kairos

This dissertation addresses the need for a strategy that will help readers new to new media texts interpret such texts. While scholars in multimodal and new media theory posit rubrics that offer ways to understand how designers use the materialities and media found in overtly designed, new media texts (see, e.g,, Wysocki, 2004a), these strategies do not account for how readers have to make meaning from those texts. In this dissertation, I discuss how these theories, such as Lev Manovich’s (2001) five principles for determining the new media potential of texts and Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s (2001) four strata of designing multimodal texts, are inadequate to the job of helping readers understand new media from a rhetorical perspective. I also explore how literary theory, specifically Wolfgang Iser’s (1978) description of acts of interpretation, can help audiences understand why readers are often unable to interpret the multiple, unexpected modes of communication used in new media texts. Rhetorical theory, explored in a discussion of Sonja Foss’s (2004) units of analysis, is helpful in bringing the reader into a situated context with a new media text, although these units of analysis, like Iser’s process, suggests that a reader has some prior experience interpreting a text-as-artifact. Because of this assumption of knowledge put forth by all of the theories explored within, I argue that none alone is useful to help readers engage with and interpret new media texts. However, I argue that a heuristic which combines elements from each of these theories, as well as additional ones, is more useful for readers who are new to interpreting the multiple modes of communication that are often used in unconventional ways in new media texts. I describe that heuristic in the final chapter and discuss how it can be useful to a range of texts besides those labelled new media.

The purpose of this study is to expand on Wayne Booth's work in the Rhetoic of Fiction regarding methods directing readers toward understanding in fiction to include the possibilities for pursuation avaiable in electronic mediums. The story theorizes the the answers to the following: How are writers in electronic spaces appropirating, expanding, and subverting electronic devices honed in print? How has the kairos, or situational context, of electronic spaces been exploited? What new rhetorical devices are being developed in electronic spaces? What does the dialogue between print-based and electronic-based works offers to rhetorical scholars in terms of rhetorical analysis and composition? 

The study analyzes the rhetoric of electronic litearture, creative works composed for display in digital environments. Analysis focuses on works that remediate classic printed literature to electronic publication. Analysis begins with close reading and develops N. Katherine Hayles's theory of media-spesific analysis as well as the Bakhtinian-based concepst of dialogism. The work analyzed fit the definition of electronic liteature posted on the electronic literature webside, that is, "works with important literary aspects that take advantage of the capapilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone networked computer". The study analyzes Shelly Jackson's Patchwork girl; George Hartley's "Madlib Frost Poem, Peter Howard's "Peter's Hiku Generator, Edward Picot's "Thirteen Wys of Looking at a Blackbird", and Helena Bulaja's "Coation Tales of Long Ago". For contast, the study analyzes John Barthes "Click", a printed short story that remediated electronic signinfiers. Six author interviews expand on data gained rhetorical analysis.

The study reveals how inovators in electronic mediums appropriate, expand, and subvert thetorical techniques honed in print-based practices. The study finds that since remediation changes kairos, the act provides an opportunity to understand emerging rhetorical thecniqus responsive to medium. Authors in electronica literature often wed literary techniques to technological possibilities, exploiting the capabilities of the new medium to advance literary and political rhetoric. The study finds that print-based practices linger in electronic publications and that electronic-based practices have become significant to print.