Mark Evan Nelson and Glynda A. Hull in their discoursive chapter on “Self –preservation through multimedia,” propose that Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of heteroglossia and addressivity inform understandings of “new and emerging speech genres,” namely digital stories.

“Heteroglossia” and “addressivity” are theories that attempt to explain “how literary texts mean” (emphasis Bakhtin’s).

Heteroglossia describes “the many-languaged-ness” of the “utterance,” which Bakhtin professed to be the “appropriate unit of linguistic and literary analysis,” as opposed to the sentence. As someone who was previously unfamiliar with Bakhtin’s theory, I found this concept  (something I suppose I’ve long and latently held to be true) exciting because the utterance, as opposed to the constructed sentence, invokes something so dynamic in terms of language, culture, and style.

Nelson and Hull emphasize the utterance as being key in identifying and shaping “speech genres.”  They take a descriptive rather than prescriptive view, noting that invention plays as much a part as convention in the shaping of language.

Addressivity, as Bakhtin defines it, is “the fundamentally ‘dialogic’ or audience-oriented nature of the utterance.” It acknowledges the utterance as having both an author and an audience, and that the utterance is as influenced and varied as the addressee; it acknowledges, too, the influence that the projection of what the author assumes of audience.

According to Nelson and Hull, context matters as well, as these change “the kinds of audiences typically implied.”  So, for example, the audience of a letter would suggest nuances in utterance that would not necessarily be appropriate or true for the audience of a speech.  Likewise, genre has implications of rhetorical structure.

The authors, after hammering out the details of Bakhtinian theory, ask not if but how heteroglossia and addressivity play a role in digital stories. This is particularly interesting because the digital story is not only a new genre (I would argue it’s more medium than genre, or, at most, a sub-genre of the memoir or creative non-fiction), but it is a combination of medium, of music, language, and image.

This combination is termed “multimodality,” a good pre-digital age example of this being the pairing of spoken language and the image (think of any number of dramatic performances). If Bakhtinian theory examines the utterance within the genre, how does it work within the medium, or rather, within the combination of mediums, particularly when those mediums combine the temporal (language) with the spatial (image)?

Judith Donath’s essay, “Identity and Perception in the Digital World,” addresses the issue of the reliability and accountability of online personae.  The purpose of this essay, as she explains it, is “to understand how identity is established in an online community and to examine the effects of identity deception and the conditions that give rise to it.” Donath writes about this issue in the late ‘90s, so the forum she uses as a springboard for discussion is Usenet, which is described in her essay as a sort of digital “bulletin board” with no formal editorial agency.

Donath first discusses how we might define identity, concluding that “the body provides a compelling and convenient definition.”  She suggests, too, that we traditionally see the identity, as nuanced as it might be, as being singular. The digital world offers the possibility of “multiple personas sharing a single progenitor,” a single physical body.

Donath identifies issues of deception that stem from the physical body’s ability to generate personas which are wildly unrepresentative of their progenitor, giving the example of a Usenet user pretending to be a doctor and giving phony medical advice.

This is particularly troubling because Usenet was meant to be a forum in which people could help other people, whether it be through offering advice or companionship. In fact, the motivation for most users seemed to have been the opportunity to not only help others, but to build a good online reputation by maintaining credible posts and offering accurate information. 

Donath gives us an idea of what this looks like in the real world by citing Amotz Zahari’s notion of the “Handicap Principal,” wherein there are both signalers and receivers. Signals, he explains, become unreliable due to excessive “cheating.”  Conventional signals, unreliable clues that a person might possess a certain attribute, are what people might use to deceive. Donath offers the example of a person who doesn’t work out wearing a body-building t-shirt. Assessment signals, on the other hand, offer more reliable evidence that a person is who they say they are, such as a self-proclaimed body builder having huge muscles. She goes on to explain that the cost of assessment signals are greater; they usually require a greater commitment or are more difficult to obtain. In the online world, most signals are inherently conventional.

Moreover, it is also costly to question one’s signals or accuse one of deception; if the person being accused is actually projecting authenticity in their signaling, the accuser stands to lose credibility.

Usenet has provided some identity signalers, but much of what they are is only implied. Names, for example, attached to well-known domains have a better built-in ethos. Adversely, there are also domains that are decidedly from the wrong side of the tracks. Another clue into credibility is whether or not the account holder has an institutional or commercial affiliation, that is, whether they are paying to be part of a domain or are part of a professional organization.

One of the more interesting facts in Ortiz’s essay is that Usenet users maintained specific rules of etiquette, such using full sentences in posts and discussions instead of contributing one-word answers, something that they believed belonged in the realm of the chat room. Likewise, anonymity in posting was highly stigmatic.

Donath spends a great deal of time discussing trolls and their ability to damage the feeling of trust within a group. However, while being identified as a troll could hurt one’s reputation, it was also seen as harmless banter in some groups.

Donath concludes with an emphasis on the “real harm in being seen” online, an idea that, I think, grows increasingly archaic (though still relevant) in the age of Facebook.

