My Declaration of Intoleration of Monotonality: A Rant

Monotonality should be illegal in a public speaker, and apparently Microsoft Word declares that monotonality is illegal ----thus the nasty, little squiggle under the word every time I type it. Dictionary.com declares it to be nonexistent and that the word I am looking for is, of course, the word monotonous . However, I just don’t think that monotonous has enough density to convey the egregiously awful weight that bears down on a listener when trapped under the slow, repetitious pounding of a monotone speaker. Monotonality seems to capture that weight.

As a teacher I know that to speak in an uninflected, monotone, trudging dialect guarantees in very short order, glazed looks, drool trails on chins, and bobbing heads slowly sinking to desk tops. And yet, many are the folk who stand in front of crowds to deliver a speech or sermon and drive their audience into a stupor with their Monotonality.

Who on this earth does not know that such uninflected droning sucks the life out of our auditory senses and crushes any chance of the delivery of their message? If they were dragged into an out of body state to listen to themselves, they would refuse to re-enter such a boring body again.

I was recently afflicted by a barrage of Monotonality and was only saved from a drooling fit by working myself into a mental lather over the travesty of what was occurring. The speaker sincerely wished to convey a message of truth and importance. However, his soft spoken, uninflected, un-undulated delivery assured that his words would glance off the granite of his audiences’ brains and fall impotently to the ground. He was doomed to failure from the beginning.

 How could anyone have so little regard for the human mind? We are by nature lovers of story and any good story attached to a seismograph would register considerable shockwaves. We need ups and downs. Who has not almost fallen asleep while driving down a long, flat, visually monotonous highway? Who will not fall asleep when subjected to a speaker armed with an over-abundance of Monotonality?

No one tolerates Monotonality by giving it their attention, and therefore, all the speaker’s efforts are wasted. In a classroom learning is lost; in a church the truth is squandered; in a business the business disappears.

I have had it with hucksters who would pawn themselves off as communicators just because they have a mike in their hand. I shall walk out of any assembly where the speaker’s speaking could be confused with a Gregorian Chant.

 A few exceptions to this declaration do apply: If the speaker be my boss, I shall be content to sit and drool; if the speaker be the preacher, I shall sit quietly and read the book Numbers. If the speaker be my wife, I shall nod in the affirmative. In all other instances I will leave immediately.