Essay

Lashanda Anakwah

Writing is a Tool

Ever since I first learned to write my name in kindergarten, I’ve been enamored with the act. I still remember my surprise in being able to capture my name down on paper. I felt cemented; and that, I’ve always thought, was the moment I became a writer.

Writing is a technology. It’s seems a bit odd to think of it that way. The act of writing is now second nature to those who live in literate societies but it was very new once upon a time. Plato, the famous Greek philosopher thought writing would create forgetfulness, he feared people would no longer rely on memorization, turning their brains to mush. In his work he expresses his distrust, “writing is simply a thing, something to be manipulated, something inhuman, artificial, a manufactured product.”  Writing has in fact, done the opposite. Humans have created a technology that changes the workings of the mind. Walter Ong explains this phenomenon in his piece, Writing is a Technology that reconstructs thought.

If functionally literate persons are asked to think of the word 'nevertheless', they will all have present in imagination the letters of the word-vaguely perhaps, but unavoidably-in handwriting or typescript or print. If they are asked to think of the word 'nevertheless' for two minutes, 120 seconds, without ever allowing any letters at all to enter their imaginations, they cannot comply. A person from a completely oral background of course has no such problem. He or she will think only of the real word, a sequence of sounds, 'ne-ver-the-less'. For the real word 'nevertheless', the sounded word, cannot ever be present all at once, as written words deceptively seem to be.

Writing overcomes the passage of time, a privilege  oral societies don't have. The quote above explains how writing captures a word and takes it of time. The syllables are captured on paper and don't disappear when the next letter is sounded out. I do not jot down notes without first marking the page with my name. Once my name is written I feel as if I can then write anything. In fact, there is nothing that calms me down more than writing my name continuously. My middle school notebooks have pages upon pages of my name written over and over again.  There have been many studies that have shown writing as an effective stress releaser. Dr. Pennebaker conducted a study where 46 healthy college students wrote about traumatic life events for fifteen minutes on four consecutive days. Those students reported a decrease in their intake of pain relievers. Writing my name takes me back to my first accomplishment. It reminds me that I am here in the world, that I exist. The familiar motion is also calming. A study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago found that students with high test anxiety did better on test when they were given a couple minutes to briefly write about their thoughts before their tests.

            Writing does what speech can’t. The process of writing includes thinking, analyzing, and processing. It happens all at once. When something traumatic occurs people usually find it extremely difficult to express in words how the event made them feel. When people write it leads to discovery. ‘We write to figure things out. We write to discover what we know. We write to uncover what we don’t know.” In Tilly Warnock’s piece Language and Literature as Equipment for Living, Warnock theories that language and literature are tools that help people take on life. She studies different writers and analyzes how they use writing to cope.

In general, what I advocate is a rhetorical approach to writing and living that provides "strategies for coping" and "equipment for living." We live in a world that is filled with doubt and uncertainty. Our languages, identities, relationships, and values are in flux; we must read situations critically and choose among possible actions if we are to identify with and persuade others. Our readings of the world and our choices about writing are social and ethical actions with far-reaching consequences. While we cannot act freely, for we act within the constraints of others and of situations, we can learn to act wisely, so that we use language to get along, and stay alive.

   Language is a survival mechanism. It is only natural that humans have expanded it's use by developing ways to further improve it's usefulness. When we memorize a poem that we love it is because we want to carry it with us wherever we may go. And now we can carry books that have thousands upon thousands of pages in our mobile phones. Humans are continuously expanding language because it is essential.

 Works Cited

Ong, Walter J. "Writing Is a Technology That Restructures Thought." Typological Studies in Language The Linguistics of Literacy (1992): 293. Web