47 Ambiguous Accent

The example in #45 about Reader John would be less ambiguous -- and more offensive -- if Reader John had accented I: "I shall lose no time in reading your paper!" In a way this would imply that, whoever may lose time, I shall not. Accent, capable of selecting the intended sense amongst various possibilities, is also available for distorting another's intended sense. A malicious person finds endless opportunities for giving false impressions, while staying within the literal truth, by subtle shifts of accent in reporting the words of others. If Mary says, "I didn't think to invite him," this becomes, "Mary said -- her very words -- 'I didn't think to invite him!'" with scornful inflection on the last word, or, perhaps it becomes, "She said, 7 didn't think to invite him,'" with the suggestion that the invitation was the fault of another. Even the most obvious and innocent generalizations can become invidious when the speaker cleverly stresses them in a special way. A famous philosopher, who liked to pose as a misogynist, once began an address to a woman's club: "Man is a rational animal."

EXAMPLE

Consider how an actor, reading Mark Antony's funeral oration, can vary his inflection to change "But Brutus is an honorable man" from apparent sincerity to open sarcasm.

Take some simple sentence such as, "He will come" and accent each word in turn. Note the different contexts implied by each accent.