Theory Archives - Page 3 of 6

Language, Technology, and Society

May 28, 2010 by Roy Johnson

how technology interacts with speaking and writing

Most people think that writing and speaking a language are more or less the same thing – that writing is speech transcribed onto paper. The fact is that they are two different (though closely related) systems, and writing is an abstract system of symbols for representing the spoken language. There are some languages which are spoken but which have no written equivalents, and there are some languages (computer code for instance) which are never likely to be spoken. Richard Sproat in this wide-ranging study Language, Technology, and Society emphasises from the start that the most important connection between speech and the written language is the technological invention of writing. He takes the radical line that most written languages have built into them a strong element of encoding the sound of the language – including even Chinese, which many people imagine to be entirely ideographic.

He examines a number of languages – Arabic, Chinese, Phoenician, Egyptian – to demonstrate that they have this thing in common, even though some are written without vowel sounds, and some are written right-to-left in sequence. Next he covers the issue of decipherment – how we can understand ancient inscriptions such as the Rosetta Stone and Linear B. The examples he looks at add up to further evidence that even apparently ideographic languages such as Egyptian hieroglyphics were not properly decoded until it was recognised that they recorded the sound of a spoken language – even if improperly, and mixed with symbols and ideograms.

In a chapter on literacy he demonstrates fairly convincingly that the relative complexity of the writing system has little or no relation to rates of literacy. Chinese and Japanese children have to learn thousands of symbols representing the words and concepts in their language, as against the twenty-six or so letters learned by children in most western European languages.

it is remarkably simple to make the case that literacy is a product of economics and indeed, has little or nothing to do with the complexity of the writing system in use in a country.

To raise standards of literacy in a society, ‘all’ that’s required is to raise the living standards of its inhabitants.

There’s a chapter on the history of the typewriter – a technological phase which was quite short lived, but which has left us with the legacy of the QWERTY keyboard layout. Despite the fact that alternatives to this have been invented, QWERTY has prevailed, largely he argues, because it is quite good ergonomically.

He finishes with two chapters which are clearly dealing with his own specialism: (he worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories for eighteen years. The first of these is on speech recognition technology, and the second on machine translation (MT) which he argues has come a long way since it first began during the Cold War. But it still has a long way to go, as even Google will demonstrate if you ask it to translate a web page into a second language you understand.

There’s a full academic apparatus of endnotes, glossary, bibliography and annotated suggestions further reading, yet I was rather surprised that throughout the whole of this very thorough study he made no reference to some of the seminal texts on the relationship between language writing and technology. For these you will need to move on to Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy, Henri-Jean Martin’s The History and the Power of Writing, and Jay Bolter’s Writing Space.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Richard Sproat, Language, Technology, and Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, pp.286, ISBN: 0199549389

More on computers
More on technology
More on digital media

Left to Right

June 13, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the cultural shift from words to pictures

This is a dream production in terms of graphic design – a lavishly illustrated and beautifully produced book which cuts no corners in delivering a luxury product. But it also has a serious argument explored in the text. The thesis is that the modern world has witnessed a shift away from the written word towards the visual image as a form of communication. In other words a shift from left to right of the cerebral cortex in our way of thinking.

The book takes a historical survey from the early years of the last century to the present to prove the point, and the theoretical claims are supported by quotes from cultural theorists such as Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, and Marshall McLuhan. It’s a very lavish production, with thick matte paper; huge page margins; full colour; acres of blank space; colour-coded chapter dividers; and well-selected graphics given all the breathing space they need.

However, I’m not sure that David Crow’s central argument is proven. We communicate a great deal these days with logos, symbols, and icons it’s true, but compared with the daily avalanche of words, the proportion is trivial.

He’s arguing that visual culture is replacing literary culture, but the examples he cites are of magazines which have merely increased the percentage of graphics they use. Commercial companies have to make their advertising act quickly – hence the use of pictures rather than words – but that is not the same as graphics replacing language as a cultural influence.

Lots of bold theoretical claims are made, in a way which somehow don’t need to be made. The examples shown are simply new and interesting visual images: they are not displacing words as an influence or introducing new cultural paradigms: they are simply fresh visual inventions.

The second part of the book deals with the history and development of writing systems – though his source for this is the rather self-confessedly lightweight Story of Writing, rather than the far more scholarly Henri-Jean Martin’s The History and Power of Writing or Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy. This leads into an encomium on the work of Otto Neurath, who proposed a ‘language’ of symbols, then the work of Charles K. Bliss doing a similar kind of thing.

