Profanity: Crossing Borderzones of Literacy (PAB2b, Technical Communications and Digital Rhetoric: Major Questions, ODU EGL 810)

Annotated Bibliography:

Jay, Timoty and Janschewitz, Kristin. “The pragmatics of swearing.” Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture. Volume 4, Issue 2, Pages 267–288. 2008 August. Accessed 2016 September 28. DOI: 10.1515/JPLR.2008.013

Also see:

Jay, Timothy1, and Kristin Janschewitz. "Filling The Emotion Gap In Linguistic Theory:  Commentary On Potts' Expressive Dimension." Theoretical Linguistics 33.2 (2007): 215-221. Humanities Source. Web. 29 Sept. 2016.

Introduction

The Skerrett and Bomer article spoke of how students self-emerge in “unofficial worlds” and that out-of-school literacies cross personal “borderzones” spanning each of our life experiences regardless of “age, gender, [or] status” (Skerret 1257). They quote Renato Rosaldo about “disparate worlds […over] a range of relationships, from intimacy to collegiality and friendship to enmity” (Sekerrett 1257). That reminded me of reading I came across over the summer about the dissonance of communications, the wedge of intentional sarcasm, and a loss of civility across the media.  P.M. Forni, a professor of Italian and literature at John Hopkins, set aside a complete chapter to civility in our culture include (qtd by Watson):

• The obvious talking too loudly
• Holding inappropriate conversations in public
• Discriminating in an employment situation
• Rudely interrupting conversations
• Texting while driving
• Disturbing live performances
• Treating service providers as inferiors
• Failing to say please or thank you
• Checking your cell phone during live performances
• Using technology in public
• Using foul language in public

Here I consider the last of these offenses to social, cultural, and rhetorical civil discourse: foul language.  In their article, “The pragmatics of swearing,” Jay and Janschewitz offer statistical research showing that, for college aged respondents, accepting profanity should be “variable, dependent on speaker-listener relationship, social-physical context, [gender,] and particular word used.”

Leaders Leading with Profanity

Philippine President Duterte

The uncivil tongue of public insult has been a political staple globally in the early 21^st century, reaching a crescendo in the 2016 presidential contest. Donald Trump kicked off his candidacy in June  of 2015 with invective aimed at fellow Republicans; since then he has tweeted “insults at presidential candidates, journalists, news organizations, nations, a Neil Young song and even a lectern in the Oval Office” (Lee).[1] Meanwhile, in the Philippines, newly-elected President Rodrigo Duterte shows that the strikingly candid and aggressive tone of politics is worldwide. In the past few months, Philippines he openly announced that he doesn’t “care about human rights.” He has given EU leaders the finger, called President Obama a “son-of-a-whore,” labeled U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as “crazy,” blocked completion of a U.S.-China treaty (by offending China), and amped up a “war on drugs” at home in which his forces have killed more than 3,500 suspected drug dealers (all without due process). In open press conferences, he greets critics with a simple and succinct “F-ck you” (Time).

Emily Post Weeps

A few short years ago, when the Jay and Janschewitz study was completed, they believed that we can learn “when, and with whom swearing is appropriate.” That borderzone is wall that—like the Berlin Wall—has been torn down. Ironically, while a leading political candidate for the U.S. presidency proposes building of  physical walls, Mr. Trump has been most effective in tearing down the social, cultural, and rhetorical walls of civil discourse.

Bibliography

Lee, Jasmine, and Quealy, Kevin. “The 258 People, Places and Things Donald Trump Has Insulted on Twitter: A Complete List.” The New York Times: The Upshot. 2016 August 22. Accessed 2016 September 24. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html?_r=0

Jay, Timothy1, and Kristin Janschewitz. "Filling The Emotion Gap In Linguistic Theory:  Commentary On Potts' Expressive Dimension." Theoretical Linguistics 33.2 (2007): 215-221. Humanities Source. Web. 29 Sept. 2016.

Jay, Timoty and Janschewitz, Kristin. “The pragmatics of swearing.” Journal of Politeness Research. Language, Behaviour, Culture. Volume 4, Issue 2, Pages 267–288. 2008 August. Accessed 2016 September 28. DOI: 10.1515/JPLR.2008.013

Korhonen, T. (2012). Toward a rhetoric of insult. Rhetorica, 30 (3), 334-337,340. Retrieved from http://hs1.farmingdale.edu:2177/docview/1034609609?accountid=8066

Skerrett, Allison and Bomer, Randy. “Borderzones in Adolescents’ Literacy Practices: Connecting Out-of-School Literacies to the Reading Curriculum.” Urban Education. 2011 March 10. Accessed 2016 September 24. DOI: 10.1177/0042085911398920. http://uex.sagepub.com/content/46/6/1256

Time Staff. “Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte Launches Profanity-Laden Tirade at the E.U.” Time Magazine. 2016 September 21. Accessed 2016 September 28. http://time.com/4502332/rodrigo-duterte-eu-profanity-philippines-drugs/

Watson, Elwood. “Are Civility and Good Manners Waning?” Diverse Issues in Higher Eduction, 2014 October 28. Accessed 2016 September 24. http://diverseeducation.com/article/67631/

 Footnote

---

[1] While considering politically-charged rhetoric, Conley gives us a reason for Aphasia being overlooked by history when Conley discusses Cicero “as a master of invective” (Korhonen 334).

