Of That Which We Cannot Write: Some Notes On The Phenomenology Of Media

The advent of electronic media has fostered recognition of a deterministic relationship among media and communicative behavior: what we communicate about, how we communicate about it, and why we do are all bound up in the nature of the media we use to do so. This essay surveys these three issues across oral, literate, and video media to suggest how literate biases may hinder our mastery of oral and video media. Two critical examples of contemporary rhetoric are presented to illustrate the case. Much of the current difficulty can be eased, it is argued, through distinguishing oral literacy, video literacy, and video orality. Of special interest are the ways in which literacy inhibits the contemporary use, teaching, and study of rhetoric in speech and video. © 1988 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.