1. Differentiation as a Doubling of Reality. 2. Self-reference and other-reference. 3. Coding. 4. System-specific Universalism. 5. News and In-Depth Reporting. 6. Ricupero. 7. Advertising. 8. Entertainment. 9. Unity and Structural Couplings. 10. Individuals. 11. The Construction of Reality. 12. The Reality of Construction. 13. The Function of the Mass Media. 14. The Public. 15. Schema Formation. 16. Second-order Cybernetics as Paradox. Notes. Index.

Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism

The Reality of the Mass Media

In this paper we show that systems development methodologies may contain incompatible assumptions about the role of users and information systems IS personnel during systems development. Using deconstruction, we analyze and interpret a systems development methodology currently receiving considerable attention-Information Engineering. We find that this methodology's characterization of IS-user relations and, in particular, its recommended partitioning of responsibility between IS and users is inconsistent and contradictory. Despite a heavy emphasis on user involvement, users are given a relatively passive role to play during development. At the same time, users are expected to sign off on projects and take responsibility for project outcomes. We suggest that such prescriptions, when put into action during systems development, make the relationship between users and IS personnel problematic. Further, we argue that the contradictions we surface in the methodology reflect contradictions and ideologies in the context within which systems development occurs. Our analysis raises important questions about the relationship between the production and consumption of information technology in organizations.

The Contradictory Structure of Systems Development Methodologies: Deconstructing the IS-User Relationship in Information Engineering

In recent years, the study of discourse has grown dramatically in anthropology and linguistics, generating a plethora of terms, concepts, and issues. A wide array of disciplinary orientations lies behind labels such as "text," "textuality," "discourse," "rhetoric," "narrative," and "poetic" (198). Here I focus on a limited range of issues in the organization and interpretation of text, working primarily with selected linguistic (34, 36, 54, 92, 118, 202), anthropological (17-20, 63a, 182, 188, 211), sociological (39, 76, 89, 90, 134), and critical (48, 73, 111, 123, 155, 161, 162, 205, 206) approaches. General overviews of these approaches, or collections of articles representative of them, can be found in the works just cited. Although research on text unavoidably touches on literacy and writing (38), language acquisition, education, and socialization (47, 89, 90, 153, 165), and political discourse and dispute (23, 29, 30), I do not address these topics directly in the following discussion. Rather, I concentrate on the status of text as sociocultural product and process, voicing in text, elements of textual organization, the relation of text to power in social contexts, some recent ethnographic studies of text, and certain further implications of this literature for social science. It is helpful by way of introduction to consider the relation between the two terms conjoined in the title. When used as a mass noun, as in "text is composed of interconnected sentences," text can be taken (heuristically) to designate any configuration of signs that is coherently interpretable by some community of users. As vague as such a definition is, already it commits us to a certain line of inquiry. The term "sign" raises issues of textual typology [iconic, indexical, and symbolic (59, 157, 170); dense, replete (77, 155)],

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2155887.pdf

Text and textuality

Literary reading has the capacity to implicate the self and deepen self- understanding, but little is known about how and when these effects occur. The present article examines two forms of self-implication in literary reading. In one form, which functions like simile, there is explicitly recognized similarity between personal memories and some aspect of the world of the text (A is like B). In another form, which functions like metaphor, the reader becomes identified with some aspect of the world of the text, usually the narrator or a character (A is B). These forms of self-implication can be differentiated within readers' open-ended comments about their reading experiences.The results of a phenomenological study indicate that such metaphors of personal identification are a pivotal feature of expressive enactment, a type of reading experience marked by (1) explicit descriptions of feelings in response to situations and events in the text, (2) blurred boundaries between oneself and the narrator of the text, and (3) active and iterative modification of an emergent affec- tive theme. The self-modifying feelings characteristic of expressive enactment give it a fugal form, manifest as thematic developments that move toward saturation, rich- ness, and depth. The results of an experimental study suggest that expressive enact- ment occurs frequently among individuals who remain depressed about a signifi- cant loss that occurred some time ago. Together with the phenomenological study,

/pdf/forms-of-self-implication-in-literary-reading-4q9xlzgppw.pdf

Forms of Self-Implication in Literary Reading

The article examines the role of disability in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's popular theories of cognitive metaphor and metaphor acquisition, and concludes that these theories are ableist in assuming that bodies have particular physical/cognitive/sensory experiences and related metaphorical expressions. In response, a disability approach to metaphor is suggested that engages the diversity of disability; refrains from policing metaphor; encourages transgression from the disability community; and invites creative and artistic reinterpretations of metaphor. This new approach is grounded in a critique of the metaphor knowing is seeing, which is commonly employed in academic writing and engaged in Lakoff and Johnson's work.

Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism

Citations

The Reality of the Mass Media

The Contradictory Structure of Systems Development Methodologies: Deconstructing the IS-User Relationship in Information Engineering

Text and textuality

Forms of Self-Implication in Literary Reading

Seeing What We Know: Disability and Theories of Metaphor

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