Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Toscano, Aaron, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-083: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • ENGL 2116 sec. 083 Major Assignments (Summer 2020)
      • Final Portfolio Requirements
      • Oral Presentations
    • June 11th: Continue with I, Robot
    • June 15th: Ethics and Perspective Discussion
      • Ethical Dilemmas for Homework
      • Ethical Dilemmas to Ponder
      • Mapping Our Personal Ethics
    • June 16th: More on Ethics
    • June 1st: Effective Documents for Users
    • June 2nd: Final Project and Research Discussion
      • Epistemology and Other Fun Research Ideas
      • Making Résumés and Cover Letters Better
      • Research
    • June 3rd: Technology in a Social Context
    • June 8th: Information Design and Visuals
    • June 9th: Proposals, Marketing, and Rhetoric
    • May 18th: Introduction to the course
    • May 19th: Critical Technological Awareness
    • May 20th: Audience, Purpose, and General Introduction
    • May 21st: Résumé Stuff
      • Making Résumés and Cover Letters More Effective
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • May 25th: More Resume Stuff
    • May 26th: Plain Language and Prose Revision
      • Euphemisms
      • Prose Practice for Next Class
      • Prose Revision Assignment
      • Revising Prose: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Good
      • Sentence Clarity
    • May 27th: More on Plain Language
    • May 28th: Review Prose Revision
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • February 17th: Verb is the Word!
    • February 24th: Coordination and Subordination
      • A Practical Editing Situation
    • February 3rd: I’m in Love with the Shape of You(r Sentences)
    • January 20th: Introduction to the Course
    • January 27th: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Spring 2021)
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 4750-090 & ENGL 5050-092 Video Games & Culture
    • Assignments for Video Games & Culture
    • August 25th: Introduction to the Course
    • November 10th: Aggression & Addiction
    • November 3rd: Moral Panics and Health Risks
    • October 13th: Narrative, ludology, f(r)iction
    • October 20th: Serious Games
    • October 27: Risky Business?
    • October 6th: Hyperreality
    • September 1st: History of Video Games
    • September 22nd: Video Game Aesthetics
    • September 29th: (sub)Cultures and Video Games
    • September 8th: Defining Video Games and Critical Theory Introduction
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 13th: Umberto Eco & Jean Baudrillard
    • April 20th: Moving Forward on Theory
    • April 27th: Last Day of Class
    • April 6th: Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition
      • What is Postmodernism?
    • February 10th: St. Augustine, On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
      • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • February 17th: Knoblauch on Magical and Ontological Rhetoric
    • February 24th: Rene Descartes’ Discourse on Method
    • February 3rd: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 and 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • January 13th: Introduction to Class
    • January 27th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 16th: Friedrich Nietzsche
    • March 23rd: Mythologies and Meaning of Meaning (part 2)
    • March 30th: Derrida’s (refusal to have) Positions
    • March 9th: Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • LBST 2213/HTAS 2100: Science, Technology, and Society
    • December 10th: Violence in Video Games
    • December 15th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • December 1st: COVID-19 facial covering rhetoric
    • December 3rd: COVID-19 Transmission and Pandemics
    • December 8th: 500-word Essay
    • November 10th: Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 12th: Frankenstein (1818) Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 17th: Frankenstein (1818) Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 19th: Frankenstein (1818) Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 3rd: Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 1-17
    • November 5th: Planet of the Apes (1964) Ch. 18-26
    • October 13th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • October 15th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • October 1st: The Golem at Large Introduction & Ch. 1
    • October 22nd: The Time Machine
    • October 29th: H.G. Wells and Adaptations
    • October 6th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology) Ch. 2
    • October 8th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 3 & 4
    • September 10th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • September 15th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • September 17th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • September 22nd: Collins & Pinch Ch. 5 & 6
    • September 24th: Collins & Pinch Ch. 7 & Conclusion
    • September 29th: Test 1
    • September 8th: Introduction to Class
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021)
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • SEACS 2021 Presentation
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • Oral Presentations
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 280F
Phone: 704.687.0613
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology (Spring 2021) » February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies

