Holy shit, y'all - I think I just had a Marshall McLuhan moment...

Lololololol. Explain how.

Yes, language is ever-changing. Bravo.

Ahh, yass - McLuhan's main premise (in the shit I know best from him, anyway) is that "the medium is the message." That is, the form of transmission through which the communication takes is inherently a product of the message being communicated. There is a certain inextricable tie between the Ethos and the Logos, perhaps (though that may be stretching it further than he did). Some of the best early Internet research in terms of communications theory involved the idea of "hypermediation." That is, so many messages being communicated through so many simultaneous media, that unpacking it becomes an increasingly cognitively-comprehensive task. You have blended word, image, and sound all forming a barrage on the senses. Independently, you can retain control of the reality being projected, but in concert it becomes closer and closer to the kind of full simulacrum of reality that we imagine in science-fiction.

That may be taking it to an extreme, though - McLuhan's most useful idea in this context would likely be his assertion that the establishment of Gutenburg's printing press (c. 1500s? Right around the Enlightenment, yeah?) fundamentally altered our relationship with information and knowledge. Shakespeare spelled his name 15 different ways. This could be a sign of authorial plurality, but pretty much everybody did. Spelling was not a concrete or rigid thing. It was phonemic, and phonemes vary to a degree between each hearer. Hell, maybe it even included an aspect of "voice" that is lacking in static systems of spelling and grammar, and thus the "perversions of language" we've been seeing on the Internet are actually aspects of rhetoric that we refuse to take seriously enough to see the patterns.

Point being, the "loss of intentionality" you mention may actually be the converse: we may be ignoring the intention of the rhetor because we refuse to see it in a removed-enough context to fully understand the message, ya dig?

McLuhan just says that the technology sustaining the medium impacts what that medium communicates more than representational content of the medium.

So the fact that we are typing little messages on phones that are more or less instantly being sent across space is more important to understanding what is said in those messages than simply reading the messages themselves.

This shit is a fucking mess, brah. The primary fallacy I see here though is projecting a made-up vision of what language was like. You have no idea, and no one can have that idea. You're making it up and contrasting your present experience with that.

My guess is that there is no contrast except in people making one up such as yourself.

Language was always barely coherent, and only retroactively sanitized to make it appear so.

Have you seen that video on snails in illuminated texts?

So, like, try not to be so much of a reductive dick, 'kay, sweetums?

If you have anything of actual content other than the most obtuse gloss of a fairly nuanced argument to offer, then please, mah dood - fire the fuck away.

>McLuhan just says that the technology sustaining the medium impacts what that medium communicates more than representational content of the medium.

Well, yeah - there is the materialist/economic influence, and he was seen as instrumental in deconstructing the embedded power relationships of cold-war rhetoric, but we're well beyond that. We already know that there's a corporate oligarchy, and that they essentially control a world market in which the economy of any country, including our own, is subject to the whim of forces far greater than we recognize. But outside of that context, even if you don't agree with what I've just said, there is a semiotic argument being made that I find far more compelling.

>The primary fallacy I see here though is projecting a made-up vision of what language was like. You have no idea, and no one can have that idea. You're making it up and contrasting your present experience with that.

Well, I did wax a bit poetic, but every culture in which writing has existed placed a lot of weight on that which was written. The Greeks didn't fucking trust it. They thought it would destroy our memory, and erode the performative aspect of rhetoric. They were totally right, too, but the sheer utility of the technology of writing was far too persuasive to deny. You had the semblance of a permanent record of things. You had something that could be referred to for, at least from their perspective, forever. It's fucking huge. So, yeah - I don't think I empirically experienced the time of early writing, but I don't think I'm making any outlandish claims. Please demonstrate otherwise, though, if you are able.

ancient graffiti is a good example.

I think if anything all today's technology shows us is how shitty language is. it's total garbage. very similar to a bowel movement. communication is extremely difficult if not impossible.

but if you think about why that is, those reasons have always been in place. because each person has their own shitty incomplete thoughts and are proud of them. no historian could ever verify that but there's no way that isn't true

I like your idea but I agree with the above poster that you're writing in a too blatantly self-conscious and intentional tone of -yeah ok I'm a genius but look I talk just like a normal guy and I'm fun at bars right guys?-

>Brian O' Blivion
I never read anything by him. Where should I start?

