Word: dictions
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...practical skill a college cab impart. Hence President Conant's avowal that everywhere "we hear complaints of the inability of the average Harvard graduate to write, either correctly of fluently," is not be silently shelved. As the "Times" stated recently, new influences of everyday life--the realistic but unrefined diction of the streets, the movies, the radio--have dulled American appreciation of good English. Harvard is facing the problem together with the rest of the country and its schools...
Best liked, hardest to locate were neutral dictions without noticeable peculiarities-what the investigators called "generalized American speech." The listeners liked best a speaker (not Pennsylvania Dutch) from Lancaster, Pa., voted second place to one from Syracuse, N. Y.-both good examples of neutral, generalized diction. A speaker from Boston won third choice. But though he gave himself away by saying "grahss" (grass), "ahsk" (ask) and "look heah," few listeners placed him correctly...