CHAPTER VI

TOTAL BODILY ACTION

Argument of the Chapter.-Speech is a form of action, and as action of one part of the body affects all other parts, the study of speech calls for a study of the whole body. This involves a recognition of the necessity for using the whole body in speech, which implies that all good speaking is emotional, from an integrated body. Also it recognizes that a live body is an index of the alertness and unity of the speaker's mind; that a sound mind implies a coördinated body, and a defective mind a body quiet or active in excess. Furthermore, action is necessary to carrying fullness of meaning to the audience by way of the eye, according to the habits of the audience as observers of what the speaker reveals.

Criteria of successful action on the part of the speaker are found in an adjustment of grace and awkwardness, a balance between strength and ease, a fitness of action to the daily habits of the audience, and an analysis of stage fright.

ACTION THE FOUNDATION OF SPEECH

Body or voice-which should be studied first? First ask: Which is mastered earlier in the struggle to learn how to communicate? Clearly the body; true of the race and of the individual man; primeval man communicated by signs before he ever talked, and children control their sign-making apparatus before they control the apparatus of voice. If all children could get and keep a mastery of the body, arms, legs, viscera, head, and face there would be few poor speakers. It seems safe to say that all speech difficulties get their origin in defects of bodily structure or defective mastery of bodily parts. Hence in the study of how to improve

speaking and reading the body properly comes, in point of precedence, ahead of voice.

I. ACTION AND HUMAN NATURE

Action an Aid to Speaking.-To meet the issue of how much bodily activity is acceptable, observe men going about their business trying naïvely to get the best results they can. The lively ones are lively in bodily action as well as in mental alertness; in fact, as we shall see, live body equals live mind. It is a simple fact that most successful speakers, men who actually win and influence audiences, are, on the platform, alert, animated, never at rest, always doing something definite with arms, hands, legs, head, and face. Also it is easy to note that almost any speaker who is active on the platform-within moderation-gets results and receives his full measure of success. Some of them, by very virtue of this bodily alertness, get more of it than their message really deserves; while many inert speakers with vital messages fail to get a hearing worthy of their learning or of their mental and moral greatness. From such we can see that obviously action at least pays; audiences like it; plainly it is valuable in establishing good communication.

GOOD SPEAKING EMOTIONAL

Not only is this a matter of common observation, but it is based on a fundamental psychological fact. "Live" speaking, just referred to, is in reality emotional speaking. There are very few occasions, if any, when effective speaking is not emotional. The fallacy in dry-as-dust style, or the "academic" at its barest, is the attempt to offer speaking that is unemotional. Strictly there can be no such thing; this is why there are college lecturers who become amazed that their students do not seem to grasp what they say; pearls before swine, possibly. The point is that the student. does not feel himself a party to an act of genuine communication, for the very reason that the situation is rifled of those qualities that give it its emotional verve and snap. Emotion a General Bodily Activity.-An emotion is de

scribed most simply as a general setting off of a burst of actions all at once. In the more intense emotions the whole body is visibly set in motion: head jerks; arms fly about; trunk does any number of things-chiefly internal, but having a great deal to do with the state of mind-legs stiffen or weaken, take to flight, or give out entirely. So whenever the speaker gets emotional-and he always does so if he is alert and in earnest-he is muscularly activated all over his body.

It is necessarily so, for one of the factors in an emotional performance is the secretion of juice by ductless glands, which gets into the blood, and so affects the whole body. These juices have two general effects: to excite, as in anger or fear, when something in the blood animates the muscles after the manner of caffein; and to depress, as in grief or despair, where something in the blood slackens the muscles after the manner of an opiate or a sedative.

How, then, can a speaker ever communicate warmly, even hotly, if his voice and words aim to be warm but his body cold? The answer is that in reality it cannot be done, and is not even tried among men endeavoring to settle interesting and vital affairs. Judd points out: "There is no such condition as one of absolute rest of the hand muscles. .. Experiments with ouija boards show that the hand moves in thinking"; and it is by no means the hand alone. Speaking cannot be fully live and animated unless the liveness and animation are displayed by the thinking mechanism-the voice and the body. Of these three the body is the one to come first in time. The emotion that is felt, which gives the speaker his urge to demand a hearing, is altogether bodily from crown to toe; and from crown to toe action is needed to give the thought adequate meaning for the listener.