It would be hard not to get the impression there's some kind of devolution of language going on when the essentially only way we glimpse anything of past communication is in the most powerful influential works ever, and what we're immersed in 90% of the time today is ads and twitter

Misuse of the medium. Consider how inefficient something as ridiculous as "little more than brain-offal that you filter to some degree and spew out of your buccal orifice like a shotgun-blast of cognitive ballast" is. Convince me this isn't a parody.

okay but what I think is if you gave ancient people like more pencils or some shit, you'd get a similar impression. that's the counter to your claim basically. take it for what it's worth. and you're right, this isn't original at all. it's like the underlying basis for every thinkpiece in the last five years.

I clicked on this thread because I'm interested in McLuhan but I didn't even bother reading OP's posts for longer than 4 sentences because he writes like a dickhead.
And yes OP you have a responsibility to be readable if you want others to read you, which presumably you do since you made this thread.

>imagine having an MA in Composition and people bail out of your posts before they've finished the first paragraph

your mom gay

Also
>teaching others how to write when he writes like this

I'll take the bait.

>the written word has been devalued to a point where it is almost equivalent with speech.

Presumes a value. Basis the argument on this assumption.

>the reason that the written word carried so much weight is that it was incredibly *intentional.*

Doesn't understand the history of written language. Presumes that because it would be hard for him to erase shit like that, it must have been hard for them. Clearly you know nothing of ancient Egyptian writing or the ease at which something could be erased by a dedicated scribe.

>but the idea is that words, when written, carried immense cultural weight in basically every society in which they existed. Until now.

The way you write about words makes me believe you don't know reading silently only became a thing in the last millennia. Words have been cast into the underworld of the mind for too long, and only now is orality resuming its centrality. Thank god!

>the thinning of the divide between "Image" and "text" was occurring in an unconscious way, and in which further dissolved the separation of speech and writing altogether.

Back to the Greeks.

units.miamioh.edu/technologyandhumanities/plato.htm

Oral dissertation! Oral dissertation! Oral dissertation!

Bring them back for all subjects early on in school, and cancel all composition classes beyond high school.

As I understand it, your core argument is that written language is taking the form of oral tradition, as traditional barriers to composing a written message break down.
I think the counter to your claim then is that this just reinforces the role of journals and publishers as endorsers of "real" ideas, in much the same way that early Greek academies served to grant a cachet to the ideas which were expressed within them, and created a subset of "real" ideas within an oral tradition.
Let me know if I'm strawmanning.

There's always been different languages ; at least one of the plebs and one of the elites. Your analysis is mistaken, because it deals with the contemporary language of the plebs and compares it to the past language of the elites.

You sound like a boring person. You must be a boring teacher always repeating the same lame jokes followed with the same burst of nervous laughter.

>the written word has been devalued to a point where it is almost equivalent with speech

This is basically the complete opposite of all Western though. The written word is derivative of speech

Holy shit. Imagine being this guy.

Dogpiling in here with all the other anons to tell you that you're an atrocious writer OP. This is what studying "composition" does to your brain.

OP should bring this handout into class (I can't find an actual source for the passage).

writing.ucsb.edu/faculty/dean/Upload-STEP08/ThePoisonedFish.pdf

>Think about that: images were beginning to acquire the weight of the written word like never before

Images have been more powerful and have existed for longer.

>reductive

Is this spear or shield? Either way, sub-par.

pleb-style brain dump
I hope no one takes preacher-man here seriously

'ur' not wrong 'tho' when people spell words just how they would pronounce them. check out the shakespeare emoji book. elaborate more on the dual effect of devaluation?

>Implying this isn't a natural evolution of language.

Pic related, super-duper intentional writing with the most cultural weight (lol geddit) ever. Tens of thousands of plebs built mountains for the guy who would be buried under magic writing. There's nothing wrong with the democritization of the press. What you should set your brain to pondering is how we filter quality from garbage. NYT, WSJ, WAPO, etc carry more weight than your livejournal, but that is no guarantee of their quality or your irrelevance. Get cracking.

Incidentally your writing style is horrendous. Just get to the fucking point I had to read two of your longposts just to get to your dumb idea. Someone ought to take your computer away and make you communicate only with wax tablet.

Stop value signalling and being so self-conscious. No one is interested in your personality.

