Translator: TED Translators admin
Reviewer: English Unplugged Please welcome to the TEDx
Sonoma County stage Kelly Corrigan (Applause) So I have to be honest, I’m not feeling very good
about my prospects right now. I don’t have a ukulele player, I don’t have a beret, I can’t do that dance that
that guy did from the gospel and I am the last thing between you
and your five o’clock drink. (Laughter) Let me give you five facts. Thirty-three percent
of high school graduates never read a book after graduation. In college the number goes
to forty-two percent. When the state of Arizona forecasts
how many beds they need for their prisons, they look to the number of kids
in fourth grade who read well. The number one cause
of divorce is poor communication. And the number one predictor
of occupational success is vocabulary. So my message today for individuals
and couples and families, for workforces, electorates,
and communities is read more. (Applause) Read personal narrative,
read poetry, read op-ed, read Doris Kearns Goodwin and Louisa May Alcott
and Captain Underpants. There are so many good reasons to read, there’s a whole set
of physiological benefits similar to what you get from meditation so there is lowered stress and
deeper sleep and reduced memory loss. And then there’s the places
that a book can take you that time and money and
reality sometimes prohibit like Xerox Park, or Gosford Park,
or Jurassic Park. And then there are the people you can meet in the pages of a book. You know you can walk the jungle
with Coronel Kurtz or skip to the tea party
with the Mad Hatter or storm the boardroom waving
a tiny phone with Steve Jobs. Reading is the ultimate
neurobiological workout. It is to the brain what exercises is
to the body. I could stop right there and the case
for reading would be made, but there’s another reason
that I want to talk about today, and that is to read for the words. The consequences
of a robust working vocabulary seem small but there’re actually many and meaningful. Before I get to them, let me just make the link quickly
between reading and vocabulary. After fourth grade your vocabulary
basically develops exclusively from reading and that’s because
written language is so much more diverse than spoken conversation. If you were to read
for thirty minutes a day for a year, you would be exposed to two million words
used in context. And they say conservatively
that five percent of those words would be new to you or unfamiliar
or rarely used words. So that’s a hundred thousand such words that you’re going to see in a year.
Let’s say you only retain a hundred, but let’s also say that you’re not
one of the thirty-three percent of the high school graduates
who never read another book again and let’s also say that you’re getting
ready to go to your 30-year reunion. That means that you have been exposed
to thousands of new words and you’ve incorporated them into your own personal arsenal. That has…that matters. that adds up. So as I said at the top,
one of the things it does for us is predict occupational success. And it has been proven
that achievement precedes the vocabulary rather than it being a result of. And at first it seemed so far-fetched to me
that that would be the case but then it seemed
so obvious the more I sat with it. I mean how we communicate
has such a huge influence over how we are perceived and how we are perceived has such
a huge influence over how we behave and how we behave over time
becomes basically who we are, to our colleagues
and within our profession. And it all starts with word choice. Two a strong working vocabulary is the best defense we have
against manipulation both commercial and political. So take for example
the whole ballot measure business. So you’ve got a team of word Smiths
that are trying to come up with the perfect exact phrasing
for that ballot measure, then you’ve got a whole set of media working
to translate that into new language and there you are the voter in the booth
having to parse those words to made sure that you can accurately
vote your conscience. That takes a strong vocabulary. Take for another example
listening to a debate. We need to be able to hear
and instantly recognize the motives behind choosing certain words over others. For instance affirmative action
over reverse discrimination or illegal immigrant
over undocumented worker or disability over difference. The third reason, as my husband said, is that language literally
defines our palette of possible thought. As Helen Keller said,
perhaps more beautifully, no offense Hun (Laughter) She said, well first she considered herself
like a wild animal until she got her hands on words you know, she first learned braille
and then she learned to sign and then finally she could vocalize. And she said language sets thoughts aster and keeps us in the intellectual
company of man. And I learned this for myself. In 1993 I came out to California
from Philadelphia and I started grad school at night
to get a masters in English Lit. My first professor was a guy named
Michael Krasny who you might know – you know –
from public radio Michael Krasny is a lucid articulate man and I will tell you that in three months
of those classes he introduced us to concepts as far
and wide as cognitive dissonance and schadenfreude
and intentional fallacy, agnosticism and relativism, solecism and those concepts
that he drew with an architect’s precision with that uncanny verbal acumen
of his are now mine. They are in my palette
of possible thoughts forever. And fourth, which is my favorite reason, Having a strong vocabulary
allows you to do the thing that fifty plus years of social science
tells us is the key to well-being; make meaningful connections to others. The strength of our connections,
the quality of our connections totally hinges on our emotional
intelligence and EQ starts with words. How accurately and unambiguously
can we identify and distinguish and convey our feelings to another. Was the lie insidious or was it shrewd? Did it make you anxious or cautious? Language allows for that potent
divine moment between friends when we both understand
and are understood. The "Exactly Moment" where I say
“I don’t know it was just, I was so disappointed,
but it was more than that” "You were disillusioned." “Exactly, that’s exactly how I felt” And so Word Nerds our job is clear. (Laughter and Applause) Only in TED do you get a clap
for calling everybody a nerd. Our job is to go out there and help
our families and our spouses and ourselves our workplaces,
our electorate, our communities read more, so that we may be able
to achieve and evaluate to think and connect so that we might keep building the bridge that Ian Forrester said is so essential, the between the prose in us
and the passion. Without it he said, we are
meaningless fragments: half monks, half beasts. Thank you (Applause)
