By BY: Oyem Israel Ekene
In our present age and time, communication isn’t just to be considered as only face-to-face conversations and spoken words. Lately, people have been expressing their thoughts, opinions, emotions, and intentions through texts, tweets, comments, emails and posts. It is needful to debunk the erroneous belief that typed words do not carry the same power as spoken words. They erroneously believe that if they don’t say it, but typed it then they didn’t say it then. This idea is misleading; hence, they don’t take what they type seriously. Communication is beyond speech; it includes all messages via all forms passed through one person to another. Verisimilitude has it that if you typed it, you said it. It is needful to then state that this article pans the lens of focus on the argument that digital communication is no less important compared to spoken words.
Communication is defined as the process of sending and receiving a message from a sender and a receiver; it is an exchange of messages from the encoder to a decoder. Communication through writing, which can happen in various forms, has been the ways people have been communicating before the advent of social media. A written letter is no less than a spoken word. In the same vein, digital communication is also a modern form of writing. Typing a message is a conscious effort to express a thought. This conscious effort is also the one applied in spoken words; hence, expression is the same. It is erroneous, then, to claim that typed words are not to be taken seriously as a speaker’s thoughts.
Spoken words can heal, strengthen, inspire, cause damage or destroy, and so can written words. A message can galvanized one into positive action as well as negative actions. It can encourage someone or cause serious emotional damage. Social media posts have caused some harms than good. This has made it clear that typed words have the possibility of causing harm: typed words aren’t empty words—they carry weight and has consequences. Unlike spoken words, which cannot be documented in most cases, written words can be documented and revisited thereby making it a lasting impact. It is an act of irresponsibility that makes people say that, “I only typed it; I didn’t say it.” Meanings do not go away just because it was typed through keypads.
The false sense of distance social media creates has made it a problematic factor because people believe that they aren’t speaking face to face with the receiver of the information; hence, no accountability for their words. This is so bad that it is has led to cyberbullying, wrong information and speech made with careless abandon. Words reflect intentions not withstanding the way it was communicated. A clear communication remains clear if the message was communicated clearly. We must learn to treat every message communicated seriously no matter the means taken.
In conclusion, it is mythical to think that only spoken words matter. In a digital systemized world, which we are in, typed words are spoken words in another form. They carry the meaning, intent and consequences our spoken words would have had. Communication is not about sound. Communication is about the expression and understanding. If you typed, you said it. We should recognize this essential truth so we can build a more responsible, humane and honest digital community.
