(re) Awakening to the Astonishing Powers of
Speech and Writing
Whence did the wondrous, mystic
art arise of painting speech, and
speaking to the eyes?
That we, by tracing magic lines are
taught how to embody,
and to colour thought?
—William Massey (1763)
Speech &Writing: the overlooked
Though they are the sources of all subsequent
technologies, today speech and writing are so ubiquitous
that they become “naturalized” and slip beneath our
To
help re-sensitize
& we
re-awaken
to the
power
of writing, I
consciousness
in that
forget their
great
power.
offer
reflections
human
history &
Howthe
andfollowing
why this happens
areabout
aspects
of
technology…
&
Any repeated experience can become unconscious and
thus momentarily beyond our control while disengaged from
our awareness.
the
500,000
years ago
FIRE
** not to scale
50,000-100,000
years ago
IMAGES &
SPEECH
3,500
years ago
WRITING
5,000
years
ago
WHEEL
600 years
ago
PRINTING
Consider the level of cultural & technological complexity we
And without
writing,5,000
where would
…in
less
than
years!
these technologies be?
have generated since the advent of writing…
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey – from club down to collaboration
In The
Muse Learns to Write (1986)
Havelock explains the importance of the Greek Alphabet:
“…I had considered some of the acoustics involved
in linguistic behavior and had traced the way in
which the Greek symbols had succeeded in
isolating with economy and precision the elements
of linguistic sound and had arranged them in a short
atomic table learnable in childhood. The invention
for the first time made possible a visual recognition
of linguistic phonemes that was both automatic and
accurate.” (9)
McLuhan, media & sensory ratios
Understanding Media (1964)
As electrically contracted, the globe is no more than a village. Electric speed in
bringing all social and political functions together in a sudden implosion has
heightened human awareness of responsibility to an intense degree……
“It helps to appreciate the nature of the spoken word to contrast it with the written
form. Although phonetic writing separates and extends the visual power of
words, it is comparatively crude and slow. There are not many ways of writing
“tonight,” but Stravinsky use to ask his young actors to pronounce and stress it
fifty different ways while the audience wrote down the different shades of feeling
and meaning expressed….The written word spells out in sequence what is quick
and implicit in the spoken word. ...The power of the voice to shape air and space
into verbal patterns may well have been preceded by less specialized
expressions of cries, grunts, and commands, of song and dance." (113-114)
"The phonetic alphabet is a unique technology. There have been many kinds of
writing, pictographic and syllabic, but there is only one phonetic alphabet in which
semantically meaningless letters are used to correspond to semantically
meaningless sounds.....the ideogram is an inclusive gestalt, not an analytic
dissociation of senses and functions like phonetic writing." (119-120)
But first, human anatomy had to change…
It’s all about the SVT or supralaryngeal tract…
Fully developed human speech depends on
specialized anatomy that appears to have
evolved more recently in anatomically
modern humans. The melding of individual
sounds into syllables that yields the rapid
transmission rate of human speech is an
automatic consequence of the manner in
which the airway above the larynx, the
supralaryngeal vocal tract (SVT), modulates
sound energy.
Lieberman, Philip. An Overview - supralaryngeal vocal tract, Teaching Sign
Language to Chimpanzees, The Evolution of Communication
“In normal adults these two portions of the SVT form a
right angle to one another and are approximately equal in
length—in a 1:1 proportion. Movements of the tongue within
this space, at its midpoint, are capable of producing tenfold changes in
the diameter of the SVT.
These tongue maneuvers produce the abrupt diameter changes needed to
changes
the diameter
of theof
SVT.
maneuvers
produce
theinformant
frequencies
the These
vowelstongue
found most
frequently
among the world’s languages…”
produce the abrupt diameter changes needed to produce the
formant frequencies of the vowels found most frequently
among the world’s languages
“Tracking the Evolution of Language and Speech”
Lieberman & McCarthy (2007)
Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the
Word Walter J. Ong (1982)
…I style the orality of a culture totally untouched by any knowledge of
writing or print, ‘primary orality’. It is ‘primary’ by contrast with the
'secondary orality' of present-day high-technology culture in which a new
orality is sustained by telephone, radio, television, and other electronic devices
that depend for their existence and functioning on writing and print. Today primary
oral culture in the strict sense hardly exists, since every culture knows of writing
and has some experience of its effects.” (11)
“Though it releases unheard-of potentials of the word, a textual, visual
representation of a word is not a real word, but a ‘secondary modeling system’.
Thought is nested in speech, not in texts all of which have their meanings through
reference of the visible symbol to the world of sound. What the reader is seeing
on the page are not real words but coded symbols whereby a properly
informed human being can evoke in his or her consciousness real words, in
actual or imagined sound." (74)
the
500,000
years ago
FIRE
** not to scale
50,000
years ago
IMAGES &
SPEECH
3,500
years ago
WRITING
5,000
years
ago
WHEEL
600 years
ago
PRINTING
7 years ago
WEB 2.0
enhanced
augmented
Digitale
writing
super
x pis composition…
anded
Traditional compositional concerns and practices still apply,
but thespeaking,
digital writer
haswriting
a vastor
array
of computers
expressive to
options,
Strictly
digital
using
requiring ahas
greater
level
of close
attention
to context,
compose,
existed
since
before
the inception
of the Web,
audience
andonline
purpose.
but
until 2004
composition was mostly limited to expert
coders and web builders. Web 2.0 represents an explosion
of online software programs and other social media that
made digital writing much easier to use without technical
expertise or extensive training.
