Speech is one of the most basic things that makes us human. We wait eagerly for our kids to utter that first word, and many parents can remember the exact day that they first heard their child begin to communicate intelligibly. We have traditionally marked ourselves off from the "dumb beasts" by our ability to jabber at each other in bursts of vocal sound densely packed with meaning - but how much of that meaning, on average, actually gets through?
I'd hazard a lot less than we assume. In a lot of ways, speech is a distraction from what's really going on, the gist of which is often shown quite clearly by body language and actions. How many times have you heard a political speech and then gone on to watch the speaker do precisely the opposite of what he or she had been verbally endorsing? If we hadn't invented speech, it would be a lot harder for us to lie.
This is, I think, one of the reasons why animals are so good for us. They don't talk, and they don't really listen to our speech - they hear the tone of voice we use, and they understand our energy. We might spend the whole day at the office fronting to our colleagues, but when we get home the dog knows all about our day as soon as we walk in the door. Animals keep us honest.
Check out #715; In which Speech is merely a Dialect, via Wondermark.com
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