Navigating Among "Perilous" Texts: Discovering the Works of Yuri Rozhdestvensky
Session Coordinator: Maria Polski
East-West Unversity, English and Communications
816 S. Michigan, Ave. Chicago, IL 60605
mpolski@eastwest.edu

The Works of Yuri Rozhdestvensky in the Context of Post-modern and Post-structural Thought

Post-modernist spirit is fractured and discontinuous. It samples terms from linguistics, semiotics, social anthropology and a variety of other disciplines and blends them into a mix of philosophical and cultural concepts. Reason loses is no longer an epistemological foundation, and its values are left dangling in the air. Thinking needs a new guide.

Post-structuralists refuse such a guide because according to Foucault and Derrida an individual’s understanding is shaped by the press of texts, and one cannot step outside these texts to analyze them objectively. The language of dominant culture pre-interprets of reality. All worldviews simply synthesize texts, and no single worldview can be final.

Yuri Rozhdestvensky studies the functioning of texts in society. He creates a system wherein each type of verbal texts receives its rules of functioning: authorship, ethos, pathos and logos for each genre are systematized. Rozhdestvensky looks at the history of societies coping with emergence of new genres and explains how new genres become incorporated into language practice (“General Philology”). He claims that interpretation of texts is possible when the external rules of their functioning are understood. It is vital to understand the limitations imposed by the technology of speech production, be it sound waves, printing press or electronic machines. Rozhdestvensky’s work is interdisciplinary. By studying all genres of texts in their entirety, he embraces current culture and offers a guide for its interpretation.

Lawrence Gorman
East-West Unversity
larryg@eastwest.edu

Yuri Rozhdestvensky in the Current Cultural Studies Debate

Culture studies has been the dominant focus of English departments for the past fifteen years. The premise of these studies is that culture operates as a text, and therefore can be interpreted by the techniques used for studying conventional texts. Texts written small are interesting only is so far as they illuminate Culture, the text written large. Cultural studies has frequently interpreted the texts of the traditional literary canon. There is no reason why this should be the case.

“Culture” can be understood in different ways. It can be “the form of communication accepted in the given society,” which legitimates some of the premises of cultural studies, and “the entirety of people’s achievements.” Yuri Rozhdestvensky presents a third possibility, one that does not so much treat culture as a text to be interpreted but as a language to be learned.

In previous societies land and capital were considered the main resources available to people. However, post-industrial society places a greater importance on the techniques to process symbols; otherwise, a society will not be able to exploit either the land or capital. Conversely, in countries with poor land and little capital, like Japan and Israel, economic prosperity is possible due to the techniques used by the citizens of those countries. Cultural studies can focus on the nature of these techniques.

This new vision of culture studies has a potential for being more than an esoteric field. It can help its students understand the dynamics of their world.

Furthermore, this vision can allow us to reevaluate the ideals of humankind. At present there is a sterile confrontation between two dried-up ideologies: a liberalism that understands the world in terms of gross national product and consumer satisfaction and the ghost of Marxism that understands the world in terms of dominant ideologies and impotent subversions. A new cultural studies presents competing ideals such as truth, nobility, honesty, beauty and health. Currently inter-cultural communication and ecological stability have joined the competition.

Mary E. McManus
Dominican University
emcmanus@dom.edu

Teaching Different Communicative Genres in the Age of Technology

Pedagogical philosophy of teaching literacy in the age of technology is idling. Current research suggests, as one of the ways of overcoming low literacy, the incorporation of technology into classrooms. Technology is investigated as a tool that caters to the learning skills of modern youngsters – those used to receiving their knowledge from electronic, and not printed sources. Modern pedagogy lacks a fundamental theory that will help to put technology in perspective.

Electronic sources of knowledge did not bring about the first revolution in education that humankind has experienced. The other two came with the invention of writing and later with the invention of the printing press; in both cases humankind struggled with the new technology and developed ways to absorb and process it. Modern education is in the state of shock because it is struggling with and adjusting to the new technology, i.e. going through the third revolution.

The key lesson learned from the previous changes is that each new technology does not supersede the old genres of texts, but invigorates and multiplies them. Each time a new technology for transmission of language is invented, schools adjust to increase their emphasis on all communicative genres. A fully educated person needs to command equally well every existing genre. Literacy in the modern world can be achieved only when technology is harnessed appropriately to serve the invigoration of all traditional genres.

Maria Polski
East-West Unversity
mariap@eastwest.edu