Творческая работа по английскому языку "The Transformation of a Letter"

The Transformation of a Letter (Message)

Saratov 2014

Content

1. Introduction
2. A brief history of letter writing
3. The letter-delivery process
4. My research
5. Conclusion
6. Literature

Introduction

The history of a mail message numbers not only centuries but millennia. The origin of a letter was necessary to exchange information. The first letters were sent only for military purposes and were widely distributed in Assyria, Persia and Egypt.  That time the letters were delivered by walking messengers and later by mounted messengers.

But the most famous and organized one was the history of Ancient Rome letter writing. Julius Caesar created state-mails, and the deliveries became ordered. There were large and small postal stations where the messengers could have a rest and change horses.

The first examples of handwriting (purely text messages made by hand) originated in Greece. The Grecian scholar, Cadmus invented the written letter - text messages on paper sent from one individual to another.

The development of mail system and letter writing was suspended for a long period of time. Different types of letters appeared in Europe with the development of trade. First of all there were merchant letters. Gradually the letters became affordable and popular means of communication.

A contemporary society has come to a high degree of progress. We use so many forms of messages that a hand writing letter has lost its prior function today.

My report is devoted to the evolution of a hand writing letter. In my work I try to show the appearance of new forms of letters. The aim of my work is to show a brief history of a handwriting letter and to analyze what other forms of messages modern people use today.

1. A Brief History of Letter Writing

A letter is a written message from one party to another. Historically, letters (in paper form) were the only reliable means of communication between two persons in different locations.

Historically, letters exist from the time of ancient India, ancient Egypt and Sumer, through Rome, Greece and China, up to the present day. Letters make up several of the books of the Bible. Archives of correspondence, whether for personal, diplomatic, or business reasons, serve as primary sources for historians.

The first letters were sent only for military purposes and were widely distributed in Assyria, Persia and Egypt.  That time the letters were delivered by walking messengers and later by mounted messengers.

But the most famous and organized one was the history of Ancient Rome letter writing. Julius Caesar created state-mails, and the deliveries became ordered. There were large and small postal stations where the messengers could have a rest and change horses.

The development of mail system and letter writing was suspended for a long period of time. European rulers were lazy to organize their communication system and preferred, as in ancient times, using messengers. Perhaps, all would have stayed if not for the monks, who were the bearers of culture and knowledge those days. The church maintained regular correspondence between its members. Wandering monks delivered all the letters.

 Civilization has moved forward, there was a need for a correspondence which provoked the arising of new types of letters in the history of letter writing. First of all they were merchant letters. Large trading houses employed the messengers, and even organized a shipment of parcels and letters. In addition, there was the city post office, where residents picked up the letters on certain days and delivered them to the destination for a small fee. Only in the 16-17 centuries there were post offices in France, Sweden and in England. They were both public and private, and the arrival of the mail stagecoach became an event.

Letters were extensively written to exchange messages during the 18th century in England. At that time, as there were no other means of communication like telephone and fax, people wrote innumerable letters throughout their lives to convey messages. Letter writing was, therefore, a necessary writing skill that everyone learnt and practiced.

Literary scholars had introduced a style of letter writing known as the period style. Normally, all business correspondence was in this style only. It was much different from today's style of writing that focuses on brevity to such an extent that even word spellings are truncated. Earlier, quill pens were used to write letters. They were long pens with a feather on top. Each pen was designed to have a unique cut. It was a precious possession that people transferred to their next generation.

In those days, different types of paper were used for different letters. For example, laid paper was commonly used in formal letter writing. Moreover, letters were written following certain guidelines. For example, a letter began with the sender's address followed by a salutation like Dear, My Dear, Dear Sir or Dear Madam. In formal letters, the year was included as a part of the date. The receiver's name and title was also mentioned. Even the closing note was very different from that of today.

After a letter was written, sealing wax was used to bind the letter pages. The color of the wax symbolized the nature of a message. For example, black wax signified the notification of someone's death in a family. As there were no envelopes to enclose the letter, the name and address of the recipient was written on a sheet of paper and was folded around the letter. Later on, when envelopes and postage stamps were introduced, the value of a stamp was determined according to the number of sheets written. Therefore, it was a common practice to write small letters and fill a page completely to reduce the number of pages. Unlike today, it was the recipient who paid the postage charge.

In the 19th century the advent of railroads and locomotives increased the rate of carriage of letters and the possibility of communication between the most distant countries.

The role of letters in communication has changed significantly since the nineteenth century. As communication technology has diversified, posted letters have become less important as a routine form of communication; they however still remain but in a modified form. For example, the development of the telegraph shortened the time taken to send a letter by transferring the letter as an electrical signal (for example in Morse code) between distant points. At the telegraph office closest to the destination of the letter, the signal was transferred back into a hardcopy format and sent as a normal mail to the person's home. This allowed the normal speed of communication to be drastically shortened for larger and larger distances. This required specialized technicians to encode and decode the letter. The facsimile (fax) machine took this one step further: an entire letter could be completely transferred electrically from the sender's house to the receiver's house by means of the telephone network as an image.

