From Bad Resumés to Poor Command of the Spoken Word

Irregardless, some peoples come from parts where they does not talk good.

I harp on this CONTINUOUSLY with my 5th grade step-daughter. Her spelling is horrendous. And I tell her that if she were to pronounce the words correctly to begin with, the spelling of those words would be much more intuitive.

The ones that really drive me batty are "probly" and "prolly".

One might think that but one would be operating under a false assumption.

A good lawyer - indeed, anyone engaged in the business of negotiating -  need not impress with a luxuriant vocabulary or Queen's English diction. Better to lull your audience or opponent into a false sense of superiority with vernacular, casual speech so that you can take advantage of their miscalculation of your intellectual powers.

Ever watch old episodes of the mumbling, bumbling Detective Columbo? We use him as an example of great sales technique when training recruiters to be non-threatening and allowing your candidate or client to assume they are in control. Works like a charm.

Unfortunately, everyone he speaks to speaks better than he does...at least around here.

I understand that taking different tones, etc with different clients is a necessity. However, I don't find any excuse to mispronounce common words - it just sounds ignorant and lazy. It's not a question of using flowery vocabulary.

OMG! I no wht u meen!

I just read an article about how text-speak is working its way in to the classroom, causing English teachers to spontaneously combust.

Ooh, don't even get me started on that one...fortunately I don't know very many people who actually say that.

lorabby - 2008-05-08 4:12 PM  EDIT: of course, I myself speak lolcat on occasion, but never in performance of mah lawyerly dooties...

What is this lolcat you all speak of?!

bcart1991 - 2008-05-08 4:02 PM

wurkit_gurl - 2008-05-08 3:58 PM

Ooh, don't even get me started on that one...fortunately I don't know very many people who actually say that.

You obviously don't travel to south Louisiana very much... Here in GA, it's pronounced "I'll ast around" by the locals.

Funny you mention it - that does seem to be a Southern thing - the only reason I even thought of it was that I was in DC yesterday and this morning, heard it all the time (and felt my skin crawl each time)*.

I will say though that I do find myself falling back into colloqualisms and my root speaking patterns (even having my midwest accent pop up at times), when I giving an extensive argument, thinking on my feet.  It is as if my mind switches over to focusing all its efforts on the logic of the arguments and I revert to auto-pilot in my speech patterns.  For example, I'll realize I start tossing in "ya know" where it doesn't belong and I tend to avoid the high-vocabulary words and use the most basic terms (example being yesterday I was arguing with a patent examiner at the Patent Office and instead of describing the systems as being "desparate", I simply called them "different."

*Yanti - how's that nesting?

bcart1991 - 2008-05-08 1:02 PM

wurkit_gurl - 2008-05-08 3:58 PM

Ooh, don't even get me started on that one...fortunately I don't know very many people who actually say that.

You obviously don't travel to south Louisiana very much... Here in GA, it's pronounced "I'll ast around" by the locals.

Hey!  I'm from Southern Louisiana, and I *never* spoke like that.  Of course, my mother was a language teacher (English, French and Spanish), and it now a hobby-linguist, so any kind of incorrect or incoherent speaking was verboten.  We weren't even allowed to use the term "ain't" except in rare occasions.

Eh, you're right--Internet's Internet. And frankly, the same things that drive you nuts drive me nuts; however, I don't think the reasons that they drive me nuts are particularly valid.

When something is committed to writing in a professional context, I agree--there's no excuse for errors.

However, there are very few standards governing speech. There's no reason that pronouncing "nuclear" as "nucular" is incorrect; it's a commonly accepted pronunciation. Then there are many pronunciations that are uncommon, but not incorrect.

Sure, it's annoying when someone says "libary" instead of "library," and I probably wouldn't want that person giving a presentation with me. But the pronunciation isn't incorrect.