Next he moves on to typographic experimentation on 1970s and 1980s UK. There are some interesting details on the way new effects were created technically, and we’re introduced to graphically innovative designers of the digital age such as Neville Brody, Peter Saville, and Malcolm Garrett. All the left-cortex right-cortex nonsense is left behind, and the study really comes to life. I would be happy to read a book-length study of this period alone if he chose to write one.

The latter part of the book is a celebration of digital possibilities – for as he rightly claims, the computer is

at once a typewriter, a retrieval device, a page layout engine, a photo retouching tool, an edit suite, a recording studio, a television and a radio.

The same is increasingly true of the mobile phone, with which he concludes. I was quite relieved to leave all the left-brain right-brain and language/visuals dichotomy argument behind and concentrate on graphic design and digital technology, which is where his heart obviously lies – and where he would be best employed concentrating his attention in future publications of this quality.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

David Crow, Left to Right: the cultural shift from words to pictures, Lausanne: AVA Publishing SA, 2006, pp.192, ISBN: 2940373361

More on design
More on media
More on web design

Literacy in the New Media Age

July 2, 2009 by Roy Johnson

theoretical study of writing in the digital age

This is an investigation of the effect of new media on what Gunter Kress calls ‘alphabetic writing’. He is arguing that multimedia and the screen are starting to challenge the page as the natural medium of writing – and that this in turn is affecting the way we write. It’s certainly true that writing for the screen has to be more immediate and heavily chunked than writing for the page, and Kress also argues that the screen is making graphic images more important as a medium of communication.

He points out quite rightly that speech and writing are two completely separate systems (which is why many people have problems with writing). The alphabet is actually a loose transcription system for translating between them. His basic argument is that all communication (including linguistics) should be seen as a subset of semiotics. There’s actually not very much about new media discussed – merely an assumption that iconic or visual communication is challenging the dominance of writing.

However, he does make the interesting observation that computers put users in charge of page layout in a way which gives new emphasis to design, as well as providing interactivity between writer and reader.

Having argued that all texts are a result of ideological relationships between author and reader, he even attempts a quasi-political analysis of punctuation. This is not really persuasive, and founders in his attempts to explain or excuse his examples of what is no more than poor writing.

But he does end on an interesting topic of reading paths. That is, the manner in which readers have to construct their own navigational routes when confronting what he calls ‘multimodal’ texts – ones with pictures and words, such as magazines and web pages, for instance.

Although he claims to have left behind an academic style so as to communicate with a wider audience, he writes in a dense and rather abstract manner. The results will be of interest to linguists, educational theorists, and semiologists – though those approaching it with an interest in new media might be a little disappointed.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Gunther Kress, Literacy in the New Media Age, London: Routledge, 2003, pp.186, ISBN: 041525356X

More on literary studies
More on digital media
More on technology
More on theory

Literary Theory: a short introduction

August 4, 2009 by Roy Johnson

brief guide to critical approaches to literary studies

This introductory guide to literary theory comes from a new series by Oxford University Press. They are written by specialists, aimed at the common reader, and offer an introduction to the main cultural and philosophical ideas which have shaped the western world. Jonathan Culler avoids the common approach of explaining the various schools of literary criticism by choosing instead a set of topics and showing what various literary theories have to say about them.

There’s a certain amount of sleight of hand. In explaining ‘theory’ in its modern sense he doesn’t acknowledge the profound difference between this loose use of the term and a scientific theory, which can be proven or disproven. Nor does he acknowledge the sort of special pleading and self justification which is passed off as ‘philosophy’ in the work of someone such as Michel Foucault. But he does have a persuasive way of explaining some of these difficult ideas in terms which the common reader can understand.

The topics he chooses turn out to be very fundamental questions such as ‘What is literature?’ – that is, are there any essential differences between a literary and a non-literary text. These are questions to which common sense supplies rapid answers, but when Theory is applied, unforeseen complexities arise.

In fact when he looks more closely at the nature, purpose, and the conventions of literature, he claims that one of the purposes of Theory is to expose the shortcomings of common sense.

There’s an interesting chapter on language and linguistic approaches to literary theory where he discusses Saussure and Chomsky, the differences between poetics and hermeneutics, and reader-response criticism. Any one of these approaches is now the basis for a whole school of literary theory.

