Explorations in Communication, an Anthology

I I \»» /\ /\ /\ VA» » \^» I v»« EXPLORATIONS IN COMMUNICATION dited by EDMUND CARPENTER and MARSHALL McLUHAN Contributions by ROBERT GRAVES GILBERT SELDES LAWRENCE K. FRANK DOROTHY LEE DAISETZ T. SUZUKI NORTHROP FRYE FERNAND LEGER and others DAVID RIESMAN $4.00 EXPLORATIONS IN COMMUNICATION Edited by Edmund Carpenter and Marshall McLuhan This book explores the form and dy- namics of communication to discover how it works — how human beings ex- change feelings, facts, fancy. What makes words, sentences and grammars meaning- ful? What is the difference between the private world of reading and the instant " togetherness " of television audiences? How does the inner structure of communication vary from society to society? These essays by world-famed scholars and artists cover the whole range of communications media — from skin touch to voice inflection, from newsprint to electronic devices, from primitive grammars to films. Here we step outside the various media by examining one through another. Print is seen from the perspective of elec- tronics; television is analyzed through print — and thus literacy's role in shaping man is brought into sharp new focus. The contemporary revolution in the packaging and distribution of ideas and feelings makes a new view of communication imperative. To give voice to such views, the bold journal Explorations was begun in Toronto in 1953, financed by the Ford Foundation and the Toronto Telegram. From the start, the magazine won high praise from the academic (Continued on back flap) ( 37417 NilesBlvd 510-494-141] SV /j Fremont, CA 94536 www.nilesfilmmuseum.org Scanned from the collections of Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum Coordinated by the Media History Digital Library www.mediahistoryproject.org Funded by a donation from Jeff Joseph Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from Media History Digital Library http://archive.org/details/explorationsincoOOcarp EXPLORATIONS IN COMMUNICATION CONTRIBUTORS Ray L. Birdwhistell Dorothy Lee Edmund Carpenter Fernand Leger H. J. Chaytor Marshall McLuhan Lawrence K. Frank David Riesman Northrop Frye W. R. Rodgers Arthur Gibson Gilbert Seldes S. Giedion Jean Shepherd Stephen Gilman Daisetz T. Suzuki Robert Graves Jacqueline Tyrwhitt Stanley Edgar Hyman EXPLORATIONS IN COMMUNICATION An Anthology Edited by Edmund Carpenter and Marshall McLuhan Beacon Press Beacon Hill Boston © 1960 by the Beacon Press Library of Congress catalog card number: 60-7938 Printed in the United States of America ) ACKNOWLEDGMENTS All the essays in this anthology appeared in Explorations, a journal published at the University of Toronto under a Ford Foundation grant. A few had appeared earlier, usually in dif- ferent form; a few, first printed in Explorations were later reprinted elsewhere. With two exceptions, all the essays are reprinted in this anthology with the permission of the authors. ("Pure Color" by Fernand Leger was given to Jacqueline Tyrwhitt by the author and subsequently translated by her when she was an editor of Explorations. "Joyce's Wake" by W. R. Rodgers is taken from the tape of a BBC radio program, "The Portrait of James Joyce," which was edited by Mr. Rodgers and produced by Maurice Brown. The editors wish to thank each author represented in this anthology, as well as the following publishers and copyright holders, for permission to use material under their control: AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION for short excerpts from Autobiography of a Papago Woman by Ruth Underhill, 1936. APPLETON-CENTURY-CROFTS, INC. for short excerpts from American English Grammar by Charles C. Fries, copyright, 1940, The National Council of Teachers of English and Charles C. Fries. DENIS DOBSON, LTD. for short excerpts from Theory of Film by Bela Balazs 1953 FABER AND FABER, LTD. for a short excerpt from Film of Murder in the Cathedral by George Hoellering and T. S. Eliot, 1952. S. GIEDION for his article "Space Conception in Prehistoric Art/' which was delivered as a Mellon Lecture, National Gallery, Washington, 1957, and will serve as a chapter in Constancy and Change in Early Art and Architecture, a forthcoming Bollingen Foundation publication. HARCOURT, BRACE & CO. for a short excerpt from Film of Murder in the Cathedral by George Hoellering and T. S. Eliot, 1952. HARPER & BROTHERS for "Buddhist Symbolism" by Daisetz T. Suzuki, which appeared in their book Symbols and Values: An Initial Study, 13th Symposium of the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, edited by Lyman Bryson et al. t 1955. vi EXPLORATIONS IN COMMUNICATION HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS for a short excerpt from Public Opinion in Russia by Alex Inkeles, 1950. W. HEFFER AND SONS, LTD. for "Reading and Writing" by H. J. Chaytor, which appeared in their book From Script to Print, 1950. PAUL B. HOEBER, INC. for "Lineal and Nonlineal Codifications of Reality" by Dorothy Lee, which appeared in their publication Psycho- somatic Medicine, no. 12, May 1950. