Friday, July 01, 2016

Language Reveal

Even though I am sometimes consciously aware that I should be using terms for writing rather than terms for speaking in my online uh, conversations, I gravitate to the latter because that is how it seems to me.

I answer an opponent in a comment section by writing "You said that..." and I will use formulations about my own communication that can suggest only speech, not writing, such as "...and I say again..." My writing voice is very strongly based on my speech, and those who have not heard me live would find it both familiar and jarring to compare my writing to my talking. Most of my original audience were folks who knew only the latter.  My current audience has only a dozen who have talked with me.

I am certain I am not unique in this - such things are not possible.  But I think I am on the far side of whatever measuring rod might be fashioned for this, as it has been commented on often. I smile, laugh, and have an animated face - and also narrow my gaze or sharply look over my glasses, with a bite to my voice, more than others. It's pretty vaudevillian routine the Wymans have, and I even on the strong side of that.

I so wonder what other people think when they write, whether they just naturally say or have conversation.  Standard internet language would suggest that we think of this as talking more than writing. Though such terms as posting and bulletin board would suggest the opposite.

3 comments:

james said...

I'm not a particularly thespian sort, and several in my family far out-talk me. But I also use say instead of write, and I have to stomp on a tendency to use phrasing and intensifiers that work fine in speech but are useless padding for writing. (e.g. I struck out "merely" in that last clause.)

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Excellent. I sometimes edit them, because they are not good writing, bujt more often keep them, because theya re how we speak. We use such intensifiers not only for dram, for for rest and thought, a sort of punctuation of speaking.

jaed said...

What we do here is interactive: we're talking with each other. We post a few sentences, we wait to see what other people have to say. This person (previously unheard) jumps in with a point, that person responds to it, and round and round. We sometimes insert a description of what we look or sound like: LOL, ;-), <frown>.

I believe we use the language of conversation because this is conversation, regardless of whether it's written or spoken. It's not at all the same as writing an article, or a book. It's not even that similar to writing a letter.