Hurray for "College English"

In “Visualizing English,” Craig Stoupe does a great job of illuminating what we read from Manovich a few weeks ago. Due to my lack of knowledge about cinematic history, I actually find Stoupe’s explanation easier to follow and just as relevant, even though it covers a greater historical timeframe. The shift from everything being oratory to having written word is a great comparison to wrap my mind around. Stoupe writes:

This mingling and repurposing are evident historically in ways that orality has survived and insinuated itself into the conventions of writing and print culture during their emergence and dominance. (618)

For me, the term “repurposing” encompasses the entire idea. While medias shift to suite society’s growing needs, these media innovations not only borrow language from the media which came before them, but also repurpose that language.



It’s like recycling. And, the reason it is important that terminology of previous media is repurposed for the new medias is for convenience. We already know the language of the verbal. We already know the language of the written. Now, when we learn the new media of visual rhetoric, we will recognize some of the language used and have a more automatic understanding of it.
To Stoupe, this is important in teaching English. He argues that English studies is going visual and students will need to understand that “[w]ords don’t simply talk to words, but to images, links, horizontal lines” as words play a role in “the visual scheme of the page” (618). This is the new direction of writing, and students must be taught it. The advantage that students have, though, is they already know the language; it is the language of oratory and writing, repurposed.