Response to Reading

It is quite apparent that over the many years of human communication, there has been a great shift from oral to written forms of it. As we have learned in our history classes, oral culture has been passed down from generation to generation. However traditional this may be, things become altered during the transition process. In writing, things are much more permanent and can be easily documented for many generations to come without being altered in any way.

I found it very interesting that Elbow thought speech was more automatic than writing was. He claimed that writing took more of an "effort." For me I believe that to be very true, but for others I am not so sure. I am positive that there are people that cannot express their thoughts and feelings orally, but express them quite eloquently in writing.

When I am writing in a journal of some kind, even though a journal is a place to keep your deepest, darkest secrets, I don't write everything that I'm feeling. Even in my journal, I need to make sure that I am not being too cruel to others, etc. Whereas in speech, I can say many things that I feel at the time even if they are hurtful. I think that writing is much more inhibited than speech just because it takes a longer thought process to form words on a page than orally.

An interesting point was also made about how spoken word cannot be erased. There is no white-out for verbal communication. However, unless there are many witnesses, it is hard to truly believe the "he said, she said."