Pronounce it right

My final comments on nonverbal communication relate to the pronunciation of words. Yes, I know, pronunciation is a verbal act. But to me it falls into the nonverbal category because it has nothing to do with meaning. If I say ''potAto'' and you say ''potAHto,'' we send the same information even though we might be sending a slightly different message. At least it tells something about the speaker. But what? Well, for one thing, it tells me that you're not from my part of the country.

Suppose you hear a speaker say ''nuc-yu-lur'' instead of ''nuclear'' or ''ath-uh-lete'' instead of ''athlete.'' Again, the information we receive from ''nuc-yu-lur'' and ''ath-uh-lete'' is the same as from ''nuclear'' and ''athlete,'' but we get the message that the person who says ''nuc-yu-lur'' and ''ath-a-lete'' is, to say the least, just a bit careless of pronunciation. Could that mean the person is also careless with facts?

Some words, especially proper names, are pronounced differently in different regions of the country. In Atlanta, Ponce de Leon, a well-known street, is pronounced to rhyme with ''nonce,'' ''the,'' and ''neon.'' In other parts of the country, the name might be pronounced ''PonSAY day LeOWN.'' In both New Hampshire and North Carolina, there is a city named Concord. In New Hampshire, it's ''CONKurd,'' but in North Carolina it's ''CONcord.'' Houston (HOUSEton) County, Georgia, is spelled the same as Houston (HYUSton), Texas.

I would be the last to suggest that you eliminate regional pronunciations from your speech, but blatant mispronunciations such as the all-too-common ''nucyular'' have nothing to do with regionalism and everything to do with indifference to our language.

If there are words that you habitually mispronounce, and you know you're doing it, make a list and practice the correct pronunciation. If you're not sure how a word is pronounced, check your dictionary.

To delve a bit more deeply into the subject of pronunciation, invest in a copy of Charles Harrington Elster's Big Book of Beastly Mispronunciations. This is an authoritative guide to pronouncing many often-mispronounced words.

In summary, don't take the nonverbal elements of speech making lightly. After all, they account for 55 percent of the impressions you will leave with your audience.

''Gaining Strength and Respect in the World''

The following speech was delivered by Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations, at the Reagan Administration Executive Forum on January 20, 1984. Note how effectively Mrs. Kirkpatrick used anaphora with several successive repetitions of ''I didn't know'' and ''I knew'':

We have all, I suspect, learned a good deal in the past three years. I personally have learned so many things I never suspected were true about government and politics—that I feel like sending recall notices to my former students.

What I didn't know about the United Nations three years ago would fill a book I don't intend to write.

I didn't know that the Soviet Foreign Minister would attack us for interfering in the internal affairs of Afghanistan.

I didn't know that the Foreign Minister of the Ethiopian government— accused by Amnesty International of burning high school students in oil— would attack us for gross abuses of human rights.

I didn't know that the Poles who had just suppressed Solidarity would accuse us of totalitarianism.

I didn't even know that we would not be able to get subjects like the Libyan invasion of Chad or the repression of the Baha'i in Iran onto the agenda of the General Assembly while ''they'' could keep Israel's ''crimes'' perpetually before that body.

The fact is, when I went to the United Nations three years ago, I didn't know much about that institution in which, as Sam Levenson said, whole peoples are sentenced to death by elocution.

A few things, however, I did know.

I knew that the elections of 1980 marked the end of our national identity crisis—that the period of great national self-doubt and self-denigration had given way to a returning confidence in the legitimacy and success of our society, our institutions and ourselves.

I knew, too, that this returning confidence in the basic decency of Americans and in the relevance of our experience to the contemporary world coincided with a time of unprecedented expansionism by the Soviet Union.

I knew they had never been stronger, and that we had never been as weak by comparison; and that this ''new correlation of forces,'' as they like to call it, constituted a dangerous threat to liberal, democratic, Western societies and to the independence and sovereignty of smaller, non-Western societies as well.

Like a clear majority of other Americans, we all knew that the defeatism, delusions, and self-doubts that had displaced our traditional American optimism during the Carter years were not, as they liked to suggest, ''a sign of growing American maturity in a complex world.''

It was a symptom of despair.

Political scientists sometimes like to argue that it is impossible to tell what an election means—especially when they don't like the election's outcome.

But it was not, really, very difficult to understand the meaning of the 1980 elections:

The election of Ronald Reagan was a victory for those who rejected the idea of inevitable American decline.

The inauguration of Ronald Reagan—endowed with unique significance by the simultaneous release of our hostages, which closed the most humiliating episode in our national history—signaled a new beginning for America; a new beginning based on restoration of a strong economy and a strong defense, based above all on a vigorous commitment to freedom in domestic and foreign affairs.

Our nation's subsequent recovery in domestic and foreign affairs has been sustained by the consensus that brought the Reagan/Bush team to office and has in turn sustained growing national health and returning capacity to believe in ourselves, our worth and our future. That recovery has progressed so that today, the ''sick society'' syndrome of the Vietnam era is finally behind us. The self-doubt, pessimism and associated paralysis of those dismal times have been replaced by a new optimism.

