On Language in Television Culture by Neil Postman

„People of a television culture need “plain language” both aurally and visually, and will even go so far as to require it in some circumstances by law. The Gettysburg Address would probably have been largely incomprehensible to a 1985 audience.“

Neil PostmanNeil Postman describes how television culture requires plain language and historical speeches might be incomprehensible today.
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Neil Postman was an American media theorist, author, and educator known for his critiques of mass media, especially television, and its effects on society.

Neil Postman explains the impact of television culture on the comprehensibility of language.


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Literature on mass media

Neil Postman quote about plain language and television culture

Neil Postman (1931–2003) was an American media theorist, cultural critic, and author. He taught communication at New York University and is best known for his books on media criticism such as "Amusing Ourselves to Death," in which he analyzes the impact of television on public communication and education.

Inspirational quote image featuring Neil Postman on cultural decline and public discourseCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility." Neil Postman
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Neil Postman quote about television and cultural self-perceptionCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore -- and this is the critical point -- how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails." Neil Postman
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Neil Postman quote about knowledge, telegraphic discourse, and understanding mediaCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The line-by-line, sequential, continuous form of the printed page slowly began to lose its resonance as a metaphor of how knowledge was to be acquired and how the world was to be understood. "Knowing" the facts took on a new meaning, for it did not imply that one understood implications, background, or connections. Telegraphic discourse permitted no time for historical perspectives and gave no priority to the qualitative. To the telegraph, intelligence meant knowing of lots of things, not knowing about them." Neil Postman
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Quote by Eric Alterman about the need for comprehensive and understandable news to hold government accountableCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"To become informed and hold government accountable, the general public needs to obtain news that is comprehensive yet interesting and understandable, that conveys facts and outcomes, not cosmetic images and airy promises. But that is not what the public demands." Eric Alterman
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Walter Lippmann quote about truth, distortion, and mass communicationCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute." Walter Lippmann
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Quote by Tom Fenton on how media and politicians dumb down the American publicCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Americans are too broadly underinformed to digest nuggets of information that seem to contradict what they know of the world. Instead, news channels prefer to feed Americans a constant stream of simplified information, all of which fits what they already know. That way they don’t have to devote more air time or newsprint space to explanations or further investigations… Politicians and the media have conspired to infantilize, to dumb down, the American public. At heart, politicians don’t believe that Americans can handle complex truths, and the news media, especially television news, basically agrees." Tom Fenton
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