PAB2a: Major Questions: Tech Comm as part of English Studies? (ODU EGL 810 Fall 2016)

The Annotated Bibliographic Article

Selfe, Cynthis L., and Hawisher, Gail E. "A Historical Look at Electronic Literacy." Journal of Business and Technical Communication, July 2002: 231-276.

Introduction

Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, of University of Minnesota, asks us to consider what academia’s industry partners expect of college graduates expect students be technologically literate” (Breuch 268).  How do we, as English Rhetoric educators, satisfy the demand of business leaders in an age when English Studies departments have fractured into these sections: composition, language arts, language education, and literacy education (Luke 90)? This division is ironic as we enter an era when blogging and instant messaging via Twitter and Facebook while watching live events (such as the Twitter-sphere explosion during the first Clinton-Trump Presidential Debate on September 26, 2016).

Digital rhetoric takes us a step further into a world where we structure “content for a future that’s unfixed, fluid and ever changing. Miles Kimball, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, contends that after thousands of years of oratory and rhetoric, the early 21^st century is “the Golden Age of technical communication. [… and we] should spread it as a set of skills valuable for everyone to learn”

The many questions

Breuch sees these as key questions facing

·         What does it mean to be technologically literate?

·         How should technologically literacy be integrated into technical communication classes?

·         the How do we relate technological literacy to performance, contextual factors, and linguistic activities to provide a mechanism to identify and analyze a range of perspectives associated with Technology and communication”?

·         How does the study and teaching of Technical Communication evolve into Digital Rhetoric?

·         Should Digital Rhetoric remain in the English Studies department, or should it migrate into the Communications department (sometimes also called Professional Communications or Communication Arts)?

Ecological approach

The English educator Allan Luke raises practical advice, suggesting that educators seek “ecological approach to digital technologies is relevant and topical for those communities and schools faced with socioeconomic and cultural questions of access to and engagement with new technologies

Under-30's with FlexJobs

in education (Luke 91).  His analysis implies that epistemology and discourse (knowing how and what to teach) can be discussed as a unit, and that pedagogy are separate studies. The problem was that it was seen as a single set of rules that changed with the perceptions and biases of various “experts.” This allows different teaching methods and goals to co-exist in a curriculum.

The demand for excellence in digital communication is not coming from just employers. Millennials entering the workforce are seeking FlexJobs (telecommuting) in three of the top ten professional/technical occupations of news reporting and editing, PR, and technical writing expect the university to provide them with a professional level of technical communication expertise (Communications Daily). This enforces a division college English Studies departments; English the language itself has become internationalized, pushing towards digitally democratic literacy becoming “increasingly multimodal, with linguistics, visual, audio, gestural and spatial modes of meaning becoming increasingly integrated in everyday media and cultural practices.” (Cope 166).

Bibliography

Communications Daily. “Promoting Work at Home; MCI, Sprint and CPE Vendors Back 'Telecommuting' Venture.” Vol. 10, No. 217; Pg. 5. 1990, Nov 8. Permalink: http://hs1.farmingdale.edu:2068/hottopics/lnacademic/

Kastman Breuch, Lee-Ann. "Thinking critically about technological literacy: Developing a framework to guide computer pedagogy in technical communication." Technical Communication Quarterly 11, no. 3 (2002): 267.

Kimball, Miles A. "The Golden Age of Technical Communication." Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Apr 2016: 1-29.

Luke, Allan. "Editorial Introduction: Redigning Pedagogy."  Pedagogies: An International Journal, 1(2), 89–91

Selfe, Cynthis L., and Hawisher, Gail E. "A Historical Look at Electrroinic Literacy." Journal of Business and Technical Communication, July 2002: 231-276.

Shin, Laura. “Work From Home: The Top 100 Companies Offering Flexible Jobs In 2014.” Forbes.com: Personal Finance.  2014 Jan 17. Accessed 2016 Sep 26. http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2014/01/17/work-from-home-the-top-100-companies-offering-flexible-jobs-in-2014/#9069a953cca3

---

Paper 1, revised: Summary: a short history of Technical Communications as English Studies (ODU 810)

Paper 1, revised: Summary: a short history of Technical Communications as English Studies (ODU 810)

NYC Middle Schoolers online

Selfe and Hawisher consider how Technical Communicators “acquired” electronic literacy, what influenced that gain, and identify similarities to help “Technical Communicators instructors, program directors, and workplace supervisors” effectively teach electronic literacy  The inclusion of Technical Communications in the English Studies curriculum leads to a commitment to digital rhetoric in the college curriculum. Technical Communications is closely related to Digital Rhetoric. Both skills require digital literacy, which include the “practices of reading, writing, and exchanging information online, with the values associated with such practices—social, cultural, political, [and] educational”[1]. For these reasons, the study and teaching of Technical Communications and Digital Rhetoric should remain in the English Studies department, not in the growing number of more technically-oriented Communications departments.