A great many recent polling data, relevant to broad, basic and significant orientations, make this clear. Some 66 percent of all voters today approve the American quality of life. Some 62 percent believe this nation's best times are still ahead of us. There is also increased clarity and agreement about our principal adversary. Some 61 percent of Americans believe communism is the worst form of government, up from 54 percent only five years earlier. Today only 9 percent of Americans, the lowest point since 1956, have a favorable opinion of the Soviet Union. This negative opinion is associated with the widespread belief (by 81 percent of Americans) that the Soviets and Cubans are encouraging turmoil and terrorism around the world and, more specifically, a substantial majority of both Democrats and Republicans think those same Soviets and Cubans promoted trouble and turmoil in Grenada and in Central America. Some 75 percent of all Americans believe the U.S. Government should counteract these activities.

Over 60 percent of Democrats as well as Republicans and independents see the Soviet Union as an immediate danger to the United States. Over half of all three groups—Republicans, Democrats and independents—agree that President Reagan's policy of firmness will prove effective in preventing greater problems. 93 percent of Americans believe it would be better to fight if necessary than to accept Russian domination, though most of us believe that firm leadership will make it unnecessary. On a range of foreign policy questions, from the general to the particular, from Lebanon to Grenada, there are some differences between rank-and-file Republicans, Democrats and independents, but these differences are small as compared to the broad consensus about basic matters. Moreover, for the first time since 1964 the confidence of the public in the good sense and good faith of those who govern them is again on the rise.

Strangely enough, the broad consensus about ourselves, the goals of our foreign policy, the nature of our adversaries, and what we should do in various situations is not reflected—certainly not fully reflected—in the positions taken by leading contenders for the Democratic nomination today, any more than it is reflected in many partisan discussions of foreign policy or in many votes in the Congress.

The shared understandings and consensus broad enough to support a bipartisan foreign policy exist; but, much too often, public discussion of foreign affairs is still dominated by the harsh, bitter, polemical spirit that so deeply scarred the American conduct of foreign affairs in the period since debate on the Vietnam War turned mean and pushed our disagreements over the limit of civil debate to the edges of violence and beyond. Remember the nasty riots that were called ''disturbances''? —The Viet Cong flags? The most violent manifestations of that era are mercifully past, but the bitterness of many of those divisions remains and distorts, I believe, national discussion of how to implement, through our foreign policy, the effective protection of democratic values and of the West.

Neither public opinion polls nor election outcomes have so far lured a good many of our opposition leaders back from the attractions of adversary elitism, from what Mark Shields has called ''reflexive anti-Americanism.'' Democratic Congressmen and candidates doubtless know that great majorities of Americans support strong defense and a prudently assertive foreign policy, but many continue to embrace elitist liberal points of view. As Mark Shields, a Democratic commentator, put it in a most recent issue of ''Public Opinion'' magazine, ''Democrats insist they favor some weapons system or another, but it's never the one which is before the Congress in any given year. . . . Of course, say the Democrats, there is some place in the world where we should tell the Soviets, 'Enough'; but it is never the place where we are currently embroiled.''

So far they just have not caught on to the fact that the American people are no longer ready to give everybody except the government the benefit of the doubt. Too many liberals remain bogged down in what they apparently consider the ''good old days'' of the anti-war movement and the counterculture.

Most of us have moved on. Most Americans decline to be ''willing victims,'' and are no longer ready to assist in the legitimization of our defeat and disappearance.

When I arrived at the United Nations, someone asked what would be the difference between this new administration's policies and the previous one's.

I said, ''We have taken off our 'kick me' sign.''

He said, ''Does that mean that if you're kicked, you'll kick back?''

''Not necessarily,'' I responded, ''but it does mean that if we're kicked, at least we won't apologize.''

In his book on How Democracies End, the distinguished French commentator, Jean-François Revel, observed that in the West people are embarrassed to call the struggle between democracy and totalitarianism by its own

name; that they prefer instead to speak of the ''competition between East and West'' or the ''struggle between the superpowers,'' as if the ''superpowers'' were politically, morally equivalent.

The people know better.

In New York, at the UN, some people tried to suggest that the liberation of Grenada was the moral equivalent of the invasion of Afghanistan. We asked them: Where were the grateful Afghans lining the streets of Kabul shouting, ''God Bless Andropov?''

The Grenadians know the difference. So do the American people.

We know the difference, too, between a foreign policy that is based on appeasement and recklessness and a foreign policy that is steady and strong.

We know that in the past three years President Reagan has given us a strong, steady policy that has paved the way for a renaissance of freedom in the United States and in the world.

And let us be clear: In giving this nation strong, steady leadership, Reagan has been Reagan.

I feel certain you are as grateful as I that the President has given us an opportunity to participate in this extraordinary reconstruction.

Thank you.