Fun da mentals : Rhetorical Devices for Electronic Literature

Language manipulation/code talk . A stub

Explanation
Exploration
Exercise (English Only)
Experiment: On Your Own

Exchange: Share Your Creations

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Explanation

In many languages, either the spoken or written word holds other possibilities for meanings. Many languages allow for puns, which are humorous "plays on words". Speakers can also imply things in languages with double entendres (something heard twice). Languages that use ideograms, like Chinese or Japanese, allow these complex ideograms to be broken up into components, thus breaking the basic word and allowing new associations with words.

Electronic literature allows more space for these kinds of plays. Flash allows letters to change within a word or to break up a word into parts.

Cell phone texting has changed English to an amazing extent.

Exploration

The examples in this section will be impossible to translate. If you know of language manipulators in your language, please use them.

Eliterature are not only using computers to pull new words from an existing text and juxtapose words in new ways but also to break words apart to examine their inner fundamental meanings and create new associations. Netwurker Mez, for instance, has created a unique network language system _mezangelle_, which brings together her talents as a writer and artist. As Mez explains in an interview on Rhizome, she uses a wide range of textual techniques such as punctuation, homophones, interjection, and variant spellings to infuse her language with potential meanings. Her play with language, symbols, and text evolved from e-mail's often cryptic abbreviations, and she uses mathematical terms both cryptically and subversively: "in2," for example, is the homophone for "into," but it also conveys the idea of splitting something into two parts. Her language thus incorporates mathematics, programming, and other code languages to create a language specifically for this new media.

Mez also uses interjected phrases set off in brackets to convey double and triple associations. When interjecting language, "Postmaster" becomes "Post[wo]ma[n]ster"--bringing in immediate associations with gender issues and bringing out the historical associations of master, as well as hinting at other homophones such as monster. Post[wo]ma[n]ster thus takes on many more roles than a simple email address as we examine the deeper implications of mastering, monstering, and gendering the post.

Exercise (English Only)

Experiment: On Your Own

 

Exchange: Share Your Creations

 

 


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