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Essay: Is writing more prestigious than speaking?

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  • Published: 19 April 2022*
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  • Words: 917 (approx)
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Nowadays, writing is becoming more and more scarce, blogs are being turned into audio files, YouTube is paving the way and speech is being used more and more often, even artificial intelligence doesn’t require us to write to it, we can speak and it will answer. Just think about the phone you own, it will definitely have a system that completely negates the requirement of writing anything. As writing becomes rarer, does it mean that it is now more prestigious as more and more people prefer speaking? In some cases, yes it does become more prestigious, however in some cases, speaking is often more preferred and useful, it all depends on the context.

In today’s society, though spoken language is used more often than written language, it is seen as less highly valued. However, it can be said without any doubt that all major world-shaking events have been brought about by the power of the spoken word. The art of Oratory or public speaking is no doubt a gifted talent but it also requires the conviction, knowledge and confidence. Many famous orators have influenced the course of the history of mankind, whether it was for the good or for the bad. These people include Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill and many more. Hitler achieved extreme power was his powerful oratory. He had an incredible ability to hold an audience of millions in the palm of his hand, causing riots as he spoke. Through syntax, phonology and paralinguistic features, Obama creates a great vision: There is not a Black America, and a White America, and Latino America, and Asian America, there is the United States of America. He puts emphasis on the different races and eventually rallies everyone and unites them under the same banner of The UNITED States of America. Although speeches are usually written down and prepared beforehand, people such as Obama are not able to practice with some of the paralinguistic and phonological features as there is no crowd to prompt him when to use them. Speaking is a performance and has to be done live, therefore it is seen as more genuine and can attract many more people than writing can.

Writing can be seen as more prestigious as not even two hundred years ago, most people could only speak, since then, writing has become more abundant as the law requires children to attend school. For most young children talking comes before learning to write or type words, even misspelt words, so at the stage of childhood where children can speak but are not yet able to write much, even if they know what they might want to write, obviously speaking will be easier. However, for many, if not most people, talking is generally still easier even after their basic physical ability to write down or type words have caught up with their ability to say them. If a lecturer is giving a speech, most people cannot write quick enough to note down everything, talking is generally still easier even after their basic physical ability to write down or type words has caught up with their ability to say them. Experiments have been done that show Information passed through word of mouth always loses meaning even if it is just going through two people. As soon as the number of people increases, even more meaning gets lost. This is perhaps the reason why the law and other permanent resources are written down on paper. With writing, we can draft a piece over and over again, finessing it until it is perfect. With speech, we do not get the luxury of doing that, as soon as you fumble over a word during a speech, we cannot take the word back. This is why writing seems to be better than speaking.

Today, humans use speech much more frequently, most speech occurs in conversations every day, this is usually spontaneous, unplanned and considered more informal, genuine and intimate. Speech is more practised in the way that when we go up to someone in the street, we do not write a message and pass it to them. Instead, we go up to them to convey our thoughts. As speech is usually done face to face, humans are able to tolerate the ambiguity and vagueness as there are many oral and visual cues that provide more information. These prosodic and paralinguistic features are always used to provide information. Speaking is harder in many ways than writing because it is a type of performance. When someone dies, the police almost always will come and knock on the door, they do not want to be thought of as unsympathetic and disrespectful. In some ways, this the same thing when you want to break up with someone, don’t expect to be able to get away with sending a text and just disappearing. Humans are fickle creatures and need the face to face cues to be able to tell whether others are being serious or whether they are simply playing with them.

In general, writing is more prestigious than speaking, however speaking is more useful in some cases. Depending on the circumstance, writing and speaking can be interchangeable and the outcome would be completely different. If we continue down the rabbit hole that is using spoken language over written, will writing eventually become obsolete? Is it truly paving the way for the future or are is it becoming a thing of the past?

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