The computer explosion took place from 1978 through 1993, which is no secret. In 1984 Gilbert Storms noted that technical communications courses be added to the curriculum, showing “how they are used in communication, particularly word processing, information storage and retrieval, and information management”[2].  Jessica Lambertson recently praised technical communication in the digital age for expanding storytelling, simplifying the documentation of teachers’ notes, encouraging a global sharing of academic findings from the highest levels of academia and government to neighborhood schools and kitchen tables. “These instances are also contextualized as signifiers of the culture’s general adoption of personal computers in writing and the office environ”[3]. Of course, we know this. But this paper covers these questions:

1. When did the subdiscipline of Technical Communication emerge?
2. What universities did it emerge from?
3. What were the exigencies for its emergence?
4. What was its relationship to the university system as a whole?

Technical Communication Subdiscipline Emerges

As early as 1980, two years into the personal computer revolution, Jacques G. Richardson of UNESCO announced the global value of the interdisciplinary responsibility of Technical

Walter J. Ong

Communicators[4]. Then in 1982, Walter J. Ong, S.J., of Saint Louis University, in “Orality and Literacy,” stated that we are born with capability for speech (what Ong calls “orality”), but that writing is a learned “consciousness-raising” activity. He foresaw a growth of what we now call eBooks and audio texts replacing books and newspapers, which can affect how we communicate orally, in electronic writing (using the technology), and digitally (changing how we think, produce text, and exchange ideas)[5]. In 2008, five years after his death, his Saint Louis University established the Walter J. Ong, S. J., Center for Language, Culture, and Media Studies, to study what he saw as the interdisciplinary departments of English, Communication, History, Theology, Modern and Classical Languages, and Philosophy[6].

The Golden Age

President Clintion

The discipline of Technical Communications in the university’s English Studies department came out of President Bill Clinton’s 1993 Technology Literacy Challenge validated teaching technology literacy to K-12 students[7]. Digitally literate high school grads were joining the entry-level workforce just when PCs were cheap and ubiquitous in all businesses. That socio-economic reality required adding Technical Communications to the college curriculum[8].  Digital rhetoric takes us a step further into a world where we structure “content for a future that’s unfixed, fluid and ever changing. Miles Kimbal, of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, contends that after thousands of years of oratory and rhetoric, the early 21^st century is “the Golden Age of technical communication. [… and we] should spread it as a set of skills valuable for everyone to learn”[9]

Today’s Golden Age of Technical Communication will lead to new level of digital rhetoric, expanded on by Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, University of Minnesota, when she explained that “issues of technological literacy related to performance, contextual factors, and linguistic activities […] provide […] a mechanism to identify and analyze a range of perspectives associated with technology and communication”[10]. This pedagogical philosophy will support the view that the study and teaching of Technical Communication as it evolves into Digital Rhetoric should remain in the English Studies department.

Bibliography

Fromm, Harold. "The rhetoric and politics of environmentalism." College English.. 59, no. 8 (Dec 1997): 946-950.

Kastman Breuch, Lee-Ann. "Thinking critically about technological literacy: Developing a framework to guide computer pedagogy in technical communication." Technical Communication Quarterly 11, no. 3 (2002): 267.

Kimball, Miles A. "The Golden Age of Technical Communication." Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Apr 2016: 1-29.

Kirschenbaum, Matthew G. Track Chaanges. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2016.

Lambertson, Jessica A. "Track Changes: A Literary History of Word Processing." Library Journal, 2016: 91.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy. New York: Routledge, 1982, 2002.

Regents of the University of Minnesota. "Who Was Charles Babbage?" The Charles Babbage Institute. 2015. http://www.cbi.umn.edu/about/babbage.html (accessed Sep 24, 2016).

Richardson, Jacques G. "Science and Technology as Integral Parts of Our Culture: Interdisciplinary Responsibilities of the Scientific Communicator." Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, April 1980: 141-147.

Saint Louis University. "The Ong Center Home." slu.edu. 2016. http://www.slu.edu/the-ong-center (accessed Sep 23, 2016).

Selfe, Cynthis L., and Hawisher, Gail E. "A Historical Look at Electrroinic Literacy." Journal of Business and Technical Communication, July 2002: 231-276.

---

[1] (Selfe 2002)

[2] (Selfe 2002)

[3] (Lambertson 2016)

[4] (Richardson 1980)

[5] (Ong 1982, 2002)

[6] (Saint Louis University 2016)

[7] (Selfe 2002), p. 233

[8] (Selfe 2002), p. 234

[9] (Kimball 2016)

[10] (Kastman Breuch 2002)