In Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice, Doug Eyman challenges us to have a radical rethink of the meaning of text. To persons accustomed to the traditional approach to the study of literature, text usually refers to what is printed between covers. The discussion by Eyman interrupts that limited definition and makes text much more dynamic- something social, material, designed, and more and more digital.
The Seven Criteria of Textuality
Eyman emphasizes the concept of text as a communicative event when relying on such theorists as Robert de Beaugrande and Wolfgang Dressler. Their seven criteria of textuality, which are cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality and intertextuality. These shift the concept of text as a fixed object to text as a discourse. The meaning of text is not just due to its existence but it is defined rhetorically by what it does in a situation. and what is understood by a reader.
Eyman then overlay design theory by the introduction of Gunther Kress. Who states that text is a topic of a social action and a conscious design. Rhetorical decisions in digital space often include these design choices. Layout, interface, interactivity. A web site does not only persuade using words alone but also through usability. And ease of access as well as visual organization. Text is, consequently not only written language but is a material and multimodal construction subject to social forces.
Text as Social Action
The most dramatic growth, perhaps, is attributed to Johndan Johnson-Eilola, who follows the history of text in its transformation into an artifact to gizmo to spime. Digital texts being gizmos, are volatile and can be manipulated by the user. They are remixable, mobile and transformable. With texts networked, as spimes, a concept of Bruce Sterling. Data-producing objects of semi-autonomous agency. This is taking rhetoric to a new place, in which texts are not passively intended as objects of persuasion. But also as active members within digital ecosystems.
What Eyman eventually demonstrates is that the definition of “text” establishes the limits of digital rhetoric as such. In case there is a text that consists of code, interfaces, algorithms and networked devices. Then rhetorical analysis should also extend its scope. Digital rhetoric cannot be reduced to the use of old tools in new media, but to the acceptance of the reality that texts are no longer fixed, passive. Located in technology systems that simultaneously construct and are constructed through human action.
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