The Spoken Word

The Written Word

The Printed Word
and
The Electronic Word

The spoken word.

Nafeesa Monroe reciting poetry

.involves all the senses.

Characteristics of the Spoken Word

Behaviors; linguistic patterns; assumptions; cultural,
regional, socio-historical context; previous or shared
knowledge; role and situational aspects.
Interruptions; repetitions; forgetting; imprecision;
laughter; attitudes, points of view; changes of tone of
voice; linking words; hesitation words or sounds,
asking for time to think (holding the floor); omissions
(ellipsis); elisions; reductions; changes of
pronunciation according to degree of formality or
informality of the conversation, or to express humor.
Intonation; tone; rhythm; stress; speed; volume.
Body language; facial expressions; gestures; signals.
Intuitive or psychic aspects.

 What are some

stories, legends
or beliefs in your
community?
Who is the owner
of this information?

Each mother tongue teaches its users a way of seeing and

feeling the world which is very unique. (Marshall McLuhan,
Understanding Media)

The dominant scientific worldview of today

evolved from European languages, with their
common roots and close relationships. These
languages are structured in a way which forces
us, when we speak or write about our world, to
think and speak of them in terms of noun-things
and verb-actions. This language structure
taken for granted in English and in other IndoEuropean languages gives is a worldview, as
soon as we begin to speak as children, in which
we really see the world made of separate things
which are still (nouns), or which move or are
moved in relation one to another (verbs). The
reason, logic and mathematics of scientists are
all based on this way of dividing the world.

Some human languages do not make our

kind of distinction between nouns and verbs.
Rather, the world is seen through certain
languages as a design of processes interwoven
through time. The speakers of Hopi or Nootka,
for example both American languages - ...have
expressions which do not separate the light form
its shining, or the water from its fallIn such
languages of process, poeple do not conceive of
time as composed of a series of things called
seconds, minutes and hours. They see time as
the changes in things, which is the way in which
phyisicists now understand time.

.Einstein once suggested to

Benjamn Lee Whorff, who studied
and wrote about the differences
between languages, that it would be
easier to describe the discoveries of
modern Physics in the Hopi
language than in English .The
languages of process are much more
suitable for organic world views
rather than mechanical world views.
(Elizabet Satouris, Earthdance)

The written word.

.only involves the eye

In the world of the ancient

Egyptions, Hindus and
Aboriginals, before the
Greeks, there existed the
dream, trance and myth,
intermixed with daily
existence. With the
philosophers of Greece, a
new level of consciousness
was begun, rational doubt
and reason, as toold to
investigate reality, the
foundation for a completely
new concept of time and
space

The cause, according to Marshall

McLuhan, was the alphabet, an easyto-use communication system, which
reduced thousands of images to 24
symbols in sequence on a horizontal
line. It was the first abstract art form
because each letter is divorced from
the image one symbol for one
sound and this may have caused,
subliminally, the ability to think
abstractly (Shlain 1993)

The ideogram, hieroglyph, and codex are images with multiple

overlain concepts.


The alphabet threads these concepts together in the form
of words and sentences, whose meaning depends on
their linear sequence.
The linear code reinforces the belief that one thing
follows another, so alphabets subtly impose causality on
the thought processes of those who use them.
Used by the Greeks for a long time, the alphabet
reinforced three aspects of understanding: abstraction,
linearity, and continuity.
(Shlain, 1993).

Writing gives us an eye for an ear.

Many a page of prose and

many a narrative has been
dedicated to expressing what
was, in effect, a sob, a moan, a
laugh, or a piercing cry. The
written word spells out in
sequence what was rapid and
implicit in the spoken word.
(McLuhan, Understanding Media)

In the Middle Ages, writing was more of a craft than a technology.

Illumined Medaeval Manuscript

THe manuscript of
the Middle Ages was
written and
illuminated by hand.
There was no concept
of author, nor of
ownership of
knowledge. With the
printing press, all this
was going to change.

The Printed Word

The Gutenberg Legacy:

The printing press
with its moveable
types accelerated the
diffusion of
knowledge.
The book, by
homogenizing
languages, helped
create Nationalism.

The Renaissance saw the

invention of moveable type by
Gutenberg in 1455. The
printing press, with its
moveable types, reinforced
that we think linearly and in
sequences. The book
fomented the individual point
of view and created the
public. The individual point of
view led to Humanism.

The printing press, by

separating the author
from his work, gave
birth to the concepts of
intellectual property
and copyright.

The Electronic Word

After three thounsand years of explosion by

means of fragmented and mechanical
technologies, the world is imploding.
Marshall Mcluhan.

Where are the students?

The classroon,
reflecting the
industrial environment
of the 19th Century,
has been abandoned
in favor of computer
centers, where
students anxiously
search for
information.

 Through electronic media,

the world been converted
into a global village.
Also, humanity is developing
a new holistic perception, of
whole systems, in which
classification of data yields to
pattern recognition.

Electronic technology invites us to explore new

literacies, including all kinds of new languages and
new vocabularies in our work: visual and auditory,
iconic and alphabetic, photographic and verbal. Jamie Miles.

The personal computer has revolutionized the

structure of communication, hiding beneath its
astonishing versatility and consumer attraction, a
bold transition to electronic culture. Unhindered
by the limitations inherent in conventional
printing, digital text has introduced a radically
new medium of expression. Interactive, volatile,
blending word and image, the electronic word
challenges all all of our assumptions about
artistic, educational and political discourse. Richard A. Lanham

The old norms of copyright

and possession of
intellectual property simply
are not applicable to the
universe of knowledge in
cyberspace...

One key aspect of this form of text is how easily it

can be recombined with other texts. The authors
own text begins to interact with other sources of

Even printing, apparently hard and

immutable, has come to be seen as
something purely provisional, because
a new one incorporating changes can
be produced at whim...

.The word processor greatly extends the

fluid stage of the text, abolishing the sense of
discrete compositions and converts the
document into a long, continuous document....

With electronic communication, the notion of a static and owned text is once more
dissolved into the fluidity commonly achieved by by oral culture. Richard
Lanham

Implications for language

teaching: What do you see? What do you think?
Be aware of the changes of
Become aware of the
perception brought about
characteristics and
by each medium.
differences between the
spoken, written, printed
and electronic word.
Use appropriate methods
and media, printed as
well as electronic, to
teach listening, speaking,
reading and writing.

Bibliography
Brent, Doug Oral Knowledge, Typographic Knowledge, Electronic
Knowledge: Speculations on the History of Ownership,
http://www.ucalgary.ca/ejournal/archive/rachel/v1n3/article.html
Johnson Girn, Rebeka Nr, Helping Students Understand Authentic
Spoken English, Tsis 2000 JGR, Centro de Idiomas, Universidad
Autnoma Benito Jurez de Oaxaca
Lanham, Richard, The Electronic Word, Democracy, Technology and
the Arts, University of Chicago Press, 1993
McLuhan, Marshall, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of
Typographic Man, University of Toronto Press, 1962
McLuhan, Marshall, Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man,
Bantam, 1964;
Satouris, Elizabet, Earthdance, Living Systems in Evolution,
http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/Earthdance/erthdnce.html
Shlain, Leonard, Art and Physics,Parellel Visions in Space, Time and
light, Quill, 1993