Sentence:  All this was extraordinarily distasteful to Churchill. It was ugly, gross. Never before had he felt such repulsion when the vicar displayed his characteristic bluntness or coarseness of <WSD>speech</WSD>. In the present connexion [...] such talk had been distressingly out of place. 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  The faculty of uttering articulate sounds or words; the ability to speak or to use vocalizations to communicate.