When he gets to genre criticism there’s a useful explanation of lyric, epic, and drama – though it’s not quite clear why he separates narrative (stories and novels) into a chapter of its own.

However, when it does come, his explanation of narrative theory is excellent. His account of plot, point of view, focalisation, and narrative reliability will help anyone who wants to get to grips with the analysis of fiction.

He ends with brief notes explaining the various school of literary theory which have emerged in the recent past – from New Criticism, through Structuralism, Marxism, and Deconstruction, to the latest fashions of Post-Colonialism and Queer Theory.

In one sense the book’s title is slightly misleading. It should be Modern Literary Theory. But this is a very interesting and attractive format – a small, pocket-sized book, stylishly designed, with illustrations, endnotes, suggestions for further reading, and an index.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp.149, ISBN: 019285383X

More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Literary Theory: the basics

May 24, 2009 by Roy Johnson

schools of literary criticism 1900-2000 explained

Despite its title, this is a survey of modern literary criticism. Hans Bertens starts from a critique of Matthew Arnold’s liberal humanist and essentially romantic appeal that literature exists on a higher spiritual plane that we are invited to visit. He then goes on to show the links with T.S.Eliot, Ivor Richards, F.R.Leavis, and the New Criticism of the United States in the early decades of the last century. Then its on to the Russian formalists and Prague structuralism – Shklovsky, Propp, and Jakobson .

These progress by a slightly dog-legged chronology to the French structuralists of the 1960s and 1970s. Roland Barthes picks up Saussure and runs with the ball of structuralism. Genette develops the same lines in his theories of narratology. When it came to Marxism I had a minor quibble with his account of ideology and I think he lets Georgy Lukacs off rather lightly – but on the whole it’s an even-handed treatment.

I enjoyed his explanations of feminism, race, and gender theory, and I couldn’t help feeling that his own interests were transmitted more infectiously as his story approached the present. What a rich choice of approaches any young student of literature has today.

When he arrives at the ‘poststructuralist revolution’ you have to be prepared for an excursion into the realms of philosophy. Literature seems a long way off, but you’ll get an account of Derrida which makes him seem almost accessible. The same is true of his chapter on Lacan

We know now that the deconstructionists took literary theory to a point where it appeared that nothing certain could be said about a text. So what happened afterwards? Well – it’s interesting that the fashions in literary theory which followed tend to focus upon on a single topic – race, class, sexuality, colonialism, or gender, and erect a series of abstact generalisations upon it.

Bertens gives very generous considerations to these late twentieth-century developments. The strength of this approach is that the theories are explained very well. The weakness is that we don’t get to see them applied. Literary texts themselves seem a long way off, and only get the occasional mention. It’s really difficult to see what ‘queer theory’ can tell us about Bleak House or The Odyssey. Go on – prove me wrong.

Nevertheless, I think this is a book worth recommending to people embarking on literary studies at undergraduate level, if for no other reason than it gives a reasonable account of what these theories claim without shirking from their weaknesses. And as he points out, although the latest of them tend to claim the intellectual high ground, their predecessors are still in general circulation.

Each separate chapter is followed by an annotated bibliography of further reading. I mention the annotation because this makes it far more useful to the reader than the long bare listings you usually find in books of this kind.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Hans Bertens, Literary Theory: The Basics, Abingdon: Routledge, 2nd edition 2007, pp.264, ISBN: 0415396719

More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Literature and the Internet

November 1, 2009 by Roy Johnson

resources, techniques, and issues for literary studies

In the field of literary studies, people have been creating digitized texts and making concordances for quite some time now. But until the advent of the Web it was difficult to get an overview of criticism and scholarship which was easily available. In fact it’s still not easy. As the authors of this excellent guide Literature and the Internet point out, it remains common for the latest work to be made available only in the form of conventionally printed books and the dinosaur publishing methods of scholarly journals.

But at last the Internet is now making ever more material easily available to us, and it is the purpose of this guide to advise students, teachers, and scholars how to make the most of the opportunity to retrieve it. They start with a general survey of the pros and cons of the Internet for literary studies, quite rightly pointing out that despite all its obvious advantages, there are still many shortcomings:

It has large and obvious gaps, it cannot cover the literary ground as even a moderately well-stocked library can, and it cannot equal the contemporary appeal of a good bookstore.

