Communicating your ideas
We live in an age of communication. Never before has communication between people been so easy, fast and affordable. The Internet age has changed our way of life, and future developments of the Internet (Web 2.0, 3.0 ...) will only accelerate this change. Now everyone has the ability to not only find and retrieve whatever information they want, but also to share their thoughts and opinions. Web pages, the blogosphere, and social networks now offer opportunities for communication that were unthinkable a few years ago.
It has been said that with the Internet we read less and less and that the days of the traditional paper book are numbered; it has also been said that today’s generation has lost the habit of reading and writing. Time will tell if this is true, but for now what is certain is that we now read and write much more, though in a different way: on a computer screen. And the digital revolution offers excellent channels for communicating ideas. Although new channels of communication have their own formats and rules, the basis of communication will always be language, written or spoken. To communicate well, it is necessary to write and speak well.
UNIV Forum papers offer the opportunity to research a topic, develop it in writing, and then present it orally. These activities develop one’s ability to communicate effectively in the digital age. Because the topics usually concern cultural, moral, and social issues, it is especially important that they be well presented. More and more, the way something is presented is almost as important as what is presented. One isn’t simply trying to affirm and prove that something is true, or that something is the right solution to a problem. Rather, the goal is to communicate that truth in such a way that the reader, viewer or interlocutor understands our position and the reasoning behind it. A clear failure of communication occurs when people do not listen to each other or do not make any effort to understand what another person is saying. In a dialogue, the goal isn’t to conquer an opponent, but rather is to convince.
When writing something—whether it be a newspaper article, a blog post, or an academic paper—it helps to keep in mind the following principles:
● Clarity. The message to be conveyed must be clear. The UNIV Forum application form can help because it requires you to define and summarize your objectives.
● Structure. The structure of a UNIV Forum paper is as follows: it describes a problem or situation, presents one (or more) hypothesis about the problem’s causes or solutions to the problem, examines the hypothesis, and arrives at some conclusions, after which the hypothesis is modified or is kept the same.
- Before writing the paper, the group should outline the arguments it will make and break them down into parts. It is good to clearly communicate the structure of the paper, perhaps summarizing it in the introduction so the reader knows what the paper will say and in which direction the argument will go.
- A useful rule is, "say what you are going to say, then say it, and when you finish, say what you just said." This applies to the entire paper, to each section of the paper, and to your oral presentation.
- It is commonly said that every good news story should answer the “five w’s": Who, what, where, when, why.
- This also applies to other methods of communication—do not take anything for granted about your audience.
● Think of your audience. You will present your paper to the general public; think of your audience as a group of friends, not a group of specialists or professors. It always helps to seek "common ground" with the listener. For example, begin with or highlight points you know the audience can relate to and develop your argument from there.
● Proper tone. We must distinguish between the proper use of colloquial language and writtenlanguage. An effective paper requires the use of formal language, but not so formal that it is boring (like an encyclopedia article) and unable to compel the reader or, for example, appeal to the reader’s sense of humor. Humor, especially intelligent humor, is always good.
● “Captatio benevolentiae” (Latin: “pursuit of goodwill”). A classic rule of rhetoric is to begin any writing or speech by appealing to the audience’s interests, capturing the audience’s attention. We have to make a special effort to do this. Some helpful ideas are:
- Start in a surprising way, presenting information or raising questions that spark the audience’s curiosity.
- Show that the subject is important because it is being studied to solve a major problem or to focus on a better solution to a problem.
- Explain that the subject is relevant for understanding other questions that interest the audience.
- Be original, using literary or oratorical devices (to provoke a smile, reflection, or even anger about what is being discussed).
● Rhetorical figures. A badly expressed good idea loses much of its value. Rhetoric consists of the art of saying well and has some very easy figures to use, both in a sentence, in a paragraph or in a text:
- Anaphora: start several sentences with the same words. Antithesis or contrast: oppose two contrary ideas to mark their opposition or clarify what is proper to one of them.
- Rhetorical interrogation: ask a question, but not to get it answered (probably, because the answer is already known), but to get the reader/viewer to think about it or to represent something certain.
- Irony: affirm the opposite of what is meant.
- Play on words: use a signifier with two different meanings.
- Metaphor: using an image to refer to a real term. Paradox: linking two ideas that, at first glance, seem contradictory, but in reality are not.
● Spelling and grammar checking. A poorly written text or one with errors loses a lot of strength, because it conveys the impression that the person who wrote it did not have the necessary knowledge or did not make the effort to review it.
- Spell checkers in word processing programs are very helpful. They should always be used.
- Doubts usually arise that must be resolved by resorting to dictionaries or grammars.
- The sentences must have the basic structure "subject-verb-predicate" (although it seems obvious, it is not uncommon to forget or take it for granted when writing a long text).
- A chapter or section is divided into paragraphs. Each paragraph should contain, more or less, a single main idea.