Pat Boyle

Junior Theology

September 17, 2006

Right Speech Assignment

            There are so many aspects to our speech.  The way we communicate with different people can be studied forever, and numerous things can be discovered about our speech.  The lies we tell, the people we tell lies to, and the fact that we can so easily deviate from the truth all affect our everyday speech.

            When first given this assignment, I initially thought that since I would be more observant about my speech, it would naturally change.  However, since I wasn’t constantly thinking about the observations, it wasn’t until after I had already deviated from the truth that I could look back and observe my speech for that time.  My general observations to this assignment are probably very similar to my classmates’.  Almost every time that I deviated from the truth, it was when I was talking to my parents.  I’m not using the word “lie,” because a lot of my speech still contained some truth.  However, my speech would deviate from the truth basically for one reason:  to make things better for myself.  This seems so obvious now, but before I had to observe my speech, I really didn’t know the reason for lying.  But after a week of observation, it seems so clear that we deviate from the truth to make things better for us, and a lot of times we lie to even make people feel better.  The truth is, everyone lies.  The number of lies we tell definitely varies from person to person, but I have found, at least after a week, that deviating from the truth is just a part of everyday speech, and unless you want to come across as a complete jerk, sometimes you will have to lie.  I’m not saying that this fact makes lying ok, but that is the conclusion that my observations from the past week have brought me to, and its something that I didn’t really recognize before.

            When it comes to the question of “Am I an honest person?”  My answer would be yes.  I’m not saying that I always tell the truth, in fact I probably deviate from the truth more than a lot of my peers.  However, the fact is, I value the truth, even if I don’t speak it as often as I should.  Another question that was asked is “Am I trustworthy?”  Again, this seems similar to being honest, but it is not the same thing.  To me trustworthy has to do with friends.  For a teenager, the easiest people to trust are their friends.  We look towards our friends for so many things everyday, and one thing I can say about myself is that I rarely let my friends down.  Maybe I don’t always tell them the truth, or sometimes I will forget to call them, but I think I can honestly say that my friends trust me, and visa-versa. 

            This assignment was a good thing for me to do, since I have never really formally examined my speech that much.  I’m not saying this is an enlightening experience that will change the way I communicate with people, but it really got me thinking about how trustworthy and honest I can be without being fully truthful.