Electric Rhetoric – A New Literacy
Electronic technologies have led to electronic consciousness, an awareness or mentalité that now changes literacy but in no way diminishes it. (104) Welch, Kathleen E. Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and a New Literacy. The MIT Press, 1999. Welch begins this work noting that computer screens dominate the workplace and other key places in our…
Presence of the Word – Word as Sound
[C]ultures which do not reduce words to space but know them only as oral-aural phenomena, in actuality or in the imagination, naturally regard words as more powerful than do literate cultures” (112). Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. The Terry Lectures. New Haven: Yale University Press,…
Presence of the Word – Plato’s Take
Spoken words are events, engaged in time and indeed in the present. Plato’s ideas were the polar opposite: not events at all, but motionless “objective” existence, impersonal, and out of time. (34). Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. The Terry Lectures. New Haven: Yale University Press,…
Presence of the Word – Back to Oral (Not)
Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. The Terry Lectures. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. As I’ve noted many times through this blog, I am not suggesting through my focus on this unique form of aural/visual communication that we are on some track to return to…
Presence of the Word – Electronic Era
Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. The Terry Lectures. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. Ong discusses the third stage of verbalization and notes that the process is sequential: The past century has seen the world enter into a new stage beyond orality and script and…
Presence of the Word
Man communicates with his whole body, and yet the word is his primary medium. Communication, like knowledge itself, flowers in speech (1). Ong, Walter J. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. The Terry Lectures. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. This work, published in 1967, reveals many of the…
The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing
Derrida, Jacques, and Barry Stocker. Jacques Derrida: Basic Writings. London ; New York: Routledge, 2007. In this chapter, “The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing” from Of Grammatology, Derrida looks at what he considers to be the problem of language. This problem has to do with how we now (Note: this was…
Time on Task
Lowerison, Gretchen, et al. Are We Using Technology for Learning? Journal of Educational Technology Systems 34 4 (2006): 401-25. No, this post has nothing to do with me staying on task beyond the fact that it is another blog post reviewing yet another source for the dissertation. This addresses a specific section of Lowerison et…
Are We Using Technology for Learning?
Lowerison, Gretchen, et al. Are We Using Technology for Learning? Journal of Educational Technology Systems 34 4 (2006): 401-25. In this article, Lowerison et al. detail their study on the role that computer technology plays in transforming the learning process in higher education, specifically, the relationship between computer-technology use, active learning, and perceived course effectiveness….
Digital Rhetoric: Toward an Integrated Theory
Zappen, James P. “Digital Rhetoric: Toward an Integrated Theory.” Technical Communication Quarterly 14 3 (2005): 319-25. Article Abstract: This article surveys the literature on digital rhetoric, which encompasses a wide range of issues, including novel strategies of self-expression and collaboration, the characteristics, affordances, and constraints of the new digital media, and the formation of identities…