Children's Actions Are All General, Hence Emotional.Every action that a child makes visibly is in effect a general action; eye, neck, arms, trunk, legs all work together; only after some years can the child with any success limit the actions of any one of these parts. The schoolboy learning to write will kick his feet, bend his back, screw his head

around, and try to poke his tongue through the side of his face. Later he learns to use his arm only; all the other little motions that go on are unobserved of others. As to speaking, it is only after considerable effort that the child can speak without getting wrought up all over. Nor does any man ever get to the point where his whole body will not break into veritable spasms under the attempt to speak under emotional conditions. That is what ails the stutterer and the stammerer; speaking for them is too emotional; they can do nothing but lose control all over the body, and, being uncontrolled in the muscles of the whole body, they are naturally uncontrolled in the muscles of the voice. Also this is what makes men tremble on the platform, or sweat all over, or become immensely fatigued by a twenty-minute talk before an audience. They are at work all over the body.

LIVING TOUTE D'UNE PIÈCE

Working All in One Piece.-As a broad general rule, whatever a man does well he does with his whole body. The best runner runs with arms and neck and shoulders, as well as with legs. In baseball the best fielder and the best batter use all the muscles from toe to crown. Good golf playing is almost impossible without control of feet, knees, hips, shoulders, neck, head, arms, wrist, and eyes. Tennis, croquet, billiards, bowling, all are done best by people who can make the whole body coördinate. Even playing a piano or writing on the typewriter or threading a needle calls for control of the body as a whole. One cannot even study well, write interestingly, or read to oneself intelligently when parts of the body are too much relaxed. Mr. Henry James, the novelist, has given excellent expression to this principle in his description of Mrs. Kemble, the English actress, when he says, "Mrs. Kemble is of all women in the world the most toute d'une pièce. If she does so little as to button her glove, she does it with her whole body." Mrs. Kemble's occupation, acting, calls especially for an effective manner on the public platform; what Mr. James really says is that Mrs. Kemble has learned the basic secret of suc

cessful appearance before a public gathering; to move and to do things all-in-one-piece.

In general the people we like best are those who are toute d'une pièce. We like people who are lithe, alert, controlled. The same applies to dumb animals; the animals most commonly admired are those exhibiting general facility and bodily activity. Nothing is more graceful than a lively kitten or more awkward than a clumsy puppy. The kitten is graceful because whatever it does it does all over and as one piece, equally well with the head and feet and body; while the puppy is awkward and ludicrous for the very reason that its body is too eager for its legs, and its head unmanageable by its body; it works in several pieces at once. Tigers, lions, panthers, deer, even snakes are graceful and easy to look at because they are just as facile with one part of the body as with any other. Camels, giraffes, elephants, apes are awkward because always one part of the body is less developed than other parts or less skillful. The elephant's trunk is more graceful than his legs. The camel looks like a duffer all over, the ape is better-looking when climbing than when walking, and the hippopotamus has no two parts that know teamwork with any other parts, and is probably the champion at awkwardness.

Babies are almost always graceful and interesting. Highschool boys and girls are pretty likely to be going through "the awkward age." Grown-ups divide about equally between interesting and awkward. Yet everybody who works at it hard enough at living all-in-one-piece can attract favorable attention. The secret is to get back to your childhood way of carrying yourself as a unit. Babies do not get stiff in the neck and shoulders when people look at them; they never get like a tow string nor push their chins forward nor try to hide themselves in their necks nor tremble at the knees nor fidget with their fingers; they are the same all over. If they are angry, they are tight and energetic all over; if they are eager, they wriggle just as much in their thorax as in their toes; and if they are at ease, they are at ease all over. Unhappily, older boys and girls are not so. Study them and see how far from grace they are fallen.