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Multivariate Media Complexes: |
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Abstract The increased volume of messages and communication techniques since 1950 requires communicators to become dependent on, and involved with, technology and applications development. Message creation, transmission, and presentation have become major industries supporting large segments of the economy. Words and pictures, and the interpreted ideas and images have a stronger influence on the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of more people than ever before. The transmitters and receivers of messages need increasingly versatile and effective media for handling the complex interactions and information on which contemporary society depends. Consequently, technologists have created new communications tools to deliver messages in multiple modes and media. The new media, new message forms, new persuasion techniques, and new strategies for various audience types require a new approach to rhetorical theory (Bitzer 1971). This dissertation argues that rhetoricians need to expand their theories to encompass the requirements of a modern technological society. It explores how they can widen the scope of rhetorical theory and practice and suggests ways that they can construct visible and kinetographic (verbal/visible) language theories that support communication in new technological environments. The author also explains how rhetoricians (and consequently writers, graphic designers, and computer programmers) can recognize and explore non-traditional communication procedures and practices when dealing with the electronic dissemination of information. Heretofore, rhetoricians have restricted themselves to forms of classical oral and verbal rhetoric that do not take into consideration visible language. Consequently, kinetography (verbal/visible rhetoric) performs an important role in technological communication because it comprises both verbal and visible elements. Kinetography becomes a means to communicate information that emanates from interdisciplinary activity to a specific audience. This information results from the interaction of two or more disciplines that function as significant units: significant because they evoke an aesthetic response or ethos that precedes the conveyance of meaning (the coordinated function that creates communication). This contrasts with multidisciplinary means of communication that combine many disciplines and methods (a complex organization of the content of communication) without necessarily improving the information transfer. Kinetography, primarily defined as a dynamic, secondary orality or technological verbal/visible rhetoric, applies to multivariate online, interactive, and broadcast media. As rhetoric, it contrasts with the accepted concept of classical rhetoric: the organization of oral and written discourse. Kinetographic complexities relate in terms of function rather than in terms of organization and have parallel verbal/visible significance. The practices of the sophists, the writings of Isocrates and Cicero, and the paradigms of many twentieth-century critics relate to one classical method of rhetoric: an oral and written process. This process requires the speaker or writer to achieve an immediate goal and to influence an audience by persuading them to accept a particular point of view. This traditional concept of rhetoric becomes inadequate for application in modern technological environments: it needs study and eventual change. Consequently, if contemporary rhetoric must experience change, then rhetorical paradigms also require change (Brockreide 1971). Rhetoricians need to explore non-traditional communication processes concurrently with learning the techniques associated with the new computerized tools. They must invent new ways to improve comprehension in complex technological environments, environments that require them to widen the scope of rhetorical theory to accommodate both verbal and visible languages. The study of kinetography proposes the construction of new parallel verbal/visible language theories and uses an historical approach to incorporate existing empirical methods.
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A proposal for a dissertation to be submitted |
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Associate Professor, Communication and Rhetoric (Retired) International Federation of Journalists, Brussels (International Press Card) |
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© Copyright 1992 by Paul Trummel |
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