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Reading not speaking
Calliope warmly recommends the article by Jorge Wagensberg published in "El País" in August 2004. We entirely share his opinion and are grateful that he has expressed it so wittily and succinctly.
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JORGE WAGENSBERG
© El País
(Translation)
At the table there are seven speakers and a moderator. Each has 20 minutes speaking time. The meeting begins, and five of them pull out a sheaf of papers, lower their eyes to the page and proceed to read out loud, relentlessly. The other two panellists look straight at their audience – and speak.
There is a story – it may be apocryphal – of an old university professor who would come to his classes with a creaky old tape recorder. He would switch it on, leave and return 50 minutes later to retrieve the equipment. All his best lectures had been recorded on tape, so why settle for anything less than such perfection? But one day the crusty old professor remembered that he’d left his umbrella behind in the classroom and he returned twenty minutes into the lesson. He opened the door and stood, jaw agape. It wasn’t just his voice ringing through the classroom that struck him; it was one hundred tape recorders spinning away, one on each chair, dutifully recording the day’s lesson.
The mind that wrote the text that was subsequently read out loud has something in common with the mind that recorded the tape: both are absent. Indeed, the professor might have chosen to remain in the classroom and lip-synch along to the tape. The mind of a speaker reading out loud is disengaged – what is to keep the audience from following suit? A speaking presenter on the other hand is a thinking mind, ready to engage in conversation. Why should I attend a session where the paper is simply read out? I can read all by myself, thank you very much, so can’t somebody just send me a copy. Why should I take part in a conversation that is a striking non-meeting of minds? Could we not connect simply by using the postal service? Perfection stems from the imperfections of real speech.
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