A discussion on
dialogue in prose reveals that most writers prefer to make it sound as natural
as possible, as if the reader were listening to a real conversation. Some
writers, such as Henry James, wrote ‘like he talked, in long, involved
sentences with a little murmer-mum-mum-mum standing for parenthesis, and with
all these rhetorical hooks he seemed to be poking about in his mind, fumbling
through the whole basket of his conversational vocabulary, to find the exact
next word’ (The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 4, 2015). Good writing
should be similar to speech, is the usual advice to authors, but researchers
are exploring the difference between written conversations and the real thing.
Language researchers
recognise that ‘pure speech doesn’t work on the page.’ This is because pure
speech stops and starts, goes around in circles, contains ums and uhs, and
generally waffles and backtracks – and contain poor grammar because people
rarely edit their own speech. Pure speech also contains diction and rhythm –
the rise and fall of speech, the surprise, the anger, the emotions, the musings
and the ramblings.
Recent research
published in the June 2015 issue of Psychological
Science on ‘The Sound of Intellect’ reports the results of an experiment on
persuasive language conducted by the University of Chicago in America.
Researchers, Juliana Schroeder and Nicholas Epley, involved MBA candidates
(Master of Business Administration) and asked them to prepare two brief
presentations for prospective employers (as if they were trying to get a job) –
one was a written text and the other was an audio recording. Another random
group of participants were asked to judge the presentations on three criteria:
intellect, the likelihood that the speaker will be hired by the prospective
employer, and general impressions.
The results showed
that, on all three criteria, the audio presentations were judged to be significantly
more effective in enabling the candidate to get ‘the job.’ The reason was that
the features of a speech, such as variance in pitch, reveal ‘an active and
lively mind’ and can convey ‘enthusiasm, interest, and active deliberation.’ In
the written text, these attributes were more difficult to distinguish.
The written texts
revealed that the candidates ‘did not predict that they needed to overcome
these limitations and did not do so spontaneously.’ In other words, the written
text was not tailored to compensate for the lack of real speech mannerisms. Their
written words did not sound like a person’s natural speech, which requires a
great deal of technical skill and more conscious thinking. Which is why it is
tough for writers to write dialogue and conversational speech. It takes effort.
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