Today, the Internet has become the predominant medium for sending letters. The term e-mail, meaning electronic mail, has entered into everyday speech.

Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the same time, in common with instant messaging. Today's email systems are based on a store-and-forward model. Email servers accept, forward, deliver and store messages. Neither the users nor their computers are required to be online simultaneously; they need connect only briefly, typically to an email server, for as long as it takes to send or receive messages.

An email message consists of three components, the message envelope, the message header, and the message body. The message header contains control information, including, minimally, an originator's email address and one or more recipient addresses. Usually descriptive information is also added, such as a subject header field and a message submission date/time stamp. By analogy, the term letter is sometimes used for e-mail messages with a formal letter-like format. And regular letters, since they take longer, are often called "snail-mail."

Another type of a modern letter is a short text message. Short Message Service (SMS) is a text messaging service component of phone, web, or mobile communication systems, using standardized communications protocols that allow the exchange of short text messages between fixed line or mobile phone devices.

SMS text messaging is the most widely used data application in the world, with 2.4 billion active users, or 74% of all mobile phone subscribers. The term SMS is used as a synonym for all types of short text messaging as well as the user activity itself in many parts of the world.

In 2010, 6.1 trillion SMS text messages were sent. This translates into 192000 SMS per second. SMS has become a massive commercial industry, earning $114.6 billion globally in 2010. The global average price for an SMS message is $0.11, while mobile networks charge each other interconnect fees of at least $0.04 when connecting between different phone networks.

While SMS is still a growing market, traditional SMS are becoming increasingly challenged by alternative messaging services which are available on smartphones with data connections, especially in western countries where some of these services attract users.

2. The letter-delivering process

Here is how a letter gets from the sender to the recipient:

Sender writes letter and places it in an envelope on which the recipient's address is written in the center front of the envelope. Sender ensures that the recipient's address includes the Zip or Postal (if applicable) code and often they include their return address on the envelope.

Sender buys a postage stamp and attaches it to the front of the envelope on the top right corner on the front of the envelope.

Sender puts the letter in a postbox and does nothing more.

The national postal service for the sender's country (e.g., the Royal Mail, UK; US Postal Service, US; Australia Post in Australia; or Canada Post in Canada) empties the postbox and takes all the contents to the regional sorting office.

The sorting office then sorts each letter by address and postcode and delivers the letters belonging to a particular area to that area's post office. Letters belonging to a different region are sent to that region's sorting office, to be sorted further.

The local post office dispatches the letters to their delivery personnel who deliver them to the appropriate addresses.

This whole process, depending on how far the sender is from the recipient, can take anywhere from a day to 3–4 weeks. International mail is sent via trains and planes to other countries.

In the past, before the invention of the telegraph, telephone and other communication technologies, people used messengers who rode on horseback from town to town and delivered correspondence. Sometimes, if the message was urgent, the torches were lit to signal the urgency.

One day it was observed that pigeons could transfer correspondence. These birds are able to find their way back from a destination very accurately. Only strong and healthy birds were chosen whose natural orientation in space was well developed. Pigeon post played a great role during the war. It is still in use in some regions nowadays. Pigeons transcend traffic jams, other transport problems. Besides, they are cheaper than the latest messaging device.

With the development of the Internet and mobile phones in the 21 century post offices and pigeon post became unpopular. People post letters and postcards less.

3. My research

One of the goals of my work is to show what forms of text messages modern people use today. I have prepared a questionnaire of 5 questions:

1. Do you like interaction?

2. What means of communication do you prefer?

3. Do you like sending handwritten letters?

4. How often do you use contractions in your messages?

5. Do you use smile marks in your messages?

 In my work I have asked people of three age groups. They are – teenagers, parents and grandparents. The results of the questionnaire can be seen in the table. They show that  9 of  25 parents prefer sending and getting short text messages. 13 of  25 interviewed parents use Internet and send e-mails. Some of grandparents write letters and send them by post. The others don’t have any correspondence at all.

 As for the teenage group the results show that practically all boys and girls send e-mails today. Sms is the most widely spread means of communication. All boys and girls from the questionnaire have a mobile phone which can send and get sms. They write letters only at school and don’t use them as a communicative device.

Thus due to the results of the questionnaire we may conclude that a letter as means of communication is becoming unpopular and may even disappear at all. E-mails and mobile text messages have substituted letters and become the most popular and useful means of communication. 

Conclusion

The history of a mail message numbers not only centuries but millennia. People continue communicating with each other by means of text messages. With time there appear new and modern forms of messages. The results of my research show that the older forms become useless and outdated. We may state that a handwritten letter has evolved into new forms. They are mobile text messages and electronic messages (e-mails). The majority of younger generation can hardly imagine their life without sms or e-mails. New forms of letters are short and fast. This trend has come to the changes in a language system and to the appearance of new words and abbreviations.

Thus we may conclude that sms and e-mails are new phenomena that mark a new stage in a letter writing history.