Language

What way of communicating is better? Is it a verbal communication or text communication? Why? I believe there are no different between them. Yet all girls say that better way of communicating is verbal communication.

Comments

Great question! In the dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates offers reasons why the girls (if you are right that all girls prefer verbal communication) may be right. Among other things, Socrates proposed that verbal, in-person communication is superior to writing for it is less subject to misunderstanding. One can, on the spot, correct misleading communication, and one can also retain the ability to revise one's position in the here and now. Socrates thought that writing things down, in contast, is akin to abandoning your speech. Still, even if Socrates is right about this, we would not know his position unless his observations were written down (asssuming that a reliable oral tradition going back to 399 BCE would be a bit unlikely) and there is often (though not always) a clarity and endurance in written communication. In reply to your question, I suggest, instead, not that there is no difference between written and verabal communication; each has its virtues and vices. If you want a record, I would go with writing or with some kind of recording, but the immediacy of verbal communication also has its virtues (and dangers). Still, I agree with you that one is not always superior or better than the other.

Read another response by Charles Taliaferro

Read another response about Language