ABSTRACT
Speech and language serve to free us from direct experience. They are the means by which knowledge is passed on from generation to generation. An equally important direct function is the teaching skills. This applies as much to practical techniques in infancy as to great refinement in art or musical endeavour later. They may also be used to convey to others abstract messages over and above what is contained in the individual words themselves. How the words are spoken and in what context can convert a positive statement into the opposite. Such supralinguistic characteristics of speech serve a large role in social development. To obtain a more comprehensive grasp of all that is entailed in these brief statements the reader needs to go to either basic texts on speech, language, syntax and thinking, or more advanced ones, depending on present level of knowledge.