It's also very reddit.

So, other than the tone, the idea itself seems noteworthy. Cool. And I don't talk like a normal guy. And I am fun at bars. Find me a way to express my ideas in emotionless, egoless code, and get back to me on how to avoid having a personality.

But why devolution? I don't think we can really judge writing in terms of evolution, because it would presume that we know what it's "evolving" into, and we thus misjudge "ads and twitter" as less valuable, when we don't really have the capacity to understand how things are changing.

It's poetic, you artless robot. Do you even human? I figure if I'm going to ask a bunch of strangers to give me feedback on ideas, I should at least try to be a little entertaining and come up with some unique ways of phrasing shit. What do you think I'm even parodying?

We're telling you that your tone is so highly irritating that it actually destroys whatever idea you maybe have had.
If you're here to discuss ideas then your personality has fucking nothing to do with it you autistic little fucker. You're like a woman. No one gives a fuck or wants to be subjected to your shitty "fun" personality.

Try reading McLuhan himself; it's not a whole lot more straightforward. Or are you easily threatened by having to think about what you're reading, and the moment you are challenged you run away and call the author a dickhead, perhaps? If that's the case, just stick to the wikis. They're nice and dull, like your expectations. Try explaining what wasn't "readable," for starters.

The degree doesn't really change anything about the fact that people are lazy and don't usually give a shit about what other people say if they have to think about it for more than five seconds. But yeah, thanks for pointing out the irony.

I've already read McLuhan, dumbass.
Your tone isn't "challenging" it's just fucking stupid.
>if you don't like something it means you're threatened by how amazing it is
Leave the two-bit psychoanalysis back at reddit.

While we're discussing challenges I've got one for you to mull over
>gets unanimous feedback that his writing is shit
>everyone is wrong
hmm interdesting

How... how did you know?

>tfw op is so assblasted he combs through the thread responding to each individual post one-by-one leaving a samefag chaincombo of 2/10 snark.
>being this fragile

I think you might actually have autism. The idea you're trying to convey could be distilled into a paragraph half the length of your tediously awkward preamble.

How are you allowed to teach anything? Jesus christ.

>Presumes a value. Basis the argument on this assumption.

Yeah, kind of, I guess? There is a basic assumption that ideas have value embedded in the argument, and that we communicate these ideas through various expressive media. Good looking out on that one. It could be totally wrong, but then it wouldn't really matter anyway, so I sort of figure why not still think and express things?

>Doesn't understand the history of written language. Presumes that because it would be hard for him to erase shit like that, it must have been hard for them. Clearly you know nothing of ancient Egyptian writing or the ease at which something could be erased by a dedicated scribe.

Oh, do tell - what is "the history of written language?" You're really saying that the technology for erasing things was better in ancient times? Really? I think you're trolling, because the fact that there were scribes in the first place only highlights the permanence of the written word. Literacy rates used to be like 1% of the population, and now it's 99% in most (rich) countries.

>only became a thing in the last millennia

Umm... wow - that recently, huh? Well, shit - I feel like a child now. How's that multi-aeon lifespan going for you? I'm only 40, so I have to rely on shitty epigenetics for information from a thousand years ago, but clearly you remember stuff from then way better than me, so please help a young blood out, gramps.

>Back to the Greeks

I'm not saying I invented the idea, dude. If you see specific connections between the Greeks and what I've said (other than what I actually already mentioned), please elaborate with more than a fucking dead-drop of classic text. It's not very detailed.

>written language is taking the form of oral tradition, as traditional barriers to composing a written message break down.

That's pretty legit. Good summary.

>this just reinforces the role of journals and publishers as endorsers of "real" ideas, in much the same way that early Greek academies served to grant a cachet to the ideas which were expressed within them, and created a subset of "real" ideas within an oral tradition.

But that's the point - there are no "journals and publishers" which command general authority. It's fake-news-land, and print media is as dead as the academe. I'm just trying to understand how it happened, and I think we've been overlooking how the oral tradition has been tacitly influenced by the post-digital conflation of communicative media - specifically word and text.

Try reading some Postmodern theory (Jameson might be a good place to start, but Lyotard and Baudrillard are more language-based, which is what I'm mainly emphasizing). The "high/low culture" divide is a meme, bro. You're romanticizing the past like a 1980s movie. It's a bit cringe.

