30.4121, Review: Computational Linguistics; Ling & Literature: Kern (2019)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-4121. Thu Oct 31 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.4121, Review: Computational Linguistics; Ling & Literature: Kern (2019)

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Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2019 17:06:21
From: Lionel Mathieu [lmathieu at bu.edu]
Subject: Language, Literacy, and Technology

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-1767.html

AUTHOR: Richard  Kern
TITLE: Language, Literacy, and Technology
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Lionel Mathieu, Boston University

SUMMARY

>From the title, the introduction presents readers with the concepts of
language (and its manifestations), technology, and literacy. Each are
individually defined and cross-referenced, leading the author to construe them
within an ecological framework centered around the notion of “design of
meaning” (New London Group, 1996), where dynamic, adaptive, and transformative
processes operate and products are generated. The introduction concludes with
an outline of the book, where the essence of each part and chapter is briefly
synthesized. 

Part I contains four chapters addressing the core notion of “designing
meaning” in language, literacy, and technology. Chapter 1 (Communication by
design) begins by considering three models of communication (as
information-transmission, as dialogic/relational, and as textual), pointing
out some of their shortcomings, before introducing readers to the concept of
design. The notion of “design of meaning” “is about creatively configuring
existing resources [i.e. available designs] in relation to purposes, contexts,
and prior discourse to produce signs and texts. Through the process of
recontextualizing, recombining, and reshaping available designs, people
produce […] the Redesigned. The redesigned, in turn, provides new resources,
new available designs, for future acts of meaning making.” (p. 34). Kern goes
on to illustrate this iterative process by carefully analyzing the case of @,
Greeklish, and emoticons (all three emerging from the set of ASCII characters
available on a keyboard), in light of material, social, and individual
resources that (re)shaped these available designs (to produce new designs,
i.e. the redesigned). Chapter 2 (Material resources: why the medium matters)
focuses on the importance of material resources as mediums influencing both
products and processes of communication. Through the notion of mediation (i.e.
what is “in the middle”), the author explores how the medium affected script
forms, in their materiality (e.g. wedge-shaped cuneiforms on clay tablets)
and/or directionality (e.g. Chinese characters on narrow bamboo strips). The
chapter also offers more theoretical perspectives on mediums and messages and
the way they fashion interdependencies. It reviews other mediating factors
such as graphic spaces, keyboards, computer interfaces, programming code, and
text automation in how they condition our linguistic practices. Chapter 3
(Social ecologies) chronicles the development of communicative conventions
that are perpetually shaped by social values and needs, mediated by and
through technology. From the advent of the telephone through its modern,
multifaceted usages, to social media and networking practices revolving around
the notion of “friendship”, to the emergence of technology-mediated societal
movements (as in the Middle East in the early 2010s), to the need for
authenticity and authentication in online communications (e.g. phishing and
captchas), Kern examines how social dimensions and contexts have appropriated
communication technologies to (re)design socio-technological genres,
discourses, and realities. Chapter 4 (The individual and design) concludes
Part I by focusing on the individual “who selects, configures, contributes to,
reshapes, and redefines” (p. 99) material and social resources to design
meaning. Here again, a myriad of examples (e.g. instant messaging in Chinese,
written representation of vernacular Arabic, idiosyncratic handwriting and
signatures, language play in French, invented languages [Tolkien’s Elvish,
Esperanto] and invented scripts [Hangul, Cherokee, N’Ko]) serve to illustrate
the mechanisms underlying the subjective ways individual imagination and
creativity transform and repurpose existing, available designs to produce
meaning in redesigned texts mediated by technology. 

