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) » January 26th: Introduction to New Media

January 26th: Introduction to New Media

Tonight we will get to know each other and find out the course goals and requirements. I will go over the syllabus and highlight some important dates and assignments to come. Then, we’ll get to know our classmates.

  • Syllabus and course requirements
  • Canvas Overview
  • Class Introductions
  • Tonight’s Readings from Canvas
  • New Media, Gender, Rhetoric, and Technical Writing

Your Story

I want us to get to know one another briefly tonight. Usually, in face-to-face classes, I’d pair you up with a neighbor and have you answer the following questions, but, for tonight, Let’s just get to it! Take a few minutes to read over and jot down answers to the questions below. You’ll be posting this on Canvas as your first Weekly Discussion.

  • Name (pronouns)
  • Year (don’t put 2021–year in the program)
  • Degree and Concentration
  • Hometown(s)
  • Job/Future Job
  • Favorite Book
  • Favorite TV Show
  • Favorite Movie
  • What do you expect in this graduate-level course?
    • What do you want to know about New Media and Cultural Studies?
    • What are your educational plans?

Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”

Let’s discuss the article you read for tonight. Areas to start or get to…

  • Anti-intellectualism
  • Elites
  • Right to know
  • Credibility and trust
  • Reading scores
  • Drop in magazine readership
  • “true concept of democracy”

Why not trust the experts? Also, what’s wrong with highway signs having pictures instead of words?

21st Century Examples of Celebrating Ignorance

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

Richard Conniff’s “In the Name of the Law”

This reading was more amusement, but, as you think about it, where (out there in the world) do you read/see/hear arguments that compare one group or another to NAZIs? If you’ve never noticed this, tell me what you think after reading David Mervin’s piece from yesterday.

  • “Godwin’s Law…holds that the longer an argument drags on, the likelier someone will stoop to a Hitler or Nazi analogy” (emphasis mine, para. 2)
  • Discussions of genocide…why don’t speakers go back further and point to the genocide of indigenous cultures in the Americas?
  • Prepackaged, ready-made arguments: “These little laws [e.g., Godwin’s Law] allow us to sound intelligent without having to do any homework” (para. 3)
  • What other prepackaged arguments do you hear?
    • You can never trust the government.
    • Taxes hurt businesses and economic growth.
    • Environmental regulations kill jobs.

Marshal McLuhan

  • p. 7: “the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium–that is, of any extension of ourselves–result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology.”
  • p. 8: “the ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.”
  • Message of the electric light (p. 9): Look to the structure that brings electricity to a household/community. Electric lighting communicates the fact that the society has a system of electric power, a grid. It shows modernization, industrialization, and progress. More importantly, though, electric lights extend or change what we can do in the dark.
  • p. 16-17: Our concept of literacy is socially constructed. We (members of a culture) have biases towards conventional ways of doing things. The norm in culture is seen as truth, and those not conforming are seen as lesser or weird. They don’t understand the “grammar” of the system; they don’t fit our patterns (e.g. a person without a cell phone is a pariah).
  • Fixed charges regarding commodities (p. 21): Societies have commodities that are, for lack of a better term, givens. The community accepts (it doesn’t have to be conscious) these commodities as givens, which “create the unique cultural flavor of any society.”{i.e. NASCAR is a given in Charlottean culture…pasta is a given in Italian culture…oil, cable TV, smart phones are givens in American culture}
  • Jung quote image: Keith Herring’s Free South Africa drawing.

Here’s a good 2-page explanation of McLuhan’s theory.


New Media, Gender, Rhetoric, and Technical Writing

There’s no way we’re going to exhaust the discussion on any of the above topics tonight (or during the semester), but, time permitting, we’ll see how far into this we can get. I’d like to share with you some ideas (musings) on Database Culture.

If you’re expecting to find “database culture” in any of our readings, I assure you it isn’t there. The structure of a computer database will help us think about *New Media* as delivering information and entertainment by assembling packets together in (usually) coherent ways. In a way, you could consider these “pre-packaged” referents that symbolize or point to ideas, events, concepts, etc.

This is one definition (and I’m briefly explaining it), but what makes new media different from old media is that new media is assembled to produce the illusion of continuity (there are other principles–let’s just focus on this one). Take film for example, the sequences and sound tracks and CGI are all elements that comprise a film. Digital technology lends itself very well to new media delivery, but digital technology isn’t the defining aspect of new media. Again, this is debatable and, more importantly, an academic definition–you won’t get many people thinking about new media in this way. For a very detailed (yet dated) discussion of this, please check out Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media (MIT Press, 2001). It’s a difficult read, but he goes through the history of media to explain “new media.”

