User:Simon/Trim4/Thesis outline first draft

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Introduction:

1. Background

As a graphic designer I have designed graphic identities and publications. As a teacher of ESL (English as a Second Language) I have taught a wide range of learners from diverse backgrounds to acquire skills in English, a language that is mostly used between non-native speakers. These two pursuits have a commonality in the representation of language; as typography, as text, as words attached to diverse voices that activate processes of translation and elicitation (in contrast with mother tongues). In exploring processes of annotating together I have become interested in the sociality of texts, how they bring people together, how texts can be separated from proprietorial notions of authorship, how they become conversations between readers, and how they can be protected as fundamental parts of our knowledge commons.

2. Thesis statement

The collection of a library represents the people that use it in terms of content, classification, annotation and methods through which the collection is created and distributed. Translation is often a necessary part of making texts accessible to readers from diverse backgrounds. Translation is also an active part of learning a second language. The material transformation of texts is a form of translation, through which diversity can increase representation, by breaking down standards that limit circulation. The publication of annotation associates texts with their readers, de-prioritizing the all-too-often tyrannical position of the author.

Body:

Topic 1: Language, identity and code

Point A: Identities are negotiated through language

  • An individual's cultural identity (e.g. English, Dutch, Japanese) is often closely related to their "mother tongue", and the death of a language accompanies the death of a culture
  • Utterances are not just statements of fact or questions, they are also "speech acts", meaning that by saying something, a speaker is also doing something (Austin, 1971), such as when one says "I bet you $20".
  • Language constitutes subjects through speech acts (Butler, 1997)

Point B: Language is inscribed in code, with purposes to both conceal and reveal

  • Both artificial and natural languages are discrete combinatorial systems
  • Software and language are intrinsically related (Cramer, 2008), even languages which we determine to be 'artificial', such as computer programming languages.
  • Convergence and divergence are phenomena that allow speakers to either associate or distance themselves from interlocutors
  • Euphemisms and slang (as coded language) reinforce social bonds of communities and allow them to communicate in ways that encrypt their messages (e.g. rhyming slang, Polari)

Point C: The publication of written texts has a fundamental effect on social and cultural development in literate cultures.

  • The written word is a virus that makes the spoken word possible (Burroughs - from The Electronic Revolution - find reference!).
  • The voice disappears as it produces words (Dolar, 2006), which without the technology of writing leads to episodic narrative structures (Ong, 2012).
  • Writing is a technology that extends the memory of societies, and transforms the way chirographic and typographic cultures think (Ong, 2012).

Topic 2: Machine vs human translation

Point A: Machines read as much as (and arguably more than) humans do

  • As a text-based medium, software relies on text being read and written by machines.
  • Machine translation is a fundamental part of this process, artificial languages are implemented at various levels of discursivity to allow machines and humans to read code and interpret it.
  • Computer languages range from low-level (e.g. machine code) to high-level (closer to natural language).

Point B: Something is always lost in translation, and something is always found.

  • As an act of decoding the meaning of a source, and encoding it in a new form, translation is a practice in which meanings, although naturalised (Hall, 1999) always shift.
  • There is no such thing as a completely faithful facsimile, every translation implicitly contains difference, sometimes in the smallest details.

Topic 3: The sociability of libraries

Point A: Communities gather around repositories of texts

  • Libraries produce sociability, they become places where people gather to learn, take part in social events, protest, find support


Bibliography:

Austin, J.L., Urmson, J.O., 1971. How to do things with words: the William James lectures delivered at Harvard University in 1955, Oxford paperbacks. Oxford Univ. Press, London.

Butler, J., 1997. Excitable speech: a politics of the performative. Routledge, New York.

Cramer, F., 'Language' in Fuller, M. (Ed.), 2008. Software studies: a lexicon, Leonardo books. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Dolar, M., 2006. A voice and nothing more, Short circuits. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass.

Hall, S., 'Encoding, Decoding' in During, S. (Ed.), 1999. The cultural studies reader, 2nd ed. ed. Routledge, London ; New York.

Ong, W.J., Hartley, J., 2012. Orality and literacy: the technologizing of the word, 30th anniversary ed.; 3rd ed. ed, Orality and literary. Routledge, London ; New York.

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