Part II also contains four chapters that address the interactions of material,
social, and individual resources in the process of designing meaning. Chapter
5 (Ancient writing in Mesopotamia) explores the genesis and development of the
technology of writing that sprung out of evolving individual and social needs.
In this chapter, Richard Kern reports on the origins of writing from the first
records of logographic proto-cuneiforms to the emergence of a more abstract
system of representation that eventually gave life to full-fledged writing
systems. Throughout that millennia-long evolution, both social demands and
material constraints were instrumental in sculpting the way early human beings
went about materializing writing and language. Chapter 6 (Paper and print)
shows how the requisite social ecology of 15th century Europe (e.g. a growing
readership, the promise of commercial gains, an abundant supply of affordable
paper) enabled the development and flourishing of the printing press (in
comparison to other corners of the world, such as on the Asian continent or in
the Muslim world), despite initially maintaining “the existing power dynamics
of literacy” (p. 154) and low literacy rates. With respect to grammar,
spelling, and punctuation, the technology of the printing press had a profound
impact on language by way of instituting a culture of uniformity and
standardization. Later on, the typewriter, which also benefited from a
favorable sociocultural climate (i.e. alphabetic scripts), became individuals’
personal printing press, thereby further democratizing and disseminating
personal prints and texts. Chapter 7 (Writing redesigned: electronically
mediated discourse) focuses on written communication in electronically
mediated interactions, where both conventional and innovative uses of language
coexist. In a variety of languages, linguistic innovations can take on
different forms, and be phonologically-based (e.g. “l8r” and “B4” in English)
and/or graphically-based (e.g “TTYL” and “OMG” in English). Such strategies
are also infused with affective elements, as in the cases of initialisms
(LOL), emoticons (;-)), capitalizations (HAHA), punctuation marks (!?!), and
many other creative reappropriations of characters and features (i.e.
available designs) to convey emotions and a sense of belonging in online
writing. The chapter also explores the discursive dimensions of online
collaboration on synchronous (MOO) and asynchronous (Wiki) platforms,
highlighting once again, how “[e]ach act of online communication brings into
play a particular set of language forms and communicative practices that are
dynamically adapted to the setting and task at hand (p.191). Chapter 8
(Multimodal discourse) extends the conversation from the previous chapter to
consider multimedia online communication, where spoken and written language is
blended with sounds, images, and videos, such that “literacy involves
understanding ‘relationships within and across modes’” (p. 194). Digital
objects such as visio-textual mash-ups and other memes perfectly encapsulate
the notions of mediation, textualization and recontextualization by overlaying
modes of expression and representation that implicate language, literacy and
technology to derive meaning. The same can be said about (cross-cultural)
videoconferencing, which is also tackled in this chapter. Chapter 8 concludes
with a discussion revolving around the notion of literacy in light of the
ever-growing predominance of the image over the written word and its
implications for understanding, learning and making meaning.
 
Part III, featuring two chapters, takes stock of the previous discussions to
assess the educational implications for language and literacy in the
twenty-first century. Chapter 9 (Principles and goals in language and literacy
education) begins by considering whether new technologies, such as computers,
erode language and literacy standards. By way of surveying a number of
relatively recent studies, the author hopes to dissipate some of the anxiety
that often revolves around rapid changes in technology, society, and
communication; before laying out his guiding principles and corresponding
pedagogical goals. There are five of them, as follows: 1) meanings are
situated and relational, not autonomous; 2) language, literacy, and
communication rely on both convention and invention; 3) the medium matters; 4)
texts and communication are always multimodal; 5) language, technologies, and
texts mediate between the social and the individual; between ourselves and
real and imagined worlds. Chapter 10 (Toward a relational pedagogy) rests on
these guiding principles to offer readers and educators concrete, practical
avenues for implementing them in educational settings. The ultimate goal is to
arrive at a ‘relational pedagogy’ that “aims to foster a reflective
consciousness of how acts of reading, writing, and storytelling ‘mediate and
transform’ meanings, not merely transfer them from one individual or group to
another” (p. 234).

EVALUATION

This book is geared towards a general readership of language scholars and
educators interested in questions and issues at the intersections of language
and communication technologies, subject to social, cultural, and individual
practices and contexts (across time, space, languages and cultures).

The introduction is particularly well-written and structured, presenting
readers with solid definitions of the concepts at hand, along with a clear
roadmap of the remainder of the book ahead. Readers will no doubt appreciate
the care and effort exerted in the layout of the introduction, which nicely
foreshadows the rigor of presentation, explanation, and analysis of the book’s
content, and does that, chapter after chapter. Throughout, the author makes
effective use of guideposts for the reader, summarizing what was discussed and
announcing what is to come. Additionally, the prose is clear, polished, and
accessible to both specialists and non-specialists alike. Hence, Kern’s
writing style certainly renders the reading experience that much more
enjoyable.

Richard Kern also makes abundant use of illustrations and graphics to support
and enrich the textual content, thereby adhering to the concepts of
recontextualization and intertextuality (Kristeva, 1986), themselves presented
in the book. Likewise, personal anecdotes and everyday objects often come as
contextualizing examples to illustrate some of the concepts discussed. Because
most of these instances are common, shared experiences and/or artifacts, they
are easily relatable, enabling readers to pause and self-reflect on our own
uses of language and/or technology, and the way we interact with one another
through these mediums.

