Centrality of Style, The. Группа авторов

Aristotle’s claim that “A writer must disguise his art and give the impression of speaking naturally and not artificially,” in On Rhetoric (1991, 3.2); and in Cicero’s statement, “The main object of the orator was that he should both appear himself, to those before whom he was pleading, to be such a man as he would desire to seem … and that the hearts of his hearers should be touched in such a fashion as the orator would have them touched” (De Oratore, 1.19).

      14.Similarly, we might recall how Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s claim to have written “Kubla Khan” while dreaming makes the mind of the poet seem all the greater.

      15.Regarding the convergence of selectivity, manipulation, nostalgia, and digital metaphor, one might question: Where do these metaphors come from? On whose nostalgias are they based? If every act of collective memory and nostalgia is also an act of selective memory and amelioration of the past, whose oppressed and suppressed experiences are being recalled or elided in these metaphors?

      16.For further reading on the sprezzaturic design of digital interfaces see Cynthia and Richard Selfe’s Politics of the Interface: Power and Its Exercise in Electronic Contact Zones, 2010).

      17.Though, a history of yellow and stunt journalism might disrupt this narrative.

      18.Such confessions, however, do not seem to mollify opposing critics, as liberals will still critique O’Reilly and conservatives will still critique Stewart. In addition, Stewart has an even stronger confessional defense in his constant claims that The Daily Show is “the fake news” despite the fact that perhaps a large number of viewers get their only “news” from the show.

      19.Though labeling new media conceptions of hypermediacy as “confessional” may be somewhat troubling because few, if any, of the authors I discuss conceive of their ideologies along an ethical continuum, I think the benefits of drawing a comparison between confessional rhetoric and hypermediation outweigh the risk of misinterpretation.

      20.Accessed for free online at: http://www.technorhetoric.net/13.2/topoi/delagrange/index.html.

      21.See John Schilb’s Rhetorical Refusals as well as Schroeder, Fox, and Bizzell’s collection Alt Dis: Alternative Discourses in the Academy (2007) for examples of scholars who agree that writers need the ability to resist the style of the majority.

      22.Though Williams’s other work on style is richly theoretical, his style manual, Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, like those of other stylistic mavericks (I’m thinking of Lanham’s “paramedic method,” here) falls slightly short of the plurality he suggests in his more academic pieces. Indeed, the “grace” of the subtitle refers more to concision than anything else. But maybe such condensing is simply necessary to create a pragmatic manual. For a more complex analysis of the pros and cons of Wiliams’s (and Lanham’s) stylistic oeuvre, see Lester Faigley’s Fragments of Rationality: Postmodernity and the Subject of Composition.

      23.See Warschauer’s and Banks’s multiple accesses; Mossberger, Tolbert, and Stansbury’s multiple digital divides; and Selber’s muliliteracies.

      24.For further information on shopdropping and other culture jamming examples see: www.woostercollective.com.

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