Basement Chronicles

On...umm...Speech

"Walked away,
heard them say,
poison hearts will never change"

Tonight's BC is brought to you by pictures of John, and a picture of Robbie.

Today I had fun playing frisbee golf. Granted, I lost my driver in a thicket that could have eaten me alive, but I also gained another in the search process, so I guess I came out even for the day.

On the way to the park I was thinking about a book review I read about a book called "The Feed". More specifically, how characters in the book addicted to a globally spanning information network connecting them directly to any information they will ever need, have difficulty finding the words they want when they find it necessary to indulge in verbal comminucation.

In a second you'll understand why I'm using so many words.

Basically, when they're talking, they'll say something like "So I went to put the cup on the...umm....table." In the book, that "umm" is them searching the Feed for the name of the item in question. The characters, so used to searching for whatever information they need, don't have the vocabulary the hold conversations as we do today.

It made me wonder if how we speak today seems stupid and childish to those who spoke English a hundred, two hundred, or however many years a comparable language can go back. I remember in Spanish class hearing how languages over the years have completely dropped certain tenses for the sake of simplicity. Thinking about just the differences in how Spanish and English speakers refer to past events, I can only begin to understand the gaping holes laziness has bored into our speech patterns.

It also made me, as a relatively Internet savvy person and the rampant computer addict, wonder how my social abilities have faultered as a product of my typing instead of talking. I know for a fact that the conversations I hold over chat mediums are much deeper, concise, and involved than those I try, and flail, at holding with people in person. One thing I've identified over the years of struggling with this problem, on top of many other factors, is that I have a lot of trouble finding the right word.

However, I can't really blame it all on computers. Asking my mother about this years ago, I guess I've had this problem since I was little, unable to find the right words for the concept I was trying to express.

I think, and hope, that I've improved somewhat over the years in my word-searching, however I can never really be sure if I've gotten better at talking, or if I've just learned how to "fake it". By that, I refer to another article I read somewhere, at sometime, that said that humans don't really understand the words they use in normal day to day conversation, but instead they understand the usage of a limited number of key phrases where we've become adept at using in specific situations.

Being of a computer geek mind, I thought this was interesting, as for the last few months I've been toying around with the idea that the mind, while a computational machine, varies from today's concept of a computer in that it is an "infinite state machine", as opposed to today's computers that are simply advanced "finite state machines".

If, in a conversational setting, we understand that the use of a certain phrase can operate as a successful segway/subject change/conversation stopper/etc, we remember that. I think that somewhere the mechanics of our minds "sets" this conditional input to its functional output, making something you can come back to. Sort of like adlibs, where you have a sentence and in the middle a prominent [INSERT NOUN], or something similar.

I think I work like this, as I find myself using the same phrases and patterns that I've used for as long as I can remember. What I find interesting in my various ponderings are the people who we consider to be "dynamic speakers", these people who we consider to be comedians, public speakers, or maybe just somebody who's an excellent conversationalist. While people over the course of time can generate enough of these "conditional phrases" to hold a decent conversation and get their point across, these people can come up with patterns completely unique to their speech and other's.

Do these people think faster than others? Or do they just know more phrases than most people? Or does their "phrase" mechanism not work, and they are used to coming up with random stuff all the time?

Back from my wandering thought process and still on the way to frisbee golf, I thought I'd test my theory. I gave myself 5 second (more than it takes for "dynamic speakers", but I thought I'd give myself a chance) to come up with something to say as it had become suddenly silent amongst the Led Zeppelin and the rolled windows.

"Man, I just know that that book, um, Invisible Monsters is going to be really, really depressing."

Yep. No possibility to really continue that conversation, just a statement of a random feeling in my head.

I'm guessing that being a "dynamic speaker"", or even a decent speaker has more to it than I thought.

Ugh.

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