On the Best Indicator of Status

Appearance has stopped being a reliable marker of social status. In an age of democratized style and the urge to look like nobody else, it’s easy to get lost: who works for whom — the people in suits for the people in hoodies, or the other way around? And listening to others recount their achievements, you’d think far more people graduated from the “university of talk” than from any real one. So how do you tell who’s who?

The answer is simple: speech.

Our speech is the most precise indicator of the circle we move in, the level of our education, our cultural baggage. Its structure, its cleanness, the depth of the thought behind it — all of it says more than any outfit or accessory. Words can build bridges just as easily as they can burn them down.

I’m often back in my hometown, and I drop by a friend’s restaurant. Sadly, even though the guests there are people of means, the swearing at times comes out of their mouths more often than ordinary words — and it only gets louder after a couple of glasses of wine, or something stronger. And, you know, that’s enough to form an impression.

Once I was made a business offer. Everything looked solid: the numbers, the prospects, the action plan. But as the man explained how the cost price came together, he laced it with so much profanity that the math faded into the background. I got the gist, of course, but I couldn’t bring myself to carry that offer to my partners, or to the people who make the decisions in that industry. The reputational cost felt too high next to the potential upside.

The world has changed, and in this respect — for the better. If in the nineties roughness in speech was often read as a sign of strength, today we expect courtesy from the people we talk to, respect, the ability to choose the right word for the moment. Even my own experience proves it: when people first look at me with a bit of doubt because I seem too young, later they pay me a compliment — “After your first few words, everything was clear.” That’s a nice thing to hear.

Recently I watched a lecture by Dr. Andrey Kurpatov. He noted that young people today struggle to take in a sentence longer than five words. And yet there was a time when Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky could spin a single thought across half a page in a single sentence. It’s a symptom of the era: speech is shaped, first and foremost, by reading. The less we read, the poorer our language — and with it, our ability to express our thoughts clearly and precisely.

A rich command of speech is like being able to drive a car with a manual gearbox. Each of us has a set of “languages” for different situations and different people. Talking with a partner, running a meeting, comforting a friend, explaining something to a child — each case calls for its own form, its own language. And the richer our “literary gearbox,” the more easily we find common ground with the people around us.

Speech isn’t just a tool — it’s a reflection of how we relate to the world and how we respect other people.

And how do you size up someone you’ve just met?

Here’s to rich, clear, and deep speech for us all! 😎