Saturday, March 24, 2012
Week 9: Discussion Question #3
This week, I found the concept of hearsay to be
interestingly enough to discuss. Hearsay is a term used for a type of evidence.
According to Boss, this evidence “is heard by one person and then repeated to
another person and so on until you hear it.” By the time you receive or hear
this information, the information would most likely be different or altered
from the original information. It is not that people do this on purpose, but it
is because we sometimes forget little details or when we try to repeat the
information, our words choices have a completely different meaning. Therefore,
this type of evidence is considered to be unreliable. An example of this
concept would be a game of Telephone. I remember I used to play this game when
I was a young child. You would stand next to your friends and one-person from
the end of the line would whisper a message to the person next to them. Then
that person would repeat it to the next person and so on. Eventually, the
message will make it to the last person and they would say it aloud to see if it
matches up with the original message from the first person. Most of the time it
doesn’t because messages get changed as people pass it on. Through this game,
the concept of hearsay is reinforced.
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This topic also stood out to me and like you the first thing i thought about was the game telephone. It was surprising to see that they actually had a term for what the game was actually based on. I also agree with you that is not a reliable source which is why court cases never rely on this type of evidence because the story could easily be altered without the witness noticing because he/she may leave out some minor details that would help out the case. I would hate it if i told someone a story and then they told someone and that person told another person but altered it in some kind of way.
ReplyDeleteI have found that hearsay has become more of a secret weapon than just simply "forgetting little details". The most common use of hearsay in my life can be related to gossip or rumors. Hearsay can be used to pull people on your side or to empathize with you. The outcome usually involved a person, or a group of people getting hurt, because the hearsay being told is often misleading. Many people make conclusions about hearsay they hear from others, which places the victim in a situation where they are not able to defend themselves. Hopefully people can resist using hearsay in the sake of the people of the people being talked about.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on how you define hearsay. Hearsay is definitely a type of evidence people use to refer to when they need to support their topic. I like how you compared it with telephone because that’s like the perfect example. I played this before and we basically have to believe what the other person says. We take what we listen to and send the message out to the next person. This is how we use our evidence today, we take what others say and use it to support ourselves. We take much evidence such as celebrities or scientist. You just have to make sure you understand the evidence before you use it that way it doesn’t get altered and people might get the wrong message in the end like telephone.
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