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Linguistic Elements In Mcluhan's Medium Is The Message

Decent Essays

“The ear favors no particular “point of view.”” This direct quote is the first thing said in McLuhan’s short passage in his book, “Medium is the message”. This quote starts off the passage and it sets a good foundation for the central idea, being that our ears hear everything, from secrets to distractions. Mcluhan is trying to convey to readers that even with the utmost effort, we cannot block out sounds we do not want to hear, and furthermore that we do not even have to focus to hear everything but that the act of hearing through your ears is a constant activity happening 24/7. Mcluhan uses a variety of linguistic elements in his passage that help concentrate the idea. A really vital linguistic element McLuhan uses are short fragmented sentences that are dense. The strategy behind these sentences are to deliver a blow with just a couple of words. “We are enveloped by sound,” is a sentence that justifies this. Each word has been carefully placed next to one another for maximum effect on the reader’s understanding of sound and how the ear receives it. Furthermore, Mcluhan uses the word “envelope”, giving the theme that there is no escape from sound, …show more content…

McLuhan uses one main visual element, that being the big “BANG!” on the left side of the passage. I believe that this visual element has a great impact on the delivery of the message because it really breaks down what sound is in it’s purest form. The bang symbol is usually used a lot in comics and is used when one of the characters throw a hard and usually loud punch making a “BANG!” sound. In my belief, the visual element is trying to display that sound is not only loud in the sense that some sounds can be loud but that they have a loud impact in our world since they’re all around us. Beyond that, he is saying that sounds can be hard hitting such as distracting sounds that might affect your focus in everyday

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