Questions for Discussion:

1. Ortiz asks if online personas “inherit the progenitor’s qualities and responsibilities.”     Do you think they do?

2. How do you view Usenet’s model of online etiquette? Do you think social networks and other digital forums encourage bad behavior and deception through their acceptance of anonymity and/or informal use of language?

3. Consider Zahari’s distinction between assessment and conventional signals (or, Goffman’s “the expression given” vs. “the expression given off”) and illustrate and example of both.

4. What do you think of the body as identity, nuanced as it is?

In Hari Kunzru’s Wired article “You Are Cyborg,” he argues that, “In conversation, when people describe something as natural, they’re saying that it’s just how the world is; we can’t change it.”  Kunzru’s interview with Donna Haraway illuminates the need to do away with the binary view of natural and artificial as two separate entities, suggesting that, ultimately, what is most natural is the idea of change itself and the dynamic nature of the human; in other words, the unwillingness and the inability to remain unchanged is the only thing that does not.

Haraway posits that “life is messier than” binary distinctions when it comes to not only the artificial and the natural, but in other aspects such as morality and gender.  It comes as no surprise that someone who refers to herself as a “cyborg” would think so.  What does come as a surprise is that this identity she self-applies is not hyperbole, which I immediately expected it to be. She describes the intimacy between people and technology convincingly, so much so that, after reading the article, I cannot deny the accuracy of such a name. However, that application does a lot in the way of emphasizing the binary itself. I read “cyborg” and I think “Robo-cop.” So I don’t like it.

Anyway: Identifying as a “cyborg,” a combination of the so-called artificial with the so-called natural, does as Haraway professes, allow people to reconstruct themselves, a most natural of human inclinations. N. Catherine Hayles emphasizes the desire to transcend the physical limitations of the body and the “natural” world through technology in her book, How We Became Posthuman, while touching on that other human desire, that of immortality. She says that “In a world despoiled by overdevelopment [and] overpopulation…it is comforting to think that physical forms can recover their pristine purity by being reconstituted as informational patterns in a multidimensional computer space” (36).  I would argue that Hayles takes too great a leap here, and that the “cyberspace body” that is “immune to blight and corruption” is without the very human nuances of that which is physical. Real life is hardly “pristine.”

However, for some, the stakes are higher.  The benefit of the physical/digital integration for people like wilde Cunningham are frankly astounding. What I like about this article, more than the idea that individuals with serious physical limitations have, via “Second Life,” the ability to take flight, is that it examines the concept of the individual as a dynamic part of a group. Aside from the confusion this causes in pronoun usage (which I found charming) this concept highlights the disappearance of the greatest of binaries: that of the self and the other. While some might insist that that distinction is a natural one, I contend that it is natural too to reach out to one another, something cyberspace engenders and continues to prove.

I’ve always considered the desire for immediacy to be an essential part of the human experience, particularly when it comes to spirituality. There has always existed an urgency in the human for transcendence beyond the physical, for a direct connection with something greater, whether it be a group of people or God.

Evidence of that desire is everywhere. Unless we shut ourselves away from the world and from our very selves, our actions and interactions all have some element of direct connection.

As we are further propelled into the new millennium, it seems that not only the desire, but the demand for immediacy is more present a concept than ever.  Objects once used as vehicles for immediacy are themselves considered barriers to connection. Through digital technology, we see not only the disappearance of those objects, but the significance and sacredness of those objects as well. Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin remark on this phenomenon in their book, Remediation. The authors posit that media functions as “a network of artifacts, images, and cultural agreements about what these special images [i.e. photographs] mean and do” (58).  They further explain that “When a tourist is taking a photograph or making a video…we treat the line of sight between the camera and the object as a real obstruction: we walk around it, bend under it, or wait until it is gone. We make these gestures…to acknowledge the reality of the act of mediation” (59).

Remediation in digital technology has changed the way we consider ownership of space and media, but also, it is increasingly reducing the space between gestures that are informed by our experience with objects and what those gestures are meant to accomplish. A striking example of this is Pranav Mistry‘s Sixth Sense device, which was showcased on TED.

Mistry’s device, while exciting, raises the question of privacy and ownership in digital media. The explosion of digital technology occurred and continues to occur at such a tremendous rate that the rules for usage lag behind. While archaic objects like the camera are loaded with implications for a specific set of etiquette, the gestures themselves have no such value.

Welcome to my blog.

I’m a teacher, student, and writer living in Mt. Sinai, New York with my partner, our two children and four cats. My interests include watching interesting films and thinking about screenwriting, listening to interesting music and thinking about song writing, reading interesting short fiction and actually writing short fiction, and forcing my children to entertain me.

When I decided that I wanted to teach high school English, I had no idea of what that actually meant.  I knew I loved literature and writing, and I had this sort of image of myself as a conduit who would pass on passion for the written and spoken word. What I didn’t realize was that language and literature are far more dynamic than I had imagined, particularly in the realm of the digital, where their existence is both viable and highly influential.

While I have ventured into using technology as a teaching tool, I still feel limited, and much of what I see my students and children seamlessly doing with digital media seems so foreign to me.

So, my plan is to make the foreign familiar, to wow my students with my vast knowledge of digital media and, consequently, to contextualize the language and literature I love so much with their lives – much of which is online.

Thanks for reading.