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06842_Field_TCUM T407.txt
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1996-04-10
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leading to a single tone and attitude to reader and subject
spread throughout an entire composition. The “man of letters”
was born. Extended to the spoken word, this literate equitone
enabled literate people to maintain a single “high tone” in
discourse that was quite devastating, and enabled nineteenth-
century prose writers to assume moral qualities that few would
now care to simulate. Permeation of the colloquial language
with literate uniform qualities has flattened out educated
speech till it is a very reasonable acoustic facsimile of the
uniform and continuous visual effects of typography. From this
technological effect follows the further fact that the humor,
slang, and dramatic vigor of American-English speech are
monopolies of the semi-literate.
These typographical matters for many people are charged
with controversial values. Yet in any approach to