WRITING,

TECHNOLOGIES, AND
MEDIA
Week 3 - ALDS 2202
Dr. Chloë Grace Fogarty-Bourget
School of Linguistics and Language Studies
AGENDA
Review: Last week
Writing, technologies, and media
Key concepts
Definitions
Issues to consider
Podcast clip
Looking ahead: Next week
REVIEW: LAST WEEK
Speech & writing
Key concepts
Literatist vs New Literacies
Writing vs Speech (binary view)
Different registers
Differences between speech/writing,
involved/informational discourse
Podcast segment (ELT)
KEY DEFINITIONS
Writing/written discourse Facts (empirical/social)
Discourse analysis Literacy practices
Discourse Registers
Discipline Affordances (potentials)
Interdisciplinary Ethnographic research
Cohesion/cohesive devices Vernacular
Utterance Communicative purpose
Text
Social construction of reality
WRITING & TECHNOLOGY
Writing as the first technology
• Writing as a tool itself
• A system of visual symbols developed to represent units of
language

Writing technologies
• Tools and technologies developed for the production of
written discourse
• These tools and technologies contribute to “potentials” of
writing as a mode of communication
TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
The idea that:
• Characteristics of technology determine the purposes for
which it will be used
• Technological change is the most important factor driving
social and cultural change

Rather:
• Technological and social change are interconnected
processes, influencing each other
• Technological innovation usually arises from already
apparent need, ones that have arisen from, or intensified
by changes in the wider society
THE PRINTING PRESS
• Invented to meet the needs of growing literate populations
with enough wealth to afford books
• (texts that could previously only be copied by hand)

• Popularized because it met the needs of the expanding

market, faster, more reliable, and cheaper
• Helped to create conditions in which new communicative
possibilities could emerge (e.g. for mass communication)
• the dissemination of a single message to a large and diverse population
(e.g. political pamphlets, propaganda, newspapers)

• Encouraged standardization of English spelling, and thus,

spoken English (Received Pronunciation)
 DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
• Enables non-specialized users to disseminate writing
and texts to large audiences globally (digital mass
communication)
• Led to the creation of new forms of communication
and new textual genres
• Opened up new linguistic freedoms
 Mobile phones (SMS)
 Internet as collaborative, interactive medium rather than one-way,
passive information repository
 Twitter, Instragram, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok
 YouTube, Vimeo
 Wikipedia
 Blogs, reviews, comments sections, and other user-generated content
 ‘Citizen journalism’
TECHNOLOGIES, MODES, AND MEDIA
•Modes
‘Semiotic resources’ (social semiotic perspective of multimodality) that can
be used separately or together to create a message (e.g. speech,
gesture, images)

•Media/um
Different communication channels used to transmit a message to a
recipient (e.g. print, radio, TV, film)
• Not to be confused with social media (institutions which
publish/broadcast messages for a mass audience)
• Also print/broadcast/digital media (different categories on the basis of
media or technology used to produce or disseminate their messages)
• ALSO writers may refer to particular genres as a ‘medium’ (e.g.
advertising)…but in this course we will call them genres, or text-types
TECHNOLOGIES, MODES, AND MEDIA
(‘OLD’ AND ‘NEW’)
Technology
•Refers to the tools (conceptual and physical) which
enable particular communication channels to function as
such
•New/digital vs Old/non-digital
• Multipurpose technology (e.g. smartphones =
telephone, messaging service, television, newspaper,
digital camera, gaming console, GPS, etc.)
AFFORDANCES OF SPEECH, PRINT, AND
HANDWRITING
Speech
 Personal, involved, responsive, and highly emotive
 Audible, synchronic, fleeting
Print
 Detached from spatial/temporal contexts, rapid, easily shared (en
masse)
 Visible, spatially organized, lasting
Handwriting
 Personal, spatially/temporally dependent (rapid or slow),
emotive/artistic potential (stylized)
 Visible, spatially organized, lasting
Note: The value we attach to choice is context-dependent
MEDIA AND MEDIATION
Millenial youth are in a love/hate relationship with
technology
Connecting to groups and networks, fun/entertainment, tools, liberating
Biased, occluded control system, potential for ‘digital’ enslavement

Communication is increasingly mediated

Phone stands between them and others
Breaking down ‘art of conversation’ vs communication
Cues, dialogue, empathy - becoming more difficult to engage in art of
conversation
“Defining and confining”
Great technological prowess, enables interaction, social connection
Constraining in that it is the only way to stay connected, communicating through
boxed tools
Tilleczek (September 6, 2019), “Revealing your emoticon side: how digital
technology has changed the way we talk to each other”, Spark, CBC Radio
PODCAST CLIPS
This American Life – Romancing the Phone
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/559/captains-log/act-two
CNC Spark – Revealing your emoticon side: how digital technology has
changed the way we talk to each other
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/spark/revealing-your-emoticon-side-how-
digital-technology-has-changed-the-way-we-talk-to-each-other-
1.5272103