I absolutely disagree with Lanham's idea of the progression from philosophers to rhetoricians with the advent of the internet. I think that the physical written word (i.e. in books) is imperative to knowledge and learning for many reasons. I think that we should preserve communication on paper, and books aren't going anywhere with their widespread use. Yes, people communicate more rapidly through the internet, but does that really make communication more effective?
With books, a sense of grammar is required, and it helps teach and remind people of the grammatical rules that have been invented and preserved throughout time. No, maybe not every person off of the street can write a paragraph using commas exactly correctly. However, people do, or should, know that a period comes at the end of a sentence to separate ideas.
The internet, on the other hand, makes grammar rules nonessential, which I think is a mistake. Even within this blog, I could spell every word wrong, use no punctuation or capitalization, and there would not be anything telling me that I had done something wrong unless I clicked the spell-check button.
I do see that the internet is extremely helpful and invaluable in many ways, but I also believe that it is often misused, overused, and that it has no comparative worth against books.
There are still philosophers today, and there were philosophers even before the advent of standardized writing. Likewise, rhetoric and rhetoricicans have existed, and will continue to do so. Like the internet and books, I do not think that the two can be compared against one another, but that they maintain two separate identities and characteristics.
I believe that philosophers do search for the more abstract and rhetoricians look more within interpersonal ideas. However, I do not think that there would even be a such thing as rhetoricians without philosophers, who develop their ideas on their own, and who must have created a uniform language in the first place for rhetoricians to use.
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This was a very interesting blog. However, I am going to play the devil’s advocate. I am not entirely certain that physical paper or books will always be around. I mean, they already have that electronic book that you can read on an iPod! It blows my mind, but I think the eradication of paper might be in the not so distant future. I also know that language, especially written language, is constantly changing. Take for instance the archaic spelling of honour compared to the way we commonly spell honor. Although it makes me cringe to think about, our language might be changing right under our noses. It is already acceptable to use phrases like “omg,” “lol,” or “jk” in e-mails, on websites, or in text messages, who’s to say that it won’t become acceptable in more formal writing? I believe that language has to change and evolve in order to stay alive. Take for example many Native American languages or even Latin.
ReplyDeleteI think that people used better grammar and were more reluctant to publish books because they had to be... You couldn't find a publisher that would but their name on half of the stuff that people come up with on the internet.
ReplyDeletei wonder if the invent of the printing press posed these same questions?
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