Spoken and written language. The choice of voice. The shmot of thought.
When I think about how I decide to write, I am surprised at the number of ingredients that go into my decision. Here is my recipe...
...just kidding, I would never do something so corny twice. Anyways, in all honesty, my thoughts travel through an industrial factory's worth of pipes, tubes, filters and screens before finally reaching the page. I constantly reconsider the arrangement of words. It would be interesting to remove my Backspace button and, for once, "talk" with typing.
Now that I consider the challenges this would impose, I think it would serve as a good exercise to show students the difference between their spoken voice and their written voice. Writing takes time; even successful, utterly precise writers revise their work over and over again while writing. By always considering the "connotations of alternative ways of expressing the same thought," good writers will guarantee that their readers have a good chance of safely arriving at the desired destination (Adger, et. al, 114).
It is not the same with verbal communication. In this mode of communication, there are different types of real-time revisions, such as body language, intonations, space fillers, etc. The participants in this type of communication produce discourse en juntos, as a team. Meaning is negotiated, loose, and free to adapt and change depending on which way you pull its tail.
There are a few strategies or exercises that would allow my students to access this understanding. First, as I mentioned above, it would be an interesting challenge to type without the Backspace key. This would show every student how hard it is not to revise their thoughts as they write; indeed, we often revise naturally! Second, I would provide my students with a few examples of transcribed speech in order to show them what real verbal discourse looks like on a page. What are the characteristics of speech? In comparison with regular written discourse, how does it appear on the page? What words are characteristic of verbal communication and what would be characteristic of written communication? What are the differences? I hope exploring these questions would give my students the skill set to recognize the similarities and the differences between verbal and written communication.
Resource:
Splatt Poetry Game
Poetry can be fun you know. This resource will show you how!
I can't imagine writing without a delete button. I just used it. But also, your point about the difference between spoken and written language--in the individual--is really interesting. I wonder how much it varies person to person what the difference between these two things is...does that make sense? For example, I feel much more confident expressing myself in writing, but at the same time, I think my written "voice" is relatively similar to my every-day talking voice. But then again that probably changes according to what I'm writing. And some people write so differently than they speak. Why?
ReplyDeleteWriting this at 8:30 in the morning is proof that I'd rather do ANYTHING than get ready to go to this next class. Ugh.