Public Speaking by Irvah Lester Winter
page 42 of 429 (09%)
page 42 of 429 (09%)
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principle is the circumflex inflection. The tone will be raised, as in
the principal emphasis, but instead of being allowed to fall straight to a finality, it is turned upward at the finish, to hook on, as it were, to the following. The weight of voice will be less marked, the inflection less long, and the pause usually less decided, than in the case of the primary emphasis. "Recall _romance_, recite the names of heroes of legend and _song_, but there is none that is his peer." At the words romance and song there is a secondary emphasis; the voice is not dropped, it is kept suspended with the pause. A common failing among students is an inability to avoid a frequent absolute emphatic inflection when it is not in place. Many are unable steadily to sustain a sentence till the real point is reached. They fail to keep the voice suspended when they make a pause. It is very important that a student should have a sure method of determining what the principal emphasis is. He should, as has already been said, follow, in rendering the thought of another, the method of the spontaneous expression of his own ideas. He should take into his mind the principal idea or ideas, before he speaks the words leading thereto. He should then, at every pause, keep the thought suspended, incomplete, till he reaches that principal idea; he should then make the absolute stop, with the effect of finality, afterwards running off in a properly related way, such words as serve to complete the form of expression. Take the following sentence: "I never take up a paper full of Congress squabbles, reported as if sunrise depended upon them, without thinking of that idle English nobleman at Florence, who when his brother, just arrived from London, happened to mention the House of Commons, languidly asked, Ah! is that thing still going?" It is rather curious that very rarely will a student keep the thought of such a sentence suspended and connected until he arrives at the real point at the end. |
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