Oral communication is what most differentiates us from animals and it is essential in human interaction. As the evolutionist Philip Lieberman mentioned in his book Eve Spoke, “Animals who talk are human, because what sets us apart from other animals is the gift of speech.” (Lieberman, 1998) There is no doubt that speech is a gift. In fact, no one can hear others thoughts. We need to talk in order to express clearly our ideas, feelings or needs to others. We have the necessity to communicate. However, human communication can be very challenging and complicated.
Even though we've done it every day since we started to talk, we are not experts at talking and listening. We tend to misunderstand each other due to poor communication. Sometimes people don’t explain clearly their thoughts because they don’t organize their ideas before starting to speak. Other times, people are just not interested in what others want to say. This creates a tension in the conversation and makes it difficult.
Now, we can’t forget about the emotional factor in oral communication. It gives flavor to our conversations and speeches. We can express anger, passion or tenderness in a much more effective way thanks to the ability to express emotions through speech. Our feelings sometimes make us say things we didn’t want to say or even hurt others without noticing it. Emotion modifies the actual content of the message, making it more intense, and this makes a big difference between oral and other ways of communicating, like written communication.
In my experience, being away from home, I have noticed how important is oral communication. Although there are plenty of ways to communicate digitally through email, chat or text messages, these methods can’t replace oral conversation. I think is mainly because of the emotional factor involved in speaking, which emoticons will never displace. We will continue to rely on oral communication as long as we seek to have true communication with others.
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