Analysis Of Typographic Mind By Neil Postman

In Neil Postman’s book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman explores many specific qualities in Chapter 4 “Typographic Mind”. He uses the first of the seven debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas to successfully back up his claims about the four qualities, attention span, and listening ability, knowledge of the issues, and literary language, as well as many other forms of logical evidence. In Chapter 4 “Typographic Mind” Neil Postman believes people have been left with an image-based mind thanks to the introduction of television. One of the first qualities Neil Postman mentions is attention span. An attention span is the amount of time you can concentrate for without getting distracted. Postman made a claim about the fact that past generations were a lot more knowledgeable and literate and had a greater attention span than the people of today. Postman states, advertisements were created to “appeal to understanding, and not to passion” (60). It is also stated that producers would make the assumption “that potential buyers were illiterate, rational, and analytical.”(58) Though Neil Postman makes it apparent that advertisers are not always truthful about what they say. Advertisers also tried to appeal to the masses by coming up with catchy slogans to lure people in. The second quality Neil Postman speaks of is listening

Literary language is a certain language or grammatical style that is used in literary writing. Neil Postman speaks of exposition and strongly speaks about words and how they “have very little to recommend them except as carrier of meaning” (50). Neil Postman is straight-forwardly claiming, that words are nonsense “if they refuse to issue forth a fact, a request, a question, an assertion, an explanation” (50). Thus showing, words are only listened to if they actually hold a true meaning behind them, if not, they will come off as uninteresting or