February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies

Tonight we have the following fun things to go over:

  • What is Cultural Studies?
  • Anything from last week?
    • We’ll cover Ch. 1 & 2 before moving back to McLuhan
    • At 7:25, we’ll break for 20 minutes, but that includes watching the video and skimming the lyrics of the songs below:
      Zac Brown Band celebrates ignorance
      Alan Jackson really celebrating ignorance

Before we get ahead of ourselves, we need to consider the difficulty in defining cultural studies. Much like postmodernism and postructuralism, cultural studies has no definitive definition. This is a strength, however, of the concept and not a failure. Forcing our discussion into a prescribed, truth would be antithetical to the theories creating meaning for cultural studies.

Ch. 1: Introduction to Cultural Studies

I want to make sure you’re able to pick out quotations and draw our attention to specific areas of the reading, so I’m going to not have specifics on today’s page. What did you find interesting? What questions do you have?

  • p. 5: “Concepts are tools for thinking and acting in the world.”
  • p. 7: “Cultural studies…examine[s] the relations of culture and power.”
  • p. 13: polysemy of texts
  • p. 23: social conventions and truth
  • p. 31: “culture is understood to be a facet of place.”
    • But then there’s globalization…
  • p. 33: What are the attributes of a liberal democracy? Consider these areas:
    • Education
    • Business
    • Healthcare
    • Military
    • Promote the general Welfare

Ch. 2: Questions of Culture and Ideology

One thing you’ll notice is that the authors will repeat information. This is good repetition and a welcomed practice. They throw a lot of names at you in Ch. 1, but they’ll come back to them in the next 565 pages. Happy reading!

  • p. 47: “Meanings are generated not by individuals alone but by collectives. Thus, the idea of culture refers to shared meanings.”
    • But do we share them in the same way…
  • p. 51: “…class is a historical phenomenon forged and created by people. It is not a ‘thing’ but a set of social relations and experiences.”
  • It’s not race but class…myth used by my fellow PhD students circa 2002; they didn’t recognize that such language pushed aside the history of systemic racism in order to homogenize (what they thought was) contemporary class consciousness.
  • p. 52: Music fans!!! “The mode of production of popular music would include the technical means of studio recording and the capitalist social relations within which such practices are embedded.
    • Music is an interesting cultural subject because how we consume music matters. Consider the different experiences:
    • Live music (club, orchestra, arena, etc.)
    • Deliberate listening (CD, mp3, vinyl, etc.–you purposely play to enjoy)
    • Background music (those earworms in stores, restaurants, attractions, etc.)
    • The above are by no means the ONLY ways to consume music. How about producing music?
  • p. 54: “Art as an aesthetic quality is that which has been so labelled by western cultural and class elites.”
    • “Art is an industry…”
    • “Art is not a copy of the world but a specific socially constructed representation.
    • Both the audience and the artist are socially constructed. Remember, language is socially constructed.
  • p. 57: “A Pierre Bourdieu [boord-yoo] (1984) has argued, cultural taste marks out class boundaries, cultural competencies and cultural capital.”
  • NASCAR, WWE, UFC, sports
  • The theatre, symphony, steeplechase
  • Vacations: Europe, Myrtle Beach, Gatlinburg, Vegas, Playa del Carmen
  • p. 59: “…meanings are produced, altered and managed at the level of use by people who are active producers of meaning….the widespread circulation of polysemic signs makes it harder for any dominant meaning to stick.”
  • p. 63: McGuigan on cultural populism: “…’the intellectual assumption…that the symbolic experiences and practices of ordinary people are more important analytically and politically than culture with a capital C.'”
    • Define an ordinary person.
  • p. 65: “What is a historically specific set of social relations between people appears as a natural, universal set of relations between things.”