Part I of the book (Designing meaning) offers numerous enlightening facts, of
which, I’d like to highlight two here.

Chapter 2’s discussion of graphic and visual “space” in mediating language use
is particularly eye-opening, as it is often overlooked in the way we go about
communicating via writing. The examples of road-signage (e.g. PED XING / XING
PED) and mirror writing (of AMBULANCE as ECNALUBMA on the hood of a car) are
striking illustrations of how space both frames and engineers our
message/communication. The same can be said of the discussion of keyboard
spaces, and the so-called “QWERTY effect” (Jasmin and Casasanto, 2012), which
found that “when people were shown individual words and asked to rate them on
a scale of positive to negative emotions, they rated words that incorporated
more letters from the right-hand side of the QWERTY keyboard more positively
than words containing letters from the left-hand side of the keyboard” (p.
71). 

Another fascinating insight (from Chapter 4) relates to cases of online
instant messaging in Chinese and Arabic, where individual participants exert
great idiosyncratic (linguistic) behaviors, drawing on social, cultural, and
material resources to shape a particular electronically-mediated message,
intersecting both global and local identities. In the case of writing
vernacular Arabic online, for instance, Kern notes that “[t]hrough their
particular uses of language […] these young Egyptian women reinforce their
friendship and their Egyptian identity while at the same time maintaining
their separateness from it: rather than simply writing in Arabic script (which
Facebook certainly allows them to do), they use ASCII-ized Arabic to create a
culturally marked shared writing space that interfuses Egyptian Arabic, Modern
Standard Arabic, and English. Through their chat they mediate between multiple
identities” (p. 109). 
 
Part II of the book (Interactions of the material, the social, and the
individual) effectively demonstrates how individual, social, and material
dimensions converge in language, literacy, and technology to yield “new
designs of knowledge” (p.167). Here, Richard Kern offers readers a wealth of
information on the origins and development of writing, the printing press,
text-based computer-mediated discourse, and digital multimodal communication,
to ingeniously showcase the processes of meaning design by way of mediation,
textualization and recontextualization. Much of the discussion here centers
around the idea that, throughout human history, material and technological
advances are very much subject to, and emerge from, sociocultural, as well as,
individual forces. In turn, these technologies can (re)configure sociocultural
conventions and (re)shape individual and communal spheres. By reading about
the fascinating development of technologies of historic importance to
humanity, readers will undoubtedly gain greater insights into the
social-cultural-material ecologies undergirding them all. 

Finally, Part III of the book (Educational implications) is probably the most
penetrating section, where the author lays out his educational philosophy with
respect to language, literacy, and communication. “Language is changing around
us”, Kern writes, “and so is our culture of literacy, but that is what
languages and cultures always do. Forecasting ‘the next big thing’ has a role
in education, but it is an uncertain science, and education has an equally
important responsibility to connect young people to the past. To prepare young
people most effectively for the future, to summon what Iyer calls “the
emotional and moral clarity that can’t be found on any screen”, educators
should attend to fundamental principles that have linked language, technology,
and cultures of reading and writing for centuries; principles that surface in
new guises with every new technology that comes along, but that are
nevertheless grounded in a common humanistic substrate” (p.231). Besides
gaining rich perspectives from Kern’s guiding principles, grounded in
empirical examination, language educators will most definitely appreciate and
cherish the plethora of suggestions about hands-on activities, tasks, tools,
and mediums, that can serve to bring about a more relational pedagogy of
designing meaning.

Overall, the book is extremely well researched, documented, and articulated.
Richard Kern is truly to be commended for the breadth of the content discussed
as well as the depth of the insights into the interdependencies that tie
language, literacy, and technology together. 

REFERENCES

Jasmin, K. & Casasanto, D. (2012). The QWERTY Effect: How typing shapes the
meanings of words. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 19(3), 499-504.

Kristeva, J. (1986). Revolution in poetic language. In T. Moi (ed.), The
Kristeva Reader (pp. 89-136). New York: Columbia University Press.

New London Group. (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social
futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1), 60-92.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Lionel Mathieu holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Arizona. He
is a Lecturer in French in the Department of Romance Studies at Boston
University. His research interests in linguistics focus primarily on the
phonology-orthography interface in second language acquisition, bilingualism,
loanword adaptations, and historical linguistics.





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