Mat 12:33 "Either make the tree ideal and its fruit ideal, or make the tree rotten and its fruit rotten, for by its fruit the tree is known.
Mat 12:34 Progeny of vipers! How can you be speaking what is good, being wicked? For out of the superabundance of the heart the mouth is speaking.
Mat 12:35 The good man out of his good treasure is extracting good things; and the wicked man out of his wicked treasure is extracting wicked things.
Mat 12:36 Now I am saying to you that, for every idle declaration which men shall be speaking, they shall be rendering an account concerning it in the day of judging.
Mat 12:37 For by your words shall you be justified, and by your words shall you be convicted.
Primarily, this whole discourse follows what Christ said about blashpemy against the Spirit, a topic that's caused enough confusion through the centuries.
Dave's paraphrase: What's in your heart is what comes out of your mouth. What you are on the inside determines your actions. You are and will be judged by your words/actions because they reveal what is in your heart, whether good or wicked.
Only God is good. The heart of man is deceitful and desparately wicked. I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me.
You could make up a law about how many words you are allowed to say before they turn into 'wickedness', but what good is that if, whenever you go to the Well of your heart to speak, all you find is wicked things to say because your heart is a treasury of wickedness? Get your heart changed for good, and when you make a withdrawal from the treasury, it will be good.
Eph 4:29 Let no tainted word at all be issuing out of your mouth, but if any is good toward needful edification, that it may be giving grace to those hearing."
Eph 4:30 And do not be causing sorrow to the holy spirit of God by which you are sealed for the day of deliverance.
Eph 4:31 Let all bitterness and fury and anger and clamor and calumny be taken away from you with all malice,
Eph 4:32 yet become kind to one another, tenderly compassionate, dealing graciously among yourselves, according as God also, in Christ, deals graciously with you."
How do you obey that? I think for the mature in Christ no commandment is necessary, and for those rebelling against the Spirit, no commandment is sufficient. Most of us are in the middle somewhere. It's certainly a very important thing to consider and a growing in Grace and the Fruit of the Spirit to constantly test ourselves against the Character of Christ.
We should certainly avoid bitterness and fury and anger and clamor and calumny and all malice. But "becoming kind to one another, tenderly compassionate, dealing graciously among yourselves, according as God also, in Christ, deals graciously with you..." requires, well, actually God, in Christ, dealing graciously with us! That's something we can't summon up by will or know in all cases what IS "needful edification that gives grace".
I reckon a lot of us tend to talk too much. That doesn't seem as important to me, from Scripture, as what we are saying, why, and how.
You asked for thoughts. These are some o' mine.