Disclaimer
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's view in any way, including those of my employer.
© Copyright 2007
The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent anyone else's view in any way, including those of my employer.
© Copyright 2007
“I caked a bake for the party.”
“Everything he says is a lack of pies!”
“Soooooo, ummm….”
We all do it. We hedge, repeat, and delay when we speak as our brains try to catch up to our mouths. We begin sentences, realize we don’t like where they’re going, stop and start over. We use little words like “Ummm” and “Uhhh” to buy time while speaking. Is it a sign that a speaker is less intelligent or less prepared? Or perhaps a sign that we’re thoughtful with our words so we pause to choose the right ones?
A new book, Umm…: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders and What They Mean by Michael Erard unpacks our verbal foibles and reveals lots of interesting insights into how and why we misspeak.
Hear a recent interview with Erard here.
After listening to Erard explain a few of his findings on PRI I started thinking about how computer mediated communication might start to change the way we stumble when we speak and how these stumbles might translate into text communications like IM. We know, and Erard would agree, that people who are eloquent in text might be worse at stumbling because they are more careful with their words and might be more likely to pause or hedge as they choose just the right word as they speak. If we’re becoming a world of typers, ie if our communication is becoming more textual, then will we become more careful speakers?
Not necessarily. If I’m text chatting in Second Life or on Skype, I’m probably using a more casual language that doesn’t require me to spell everything exactly right or use all the $5 words I know. Folks I gchat with aren’t expecting flowery metaphors or assonance in my IMs. But we might be effected in another way. Do we not see these speaking blunders in text because: 1) our hands are not as fast as our mouths and we have more time as we type than we do as we speak, 2) we can backup, delete, and edit our text before we hit the Enter key, 3) or perhaps, these verbal blunders are finding other kinds of expression in a hypermediated world.
Every reply to someone in the wrong chat window? Click “reply all” when you only meant to send your message to one person? Type something into the area chat in SL when you meant to type it into the IM window? Then there are the textual blunders of word confusion like “there” and “their” that you can’t hear when you speak but you can see when you type?
How do you think our verbal blunders are changing in a text-based world? Does your speaking style invade your writing, chatting?
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As a little test, I’m just going to write this comment through without correcting anytihng as I go. (And believe me, that is driving me bonkers already.)
I find that the frequency of blogging and participating in computer-mediated communication channels has greatly improveed my ability to put together coherent sentences and communicate what I want to day. My spelling and malapropisms, though, are not going away, mainly because in CMC I always have the option to correct things as I go. I tend to do a final read (sometimes too quickly) of the post before letting it go into the world, so there are plenty of opportunities to practice better word choices in this medium.
When it comes to speaking, my writing has improved my speech, definitely. It is still very intimidating not to have the crutch of casual style (even though any transcript of what I say would make me cringe in text form) or the time control to slow things down to match the speed of my brain processing at the time. Even typing this and trying to let errors and poor working get through is difficult because I still het the backspeace key too frequently and without thinking. I am having to make a conscious effort to let the mistakes slip through now.
In my normal mode, the above would have been edited down into two smaller paragraphs before hitting post. And my many typos would only haunt me briefly, as an internal reprimand rather than a public display of my faults.
I tend to be very careful in my typing for emails and online graduate work, whereas my primary goal in IMs, texting, or SL chat is to get my point out quickly.
One interesting thing I started noticing in Second Life was that people like to correct their spelling mistakes after the fact, for exmaple:
*example
I tend to speak slower to “let my brain backpeddle when it needs to”, and was taught in oral communications courses that “umm, uh, and-uh, etc” were all EVIL, so instead, I speak slowly, and leave gaping pauses of silence when I need to think before my mouth operates.
(I’m on a presentations/public relations kick at the moment, so I’m going to find the book tonight…)
Kevin: How brave of you to not edit your comment. I’ve been teaching writing for so long that it’s nearly impossible for me to know edit as I go and almost as difficult for me not to notice the errors in other people’s writing as well.
This has me thinking…where is the line between poor grammer/vocabulary and textual slips? Is using the wrong word in text really the same as uisng the wrong word when you speak?
Must think more about this.
Ipenda: I do the same thing! I pause instead of doing the “ummm uhhh” thing and I think it’s because I’ve done SOOOO much public speaking and have been so aware of how I sound for so long. I didn’t think I really did this when I type but then yesterday I noticed that I do pause and sort of stare off to find the right word (almost typed write word) before going on.
So much to ponder.
S/I