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A Rhetorical Theory of Attention for Mediated Communication THE ATTENTION SITUATION: A RHETORICAL THEORY OF ATTENTION FOR MEDIATED COMMUNICATION by David Benjamin Landes Bachelor of Arts, University California at Santa Barbara, 2007 Master of Arts, University of Pittsburgh, 2009 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2015 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH KENNETH P. DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by David Benjamin Landes It was defended on April 27, 2015 and approved by Dr. Richard Lanham, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, UCLA Dr. John Poulakos, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Dr. Gordon Mitchell, Associate Professor, Department of Communication Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Brent Malin, Associate Professor, Department of Communication ii Copyright © by David Benjamin Landes 2015 iii THE ATTENTION SITUATION: A RHETORICAL THEORY OF ATTENTION FOR MEDIATED COMMUNICATION David Benjamin Landes, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2015 What are the available means of attention in a given situation? This dissertation offers a hermeneutic for everyday life that capacitates people to answer this question. The field of communication has long recognized how new technologies challenge our assumptions about how attention operates and how they urge us to reformulate the language we use to think about attention. Rather than provide one attention vocabulary suited to one media environment, this project takes a generative approach that aims to continually refresh our notions about attention at the rate of technological change. To this end, I propose a way of talking about attention as a situational process that must be described pluralistically through a rotation of vocabularies. I offer the “attention situation” as a guiding framework for how interdisciplinary discourses can coherently converge upon any given situation. Then, I illustrate the attention situation framework through a distinctly rhetorical approach to theorizing attention. Paralleling the idea that rhetoric is an architectonic art, attention too is the architecting of material, symbolic, and intentional processes. I illustrate this through many examples from paradigmatic thinkers in media and rhetorical theory. The works of Marshall McLuhan and Kenneth Burke help exemplify how the attention situation can be used to highlight the communication-sourced aspects of attention. From these attention concepts, I formulate “dramatic ecology” as a paradigm of ways that attention is formed within larger socio-technological dialectics, which provides a finer language to assess communicative situations than that of science’s mechanistic behaviorisms. The attention situation, dramatic ecology, and the material-symbolic-intentional iv dimensions of attention together demonstrate how attention’s cross-disciplinary discourses can be adapted into situational praxis. This rhetorical approach to attention offers a generative toolkit for continually re-theorizing attention through the changes ahead in technology, society, and culture. v TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................. 1 2.0 WHAT IS ATTENTION? ............................................................................................................... 10 2.1 WHAT HAS ATTENTION BEEN? ............................................................................ 12 2.1.1 Scientific Conceptions of Attention ......................................................................... 12 2.1.2 A Select History of Attention and Communication ................................................ 23 2.2 WHAT CAN ATTENTION BE?: PROJECT OUTLINE ......................................... 35 2.2.1 The Three Dimensions of Attention ......................................................................... 35 2.2.2 Two Perspectives on Attention Introduced: Dramatic Ecology ............................ 48 2.2.2.1 McLuhan and Ecology ................................................................................... 49 2.2.2.2 Burke and Dramatism .................................................................................... 54 2.2.2.3 Dramatic Ecology of Attention ...................................................................... 58 2.2.3 The Attention Situation ............................................................................................ 62 3.0 THE MATERIAL DIMENSION OF ATTENTION .................................................................... 68 3.1 MATERIAL ECOLOGY .............................................................................................. 71 3.1.1 Media .......................................................................................................................... 77 3.1.2 Sense Capability ........................................................................................................ 83 3.1.3 Sense Ratios ............................................................................................................... 91 3.1.4 Environment .............................................................................................................. 97 3.2 MATERIAL DRAMATISM ....................................................................................... 102 3.2.1 Recalcitrance ........................................................................................................... 105 3.2.2 Orientation ............................................................................................................... 109 3.2.3 Form ......................................................................................................................... 113 3.2.4 Motives ..................................................................................................................... 120 3.2.5 Re-Orientation ......................................................................................................... 124 3.3 CONCLUSION: THE MATERIAL DIMENSION IN DRAMATIC ECOLOGY 128 4.0 THE SYMBOLIC DIMENSION OF ATTENTION .................................................................. 131 4.1 SYMBOLIC ECOLOGY ............................................................................................ 135 4.1.1 Metaphorizing the Material ................................................................................... 135 4.1.2 Language .................................................................................................................. 140 4.1.3 Attention Clichés and Archetypes ......................................................................... 144 4.1.4 Anti-Environment ................................................................................................... 152 4.2 SYMBOLIC DRAMATISM ....................................................................................... 163 4.2.1 Perspectivizing the Material................................................................................... 165 4.2.2 Language .................................................................................................................. 169 4.2.3 Semantic and Poetic Meaning, Scientistic and Dramatistic Use ......................... 173 4.2.4 Terministic Screens ................................................................................................. 186 4.3 CONCULSION: THE SYMBOLIC DIMENSION IN DRAMATIC ECOLOGY 197 5.0 THE INTENTIONAL DIMENSION OF ATTENTION ............................................................ 202 5.1 INTENTIONAL ECOLOGY ..................................................................................... 206 vi 5.1.1 The Ecological Hermeneutic - Interpretive Method ............................................ 209 5.1.2 Sense-Making .......................................................................................................... 217 5.1.3 Rational Detachment and Integral Awareness ..................................................... 223 5.1.4 Tetradic Attention ................................................................................................... 232 5.2 INTENTIONAL DRAMATISM ................................................................................ 238 5.2.1 The Dramatistic Hermeneutic - Interpretive Method ......................................... 239 5.2.2 Resymbolization and Reorientation ...................................................................... 241 5.2.3 Pentadic Attention ................................................................................................... 244 5.3 CONCULSION: THE INTENTIONAL DIMENSION IN DRAMATIC ECOLOGY ..................................................................................................................................... 251 6.0 CONCLUSION .............................................................................................................................. 253 WORKS CITED...................................................................................................................................... 258 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. McLuhan’s Material Environment .............................................................................................. 76 Figure 2. McLuhan’s Material Environment .............................................................................................. 97 Figure 3. McLuhan’s Material Environment and Attentional Modes ......................................................
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