Traditionally Southern statesmen have been orators. A society emphasizing social rituals and manners requires a kind of reverence ...for words to adequately express sentiment and feeling. The dregs of this rhetoric remain the stock in trade of the grass roots politicians. The Southerner generally does not shy away--to the extent the Northerner does--from a use of language that is something more than bare statement. The Northerner, with his conditioned respect for practicality and getting-to-the-point is more likely to possess a far greater reading than speaking vocabulary and to associate anything more than simple expression with ostentation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »