This just in! (Or, stuff by semi-experts on language I found this morning)

Today, thanks to the web, I became a fan of Anne Trubeck's columns, particularly her latest one on the rhetorical/literary functions of the facebook status update, and also learned about the "100 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language". But, before I go on, I need to say this about the latter column--as a "word person," I'm on board with several of these, and use quite a few of them in speech and writing (for example, "obsequious" and "panoply," I cannot live without). Several others, though, I have serious doubts about. For example, years ago, a list of "do nots" came rolling down the WPA email pike: it concerned the linguistic faux pas presenters at a certain national conference should avoid: one of the recommendations was to steer clear of using the word "conflate" in any form because of its overuse and flatness--it had been, in fact, banished to the realm of "just don't go there" in academic discourse, and, by extension, to the list of words one could use to play a game affectionately known as "bullshit bingo"".

Clearly, anyone who calls himself "Dr. Language" must have a sense of humor and irony. But I take offense at the idea that simply because this guy posts a list of words, purporting to offer us the best of the best, we will start using said words and subconsciously thinking to ourselves, "My God, he's right! These are the most lovely words!" Such an assumption is pure madness, as "Dr. Language" is, first of all, no one's cynosure, and this epicurean ailurophile will happily eschew his list. And hey, if his pecadillo is to decree which words out of an entire language are beautiful, that is certainly his right: but, I find his motives umbrageous.

But back to Trubeck's thoughts on the status update--I find her ruminations an excellent springboard for further discussion the whole "medium is the message" debate--and I will not take sides with Burke vs. McLuhan on this one, though I think that what McLuhan observed in the 60s is far more true now (and Burke's criticism is, hence, less relevant), given the myriad intrusions eletronic genres make into our constructions of prose--case in point, the fact that the "prompt" for the status update requires that your name be the first word--such a constraint drives the message in that I need to mold my content to make the subject the doer of the action (unless I wish to subvert that structure rather awkwardly through a passive construction), and it also encourages egocentric writing--not a bad thing per se, but in that genre, *you* (or whoever's name appears to start the update) are always the focus/agent: the star of the show.

One issue Trubeck circumvents in what is really a great informal discussion of social-network mediated discourses, is how all this plays with the canon of memory. When writing was first invented, as Socrates explains to Phaedrus, this technology was suspect--what, oh what, would happen to the sacredness of memory in storing our narratives, speeches, plans, etc? (For a more contemporary contextualization, think of how riled up some get about spell check--i.e. what, oh what, is that horrid little mechanism doing to corrode our spelling skills?) But currently, although I agree with what Bolter contends about the breakout of the visual, we are in a hypertextualized society, in which memory's essence seems to be diminishing as we filter our lives through five, six, seven different media a day that beg for fragmentary, immediate updates deperately trying to gesture to (signify) our reality. We are textualizing our every move, perhaps in order to preserve "memory" through our own terminisic screens so that we have the goods on what really happened/is happening (or are we?). All of this reminds me of E.M. Forster's saying, "How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?"

New on Kairos

I just noticed two new discussions on the Kairos blog that relate to Multimedia Media--one is the announcement for Matt Barton and Bill Loguidice's new book on vintage video games, and the other is a blurb about Microsoft's new "Word Stickers"--I don't really know how much of a learning aid those would be for someone just learning to type. As platypus matt says, one could find that same information from going through another route.

To whom it may concern...

This is a sort of "random bullet" post whose purpose is to vent to an audience who will never read it. That intended audience is anyone who has ever written or will ever write a letter of recommendation for an ABD job candidate in the humanities.

• Please, for the love of all you might hold sacred, do not open your letter to the search committee with that old chestnut, "This is not going to be the typical letter of recommendation in favor of a potential candidate." Although I know you are sincere in your praise of almost-Dr.-Suzy Twinkletoes, your writing that sentence (or some variation of it) makes me anticipate some actual, radical departure from the typical rec letter, like, say, a link to a YouTube video of you praising the candidate through the medium of interpretive dance. That would be totally cool. Instead, as inevitably happens, your letter does turn out to be the typical rec letter, and I become super disappointed in you and your candidate, because you have led me on.
• If possible, avoid damning with faint praise. Or at least avoid damning with faint praise for two single spaced pages--what I mean is, keep the damning brief. (And by "damning with faint praise" I mean tactics such as going on for two paragraphs about how the candidate has really mastered the art of showing up for office hours.) I mean, I'm a rhetorician, and I know the tricks. If you can't write a glowing letter, try to weasel your way out of writing one at all.
• I vomit instantly when I hear/read the phrase "best practices"--just an fyi.
• If you have not witnessed this person's teaching abilities, don't turn the lack of observation into a red herring--such as, "I have not had the opportunity to witness Mike B. Pretentious's teaching. However, I am sure that, based on...." Um, no--stop right there. Do not pass go--for all you know, the dude could be turning his classes into devil-worshipping workshops (albeit ones that use "best practices"). Assume nothing.
• When referring to the candidate's dissertation work, please do not speak of "exploding binaries," "counterhegemonic agendas," and "shifting paradigms." Because, um, although you think what your protege is doing is going to change life as we know it, I've just read 28 other letters that attested to those candidates' plan to shift, explode, and agenda the crud out of the next guy/girl. Maybe you guys should get together and talk and have some big counter-hegemonic tupperware party.

This has been a public service announcement from a concerned rhetorician.

Oh, Colossus, you nut!

In 1970, "The Forbin Project" emerged as the latest in a slew of technophobic films that, perhaps, considered itself prescient of the inevitable destruction of mankind in a world ruled by technology (i.e. the dominance of the big creepy "supercomputer"). In this clip, Colossus spews his personal philosophy ("man is his own worst enemy", bla bla bla) through a really primitive text-to-speech program. He (and I stress he--we'd probably be pretty hard pressed to locate early cinematic equivalents of the likes of Colossus or HAL that talk through female voices) threatens to annihilate the world with the help of "Guardian," his counterpart, a computer built by the Russians.



I don't think it will surprise anyone to know that this movie does not have a happy ending. Nonetheless, I do find the film fascinating in that it is based on the premise that we imbue our machines with our own will, conscience, and possible bent toward the destructive. Now, in 1970, which was not so long after the introduction of the ENIAC--the first computer that was so big it filled a room (no, seriously, stop laughing!)--people still considered technology to be not only something they could choose whether to interact with--but also something that had a scary potential to undermine human life. So, when this film first came out, though it was probably chilling on some level, its premise was still unrealistic.

However...

Today, as Donna Haraway argues, we are all "cyborgs" in the sense of having a connection (both mental and physical) to myriad technologies, some of which we do not even notice as being a part of us. Furthermore, as Kate Hayles compellingly explains, the aspect of "relationality" between us and our machines makes it more and more likely that they can mimic our thinking and decision making processes; thus, taking into account her theories, we can see Colossus's going rogue not as some sort of terrifying "fluke" or bug in the system, but rather as an actual reflection of his adoption of his human creators' traits.

Embedding a video

I am going to show students how to embed a video into their posts, like this one:



It's fairly simple.

But while I'm at it, I might as well post an observation on this random YouTube selection I chose to embed. Obama's speech clip illustrates several of the (sometimes paralinguistic) elements of Obama's speaking style (use of voice/tone to convey confidence, emphasis on "we"and "our" to solidify identification with his audience) that contribute to his percieved effectiveness. Still, (and I was truly shocked when I found out that his speech writer is 27 years old), he rattles off a list of binaries in this clip that, if examined closely, indicate just how deeply embedded non-neutral language is in our culture. For example, he makes the point that Americans from diverse walks of life have come together to prove that change is possible: these diverse groups include young/old, white/black/Hispanic/Asian, rich/poor; however, while this list of groups seems fairly obvious, he also include "gay/straight", and "disabled/non-disabled"--and although I am not here to go on a language police rant, I do want to point out that the gay/straight dichotomy has been cited as one that, through the metaphor of heterosexual=straight, gay=bent/crooked, presents an image of gays/lesbians as deviant. Likewise, the disabled/non-disabled dichotomy does something similar in defining a whole person as disabled (or not), rather than a person who has a disability. And yes, I understand that rephrasing those last two binaries would have thrown off the rhetorical flourish of the parallel structure.

Now, one could simply sigh and say, "But don't you get the point of what he's saying?" I absolutely do. It's all about inclusion and collective responsibility in achieving goals: awesome. But at the same time, those phrases, those tiny phrases, still bear some scrutiny--and I wonder just how much a 27 year old is aware of the impact of those seeminlgy infinitesmal phrases when taken in the context of a whole speech--language does, in fact, shape our reality.

Alas, "now is the time for all good rhetoricians to come to the aid of their country..."

Weight, Clothes, and Looks

By way of more productive procrastination (I really should be finishing up an article draft now--it is in fact due to the editor soon, but I don't wanna) here I go on a half-baked discourse analysis that lazily throws in a few undeveloped theory references so I can feel like I'm doing something scholarly. Ladies, and gentlemen, I give you "Kymaro's New Body Shaper":



I am not an infomercial watcher (is anyone?)--but I was so struck the other day by the opening statement of that program--"Stop suffering everytime you look at yourself in the mirror"--that I had to sit up and take notice. What you have here is not a mere suggestion that your appearance (though surely pleasing as it is now, perhaps just needing a little help) could maybe be improved by this apparatus. No--what we have is a foregone conclusion that you, audience member, whoever you are, are so hideously deviant in some way that you are undoubtedly reduced to tears by the sight of your pathetic self. I ask you--is this really the best way to begin a thirty minute ad in which you hope to convince people (ugly and freakish as you believe they are) to buy something from you?

And in mulling over the unexplored warrant of Kymaro's rhetorically misguided imagineers, I began to feel rather uneasy about programs that have a similar subtext--where the aim is to get people to stop embarrassing themselves, their families, and the general public with what they wear. Consider, for example, a show like "How Do I Look?"--I actually watch this one because I find Finola Hughes far less shrill and abrasive than the duo on "What Not to Wear". In this clip, Finola and the fashion victim's buds verbally shred her wardrobe:



I'm not sure what my problem is with all that--it's not that I necessarily think that people shold not dress in manner that does not fit some system of propriety. For example: women my age just should not wear Hello Kitty anything. But at the same time there's a really Clockwork Orange kind of thing going on in these shows--a sort of "let's foribly re-indoctrinate you into the world of the sane through fashion. And let's do it under the guise of helping you find the 'true' you." And sometimes, the makeover-ees (generally female) rebel, making it clear that they are going to keep on wearing their green corduroy bellbottoms and crocs to work. I applaud them.

Oh, yeah, I forgot about the apathetic theory references that I won't bother to tie into this in any effective reader-based way...ummmm, Foucault and the Panopticon. Discuss :).