The Shifting Relationships between Speech and Writing

Abstract

Paradoxes . . .beset the relationships between the original spoken word and all its technological transformations.... [I~ntelligence is relentlessly reflexive, so that even the external tools that it uses to implement its workings become "internalized," that is, part of its own reflexive process.(Ong, Orality, 81)1We have seen interesting work in recent years on the nature of speech and writing and the mentalities associated with each.The insights from these investigations are extremely valuable, but a dangerous assumption is sometimes inferred from them: that speech and writing are distinctly characterizable media, each of which has its own inherent features and each of which tends to foster a particular cognitive process, or "mentality."2I am interested in the cognitive processes associated with speech and writing, but instead of saying that each medium has a particular tendency, I will argue that each medium can draw on and foster various mentalities.This essay is a call for writers and teachers of writing to recognize the enormous choice we have and to learn to take more control over the cognitive effects associated with writing.This essay is in three parts-each showing a different relationship between speech and writing.I. The Traditional View: Indelible Writing, Ephemeral Speech Obviously writing is more indelible or permanent than speech.Speech is nothing but wind, waves of temporarily squashed air, waves that begin at once to disperse, that is, to lose their sound.Writing, on the other hand, stays there-"down in black and white."Once we get it on paper it takes on a life of its own, separate from the writer.

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