THE NEW NEW RHETORIC; E-MAILING, SOCIAL NETWORKING AND BLOGGING VIEWED AS FORMS OF ARGUMENTATION AND RHETORIC

            Buried on a single page of September 2009’s WIRED magazine is a marvelous piece by CLIVE THOMPSON called “THE NEW LITERACY.”  Much of what I’m about to discuss is drawn directly from Mr. Thompson’s article, and I expressly attribute to him as souce material at p. 048 of the September 2009 issue of WIRED magazine. 

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            According to Thomson, far from inhibiting today’s generation of kids from writing, the computer age of emails, facebook and other social networking tools, etc., and blogging, along with chat sessions, have actually INCREASED substantially the amount and type of writing that this generation does.  Id.

            These striking conclusions are based on a study by Prof. Andrea Lansford, professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford University, known as the “Stanford Study of Writing,” which collected 14,672 writing samples of students from 2001-2006—including class assignments, formal essay, journal entries, emails, blog posts, chat sessions and posts to social networking sites.  Id.

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            Conclusions?  “I think we’re in the midst of a literary revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen since Greek civilization.”  Id.  According to Prof. Lansford, technology isn’t stifling our ability to write—it’s reviving it and enhancing it in bold new directions.  One striking finding:  young people today write far more than any generation before them.  38% of her sample in the Stanford cohort did their writing out of the classroom, due to socializing on line, email and blogging.  Id.

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            According to Prof. Lansford, before the internet, most Americans never wrote anything that wasn’t an assigned school assignment or job assignment.  Id.  Moreover, the Stanford study found that the quality of writing online was good.  Id.

            Moreover, the KIND of writing online had a form to it—it was RHETORICAL, PERSUASIVE writing—focused on the audience, and getting a point across.  Id.  For those of us who have taught debating, persuasive speaking and these relevant arts for a long time, this may sound quite familiar. 

            Prof. Lansford specifically concludes that the “modern world of online writing, particularly in chat and in discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of fifty years ago.”   Id.  Well, imagine that.  Writing as persuasive, argumentative speech.  Who would have thought of that? 

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            The article goes on.  “For students today…writing is about persuading and organzing and debating…the Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their in class writing because it had no audience but the professor: it didn’t serve any purpose other than to get them a grade.”  Id.  Again, kids who’d rather debate than go to class.  I think we’ve seen that before too, if any of us have coached debating or speech.  People who get into debating and speech enjoy it.   Id.

            The bottom line of the article and of the Stanford-Lunsford study is that students today are using new media to become debaters, rhetoricians and persuasive writers and speakers.  Their writing is concise and focused on specific target audiences, and the anticipation of responses and replies forces them into debater-like preparation for extensions, rebuttals and replies.  What we have, then, with the new media of the internet, is a new new rhetoric, and a new type of debating and persuasive speech.  Id.

The Author at right attending one of his innumerable Harvard Reunions.  The brilliant young woman at left is the daughter of one of his classmates.  You can tell a Harvard Man, but you can't tell him much.

            This phenomenon deserves considerably further study from the speech, rhetoric and debating community.