In fact the differences between books in libraries and texts on the Net are intelligently explored, before we get down to some practical advice on usability. This centres logically enough on using search engines, and they offer an explanation of the different techniques which can be deployed, as well as alerting users to the differences in kind amongst the sources which might be located.

The centre of the book is an extensive list of resources. These are arranged as web site address – in categories ranging from libraries, journals, literary periods, literary criticism, discussion groups and email distribution lists, to individual authors – from Achebe to Zola – and their home pages.

Mercifully, these lists are annotated with useful evaluative comments, making clear distinctions between sites which are commercial, fan pages, and the results of scholarly research. It’s interesting to note how many of the award-winning sites are the work of dedicated individuals (such as Jack Lynch at Pennsylvania and Mitsuharu Matsuoka in Japan) and departments in little-known colleges in the back of nowhere. Major institutions are noticeably thin on the ground.

I felt reassured that the authors had done their homework, had visited the sites they discuss – and were not frightened of levelling criticism at some quite well known names in the literary establishment. They point out the need for more qualitative evaluation of online resources and web site reviews.

This is followed by advice on the evaluation of sites, including a series of basic questions we can ask on arrival. Is the information accurate? Is it complete? And is there any acknowledgement of the sources being used?

There is also a section for teachers, discussing how computers and the Internet can be used in literary studies, with suggestions (for instance) for hypertext assignments and web essays – though I hope their term Webliographies doesn’t catch on.

They consider the nature of electronic texts – from plain ASCII, through the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and even as far as the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and Extensible Markup Language (XML).

These are only touched on lightly, with their differences briefly explained, but this is a valuable topic to raise in the consciousness of students and teachers, especially in the light of controversies surrounding the form in which commercial electronic books are being issued.

The guide ends with considerations of the theoretical and political connections between literary studies in an era of digitized text – exploring some of the notions raised in recent years by Jay Bolter, George Landow, and J. Hillis Miller.

They even have some interesting comments to make on the likely impact of Information Technology on academic careers – including the vexed issue of academic publishing, which must surely be due for major convulsions in the next few years.

Many people have argued that it’s now rather pointless issuing printed resource guides which will be quickly outdated. But there is a reason for such publications. The fact is that it’s often quicker to locate information in a book, rather than searching through files or favourites using a browser.

Certainly, I’m very pleased that this book is on my desk, and I look forward to exploring its suggestions and passing on any gems to my own students – who are currently learning how to write, link, zip, and upload their first web essays.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Stephanie Browner, Stephen Pulsford, and Richard Sears, Literature and the Internet: A Guide for Students, Teachers, and Scholars, London/New York: Garland, 2000, pp.191, ISBN: 0815334532

More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Metaphor

July 15, 2009 by Roy Johnson

its meaning in literature and general culture

Routledge have a series of books (New Critical Idiom) which offer monographs examining the key concepts and critical terms used in literary, cultural, and media studies. They seek to bring modern theory to bear upon traditional concepts, so as to illustrate the development of modern usages and shifts in contemporary interpretation. David Punter’s examination of metaphor starts by looking at its history. This begins with Aristotle’s observation in his Poetics (350 BC) that the genius of metaphor lies in the ability to see similarities in two different things.

That is at the base of metaphor in all its forms – similes, metaphors, metonymy, synecdoche, symbols, and allegories – and I think he was wise in not getting hung up about the differences between them. He looks at examples in poetry and prose, showing them working at various levels of complexity – from simple similes to extended metaphors which seem to be operating at a ‘beyond the text’ level. After establishing the basics, he moves on to look at metaphor in a non-European context (specifically, Chinese poetry) then at public or political metaphors (‘Fathers4Justice’, the Crown, and Labour’s red rose symbol – cue William Blake).

In most cases his approach is to show what lies beneath the ‘intended’ meaning(s) so as to show others, that might be unintended, lurking below. To give an example that never ceases to amaze me, when local government officers speak of their ‘front line’ services, I wonder if sub-consciously they think of the public (their clients, whose interests they are supposed to be serving) as their enemy, with whom they are at war?

Then he tries something more difficult – interpreting modern texts that seem to have metaphorical meanings to which (it would seem) we do not have access – The Life of Pi being his most prominent example. This didn’t seem so convincing.

