Dear Readers,

Have you ever thought about the impact of both spoken and written words? Or why something you might have said was misconstrued and considered offensive, though totally unintended? Such experience is not uncommon, and it happens to us in our everyday lives, but most notoriously to politicians in a message directly and indirectly to the public. Their messages are torn apart in search of the underlying “true” meaning, headlining newspapers and other forms of media, all because their original message failed to deliver.
 
A recent happening that exemplifies such a case was Paul Ryan, a Republican member of the House of Representatives in the United States, who sparked controversy over his statement in a conservative radio program broadcast: “We have got this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning to value the culture of work, so there is a real culture problem here that has to be dealt with.” The response from the public, mostly those from the opposition party but even from his own, was immediate and chastising - many deemed the statement, as Representative Barbara Lee put it, a “thinly veiled racial attack” and “inner cities” as a code word for the black community; others like Senator Elizabeth Warren were outraged by such view on the working poor, stating that “Paul Ryan looks around, sees three unemployed workers for every job opening in America, and blames the people who can’t find a job.” Though Representative Ryan has given the retort that his comments “had nothing to do with race,” it did not clear the air - prior to the controversial statement, he cited Charles Murray, the author of the controversial book The Bell Curve, in which he argued class and race have connections to levels of intelligence.
 
In an Opinion Page column of The New York Times, visual Op-ed columnist Charles M. Bow voiced that “other parts of Ryan’s original interview were on target, when talked about the value and dignity of work and the way that work builds character,” though similarly in agreement that “what Ryan said was horrific.” Likewise, after setting the offensive parts aside, the core message, or what I hope that it was, that failed to be delivered was not a bad one. While I do not particularly believe that Representative Ryan is a racist or discriminating against the poor, it was inevitable that the rather blunt phrasing of words (like “not even thinking about working or learning,” which hints at the belief that the people of the “inner cities” are lazy or ignorant) could only be met with outrage and the delivery of message was not possible.
 
The delivery of message should always be at utmost concern when one speaks to or writes for an audience, including accurate selection of words, coherent and, if necessary, persuasive phrasing, and awareness of the target audience (and the consequential ones as well). Your words when expressed in public have impact with positive and/or negative consequences. There are definitely smoother ways of delivering the same message.
 
Regards,
Gyuri Bae
Editor-in-Chief

    

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