EL336: Choynowski

Daniella chose some excellent quotations from Lesser for discussion, however I'm going to focus on what my peers are saying for these presentations instead of the readings they assigned to us.

"E-mail is of good use if you are not such an eloquent speaker. You can hide behind it. There is no nervousness visibly present in an email; observable nervousness can be a form of noise and distraction that can hinder communication." -Choynowski

How true, Dani. I wrote about this in a blog entry earlier in class this semester. I feel that I'm extremely obvious when I'm nervous. Of course, it doesn't help that any sort of amped up blood flow is very obvious when your completion mirrors that of a bottle of Elmer's glue, but I'm talking verbally. I get the feeling--I'm not certain I do this or not--that I stutter more, use filler words like "uh" and "um" more and make eye contact less when I'm nervous. I also have a tendency to ramble; my speech becomes much quicker and less audible, and I'm sure I fidget incessantly.

Perhaps it is the fact that my physical nature and body language give so much away that I know no matter what tone or word choices I make while speaking will never have the ability to mask my true feelings the way communicating over the Internet does.

This made me think, though, there are ways of showing emotion with text. I'd say they're elements of our textual language that are used more in the fictional world of writing: the ellipses, the exclamation point--mechanics one doesn't see often in academic writing unless a direct quotation is involved.

For example, if I were talking with a friend online:

Friend3345:Hi Storm, how are you?

I would respond naturally in various ways depending on my mood:

Me: I'm great! How are you doin'? (mood is obvious)

Me: Eh. (could possibly be indifferent, or potentially signal I'm mad at you)

Me: Eh... (the ellipses change the tone a bit here--I could still be indifferent but more willing to talk about it)

Me: I'm good. (shortness could mean annoyance, I'm doing homework, I'm mad at you)

Me: hey hey! (excited you IMed me, I usually only use this salutations with people I know very well)

...Alright, I think you get the point. If not, it's that our age and culture has adapted to being forced to decipher the emotions behind textual messages (e-mail, sms, instant messaging, etc.) quickly and accurately enough to have successful, meaningful communication in these mediums (or was is moda that we're calling it now? I can't remember from Tuesday...).

Yes, electronic communication does provide a physical mask, but we still present our emotional nature through mechanical and word choices. As I've already stated, I feel I communicate much more successfully through writing, be it electronic or manuscript. My father always says, "engage brain before mouth" and text must be thought about more carefully than speech or, well, there'd be no need for white-out (to save the lengthy discussion of revising while we write).