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF AMERICAN LINGUISTICS for "Lin- guistic Reflection of Wintu Thought" by Dorothy Lee, which appeared in the Vol. 10, 1944 issue. ELIA KAZAN and NEWTOWN PRODUCTIONS, INC. for a short excerpt from "Writers and Motion Pictures." This article appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, 199, 1957. EDMUND MORGAN for a short excerpt from The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti by G. Louis Joughin and Edmund M. Morgan, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1948. THOMAS NELSOxN AND SONS, LTD. for a short excerpt from Our Spoken Language by A. Lloyd Jones, 1938. PRENTICE-HALL, INC. for "Lineal and Nonlineal^ Codifications of Reality" and "Linguistic Reflection of Wintu Thought" by Dorothy Lee, both of which appeared in their book Freedom and Culture, 1959. PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS for "The Language of Poetry" by Northrop Frye, which appeared in their book Anatomy of Criticism, 1957. ROY PUBLISHERS for short excerpts from Theory of Film by Bela Balazs, 1953. MARTIN SECKER & WARBURG, LTD. for short excerpts from Voices of Silence by Andre Malraux, 1954. RUTH UNDERHILL for short excerpts from Autobiography of a Papago Woman, American Anthropological Association, 1936. WILLIS KINGSLEY WING for "Comments on 'Lineal and Nonlineal Codifications of Reality' " by Robert Graves. YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS for short excerpts from On Principles and Methods in Latin Syntax by Edward P. Morris, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902. CONTENTS Introduction CLASSROOM WITHOUT WALLS 1 Marshall McLuhan TACTILE COMMUNICATION 4 Lawrence K. Frank LINGUISTIC REFLECTION OF WINTU THOUGHT 12 Dorothy Lee TIME AND TENSE IN SPANISH EPIC POETRY 24 Stephen Gilman BUDDHIST SYMBOLISM 36 Daisetz T. Suzuki THE LANGUAGE OF POETRY 43 Northrop Frye KINESICS AND COMMUNICATION 54 Ray L. Birdwhistell ACOUSTIC SPACE 65 Edmund Carpenter and Marshall McLuhan SPACE CONCEPTION IN PREHISTORIC ART 71 S. Giedion THE MOVING EYE 90 Jacqueline Tyrwhitt PURE COLOR 96 Fernand Leger THE PIRATE'S WARDROOM 100 Stanley Edgar Hyman THE ORAL AND WRITTEN TRADITIONS 109 David Riesman READING AND WRITING 117 H. J. Chaytor THE EFFECT OF THE PRINTED BOOK ON LANGUAGE IN THE 16TH CENTURY 125 Marshall McLuhan LINEAL AND NONLINEAL CODIFICATIONS OF REALITY 136 Dorothy Lee COMMENTS ON "LINEAL AND NON- LINEAL CODIFICATIONS OF REALITY" 155 Robert Graves THE NEW LANGUAGES 162 Edmund Carpenter MEDIA LOG 180 Marshall McLuhan CHANNEL CAT IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE 184 Jean Shepherd JOYCE'S WAKE 188 W. R. Rodgers vil viii EXPLORATIONS IN COMMUNICATION COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION 196 Gilbert Seldes THE SOVIET PRESS 200 Arthur Gibson FIVE SOVEREIGN FINGERS TAXED THE BREATH 207 Marshall McLuhan Notes on Contributors 209 INTRODUCTION The articles in this anthology come from Explorations, a journal on communications published between 1953 and 1959. All its issues are now rare collectors' items. Explorations explored the grammars of such languages as print, the newspaper format and television. It argued that revo- lutions in the packaging and distribution of ideas and feelings modified not only human relations but also sensibilities. It further argued that we are largely ignorant of literacy's role in shaping Western man, and equally unaware of the role of electronic media in shaping modern values. Literacy's vested interests were so deep that literacy itself was never examined. And the current electronic revolution is already so pervasive that we have diffi- culty in stepping outside of it and scrutinizing it objectively. But it can be done, and a fruitful approach is to examine one me- dium through another: print seen from the perspective of electronic media, or television analyzed through print. De Tocqueville, to study democracy, went to the New World, for he realized that colonial America had a huge advantage over Europe. It was able to develop and apply swiftly all the conse- quences of printing (in the book, the newspaper and, by exten- sion, the assembly line in industry and organization) because there was no backlog of obsolete technology to be liquidated first. Europeans had to struggle through a long, painful period in order to clear enough room to exploit the new print technology. Today America has the largest backlog of obsolete technology in the world: its educational and industrial establishments, built by print and methods derived from print, are vast and pervasive. Backward countries have a huge advantage over us: they x EXPLORATIONS IN COMMUNICATION now stand in relation to electronic technology much as we once stood in relation to print technology. What we plan to do or can do to brainwash ourselves of this obsolete inheritance has yet to be faced. The relevant factor in this obsolescence is the use of electronic tapes by which information is fed from several points si- multaneously and in concert; previously, with print, there had been one unit followed by another unit. With this switch from linear to cluster configuration, literacy lost its main prop in the social structure of our time, because the motivating force in the teaching of reading, and the development of a highly literate culture, was the strict relevance of that classroom discipline to every pattern and purpose in the outside world.

Load more