Also, not bad - I'm a pretty boring teacher, but I only nervously laugh after jokes that I try to keep fresh and not reuse (unless they're really good). Also, only boring people call others boring. You should try drugs or something.

That's sort of exactly why it's noteworthy.

Don't have to.

feelsgoodman.jpg

I'm always charmed by how people complain about writing, but never explain what it is they have a problem with. My guess is that it's comprehension, and instead of actually reading things they run away and cry about how bad of a writer the person is instead of offering anything useful. You can ask questions about things you don't understand, you know. It's not a competition - there will be things you haven't read and ideas you don't immediately grasp. This is how we learn, user. Try reading it again, but this time underlining words you aren't familiar with, and if you can't infer their meaning through context clues, look them up. You might have to read things *before* you can understand other things. It will all make sense eventually, though. No worries.

"The following article comes from Ken Macrorie’s book 'Telling Writing'..."

^^^literally states source at top of .pdf^^^

Yeah, I like Macrorie's take on the static construction of "academic English," and it's covered very early on in any decent Comp program. Try looking at Walter Ong and the "Mushfaking" phenomenon; it's sort of related.

Yeah, but they have always been in two separate spheres, and as strong of an "argument" as you can make with an image, the written word is required for things like laws and explicit social order. The constitution isn't a picture. There is a weight to words that images simply do not possess... and which they are acquiring.

How do you write something like this and not explain what makes it "pleb-style" or why you'd hope no one "takes it seriously" (whatever that even means)? Are you trying to impress someone? Do you think you're not a "pleb"? I'm genuinely curious.

Not saying that phonetic spelling is less valuable. I'm saying it doesn't matter if we return to an unstable state of spelling; semiotically it's the fact that the written and spoken word are becoming equal in terms of their position as sign and signifier of a larger, signified cultural object. The 2015 word of the year was the laughing-while-crying emoji, ffs; it's already clear that the primacy of written language as arbiter of truth is dead.

lol umad?

You're reading a lot of judgement into the words - you should try rereading it with a more descriptive tone.

Thanks, but I didn't really ask how my tone came off; in fact I requested a specific four-point rubric for feedback. Your response would fall under "e) how much of a douche I sound like" - note, that option is not there.

If you have something to say about the actual idea, though, have at it.

Now I think you're just jealous. Thanks for the compliment, though, you misogynist cuck; how do you know I'm *not* a woman?! Try another board than Veeky Forums if you don't actually like literature - are you really that daft?

>ITT: OP is a pretentious first year college graduate and is projecting/pretending that he is a professor and has an MA, but doesn't and is actually some brainlet trying to rehash today's Communication 101 introduction course lecture

Also, this idea isn't something new - you're literally just rewording some already drawn out argument.

>gets unanimous feedback that his writing is shit

You are stupendously brilliant at missing the fucking point. I don't fucking care if you like me; I just want to know what you think about the idea. If you don't understand it, then either move on or do the necessary research to catch what I'm pitching. I dare you to make a single valid criticism of the idea outside of the tone in which it's being expressed.

>I think you might actually have autism.

Yes, that's very likely. And?

>The idea you're trying to convey could be distilled into a paragraph half the length of your tediously awkward preamble

Great - then FUCKING DO IT.

Please, find me this 101 course that discusses the blending of image and text in a postmodern digtal context of hypermediation. I dare you.

Also, meta-projecting FTW.

>you're literally just rewording some already drawn out argument

Okay, good start - now try to actually identify and place this "already drawn-out argument" in context, and then you'll be contributing to a real academic conversation... it's scary, but fun.

People inherently give one form of communication a certain gravitas. This gravitas historically resided in the written word, as, for better or worse, only those who were successful/socially privileged had access to publishing writing on a large scale.

Now with the advent of internet technologies, any old pleb can publish a message to a wide audience, with the result being the majority of messages we see now are utterly banal/pointless and the written word is consequently devalued.

Some aspect of communication has to hold the gravitas that writing once did, and the pictographs seen in memes/emojis seem to be rising up into that space, possibly signaling that the communication we give cultural weigh to in the future will have a radically different basis, pictorial rather than written.

hell no i won't

this thread is the definition of pseudery, that is to say the self indulgence of one's own flatulence

OK, I'll bite. From what I understand about your argument, language has deteriorated in quality, hm? Right, so why is that? You have offered the argument that it's because of the ease with which the common person has to write words on a screen and paper.

