In the modern age, Text has come to have many different meanings. For example for the average teenager, it refers to to texting. But it can also refer to any written work from small blurbs to the main bulk of the writing. But what does that exactly mean for the digital age?
So What exactly is text?
In Doug Eyman’s “Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric”, he defines the term in both the paper and digital age, saying the following:
“As a student whose early scholarly training was focused solely on literary studies, I initially understood “text” to be a fairly limited term that referenced printed text (and, in particular, literary works); it was not until I began working with cultural studies approaches and postmodern theory that I learned that “any object, collection of objects, or contexts can be ‘read’ by tracing and retracing the slipping, contradictory network of connections, disconnections, presences, absences, and assemblages that occupy problematic spaces” (Johnson-Eilola 2010, 33). In rhetorical studies, text can be thought of as the container for arguments or persuasive discourse, but that tradition is also usually associated with printed texts (or transcripts of spoken words); for digital rhetoric, we must see text in a far more expansive light.”
…Can I simplify that?
It’s as I said at the start: text has several different meanings. It can refer to printed words, usually in the context of books or articles. However, as Eyman says, technically anything can be read in several ways, for example, by tracing the connections that occupy an object.
In Rhetorical studies, however, it has a slightly different meaning. It serves to hold the arguments or whatever the meaning it has. As a result, it can refer to several different mediums from spoken words to articles. In a rhetorical sense, it can have as many methods to display it as there are meanings for the word.
Leave a Reply