Silence and the Notion of the Commons

The title of this essay “Silence and the Notion of the Commons” gives the same idea of people as programmable and unprogrammable similar to the idea seen in the Matrix. Whereas programmable people, who are the commons, are the people inside the matrix they are also known as the sheep, the people that believe in everything they are told. The unprogrammable people, who are the silence, are the people outside of the matrix. Ursula Franklin uses a variety of techniques in order for the audience to fully understand her message, and to inform them of the topics discussed in her essay, as is particularly apparent in paragraph 5 of her essay “Silence and the Notion of the Commons.”

Franklin addresses her audience in first person in paragraph 3,

“I would like to thank everyone involved in this conference, and the organizers in particular, for inviting me to deliver this talk. I am very obviously an outsider and wish to come to this group to talk about something that is central to all work that you people are doing.”

Franklin addresses her audience personally. She speaks to them about something not necessarily of her interest but of the audience’s interest. Her audience is perhaps mature but may have some people that English may not be a language the understand, therefore by emphasizing very drastically on the important words in her essay by saying them frequently. It is a psychological tact that the more times you repeat a word the better the chance there is of the audience remembering it.

In paragraph 4, Franklin uses repetition to emphasize sound and its sources. She uses “s” sounds throughout the whole passage to imbed the sounds into her audiences mind. The use of alliteration can first be seen in the title “Silence and the Notion of the Commons”, the sound that standout are the “S” sounds of Silence and in Commons. This idea is used in paragraph 4 by the repetition of sound and source that is then incorporated into soundscape and landscape. She also uses the phrase “mix sounds” which is ironic to the fact that she only uses the alliteration of the “s” sound in mix and in sounds. The use of alliteration also allows the audience to pay close attention to the important words.

Another technique Franklin uses to maintain the audience’s attention is her sentence structure. She uses very long sentences throughout paragraph 4 and has 2 short sentences in the middle of the paragraph.