Articulate Speech

The ability to articulate is a very important skill that is undervalued in today’s society especially by young people today. By reading Northrope Frye’s article “Don’t you think it’s time to start thinking?” we learn that education plays an important role in developing our ability to articulate. With the ability to articulate, we then can begin to remove the dangers and misconceptions in society, therefore creating a safer place to live.

Critical thinking and articulate speech is not valued in today’s society because teenagers are spoon fed today. We have media that takes away our ability to express ourselves and instead replaces it with meaningless slang. We have parents and other leaders in daily life that make their views very precise that

teenagers are no longer need to think for themselves. There is no hidden meaning left to discover nor creative writing to look into, teenagers today believe everything is given to them, there is nothing left to figure out. In the article Frye states “simple verbal formulas that have no thought behind them but are put up as a pretense of thinking” (Frye). To sum Frye’s words, instead of the reader thinking about the words and making judgements, the words are making judgments and giving them to the reader.
Education is of great importance, especially in our society today.

By being educated, it makes people motivated to question what we read or hear. In society inarticulateness exists in many ways. If we have the education to question what we do not understand, we can identify inarticulateness and understand what is being covered up behind the simple play on words. Frye starts “it is not until we relies these things conceal meanings, rather than reveal it, that we can begin to develop our own powers of articulateness.” (Frye). Frye is referring to the fast “clichés and prejudices” (Frye) that we hear in society, when really, they are a mask to conceal the hidden problems behind them. Education makes us understand the meanings that are being covered up and it gives us a chance to remove the strain it is making on society. Education helps up develop our own powers of articulateness to defy what is being told to us and create a vastly different

solution.
Lastly, there are many dangers of inarticulateness in society.

Frye states “use only stereotyped readymade phrases to blend in with the mass” (Frye). He also mentions in the article that often, to maintain power, or have greater power, people use words that are inarticulate and unintelligent, due to the fact that no one understands, therefore no one says a word. The dangers in society arise when someone steps up to the stand to rebel against what is being said. When people refuse to obey, others may get suspicious. Therefore because of the lack of articulate skills, no one bothers to rebel in fear that dangers await them if they

do.
In conclusion, Northrope Frye does an excellent job in portraying the need of articulate speech in society. He explains the dangers faced and the strain inarticulateness puts on society when people are uneducated and play with unintelligent words. He does an excellent job of proving to the reader why the skill of articulateness is needed and “once acquired will never be obsolete’ (Frye).