Analogues to argument: new media and literacy in a posthuman era.

• Author: Warnick, Barbara
• Position: Review Essay

In introducing a series of articles on visual argument published in this journal in 1996, Birdsell and Groarke noted the importance of the visual in understanding "the role of advertising, film, television, multi-media, and the World Wide Web on our lives" (p. 1). Subsequent specific analyses of visual arguments have supported Birdsell and Groarke's observation. For example, Barbatsis (1996) noted that televisual expression makes use of narrative structure, authorial voice, and enthymematic processes to support its appeals and control the audience's point of view. Shelley (1996) described ways in which visual argument tacitly uses pictorial embellishment, selective portrayal, and fallacious appeals. More recently, Lake and Pickering (1998) discussed visual modes of refutation such as alternative portrayal, dissection, substitution, and transformation in documentary films on abortion.

Recent studies of rhetorical discourse on the Internet and the World Wide Web have shown that these multi-media environments are important sites for argument (Gurak, 1997; 2001; Apple & Messner, 2001; Warnick, 2002). These studies indicate that the writers, designers, and spokespersons who express their views via computerized media seek to influence their audiences as frequently as do authors and speakers in more traditional media environments such as print, television, photography, and film. New communication technologies use rhetorical structures and strategies different from but analogous to more familiar forms of logic and reasoning. For example, whereas syllogistic, quasi-logical, and statistical reasoning more readily characterize argument in some traditional communication environments, the use of algorithms and intertextuality may occur more frequently as argument patterns in Internet-based, multi-mediated environments.

A good deal of the communication and argumentation literature regarding mediated public argument falls into two categories. The first of these seeks to conceptualize the means by which arguments are mediated. By "conceptualize," I mean to examine how their components are defined, how their processes are explained, and how the principles that govern their use are articulated (Kennedy, 1980). The studies cited in the first paragraph of this essay fall into this first category. The second category focuses on how new technologies are represented in public argument (Flanagin, Farinola, & Metzer, 2000; Stroud, 2001; Warnick, 2002), and on critical analysis of their social effects (Turkle, 1995; McChesney, 1999; Kaplan, 2000). One could argue that these two categories are closely related, since those who conceptualize new media forms and functions often depend on arguments about the extent of new media influence to justify their work, while social critics of new media draw on textual studies to uncover the values an d ideologies embedded in discourse about technological innovation.

My purpose in this essay is to review recently published books in these two categories. The first book conceptualizes new media by focusing on its key forms, conventions, semiotics, and design patterns. In doing this, Lev Manovich's Language of New Media contributes to our understanding of how new media texts are structured so as to influence their users through visual argument, coordination between text and image, hyperlinks, and various forms of reasoning. By tracing users' experiences of digital texts, Manovich explains how these texts are cognitively processed and interpreted. His emphasis on message design and reception makes his book a sine qua non for scholars and students interested in how argument works in multimedia environments such as the Web.

The remaining two books deal with public discourse about technological innovation and its social effects and thus fall into the second category. They also both consider issues related to public policy concerning technological manipulation and alteration of the body. In Cyborg Citizen: Politics in the Posthuman Age, Chris Hables Gray identifies key issues related to "cyborgization" of the human in human cloning, artificial and transplanted organs, prostheses, and genetic alteration. His book serves as a representative example of scholarship on this topic, both in its focus on strange and provocative policy issues and in its inattention to careful support and documentation of its claims.

In her book, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics, N. Katherine Hayles deals with many of the same issues as Gray, but she does so in a more oblique and careful manner. In contemplating the possible loss of materiality and embodiment in an information age, Hayles exposes some of the angst about new technologies. To explore society's visions of the posthuman, Hayles examines treatments and discussions of artificial intelligence, robotics, and forms of technologically supported life in cyberpunk fiction and scientific treatises in cybernetics and informatics. Although published in 1999, Hayles's book continues to be widely praised and frequently cited. In academic discourse about the shift to the posthuman, it is likely to be influential for some time to come.

Familiarity with books such as Manovich's that conceptualize the workings of mediated argument can prepare argument scholars to analyze forms of reasoning and argument that arise in electronic communication. These include microstructures of practical argument such as dissociation, analogy, and argument from model (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969; Warnick, 2002), structured narratives (Fisher, 1987; Ricoeur, 1984), visual images (Mitchell, 1992), and hyperlinked networks (Mitra, 1999; Mitra & Cohen, 1999). Furthermore, studying argument practices online calls for new forms of literacy that argument scholars can develop and teach to their students. Books such as Manovich's enable us to expand our conceptions of reasoning and logic to include symbolic patterns different from but analogous to the existing logics of oral, print, and traditionally mediated texts.

Social criticisms like those of Gray and Hayles prepare us to recognize what is lost as we move from the material to the immaterial, from the book to the electronic text, from the human to the posthuman. They also enable us to anticipate what we might gain. In the new media era, humans will continue to reason, to make arguments, and to deliberate about policies that affect their future. They might go about these deliberations in different ways using different assumptions and forms of reasoning than we use. The books reviewed here help us to contemplate these changes.

NEW MEDIA LANGUAGE AND NEW FORMS OF ARGUMENT

In his book, Manovich endeavors to describe the workings of new media at a time of decisive media shift. I believe his book is highly relevant because new forms of communicating call for new ways of thinking about communication processes. Maintaining a broad, inclusive conception of argument and its workings can enable...