Nick on Lanham

The part of Nick’s presentation on Lanham that stuck with me the most is the diagram that he used to demonstrate a theory of reader attention in relation to style. The reader’s attention is described by a line that hits the horizontal line of stylistic surface at an angle. At the point of intersection, the attention line is refracted into two—one line bounces off the horizontal line at an angle equal to the one that the attention approached and the other continuing through the point of intersection without any degree of deflection. The diagram reminds me of one of those diagrams that describe the process of subatomic particle formation. I like it because it seems to render an invisible, baffling, complex process in a simple way to my grasping mind.

I liked the diagram for what it implied more than the lesson I was supposed to derive from it, though. When the reader’s attention struck the stylistic surface, we were supposed to pay attention to the line that deflected off the surface. That line held the significance of style, the “how” of writing rather than the “what.” That line runs parallel to other lines we’ve studied like “the medium is the message” or “discourse is socially constructed.” Of course, in order for that attention line in the diagram to truly be representative, it should have bounced back to the reader. As it is diagrammed, the attention line just shoots off into empty space. Unless the reader’s attention to style line is returned to him somehow . . .

I know any diagram is a representation and simplification of reality and I shouldn’t be so picky. If the reader had squarely faced his text, the “at” line would have returned at a ninety degree angle and would have been indistinguishable from the “reader” line and Lanham’s point would have been lost. But I’m not really bothered by that—at least, not too much.

The thing that I really like about the diagram was that the reader’s attention line passed through the stylistic surface at all. That language can pass “through” at all that it has a referential function seemed the major point. To me, the world of theory is one where the influence of postmodernism is so strong that any theorist who even hints at a shared world instantly becomes a hero—just implying an “objective” reality made me more comfortable with his focus on style.

Much of Lanham’s work seems to fall under the social constructivist rubric. Like postmodernists, the social constructivists says that language is a series of signs. Meaning is constructed of language so that so that discourse communities are ones that share understanding by agreeing on the meaning of certain words. But where the social contructivists differ from the postmodernists is in the real of referentiality. Beyond that system of signs, the social constructivist assumes an objective world we all share. It is an assumption that isn’t always apparent in the complexity of their focus on the constructed nature of humans and reality, but it is there, thank goodness.