There’s also a discussion of psycho-analysis and metaphor which I thought might say something about what the two things being likened to each other might reveal about the person making the comparison – but he drifts off into a consideration of Edward Lear’s nonsense poetry. It doesn’t seem to occur to him that Lear’s famously bathetic last lines (‘That elastic old person of Pinner’) which merely echo the first, might just be an example of feeble whimsy.

At its weakest, his commentaries are not much more than chasing word associations (‘Howling at the moon’-> Howling Wolf -> Wolf -> Sheep -> Wolf -> Rome) and so on, but at their best he offers genuine insights into the limits and possibilities of his subject.

And despite any differences one might have with his interpretations, any students of literature (and in particular, poetry) will find his extended analyses of modern poets (Hardy, Hughes, W.S. Graham, Walcott) very illuminating.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

David Punter, Metaphor, London: Routledge, 2007, pp.158, ISBN: 0415281660

More on literature
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

New Media Language

May 21, 2009 by Roy Johnson

new forms of language, rhetoric, and communication

This is a collection of papers given at a conference on ‘Language, Media, and International Communication’ at Oxford University. The contributions are from academics and journalists, and the best thing about them is that they are interestingly varied in topic and approach. Issues discussed include the manner in which the norms of communication in the English-speaking world are affecting speakers of other languages. The example given is of an assistant in MacDonald’s in Budapest who speaks Hungarian, but uses an Anglo-American ‘discourse’.

Robin Lakoff also writes on the ‘new incivility’ – how swearing and bad manners have risen to the surface of public discourse, from the television chat show to the theatres of government in the west. Sometimes the arguments seem to take a sledgehammer to crack nuts. Martin Conboy’s otherwise excellent analysis of the language of hysterical chauvinism in The Sun could have been done without evoking references to Mikhail Bakhtin.

Despite the title of the book, the emphasis is more on media than on language. John Carey looks at the problems of establishing credulity in reportage, and there’s a well-informed piece on the BBC’s anguish regarding the middlebrow nature of Radio 4.

One of the best pieces in the collection is by co-editor Diana Lewis on the changes brought about to the concept of news and the way it is broadcast as a result of now being simultaneously available in so many different forms. It comes at us in traditional manner via newspapers, radio, and television – but to these are now added instantly updated web sites, news feeds, and personal blogs – all of which can come along with a huge variety of background and contextual materials, available at the click of a hyperlink. Have a look at any page on a Wikipedia entry, and you’ll see what she means.

I also enjoyed an amusing piece from the Guardian columnist Malcolm Gluck on the difficulty of describing wines without slipping into Pseud’s Corner prose. At a more serious level, there’s an excellent piece analysing the duplicitous and rhetorical devices used in White House press briefings, where the official spokespeople try to give away as little as possible, and the press representatives try equally hard to make them admit the truth of what is going on.

There are two good chapters from professional lexicographers. John Ayto looks at the way in which newspapers create neologisms by what’s called ‘blending’ – as in motel comes from a blend of motor + hotel. John Simpson, one of the editors at the Oxford English Dictionary, considers the problem of accepting new media forms such as film, tabloids, and email as the sources for word definitions.

It certainly deals with traditional as well as new media – because there’s lots on the press, particularly the tabloids. This will be of interest to students of media, communication skills, politics, and current affairs, as well as anyone who follows trends in current language use.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Jean Aitchison and Diana M. Lewis, New Media Language, Abingdon: Routledge, 2003, pp.209, ISBN: 0415283043

More on digital media
More on technology
More on theory

Orality and Literacy

July 13, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Speaking, Writing, Technology, and the Mind

Orality and Literacy has become a classic since it was first published in 1982. It is concerned with the differences between oral and literary cultures. In making this exploration, it throws light onto the essential elements of writing which will be of interest to anyone concerned with the process at a theoretical or deeper level. It starts with the observation that speech and writing are two separate systems, and that ‘oral literature’ is a contradiction in terms. Much of the early argument deals with the issues of ‘authorship’ of Homer’s two epics The Odyssey and The Iliad. Were they written or spoken?

He suggests a fundamental difference in oral culture and its dependence on formulas, cliche, and kennings. Not an oak tree, but ‘the noble oak’; not the Mediterranean, but ‘the wine dark sea’. He also makes interesting use of the work of the Soviet psychologist Luria [also recommended by neurologist Oliver Sacks] to demonstrate the non-abstract thinking of people in oral cultures.