Let’s focus on Ideology and Hegemony

  • p. 72: “ideology is involved in the reproduction of social formations and their relations of power.”
  • p. 74: “The educational system…is the site of contradictory ideologies and of ideological conflict rather than a place for the unproblematic and homogeneous reproduction of capitalist ideology.”
    • Although we can point to a few capital-I ideologies, it’s more defensible to consider ideology as not stable yet influential for a culture.
  • p. 75: “[Antonio] Gramsci[‘s]….theory of cultural hegemony describes the way a ruling class is able to maintain power because the values which support its continued dominance circulate as common sense” (italics added).
    • Common sense, conventional wisdom, normal behaviors…
  • p. 76: “For Gramsci, all people reflect upon the world and, through ‘common sense‘ of popular culture, organize their lives and experience” (italics added).
  • p. 78: “…advertising creates a world of differences between products and lifestyles which we ‘buy into.’ In purchasing products we also buy the image and so contribute to the construction of our identities through consumption.”
    • Are we the sum of our purchases?
    • What can we assume based on another’s purchases? (Think house, car, minivan, sports car, latest smartphone, latest iPhone, designer bag, etc.)
  • p. 81: Anthony Giddens (1984) structuration theory: “…social systems shape individuals, even though these structures do permit degrees of freedom.”
    • For instance, we vote for whom we want to represent us; however, the two-party monopoly, gerrymandering, and electoral college curtail that freedom.
    • Additionally, an individual’s vote is irrelevant, but many citizens votes together matter.
    • This does not mean you shouldn’t vote. Not voting is almost as anti-intellectual as denying anthropogenic global warming.
    • Also, if the cultural menu is large enough, one might believe they’re* choosing something different, but the culture has already circumscribed the possibilities.
  • p. 83: “…ideology…should be regarded as discourse that have specific consequences for relations of power at all levels of social relationships (including the justification and maintenance of ascendant groups).”
    • Ideology isn’t absolute “truth”; however, it can seem to be one’s own truth through socially constructed reproductions of values.

*Yes, “they, their, them” are perfectly acceptable gender-neutral singular pronouns. “You” is both singular and plural, so “they” can also function as singular and plural.

Based on time, we’ll move onto Marxism and see where we can go from there.

  • p. 64: ” Marxism, or historical materialism, is a philosophy that attempts to relate the production and reproduction of culture to the organization of the material conditions of life.”
  • p. 71: “…ideology began as an exploration into why capitalism, which was held to be an exploitative system of economic and social relations, was not being overthrown by a working-class revolution.”
    • Of course! After all, everyone benefits in a capitalist society. I’m sure you’ve heard that capitalism has provided us necessary resources better than any other system.
  • Base and Super Structure
  • Post-industrialism and the Digital World

Celebrating Ignorance

In case we didn’t get to this last week, let’s discuss how these texts reflect anti-intellectualism and trite, nationalistic ideology. This is where we should be taking our break (7:25-7:45). In addition to the links below, if you have time, you can read a short piece about “American Contradiction” from a rather interesting book (opens as a PDF).

  • Zac Brown Band celebrates ignorance
  • Alan Jackson really celebrating ignorance

Now, let’s head back to January 26th’s page for more discussion on McLuhan, Rhetoric, and locating values.

Are You Normal?

I mentioned this last week, but here’s some more data and food for thought. As people taking a graduate-level class, you’re elite. At least, you’re intellectual elites (I don’t know if you’re economic elites). According to the US Census Bureau…

  • One-third of the US populations has a bachelor’s degree (or higher)
  • In 2018, “13.1% of U.S. adults have an advanced degree”
  • In 2018, it looks like 2.6% have doctoral degrees (same link)

Next Class

For some reason, Spring Break is next week: Feb. 8th-14th, so we won’t have a class meeting, but you can certainly use the extra time (or during a break while in Cancun) to finish Misunderstanding the Internet, our next reading. We’ll discuss the entire book during our next class meeting on Tuesday, 2/16.

Don’t for get to post Weekly Discussion #3’s response before 11:00 pm on Friday, 2/5.

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