Propaganda and Demotic Speech (p. 695)

Bridging the gap between spoken and written word has been difficult task throughout our literary history.  There are three main points regarding this matter: 1) English is more difficult than other languages to translate from true written to true spoken, due to slang, accent, and inflection.  2) Scripted propaganda is less effective than extempore propaganda because it doesn't apply to that unique crowd, no matter the symmetry of the political agenda.  3) Written and spoken word aren't so easily reconcilable.

English can be a challenging language to translate from written to spoken word because often our meaning is embedded within our tone due to a lack of inflection. Latin--which is inflected--constructs individual words via a stem and ending, based on gender, case, time frame, and number, whereas English words are un-gendered and capable of existing independent of a sentence, but often require tonal manipulation to fully convey nuanced meaning.  English thus doesn't use stems and endings to build words, which makes memorization of definitions easier, however produces more long-winded sentences because if one wants to produce a more complex clause more individual words need to be added.  These long-winded sentences facilitate misunderstanding much more than Latin, which is tighter due to the precision allowed by its inflection. 

Spoken propaganda is problematic because speech writers are often literarily proficient, but unfortunately the audience are common people who aren't used to hearing good language.  (If you think this is improbable and unrealistic, just look at how US presidential speeches score on a Flesh-Kincaid readability test).  If you follow the link, you'll see that our last two presidents speak on an eighth-grade reading level, determined by words per sentence and syllables per word.  In the US, the grade level has gone down every year since since Jack Kennedy was president, except the transition from Lyndon Johnson to George H.W. Bush, where it remained at grade 10.4.  Thus, speech writers in America recognized an effective way to reach more Americans; dummy down.  Obama currently uses 16.7 words per sentence, which is lower than George W. Bush, who isn't exactly known for his verbal acuity.  When having a normal conversation with others, intentionally try to limit your sentences to sixteen words.  Here's a basic sentence: "I like to go to the grocery store on Main Street because it has better produce and lower prices."  That's nineteen words, and I barely said anything.  Propaganda writers keep this in mind, because they want to tell people what they're already inclined to hear, and influence them to do more of it, but on a word budget.  Thus, propaganda becomes a game of word-economics, rather than meaning.  Imagine what a speech would sound like if the script writers operated on the assumption that the audience was on the same literary level as they were.

Written word not designed to be verbalized can sound clumsy when verbalized, but no more than spoken word can sound clumsy when written.  The two worlds have wildly different entailments, and only those who are truly exceptional can speak exactly as they write.  Even then, the multi-clause sentences that exist on page, full of commas, rarely exist in real life.  Real life is more period-friendly than comma friendly.  Proficient orators don't use scripts; they play off the crowd, engage the audience, highlighting some points that become immediately relevant, and dulling others which seem less.  Written word has a prepared agenda, with an introduction, evidence, and some type of conclusion or conclusions.  This structure, no matter the language, insulates a speaker from their audience because that particular audience isn't being addressed at that particular time.  Extempore speeches are way too risky of an endeavor for campaigning and active presidents, so they'll most certainly continue reading prepared speeches, and from the looks of it, become progressively less intellectually demanding and insightful.

Written word is thus designed to sound as realistic as possible in the reader's mind, devoid of all the trimmings, vagueness and ambiguities which often saturate common spoken word.  Propaganda is designed to feel like second nature, like that worn-in leather jacket, like sitting in the warm sun on a temperate spring day.  The audience's imagination engages differently when reading than when listening, and demotic--or colloquial--language facilitates both the reader's and listener's perceived experience of reality because that's how they usually talk and interact.  That's the bridge.  Thus, it's not just a concrete recipe of words or sounds, it's an objective metaphysical experience that can be inspected, but not necessarily translated from one medium to another.  We can try to translate it, but we will lose some things.