You’ve got to be prepared for some abstract but often delightful language in his expression. Terms such as ‘verbomotor lifestyle’, ‘chirographic culture’, and ‘noetic economy’ nestle alongside some compressed reflections on language, time, space, and our sense of self.

The second part of the book deals with the relationship between consciousness, writing, and technology from the relatively recent 3500 BC onwards. He explains the importance of the alphabet (a one-off invention) and even argues that writing down words – as distinct from speaking them – has an effect on our thought process.

without writing, human consciousness cannot achieve its true potential, cannot produce … beautiful and powerful creations

His comments on the relationship between writing and the body (headings, chapters, footers) are wonderfully suggestive, as are his observations on the fictionality of the addressee in personal diaries. He also dives into the pedagogical debates on language, arguing cogently that whilst all dialects are potentially equal in that they must use the same grammar, it is bad practice not to urge exposure to the full grapholect of the written language, which has “infinitely more resources”

En passant, there’s a very good account of classical rhetoric (antinomasia, paradiastole) which explains why this was important to classical Greeks. He even has an explanation for the importance of female authors in the rise of the novel.

Next comes the importance of space in the rise of print, and the origin and significance of things we take for granted – such as title and content pages, indexes, paragraphs, even page numbers. These further separate print from oral culture and make the book less of a recording of something spoken, more an object in its own right.

The latter parts of the book take his observations into the realm of literature and criticism, using the examples of narrative, closure, and character to illustrate the changes from an oral to a print culture.

He ends with what he calls ‘theorems’ – topics for further consideration in the orality-literacy shift. These include literary history, New Criticism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, and Reader-response Theory.

This is a book which throws off thought-provoking ideas on every page. It has been inexplicably out of print for some time. If you are interested in the psychology or the philosophy of what it means to produce writing on paper or screen – get a copy now.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy, London: Routledge, 2002, pp.204, ISBN: 0415281294

More on digital media
More on theory
More on typography
More on writing skills

Pause and Effect: the art of interactive narrative

July 9, 2009 by Roy Johnson

techniques of telling stories in visual media

Pause and Effect examines the intersection of storytelling, visual arts, new media, and interactivity. It’s a mixture of a little theorising with plenty of practical examples. Mark Meadows starts reasonably well with some interesting reflections on narrative and perspective, and then plunges valiantly into the realm of literary narratives. But before giving himself time to consider them seriously, he’s off into Excel spreadsheets and interactive games. It’s a very elegantly designed book. Almost every page is illustrated with diagrams, screenshots, and paintings.

He ventures bravely into first, second, and third person narratives, plus point of view. Famous names come thick and fast – Homer, Aristotle, Dostoyevski, Giotto, James Joyce. We get reflections on novels, TV programs, video games, and Spiderman comics. But it’s hard to find a coherent argument. Most of what he has to say is descriptive rather than analytical.

This is a shame, because theoretical reflections on new media design would be very welcome – but here there is the sense of someone struggling with issues which even literary theorists have sorted out long ago.

He does look at some interesting examples of narrative art – religious paintings and tablets. But when you think about it, the traditional narrative painting is ‘cheating’ in terms of conveying a new story. Viewers of ‘The Annunciation’ already know the sequence of events when they see the depiction of them in two dimensions.

There are some interviews with designers of multimedia and interactive events, plus case studies which feature contemporary games designers. He also covers interesting reports of experiments which seek to blend digital genres. Probably the best part of the book however is where he offers reflections on narrative and architecture, second-person point of view, and 3D virtual reality.

This is a publication which will appeal to people who want to pursue ideas about narrative theory. Web designers and new media buffs will certainly pick up some new lines of investigation to think about.

Buy the book at Amazon UK

Buy the book at Amazon US

Mark Stephen Meadows, Pause and Effect: the art of interactive narrative, Indianapolis (IN): New Riders, 2003, pp.257, ISBN: 0735711712

More on digital media
More on technology
More on theory

how technology interacts with speaking and writing

the cultural shift from words to pictures

theoretical study of writing in the digital age

brief guide to critical approaches to literary studies

schools of literary criticism 1900-2000 explained

resources, techniques, and issues for literary studies

its meaning in literature and general culture

new forms of language, rhetoric, and communication

Speaking, Writing, Technology, and the Mind

techniques of telling stories in visual media

Get in touch