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> When thought overwhelms the mind, the mind puts it into the world, notably in diagrams and gestures And in song and words. > Some ancient outpourings of tho

> When thought overwhelms the mind, the mind puts it into the world, notably in diagrams and gestures And in song and words. > Some ancient outpourings of thought ... And oral histories. So, using media to help with cognition. Odd that they don't mention oral media.

kqr 2y ago
For some reason, oral media are not as good at this as the written word and abstract drawing. James Gleick (The Information) speculates that it has to do with being able to zoom back and forth between parts of sentences and paragraphs. It offers an explicit way of structuring thought.
- 082349872349872 2y ago
  I think of rhetorical devices as a way of formalising oral discourse, providing signposts that aid the listener "parse out" a more-complex-than-1D structure, aiding "zooming back and forth between parts of sentences and [whatever the oral equivalent of a paragraph may be]" via explicit additions. (I wonder if the different temporal aspects of delivery also play into other aspects of style? For instance, I translated an italian art critic once whose prose style was heavily pyramidal: every so often, at the beginning of a paragraph, he'd introduce a crisp new thought, and his language would steadily get more elaborate and flowery after that, until I often was struggling, but just before he seemed about to leave the plane of actual semantic meaning behind, he cycled back to the next crisp thought. My hazy understanding of latin oratory is the opposite: it was supposed to be all flowery at the outset, and steadily tighten to conclude crisply. If this be a true distinction, it'd make sense in the light of media consumption: more people read a hed than lede, more the lede than anything after, but presumably orators attract listeners, so more people hear the conclusion than prepatory statements, and more the prepatory than the prefatory?)

kqr 2y ago

For some reason, oral media are not as good at this as the written word and abstract drawing. James Gleick (The Information) speculates that it has to do with being able to zoom back and forth between parts of sentences and paragraphs. It offers an explicit way of structuring thought.

082349872349872 2y ago
I think of rhetorical devices as a way of formalising oral discourse, providing signposts that aid the listener "parse out" a more-complex-than-1D structure, aiding "zooming back and forth between parts of sentences and [whatever the oral equivalent of a paragraph may be]" via explicit additions. (I wonder if the different temporal aspects of delivery also play into other aspects of style? For instance, I translated an italian art critic once whose prose style was heavily pyramidal: every so often, at the beginning of a paragraph, he'd introduce a crisp new thought, and his language would steadily get more elaborate and flowery after that, until I often was struggling, but just before he seemed about to leave the plane of actual semantic meaning behind, he cycled back to the next crisp thought. My hazy understanding of latin oratory is the opposite: it was supposed to be all flowery at the outset, and steadily tighten to conclude crisply. If this be a true distinction, it'd make sense in the light of media consumption: more people read a hed than lede, more the lede than anything after, but presumably orators attract listeners, so more people hear the conclusion than prepatory statements, and more the prepatory than the prefatory?)