How to Do Things With Words

An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method (2nd ed.

From the Publisher: 
A Question of Identity 
Life on the Screen is a fascinating and wide-ranging investigation of the impact of computers and networking on society, peoples' perceptions of themselves, and the individual's relationship to machines. Sherry Turkle, a Professor of the Sociology of Science at MIT and a licensed psychologist, uses Internet MUDs (multi-user domains, or in older gaming parlance multi-user dungeons) as a launching pad for explorations of software design, user interfaces, simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, agents, "bots," virtual reality, and "the on-line way of life." 
Turkle's discussion of postmodernism is particularly enlightening. She shows how postmodern concepts in art, architecture, and ethics are related to concrete topics much closer to home, for example AI research (Minsky's "Society of Mind") and even MUDs (exemplified by students with X-window terminals who are doing homework in one window and simultaneously playing out several different roles in the same MUD in other windows). Those of you who have (like me) been turned off by the shallow, pretentious, meaningless paintings and sculptures that litter our museums of modern art may have a different perspective after hearing what Turkle has to say. 
This is a psychoanalytical book, not a technical one. However, software developers and engineers will find it highly accessible because of the depth of the author's technical understanding and credibility. Unlike most other authors in this genre, Turkle does not constantly jar the technically-literate reader with blatant errors or bogus assertions about how things work. Although I personally don't have time or patience for MUDs,view most of AI as snake-oil, and abhor postmodern architecture, I thought the time spent reading this book was an extremely good investment.

스크린 위의 삶 = Life on the screen : identity in the age of the internet

Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism

1. Interaction. The interactions learners have with each other build interpersonal skills, such as listening, politely interrupting, expressing ideas, raising questions, disagreeing, paraphrasing, negotiating, and asking for help. 2. Interdependence. Learners must depend on one another to accomplish a common objective. Each group member has specific tasks to complete, and successful completion of each member’s tasks results in attaining the overall group objective.

将“Cooperative Learning”融入课堂——浅谈英语素质教育

This essay proposes a conception of genre based on conventionalized social motives which are found in recurrent situation‐types. The thesis is that genre must be conceived in terms of rhetorical action rather than substance or form.

Genre as social action

A question arose, during a committee discussion in our English department last year, whether students in our large technological university should be permitted to take a technical writing course to satisfy humanities requirements of their own schools and departments (1). There were two opinions among those in my department with whom I talked. Those who teach literature believed that students should not satisfy a humanities, or "English," requirement with a technical writing course. And our department should prevent them from doing so by instituting a literature prerequisite for the technical writing course. Those of us who teach technical writing responded differently. Mostly, we were baffled. Obviously we did not welcome what we considered an irrelevant prerequisite for our course, and we did not like the idea of our course being held hostage for the overstaffed literature courses. But were we willing to argue, indeed, could we argue that technical writing has humanistic value?

/pdf/a-humanistic-rationale-for-technical-writing-gwvswtyagh.pdf

A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing

�The FBI has been reading my diary,� claimed a high school student in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (Elliston, 2003). In fact, Chapel Hill police in training with an FBI task force had read the student�s weblog. They were investigating a possible security breach in the school�s computer system, and the student�s blog had contained references to �hacking.� The student had told only a few friends about her blog and �didn�t intend for it to reach a wider audience. �It was really personal,�� she said. A blogger from Utah harshly criticized her Mormon upbringing and her job and co-workers online, assuming that her technophobic parents and her boss would never find out. But they did, and �All hell broke loose,� as she put it. She alienated her parents and lost her job. �It was shocking for everyone,� she said; �I was extremely na�ve.� (St. John, 2003). Another blogger reports on her friends and her boyfriend, saying, �There�s not a lot I won�t put on there� because �I love to be the center of attention.� This 18-year-old also said that her mother was aware of her blog but did not know how to find it, adding that she relied on security by obscurity (St. John, 2003). In China an intimate blog written by a 25-year-old who also wrote a magazine sex column attracted 10 million daily visitors to the Sina.com server. Her blog initiated a �raging debate� on the internet, and the Chinese censors banned her forthcoming book (Yardley, 2003). Although she defended her right to write about her sex life, the blogger said that she never realized her blog would be read so widely or that it would create such controversy. She quit her job at the magazine and has shut down her blog.

Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog

This study examines how students enrolled in two Web-based sections of a technical writing class performed compared to students enrolled in a conventional version of the class. Although no significant difference in student performance was found between the two learning conditions, our data reveal intriguing relationships between students' prior knowledge, attitudes, and learning styles and our Web-based writing environment. One finding that we focus on is that reflective, global learners performed significantly better online than active, sequential learners, whereas there was no difference between them in the conventional class. Our study highlights the complexity of effective teaching and the difficulty of making comparisons between the online and the classroom environments. In particular, we maintain that the transfer of active learning strategies to the Web is not straightforward and that interactivity as a goal of instructional Web site design requires significant elaboration.

Active and interactive learning online: a comparison of Web-based and conventional writing classes

Computerized systems for automated assessment of writing and speaking create a situation in which Burkean symbolic action confronts nonsymbolic motion. What is at stake in such confrontations is rhetorical agency. In this article, an informal survey that asked teachers of writing and speaking about automated assessment informs an analysis of agency that contrasts writing and speaking along the dimensions of performance, audience, and interaction. The analysis suggests that agency can be understood as the kinetic energy of performance that is generated through a process of mutual attribution between rhetor and audience. Agency is thus a property of the rhetorical event, not of agents, and can best be located between the two traditional ways of defining agency: as rhetorical capacity and as rhetorical effectivity. Unwillingness to attribute agency to automated assessment systems makes them rhetorically ineffective and morally problematic.

Carolyn R. Miller

Papers

Genre as social action

A Humanistic Rationale for Technical Writing

Blogging as Social Action: A Genre Analysis of the Weblog

Active and interactive learning online: a comparison of Web-based and conventional writing classes

What Can Automation Tell Us About Agency