Elocution and Pronunciation

Why a law student in particular should learn this list. Every one of those words is a working legal word, and half of them appear in a single criminal case: the conduct of the suspect, the contract produced in evidence, counsel rising to object, the convict.

Sounds that habitually cause difficulty

These are the ones worth practising. The point is not to lose an Indian accent, which is nobody's business, but to be understood in a courtroom where the listener may not share it.

The v and w distinction. In v the top teeth touch the lower lip; in w the lips round without touching the teeth. Practise pairs: vine and wine, vest and west, veil and whale, verse and worse. Dickens gets a whole character out of the confusion, since Sam and Tony Weller in The Pickwick Papers exchange the two consistently.

The th sounds. English has two, and neither is a t or a d. The voiceless one is in think, thought, three, both. The voiced one is in this, that, they, there, other. In both, the tongue tip is between or against the teeth.

Final consonants. English distinguishes words by their endings, and a swallowed ending destroys the distinction: fact and fac, act and ac, asked, risked, texts. Practise clusters at the end of words, which is where Indian speakers of English most often lose intelligibility.

Long and short vowels. ship and sheep, bit and beat, full and fool, cot and caught. In law, live and leave, and bail and bell.

Silent letters. Words a law student uses constantly and which are commonly mispronounced: subtle, debt, doubt, indict, plumber, receipt, mortgage, salmon, island, half.

Legal words that are commonly mispronounced

Pronunciation varies between countries and between courts, and confident local practice is not wrong merely because a dictionary prefers another form. What follows is the standard form a student can rely on.

Indict, indictment. The c is silent, so the word sounds like "indite", "indite-ment".

Suit, suing. A suit in law is pronounced like the garment.

Recuse, recusal. Two syllables and three: re-CUSE, re-CUS-al.

Certiorari, mandamus, quo warranto, habeas corpus. The prerogative writs. Learn to say them slowly and evenly rather than fast and wrongly; nothing marks out a beginner faster.

Res judicata, res ipsa loquitur, ratio decidendi, obiter dicta, ultra vires, mens rea, actus reus, prima facie, bona fide, ex parte, sub judice, suo motu, amicus curiae. These appear in every year of the course. Say each aloud, syllable by syllable, until it is automatic.

And one warning about Latin. There is more than one accepted way to pronounce legal Latin, and Indian courts have their own settled usage. Learn the usage of the courts you will practise in, and use it consistently.

How to practise, in four exercises

Read aloud for ten minutes a day. MU's own note asks for this. Read anything: a judgment, a newspaper, a page of the prescribed texts. Read to the far wall.

Record yourself and listen. Uncomfortable and more useful than any other exercise. You will hear the swallowed endings and the monotone immediately.

Mark up a passage before reading it. Underline the words to stress, put a slash where you will pause, and mark where the voice rises and falls. Then read it as marked.

Practise the pairs. Sixty seconds a day on vine and wine, think and this, ship and sheep, and the noun and verb stress list above.

A worked answer

Question. "Write a short note on elocution." Six marks.

A model answer. Elocution is the art of clear and expressive speaking, comprising the production of the voice, the correct pronunciation of words, and the delivery of a passage so that its meaning and feeling reach the listener. In its competitive form it consists of delivering a prepared passage, usually somebody else's words, and it is judged on pronunciation, clarity, modulation, pace and pause, expression, poise and the observance of the time limit. Its elements are the elements of the voice: volume, which comes from breathing low in the body rather than from the throat; pitch, which must be varied, since a monotone stops being heard within two minutes; pace, which should be slower than feels natural; pause, which is the most powerful and least used device available to a speaker; stress, which carries meaning and changes it when misplaced; and articulation, since most inaudibility is caused by swallowed final consonants rather than by lack of volume.

For a student of law it has a direct professional value, because a court hears an argument before it considers it, and because the profession's working vocabulary contains words whose stress distinguishes noun from verb, such as a record and to record, or a convict and to convict, together with a large Latin vocabulary that must be said correctly and evenly. It is improved by reading aloud daily, which MU's own syllabus recommends, by recording and listening to oneself, by marking a passage for stress and pause before reading it, and by short daily practice on the sounds that give difficulty.

Why it scores. A definition, the judging criteria, the six elements of voice, a professional application, and a method of practice.

Quick revision

Elocution: the art of clear and expressive speaking aloud, judged on pronunciation, clarity, modulation, pace and pause, expression, poise and time.

Elements: volume from the diaphragm; pitch varied; pace slower; pause deliberate; stress meaningful; articulation of final consonants.

Noun and verb stress: RE-cord and re-CORD, CON-duct and con-DUCT, CON-vict and con-VICT, OB-ject and ob-JECT.

Sounds to practise: v and w, the two th sounds, final consonant clusters, long and short vowels, silent letters.

Indict is pronounced "indite". Learn the writs and the standard Latin tags aloud.

Practice: read aloud daily, record yourself, mark up a passage, drill the pairs.

Test yourself

1. Define elocution and distinguish it from a speech competition. Elocution is the art of clear and expressive speaking, covering voice production, pronunciation and delivery. In competition it means delivering a prepared passage, usually written by somebody else, whereas in a declamation or speech competition the words are the speaker's own.

2. Why is stress important in English, with an example from legal vocabulary? Because English is stress-timed, so a word with the stress in the wrong place is often not recognised at all. Many legal words change stress between noun and verb: a CON-vict but to con-VICT, a RE-cord but to re-CORD, an OB-ject but to ob-JECT.

3. What is the commonest cause of a speaker being inaudible? Not lack of volume but swallowed final consonants. English distinguishes words by their endings, so clusters such as those in acts, facts, asked and texts must be articulated or the word is lost.

4. How is the word indict pronounced? The c is silent: it sounds like "indite", and indictment like "indite-ment".

5. Give the four exercises that improve pronunciation. Reading aloud for about ten minutes a day, as MU's own note recommends; recording yourself and listening back; marking a passage for stress and pause before reading it aloud; and a minute a day on the sound pairs that give difficulty, such as vine and wine or ship and sheep.