If you haven’t spoken to anyone at all for 24 hours, not even the newsagent or supermarket assistant, it can be odd trying to find the right words, and the right voice, to make a human connection.
If you haven’t spoken to anyone at all for 24 hours, not even the newsagent or supermarket assistant, it can be odd trying to find the right words, and the right voice, to make a human connection. It’s as if you can get rusty with audacious speed, and that without continual usage the habit of conversation begins to degenerate, like the muscles of a marathon runner who stops running. Radio, though, is a good way of pretending; of imagining yourself in a conversation even if there is no one else in the house. A couple of programmes on Radio Four this week talked about language, how we speak, how we make connections through what we say, and why words, or rather the right words, matter.
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