"An inability to handle language is not the same thing as stupidity"
About this Quote
Hare’s line is a scalpels-out jab at a society that treats fluency as a moral credential. As a playwright, he’s spent a lifetime watching people use words to climb, to conceal, to wound, to charm. So when he insists that clumsiness with language isn’t stupidity, he’s not offering a gentle reminder about learning differences; he’s indicting a class system that confuses polish with intellect and accent with worth.
The intent is corrective but also accusatory: the real stupidity belongs to institutions and audiences that conflate verbal performance with mental capacity. In Britain especially, where speech is a social GPS, “handling language” is rarely neutral. It’s code for education, confidence in public spaces, the right kind of vocabulary, the right kind of hesitation. Hare is pointing at the unfair shortcut: we downgrade people who don’t talk like we do, then congratulate ourselves for our “standards.”
The subtext cuts two ways. It defends those whose thinking outpaces their articulation: the shy, the dyslexic, the immigrant, the working-class speaker who’s been trained to distrust their own voice. It also needles the articulate frauds: the people who can “handle language” brilliantly and use that competence to launder weak ideas, sell policy, or dodge accountability. Theatre is full of them; so is politics.
What makes the line work is its plainness. Hare doesn’t romanticize the inarticulate or demonize eloquence. He simply breaks the lazy equivalence, and in doing so exposes how often our judgments are about power, not brains.
The intent is corrective but also accusatory: the real stupidity belongs to institutions and audiences that conflate verbal performance with mental capacity. In Britain especially, where speech is a social GPS, “handling language” is rarely neutral. It’s code for education, confidence in public spaces, the right kind of vocabulary, the right kind of hesitation. Hare is pointing at the unfair shortcut: we downgrade people who don’t talk like we do, then congratulate ourselves for our “standards.”
The subtext cuts two ways. It defends those whose thinking outpaces their articulation: the shy, the dyslexic, the immigrant, the working-class speaker who’s been trained to distrust their own voice. It also needles the articulate frauds: the people who can “handle language” brilliantly and use that competence to launder weak ideas, sell policy, or dodge accountability. Theatre is full of them; so is politics.
What makes the line work is its plainness. Hare doesn’t romanticize the inarticulate or demonize eloquence. He simply breaks the lazy equivalence, and in doing so exposes how often our judgments are about power, not brains.
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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