Reading And Listening Analysis

Contradiction between Reading and Listening to Speeches
According to recent discoveries, a person is very easily distracted. When an orator is speaking, a listener can become distracted by everything else around them such as loud noises and prominent smells. Their focus must be sharp and their comprehension must work instantaneously for them to fully comprehend every word and message. On the contrary, when reading a speech, the reader can set his/her own pace and emotion, and they can identify repetition much more efficiently because they can always go back for missed meanings. Reading a speech is different from listening it because when reading it, one can easily comprehend its meaning and set their own pace and emotion and identify repetition

When reading a speech, the reader can easily identify repetition and understand what it is communicating. For instance, in John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address speech, the text reads, “This much we pledge--and more. To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends… To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny… To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required--not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right… To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge--to convert our good words into good deeds--in a new alliance for progress--to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty” (Kennedy). Kennedy repeats certain words and phrases in his speech to emphasize their points and their importance so that the audience understands his message. Furthermore, the reader can identify the message easier by observing the repeated phrases and the words around them. In contrast, when listening to a speech, the listener may have a harder time identifying repetition and comprehending the meaning because the orator is speaking it themself. To illustrate, in Barbara Jordan’s Keynote Address, she says, “We are a people in a quandary about the present. We are a people in search of our future. We are a people in search of a national community. We are a people trying not to only solve the problems of the present, unemployment, inflation, but we are