The concept of truth is intimately linked to the biases of forms of expression. Truth does not, and never has, come unadorned… which is a way of saying that the ‘truth’ is a kind of cultural prejudice. Each culture conceives of it as being most authentically expressed in certain symbolic forms that another culture may regard as trivial or irrelevant. – AOD, pgs. 22-23
Postman moves his argument into the realm of epistemology in his discussion of cultural truth-telling and preferred mediums. Basically, truth-telling takes many modes and cultures determine which modes are more reliable. Postman suggests that some forms are better than others and thus have an overall positive effect on a culture. He claims that, already in his day, “television-based epistemology has had grave consequences for public life [and] that we are getting sillier by the minute” (24). Later he says that this epistemology is not only “inferior to a print-based epistemology but is dangerous and absurdist” (27).
In the next few chapters that close Part 1 of AOD, Postman makes many claims that I’d like to address if only briefly, but the primary claim that he sets out to support in the rest of his book is found in the above quotes. In order to demonstrate the superiority of a print-based epistemology outlines the many tools necessary for (critical) reading, and takes the reader through a short (and largely misleading) tour of early America.
His delineation of all the tools required to read and comprehend any print-based text is too long to post (but the interested reader can refer to pages 25-26) – and this is done rather purposely. He basically describes all of the skills that a person employs – most of which are achieved unconsciously – to accomplish what we might call critical reading. Some of these skills include ignoring the aesthetics of the printed letters to recognize their symbolic function (i.e., on must be able to read “I’ll” and not resort to marveling at all the straight lines), as well as “knowing the difference between a joke and an argument” (26). In fairness, these are rather absurd examples in a list of otherwise legitimate actions, but they are included in order to compile a dauntingly long list in order to make an argument by implication: the medium of television is not conducive to this level of scrutiny, and since it requires less interaction and skill it makes for a weaker epistemology. The implicit argument is made more explicit in Part 2, so I’ll deal with it in his terms later, but doesn’t this have more to do with an underdeveloped concept of television as a specific genre that requires a different (though similar) set of tools for a careful reading? In the growing field of visual rhetoric scholars have argued that images (both still and moving) have a language and syntax and are, indeed, argumentative.[1] I will grant, of course, that television is often a more persuasive medium than print and it probably has a lot to do with a lack of critical interaction. Not every printed text receives or requires a critical reading, and print is an older technology about which people have had time to develop critical, analytical tools – similar to the ones which are continuing to be developed for visual rhetoric.[2]
Postman then moves to American history. The early settlers and the next few generations are given a rather romanticized treatment as Postman walks through publication and speech practices in early America. The point he seems to communicate is that the print-based culture of early America lent itself to higher literacy rates (though he admits that’s a difficult statistic to pin down), more analytical discussion, better grammar, and longer attention spans. I won’t respond to much of what he argues because a lot of it strikes me as silly. To favor an older form of language because of its complexity is sociolinguistically untenable. Language changes but remains rule-governed – to favor an older language variation because of its syntactical complexity can only be motivated by a conservatism that restricts language in ways that it cannot be restricted.
I will close this post with two, overly-brief responses to a couple of Postman’s examples. He holds up the Great Awakening as an oratorical event which succeeded largely because the preachers used “printable” speech and it encouraged literacy through intelligent debate (see pgs. 42 and 54). Having spent a significant amount of time looking at the Great Awakening – as a historical event as well as the culture in which it unfolded and the practices and theologies of its major players – I can only say that Postman is hilariously and irresponsibly off the mark. Charles Finney in particular took advantage of the anti-intellectual spirit running rampant in America at the time to win people over through staged spectacles, embellished visuals, and often-incoherent speech.[3]
Finally, Postman recalls a 7 hour debate (which was apparently shorter than most) between Lincoln and Douglas wherein the audience was encouraged to eat between speeches to come back refreshed. According to Postman, several hour long speeches were commonplace at this point in America’s history which leads him to ask: “What kind of audience[s were] these?” (44). It seems to me that these were the types of audiences who would eventually invent telegraphs, radios, televisions and the like – perhaps in an effort to make presidential debates more palatable. Remember that these technologies spring up from cultures and don’t autonomously act upon them – a point which Postman acknowledges but doesn’t address (79).
Andrew Fletcher was a Scottish politician and writer who lived from 1655-1716. He lived and worked in print-based culture when he wrote the following:
Let me write the songs of a nation; I don’t care who writes its laws.
It is interesting to me that Postman so romanticizes the pre-television, post-printing press era as preeminently literate and paradigmatically reasonable when others recognized existing mediums which bypassed peoples’ literacy and reason and made for effective persuasion.
[1] Postman denies both of these claims explicitly on pages 50 and 72. I would recommend Anthony Blair’s “The Possibility and Actuality of Visual Arguments,” and James Monaco’s “The Language of Film: Signs and Syntax.”
[2] In fact, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that my fellow graduate students are required to include a section on visual rhetoric when they teach undergraduate Rhetoric and Writing Studies courses. This generation of students is being taught to interact with various forms of texts at a critical level.
[3] I refer the interested reader to Nathan Hatch’s “The Democratization of AmericanChristianity.”
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