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I enjoyed doing this exercise because I am fascinated by the act of using my voice to create form. This year I have been practicing singing and oratory on a daily basis, doing recordings of myself for music and narration projects. In the context of speaking, I\u2019ve developed a passion for effective pronunciation and vocal vibration, recognizing it as an art form that can transmit beauty and emotional healing. While doing this week’s readings, I found Haass\u2019 (2013) description of writing as a technology to be compelling and I think the same applies to speech.<\/span><\/p>\n With this in mind, while doing the exercise of speech to text, I had some technical advantages and experience that kept the transcription from having many flaws. I must admit, of course, that I was more mindful and careful in my speech. However, because of my practice, this is normal to me now.<\/span><\/p>\n While looking at the text, the major deviation I find from written English is that there is no punctuation. I have a big paragraph that looks like an endlessly flowing, very (very) long sentence. When I read the sentence I find myself slipping through sentences that sound non-sensical. This makes me think about the importance of punctuation and how this must have been an issue that the investors of the technology of writing came across while creating it. This must have required an analysis of how we use silence and inflections while speaking and find a way of symbolizing that through colons and commas. It\u2019s interesting to think how we have assigned a form (a colon or a comma) to something formless (silence). This makes me think about Gnanadesikan\u2019s (2011) statement about writing being \u201conly a means of expressing language, not language itself\u201d (p.4).<\/span><\/p>\n In this week\u2019s readings, Schmandt-Besserat (2009) made me reflect on the connections between graphic symbols and language. While exploring in detail my experience of speaking, even in an improvised context such as this, I\u2019ve noticed that words first appear in my mind, and then I read them. Looking more closely, it seems to me like, before a word is formed in consciousness, there is an image of an experience. In that sense, the text I am seeing is a description of images and experiences. What feels \u201cwrong\u201d in the text is when this description becomes non-sensical through an error in the text. For example, one was \u201cnobody is really perfect, and if that is true Bend I have no reason if you ashamed\u201d. It seems to me that sentences like this are considered wrong or mistakes because they create sentences that can\u2019t be properly referenced to images and experiences in our memory.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s interesting to think about how this might have been if it was scripted. As a musician, I have experience with improvisation, so the text came up fluently and structured. However, it is not as tight as it would have been if I had taken the time to think more carefully about what to say. As noted by Hass (2013), “written texts foster contemplation, analysis, and critique” (p.9). Speaking is similar to singing in the sense that there\u2019s almost no time to take pauses to reflect, go back, and edit lines of thought. Writing on the other hand is more like sculpturing, in the sense that the thought objects we create can be molded and refined. Spoken words come into existence and quickly fade out of existence – there\u2019s no turning back; while written words come into existence and are situated as an object in space. As noted by Gnanadesikan (2011), \u201cwriting is generally done more deliberately than speaking, so finished written pieces are much more carefully crafted than a typical spoken sentence\u201d (p.5).<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n References<\/strong><\/p>\n Gnanadesikan, A. E. (2011).\u201cThe First IT Revolution.\u201d In\u00a0The writing revolution: Cuneiform to the internet<\/span><\/a> (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons (pp. 1-10).<\/span><\/p>\n Haas, C. (2013). \u201cThe Technology Question.\u201d In Writing technology: Studies on the materiality of literacy<\/span><\/a>. Routledge. (pp. 3-23).<\/span><\/p>\n