Speech and writing are both very important forms of communication in today's society, but I feel as though the form of writing is more superior when communicating. Speech is a very important aspect of today's society. We listen to the radio for news and entertainment, in addition to communicating to on another on a daily basis. We speak our opinions and listen to others. Vocal communication saves time over writing and shows emphasis on specific phrases and tone of voice.
Writing, on the other hand connects us to others with or without being face to face. Writing enables us to communicate with people all over the world through letters, emails, internet posts, chat rooms, instant messaging and text messaging. Before people spoke to one another, writing took its first steps with symbols. In fact, according to The Washington post's article, "The End of Literacy? Don't Stop Reading by Howard Gardner, "it was less than 100,000 years ago that our human predecessors first made meaningful marks on surfaces, notating the phases of the moon or drawing animals on cave walls." As time went on, "within the past 5,000 years, societies across the Near East's Fertile Crescent began to use systems of marks to record important trade exchanges as well as pivotal events in the present and the past,(The End of Literacy?" which proved as beneficial as the early steps or writing.
I feel as though writing is superior to speech because writing is the building block of speech. In order to form words and sentences the formation of the alphabet must be written down before anything can be spoken. As noted previously by the article The End of literacy, about 5,000 years ago humans took the first steps of writing by communicating trade information, even though they could not talk to one another. So, in other words, writing came first, and the human’s civilization can survive and communicate without speaking.
Today communication is getting faster and to the point. Nowadays, "more than a billion people can communicate via e-mail, chat rooms and instant messaging; post their views on a blog; play games with millions of others worldwide; create their own works of art or theater and post them on You Tube; join political movements; and even inhabit, buy, sell and organize in a virtual reality"(The End of Literacy? Don't Stop Reading) Even speaking to one another has shortened, According to a Washington Post article titled, “The Dumbing of America” by Susan Jacob, Harvard University's Kiku Adatto found that between 1968 and 1988, the average sound bite on the news for a presidential candidate -- featuring the candidate's own voice -- dropped from 42.3 seconds to 9.8 seconds." The incredible difference in time show how less speaking can get the point across. Not to mention today presidential candidates have their own websites where people can get information themselves through the writing process. According to Chapter five in the textbook "Communication in History" by David Crowley,"political leaders have always used writing, Nearly 4000 years ago and a totally different script separate the famous black basalt law code of Hammurabi of Babylon."
Although, nationally, we speak and write everyday I feel as though we can survive without speaking and write to one another, even if it is more time consuming. Writing although abbreviated at times is a useful source of communication and superior to speaking.
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2 comments:
Hey Dan, i actually wrote my blog using the opposite argument (that speech is superior to writing.) While trying to decide which position to take i thought of the many points that you made in this blog. You mentioned that writing is the foundation of speech, using the alphabet to learn how to speak. I think that oral communication is underplayed slightly. Prior to the formation of the alphabet people still communicated relatively efficiently. In regards to politics, the written language is helpful, but don't you think that well thought out responses might misguide audiences? Sarah Palin could have written an entire memo on the Bush Doctrine, but thanks to oral communication the public already knows her thoughts on that area. I believe that oral communication requires the speaker to speak the truth, while writing can often be misleading.
I wrote my blog kind of in the middle ground with this topic, but i was going to take the same p.o.v. as you. Writing really does connect us all better, it helps us learn more efficiently,cwe can even be manupulated through writing. It is also probably a lot easier to be consice in writing, whereas speech can be misunderstood more easily.
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