Spoken vs. Written Word in Today's Media

When the class was presented with the challenge of defining and defending the superiority of oral communication over written or vice versa, I feel the need to rise to the occasion and take a shot at it.

Now, in today’s society the written word is a cheaper, mass-produced and incredibly potent device that both promotes widespread literacy…but also idiocy. Like most things, it’s how you use it. As we’ve witnessed on the street, in the office, at school and as showcased on the internet and TV, a lot of Americans are really dumb, and really proud of it. From “The Dumbing of America” article, the US has receded even farther into a bubble, both socially and educationally. “What doesn’t directly effect us, we don’t need to care about or even know.” It breaks my heart, but alas, I remember when at 14 all I cared about was staying awake in school and getting home to instant message my friends about how boring that day at school was.

To me, it is hard to pull one method away from the other and raise it onto a higher platform. Orality and written word are linked in the romantic sense of things. You can have an incredibly written speech, but if your orator sucks wind, the message is more likely to be lost to the audience. But then again, if we can mass produce that fantastic speech and hand it out for everyone to read, people can come to their own decisions about it (sometimes to the advantage or disadvantage of the original author). The message itself is subjective and can be aiding to resolve or mercilessly killing what American literacy we have left (ex. “infotainment”). Today with a lot of written communication transpiring over the internet and cell phones electronically, a lot of these words are being misinterpreted (ex. “I AM EITHER YELLING AT YOU THROUGH THE COMPUTER OR MY CAPSLOCK IS STUCK”) or completely butchered (a more mainstream ex. “idk, my bff, jill?”). One thing I always tend to read and observe is how easily textual conversation can be misunderstood to the point of confrontation. The mind’s voice, which most likely is trying to bridge that void in our brains with the absence of sound, can skew what is read depending on our own moods.

I am fascinated by the idea of the biological processes that oral communication can only accomplish over written or video formats. It is an active process, a feeling process. We hear voices. We see gestures and faces. We respond with our own voice and/or gestures. It is an active exchange, more so than the solitary act of reading the written word as mentioned in the essay “The Rise of the Reading Public.” To be honest I had to read this essay about two times over. My mind’s voice could not spice it up enough for me to truly understand the word’s the first time around. But ever since reading that my imagination drifts off to when intense and intimate socialization probably determined the survival of the species. Was it a unique sense of brotherhood or sisterhood we lost when the first pages were stamped from the printing press?

With the new developments in instant communication technology we’ve seen our networks expanding exponentially. In the “The End of Literacy? Don’t Stop Reading” article I found these observations interesting “…young people seem to have a compulsion to stay in touch with one another all the time; periods of lonely silence or privacy seem toxic. If this lust for 24/7 online networking continues, one of the dividends of book reading may fade away.” It fascinates me the preference of texting over making an actual phone call (when not sitting in the middle of a class lecture, that is). With the instant messaging I mentioned before and with phone texting now, through the use of these devices we are removing ourselves from any line of sight (or in some case, line of fire). You don’t see or hear me tell you “You smell.” But those pixels on your screen you’re reading are saying so because I made it say so. Confusing as it may be, the social barricade we create through the use of these technologies as old as the written word have, in my opinion, wounded our ability to think faster in dire situations and even to learn more about ourselves.

No matter how revolutionary an idea can be, there is a sad fact that we in this fast-paced Western society are leading sheltered lives that exist on input and output. Yes, we are educated in the Sciences and Arts, but what does it mean if we cannot share it properly with another human being? When we see those rare “people-smart” folk and those few, incredible orators who rise from the masses, we listen to what they have to say and it almost always shakes us up from the half-lidded, passive stupor our device monitors coax us into. They shake us up and give us something to believe in, no matter how ridiculous the message may be. It is in the delivery.


Articles/Links:
Cingular Commercial - Idk, My Bff, Jill? Cingular Wireless. Youtube.
Internet Slang Dictionary.
Lolspeak. Icanhascheezburger.com.
Misintepreting Email Communications. Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society.
The Dumbing of America. Washington Post.
The End of Literacy? Don’t Stop Reading. Washington Post.
The Rise of the Reading Public. Communications in History.