UNIT 3 Language and communication The essential difference between writing and speaking is that writing can be crossed out, whereas speech cannot. Communication is now a continuous work in progress, as long as it’s done on screen, and as long as you delete it before anyone reads it. Which is just as well, because instead of technology having made accuracy of spelling and grammar irrelevant, the move from the spoken to the written word has had the opposite effect: we judge accuracy severely, whether it be a romantic message or a job application, and are unimpressed by people who don’t know how to use apostrophes or that definitely is spelt with an i. Glancing around the internet, you can find examples of terrible English, but you’ll also find an astonishing number of corrections. There has probably never been a time in history when writing was so universal and so
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The Sunday Times
Give synonyms for the ten words in bold as used in Text 3A: exposed essential
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important. Books on the English language, even books on punctuation, can now top the bestseller lists. The decay of language and the disappearance of poetry and printed books – because of texting and tweeting – the self-love of Facebook, the rise of e-books, were prophesied until very recently, but no more. Words are surging around and across the world in an extraordinary, unstoppable blizzard, written and read on a scale that is quite mindboggling. Today, the Philippines holds the record for texting: 27 per user per day. In Scandinavia, more than 85 per cent of the population communicates by text. Some 294 billion e-mail messages are sent every day, or 2.8 million per second. These are communications that until recently were made by telephone, letter, face to face – or, and this is highly significant in the communication debate, not at all.
unprecedented universal
pondering decay
epigrams prophesied
ambiguous surging
Working with a partner, look at the following devices used in Text 3A and comment on their effects, i.e. what they contribute to a piece of argumentative writing: a clichéd imagery (in italics)
d statistics
b idioms (underlined)
e subject pronouns.
c examples
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Now consider the content of Text 3A with your partner. a Summarise in one sentence the viewpoint of the writer on the subject of communication technology. b Identify the arguments being used in Text 3A and list them. c Give the counter-argument for as many of the items in your list as you can.
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