Word: verbal
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...present. Such diverse hands as Cavett, professional Wild Man Pat McCormick and Writer-Director Marshall Brickman, who all put in typewriter-time at the Carson Stables, speak not only of his considerable editorial skills but of his ease as an employer. If Carson, on camera, suggests simultaneously a verbal glibness and an emotional reserve, that is usually considered Midwestern; it is the same reserve that is the core of his charm and longevity. His audiences derive from Carson not only a few good laughs a night (no mean average five times a week) but the cool comfort...
Carson provides nightly exhibitions of almost unrivaled technical skills, little seminars in comedy and verbal brinkmanship that can be both tutorials for the trade and, for the paying customers, a standard against which other stand-up comedy is measured. In Johnny Goes Home, Carson is shown doing something else uncharacteristic: losing his grip. Dangling from a railroad bridge as a freight rumbles above him, his arms give out and he tumbles into the water close beneath. Walking ashore, he laughs and says, "If I'd waited another five seconds I would have made it." Historians of comedy, take note...
...Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus in fact hid behind his nonverbal art. The author paraphrases Kierkegaard on Don Giovanni: "Don Juan is not someone who creates himself by thought, but someone who can only reveal himself musically, since the erotic principle by which he lives evades his consciousness or its conscious verbal expression...
...week about how the nation's high school seniors did on the Scholastic Aptitude Test. The scores, which can be crucial in students' applications to colleges, were up a total of three points over last year. Out of a perfect 800 score, the nationwide average on the verbal section was 426 (in contrast to 424 last year); on the math section it was 467 (in contrast to 466). The three-hour test, which is taken by about 1 million seniors a year, is designed to predict on the basis of general intellectual aptitude how they will perform...
...trends around here, we like to see things occur over at least a two, three-or four-year period. But certainly it is encouraging to see it go this way rather than the other way." In 1963, before the scores began to drop, the national average was 478 for verbal and 502 for math. Educators hypothesize that much of the 19-year decline occurred because colleges expanded their admissions, prompting many students to take the SAT who would never before have applied. A variety of other social factors, including television, the frequency of divorce and the softening of high school...