words can also shape us…
inside & outside
psychologically & physically
Negative self-talk = self-created failure
Mantra = mind tool Write a positive script
Never: intellectual challenge will “grow your brain”
Yes! neuroplasticity + challenge = neurogenesis
see The Wisdom Paradox by Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg
Words can cause OR unlock the
dreaded WRITER’S BLOCK
In Understanding Media, McLuhan reminds us that the alphabet, like all
technologies, has significant invisible drawbacks, one of which is the
subtle way it limits rather than encourages fluency…
•Fixes ephemeral phonemes
•Written in stone
•Engraved invitation
•Grammar hawks
•Self-doubt
•Hesitation/Procrastination
•Technophobia
•Rigid linearity
•Perfectionism
“Certainly the lineal structuring of
rational life by phonetic literacy has
involved us in an interlocking set of
consistencies …Perhaps there are better
approaches along quite different lines; for
example, consciousness is regarded as
the mark of a rational being, yet there is
nothing lineal or sequential about the
total field of awareness that exists in
any moment of consciousness.”
Vygotsky’s ZPD, Digital Natives &
A key
drawing out
studentmetaphor
potential is
concept
of the “zone
MarctoPrensky’s
insightful
ofthe
“digital
natives”
quite
of useful
proximal
development”
or ZPD conceived
in thechanges
early 20thin
in helping
us to negotiate
unprecedented
Century
by pioneering
psychologistwho
Levuncritically
Vygotsky.
communication.
Unlikecognitive
the techno-evangelist
Briefly
stated,
is that experience
in learning
when
discards
the the
old ZPD
and embraces
the new, we
can remind
the the
student
is given
sufficient
challenge
his assignments
that
traditional
student
“digital natives”
thatinelder
knowledges are
hestill
cannot
succeed
without
some guidance
the teacher.
relevant,
useful
and reliable.
As “digitalfrom
immigrants”
we
Anare
effective
assignment
is not soand
easy
as toreturning
insult the
student and
empowered
to encourage
teach
adult
bestudents
dismissed,
is itneed
so difficult
totheir
discourage
and crush the
whonor
may
a guideasfor
immigration
student
with inevitable
The
ZPD is that
fine but
shifting
experience.
Our helpfailure.
with the
tech-know
learning
curve
helps
balance
two pedagogical
extremes, a balance that
create between
a ZPD tothese
maximize
student growth.
maximizes learning and requires an attentive and flexible
approach from the teacher.
Liberal Arts = Diversity of Knowledge
The chief
“The
workand
thatunique
currently
value
captures
of a Liberal
our fancy
Artsinvolves
education
high
technology,
is
not in supposed
electronic
“mastery”
media,of
and
content
"symbolic
knowledge,
analysis.”…
but
associated
rather
the exposure
with advanced
to andeducation,
experimentation
and there
withisa no doubt
that work
variety
of disciplines,
of this type requires
perspectives,
high levels
priorities,
of analytic
value skill.
What concerns
systems,
and production
me, though,
expectations.
is the implication—evident
Because of
in
popular
this,
the discourse
experience,
about
intelligence
work—that
andso-called
contribution
older
of types
all of
work, like manufacturing
members
of the campus community
or service work,
should
are,
beby and large,
mindless,in"neck
included
the conversation,
down" rather whether
than "neck
traditional
up." ....But, though
identifiedstaff
student,
withor
another
lifelongera,
scholar.
work of body and hand continues to
create the material web of daily life. As with any human
achievement, such work merits our understanding; the way we
talk about it matters. And the dimension of it that is least
discussed and appreciated—and that we can continue to learn
from—is the thought it takes to do it well.”
Mike Rose
The Mind at Work (2004)
Thinking, Writing, Process & Portfolio
PROCESS / PORTFOLIO writing
pre-WRITING =
brainstorming
outlines
mapping
discussion
Portfolio = drafting, collecting, revising & presenting your work
Drafting & Revision…
“revision”= re-seeing, reimagining, reinventing – SIGNIFICANT change.
1.
Assignment/desire/exigency
2.
pre-writing notes
3.
Rough Draft
4.
First Draft
5.
WORKSHOP
6.
Second Draft
7.
WRITING CONSULTATION
8.
Third Draft
9.
FINAL FEEDBACK
10.
“Final” Draft
Digital Writing: programs for AUDIO composition…
5 min. intro video made with “iShowU HD” – click screen below to begin.
Image editing programs…
Even the face of death can be transformed with GIMP freeware
3 min. intro video made with “iShowU HD” – click screen below to begin.
are ideal for drafting & collaboration
Virtual House of Usher
collaboration in Second Life online simulation
Virtual House of Usher –
creative writing & nonfiction research
*simulation no longer active in SL – see “The Fall: Digital House of Usher” video tour
Resources
Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. Translated by John Wilkinson.
New York: Vintage Press, 1964.
Gee, James Paul. Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses 3rd ed.
London: Routledge, (1990) 2008.
Lieberman, Philip and Robert McCarthy. “Tracking the Evolution of Language and Speech:
Comparing Vocal Tracts to Identify Speech Capabilities.” Expedition vol. 49, no. 2,
2007. pp. 15-20
Lieberman, Philip. An Overview - supralaryngeal vocal tract, Teaching Sign Language to
Chimpanzees, The Evolution of Communication
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: the extensions of man. (1964)
ed. Terence Gordon. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2003.
Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word.
London: Routledge, 1982.
Vygotsky, Lev. Thought and Language. ed. Alex Kozulin.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986