Think about all the Search Engines you’ve used. Our Information Age is dependent on, well, information. We consume sound bites, narratives, and ideas through our interactions with media. Below are some questions I’d like us to begin to answer regarding database culture:

  • What do search engines produce?
  • What does it mean to be a part of a database culture?
  • What is cafeteriazation? In what ways are we a cafeteria-style culture?

Thinking a bit more about a textual configuration…

I know I didn’t assign this reading, but I added David Frike’s “The E Street Band Keep Rolling in ’09” on Canvas, which is a short, one-page reading I use in many classes to make various points. For our purposes, I want to focus on Fricke’s way of assembling references of other musicians to convey a representation of a Springsteen album.

Fricke’s article is a series of prepackaged ideas that carry his discussion of the Springsteen album. Phrases such as “pop stomps loaded with Beatlesque guitar jangle,” “1966-Beach Boys vocal harmonies,” and “pedal steel guitar a la Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline” (para. 3) are loaded with information–hypercompressed–and are references requiring readers to know them.

Consider audience, purpose, and situation (context):

  • Do these references mean the same thing to every reader?
  • Which readers will understand Fricke’s references? What might a reader need to know to get the most from this review?
  • Comparing this to McLuhan’s argument, is Fricke providing us with an inside-outside perspective like cubism, or is this more linear?
    • Imagine hypertext or links to the various sounds Fricke references.
    • What else does Fricke communicate with references to other musicians?
    • By the way, I’m an English professor with a Bob Dylan poster in my office. Cliché? Why or why not?
  • New Media isn’t really new; it’s an extension of configurations and constellations of different media. Content isn’t irrelevant, but it isn’t the entire body of critique; likewise, our use of technology isn’t irrelevant to cultural studies, but it also doesn’t hold the entirety of meaning.

Good luck solving the cubism-linear question. This is what grad school is all about, so welcome to the first night of class.

Define Technology

What is technology? Let’s get started thinking about technology/ies broadly.

Ubiquity of Rhetoric

You’d think that with such a rich history, rhetoric would be introduced to students long before college. Well, it is, but not necessarily as a pillar of Western Civilization. The term comes up when politicians or their critics denounce an opponent’s speech as empty; therefore, “rhetoric” is often associated popularly with “empty speech,” non-contributing verbiage, or fluff.

But the study of rhetoric is much more complicated. Just as each discipline has its own epistemology–the study of knowledge, its foundations and validity– each discipline’s communication has a rhetoric. And rhetoric isn’t limited simply to disciplines: Movements, Social Norms, Technology, Science, Religion, etc. have a rhetoric. I often define such analyses into “rhetorics of…” as common factors surrounding the power or belief in a particular area. In other words, beliefs, attitudes, values, and practices are rhetorics of prevailing social ideology: One’s acceptance of cultural “truth” is based largely on one’s immersion into the culture’s myths and beliefs. Therefore, this definition of rhetoric requires us to recognize the relationship among sender-receiver-mediator. Of course, for our discussion, the “mediator” is culture. There is no concrete, definitive transmission of rhetorically pure communication. Sender and receiver filter the message(s) based on their experiences. Lucky for us, we can locate prevailing patterns in messages because culture mediates them. When doing a rhetorical analysis, you have to ask what are common ways particular ideas are conveyed in a culture. There are plenty of examples in new media.

For instance, what’s the rhetoric behind Hollywood movies that end in marriage and/or babies? Well, getting married and having children is a major cultural practice, so that gets “played out” in films. Additionally, women are often consider babymakers in search of a man to donate the necessary ingredient, so female characters in Hollywood films have traditionally not been *complete* until they marry and have children or somehow fulfill a woman’s socially constructed “proper” role according to prevailing attitudes. Because our culture (remember, this is a generalization) favors families as opposed to singles, the rhetoric of our entertainment–the power behind acceptance or enjoyments of a film–conforms to the cultural value of privileging families.

A brief Introduction of Rhetoric–From another class Web site.

Locating American Values

Because this course is a theoretical exploration of how we can locate a society’s values by “reading” its technologies, we ought to think about what those values are. This page asks you to think about American values–it’s from a different class, so don’t get too attached. The goal of this next exercise is to identify values that we might be able to “read” in technologies from American society.

Keep up With the Reading

You readings for the semester are on Canvas. If I haven’t shown you how to access them, let me do that now. Keep up with the reading, so you don’t get behind. If I didn’t mention it already, there’s a lot of reading in this class–lots!

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