Understanding McLuhan/Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso/pc/mcluhan.dxr/08993_Field_TCGG T758.txt

Text File | 1996-04-10 | 939b | 16 lines

     Not only did simultaneity of meanings have to go with the
change from oral to visual culture, but pronunciation and pitch
were flattened out so far as possible. Robert Hillyer writes in his
In Pursuit of Poetry  (p. 45):

     For the most part, we Americans do not avail ourselves of
     changing pitch. Unconsciously we avoid it as an
     affectation and lose half the effectiveness of our native
     tongue in one long monotone of drone, drawl, or growl.
     The effect is flat and blurred, especially since we run our
     syllables and words together, like a piece of prose without
     any punctuation. We ought to let every syllable come out
     round and full like a golden bubble! But we don’t. The
     result is hard on poetry. The American voice is, in general,
     far richer than the English. Leaving out Cockney—and
     that super-Cockney, the “Oxford accent”—we mistakenly