Written word may not be a new thing in history. There was however a change in access to written word. It used to be that elites - political figures, wealthy businessmen, etc. - had a monopoly over the written word. They had the money to write, produce, and sell it - those too poor were deemed unfit to even have access.

Now, what with how cheap phones and computers are, I'd think it's natural for the quality of written content in any medium has gone down drastically. This is simply because common people aren't like the elites. Elites are producing written works for a purpose and usually have a great understanding of how language works. Common people can only attempt to grasp language because they're nothing special, they're average, so their written work will be average, mediocre.

So I'd say it's more about the writer rather than language changing into something worse. When the laymen had access to writing and literature, it was already doomed to be shitty simply because when average, mediocre people can lazily produce something without much effort or cost, then they will. And yet, the elites still maintain that written word must be something of high quality and must not be treated like anything but.

Faggots like you actually believe in the distinction between form and content, as if it didn't matter how stupendously verbose, circular, and masturbatory your writing is, because people should just sift through that garbage to find the half baked kernel of a thought you're trying to dress up as the Next Big Idea. Newsflash, your language composition is atrocious and no one will ever care what you think because so many others have done it in fewer words.

I feel bad for you. You're trying so hard, so so hard

Best comment so far. All 3 replies before mine are samefag

You presume that the value of writing is not equivalent to speech. But you probably don't have a basic understanding of orality and writing systems which both have different biases, different pluses and negatives. For some, such as Socrates, writing held too many negatives and so he held orality as having a higher value over writing. You enjoy Harold Innis, and Walter Ong.

>"the history of written language?" You're really saying that the technology for erasing things was better in ancient times?

People lived harder lives and so the short comings of the technology was greatly offset by the commitment, especially because being a scribe was a sacred office. The works of ancient civilisations are filled with musings and jokes, more so as the medium changed from stone to papyrus. This is Innis' basic premise for the bias of communications.

>How's that multi-aeon lifespan going for you?

It goes well. Some days I forget that part of me and enjoy being a random pretentious twat shitposting on the internet.

>It's not very detailed.

Holy fuck, is this the joke part? Did I take this bait too fucking well. So no one reads anymore. Boo hoo. It will take a few generations to adjust to the new oral paradigm, but it'll be good for us all in the long run.

Thus the birth of the new gods...if anyone's paying attention. The return of pomp is the return of the sacred. The return of the liar is the return of myth. These are frightening only to those who overlook the suffering of people that have nothing sacred to give their life purpose and so seek out the miserable existence of the consumer.

You should also look at the inverse, how oral tradition within institutions shapes the content of image and text. The body for instance precedes and is in conversation with photo, and can dictate the terms to the photographer, forcing them to witness the body in a way it wants to be photographed. Fashion communicates just as architecture does, and this impacts over mediums. The primacy of written language has always been a noble lie, especially for countries with constitutional democracies.

I thought you all passed on Gass.

>considers his own posts "literature"

This very old. Burroughs wrote an essay on it with the phrase "language is a virus" which has been a meme of the past three quarters of a century, and it wasn't necessarily original when he wrote it. Google the phrase, and read moar.

Well, now, that was pretty good. I admire your brevity and efficiency of language.

It's interesting how much you've embedded the classist framework in your analysis. Predicating the claim on the idea of language "deteriorating in quality" is problematic because it presumes an inherent hierarchy of style. Style merely represents the reflection of the values of the power-elite. It is not a thing that is divine or granted a-priori superiority. There is no "better" or "worse" mode of communication.

Cool; do it in fewer words. Give it a go, faggot.

Thanks; that is relevant and intriguing.

No it complicates your idea.

No, laws and social order exist before the written word. Even Levi-Strauss who argues your point details a tribe as having these things despite not having writing, and he was saying that writing creates social dominance! The weight to words comes from their relation to oral speech. A judge doesn't hand someone a card detailing why they are guilty or not guilty -- social order is dictated (literally) through speech. Short written communication mimicking oral speech more closely doesn't mean that emojis will soon be able to write the constitution. As you say they are different spheres.

Don't call me a nerd, you fucking queer
>op IRL