Habitual Rhetoric

Digital Writing before Digital Technology

Alex Mueller

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2023
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• eBook ISBN:
  9780822989981
• Subtopic: Creative Writing
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Writing has always been digital. Just as digits scribble with the quill or tap the typewriter, digits compose binary code and produce text on a screen. Over time, however, digital writing has come to be defined by numbers and chips, not fingers and parchment. We therefore assume that digital writing began with the invention of the computer and created new writing habits, such as copying, pasting, and sharing. Habitual Rhetoric: Digital Writing before Digital Technology makes the counterargument that these digital writing practices were established by the handwritten cultures of early medieval universities, which codified rhetorical habits—from translation to compilation to disputation to amplification to appropriation to salutation—through repetitive classroom practices and within annotatable manuscript environments. These embodied habits have persisted across time and space to develop durable dispositions, or habitus, which have the potential to challenge computational cultures of disinformation and surveillance that pervade the social media of today.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction | Digital Writing before Digital Technology
• 1 | Habitual Rhetoric: A History of Habitus
• 2 | Translation: Online Education and Transfers of Authority
• 3 | Compilation: The Encyclopedic Habits of Wikipedia
• 4 | Disputation: Medieval Debate and Digital Dialogue
• 5 | Amplification: Inhabiting and Annotating the Page
• 6 | Appropriation: Stealing Bodies and Properties
• 7 | Salutation: The Public Intimacy of Social Networks
• Conclusion | Breaking Bad Habitus
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index