Published Apr. 26, 2007 in "The Oklahoma Daily"
Viewable Online Here
The use of the spoken word is diminishing every day.
Don't believe me? Take a look, or rather a listen, around. Radio, once the sole method of electronic entertainment, has been left in the dust by television. It has been reduced to a diversion used by most only when driving.
Mesmerizing speeches by gifted orators that once were the main vehicles of popular knowledge about most anything have been replaced by sound bites barely a few seconds long. And the focus of those bites really is on their accompanying video.
Things taken for granted even just a few years ago have been drastically changed.
Consider the phone call: It was a universal truth just a few years back that a phone conversation required listening and speaking, that the comfort and pleasure of hearing a friend's voice was guaranteed when using the phone to communicate. Even that has been breached by the thumb-happy world of text messaging.
There are benefits of text messages.
They're great for communicating in classes and meetings, they're very inexpensive and they don't use up cell-phone plan minutes. However, for some, they have replaced calls altogether.
This is strange to me. I won't go so far as to call this a bad thing, as those who practice it likely have many valid reasons for doing so.
It has taken root, however, to the extent that many cell phones on the market are designed to be texting machines first and voice machines second. This hyper-texting behavior is on the rise, and is also rewarded. Just recently, a teenage girl from Pennsylvania won $25,000 as America's new text-messaging champion.
In this increasingly speech-free climate, the sheer power of human speech and the spoken word ought to be remembered. A major milestone in any baby's development is his or her first word.
This is because speech is one of the hallmarks of humanity. The spoken word has communicated great discoveries, incited nations to war, brought comfort to the suffering, consoled millions during times of sorrow and passed traditions and knowledge through generation after generation.
Given this, the recent decline in the emphasis and use of the spoken word is definitely a weird phenomenon. It seems that not only should this misguided slide into silly silence be halted, but that it must be reversed.
That is particularly true on college campuses, which are the most vibrant crossroads of ideas and collaborative work.
Because much of those ideas and collaboration occur by voice, campuses seem like the last place that the specter of silence would take hold.
This, combined with the sheer educational prestige of college makes campuses ideal places for the aforementioned reversal to occur.
That reversal, no matter how successful on a particular college campus, must quickly travel out to other facets of community and society for it to truly be effective. This is quite a daunting task, but it can be achieved relatively easily with a series of engaging and accomplished speakers on campus.
When such speakers come to campuses, they bring a particular message.
Their audience is made up not only of college students, but more importantly of people from the surrounding area. While the speaker's message alone is quite valuable to this audience, what is more important is the particular vehicle of delivery.
And what vehicle does a speaker use to deliver his or her message? Why, the spoken word, of course.
That spoken word is presented completely by itself.
There is no accompanying video, no analysis, no background dancers, nothing. Just the spoken word.
These speakers provide disparate, thought-provoking messages, but they do so in a manner that reminds us all of the awesome power of the spoken word and how crucial it is to everyone.
We are lucky enough to attend a college that is very well-frequented by notable and gifted speakers.
In this one school year, speakers have included Vicente Fox, Al Gore, George H.W. Bush, Patch Adams, Paul Rusesabagina and Samantha Power.
Each of these speakers is an amazingly successful person and genuinely gifted orator. Their presence, their message and their delivery has done much to highlight the strength and importance of the spoken word in our world today and the world yet to come.
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