Page 143 - Literacy in the New Media Age

132 LITERACY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE

as quite separate clauses; and the comma insists on a silently spoken instantiation
of this structure. On the other, it necessitates an intonational performance, so that
in my reading with the comma, my voice rises (silently!) to above mid-level on
the end of ‘introduction’, and continues much lower on ‘and’, a signal in speech
that further material is to follow, in a new unit. When I read it without the
comma, it is quite difficult for me to recover and hear my silent performance, but
in as far as I can, my voice remains level. That is, the intonational level at the
end of ‘introduction’ is at the same height as at the beginning of ‘and’, a signal in
speech that the same unit is continuing.
Any reader will bring habituated practices of reading to a text, in which the
more or less residual relations between spoken and written language play a part.
The ordering without the comma suggests to me a tighter, denser structure. The
punctuation with the comma suggests a less dense, less integrated ordering, one
which leans on the forms of speech in a recognisable fashion. My reading shows
that ‘behind’ the system present on the page lies another fully explicit system of
spoken ordering, of the spoken speech, which is itself a complex set of systems of
intonation, duration, silence, intensity and pace.
We could form a hypothesis about this writer’s choice of position on the ‘line’
– quite close to speech-like forms (but further than I might move). One
consequence of this is a relatively tightly integrated conceptual structure (more
than I might adopt). In as far as punctuation is an ordering/structuring device
oriented towards the reader, the question arises of the effect of this tendency to
tighter syntactic integration compared to the effect of a tendency towards more
speech-like structures. My hypothesis is that there are contradictory effects: the
more speech-like structure is more transparent, may appeal more to readers who
are oriented towards speech, may make the material easier of access. However,
for readers who are strongly oriented towards writing-like structures, they may
seem more appropriate, while the speech-like structures may seem too personal,
too informal, not professional.
From a rhetorical point of view, the punctuation which invites or insists on the
pause demands a performance – in pacing, intonation, emphasis. Thereby it draws
the reader willy-nilly into the act of performing someone else’s text in their own
preferred or habituated speech-form. In this performance, the other’s text is
literally made into my own text by me; I internalise the other’s text through my
performance of it in terms of my habituated practice. It is a highly effective
rhetorical device, a highly coercive strategy. In as far as the text which is more
distant from speech does not insist on my performance (or does so far less
insistently) its coercive effect is less. One would expect demagogues to write in a
more speech-like form. On the more positive side, the insistence on the pause
gives greater weight to the units, and in this fashion invites analysis of and
reflection on each element to a greater degree.