Captivated by Capturing Sound

Thomas Edison invented the phonograph in 1877, and people were amazed and captivated by the capturing of sound. The ability to make something heretofore ephemeral into something permanent resulted in a paradigm shift in possibilities.

Now, over a century later, after innumerable sound recordings, we still face the “hierarchical relationship between written and spoken forms” (Shankar, 2006, p. 374). Likewise, Shipka (2006) remarks that a multimodal theory of composition does not take talk and writing as assumed starting points—and that we need to consider the potential of sound. Institutional traditions and power structures have (and still do) maintain written expression as the legitimate compositional form. What sorts of power shifts would have to occur for something like “spriting” to gain legitimacy?

Shankar (2006) observes that the “ability to write has become completely identified with intellectual power, creating a graphocentric myopia concerning the very nature and transfer of knowledge” (p. 374). Yet, there was a brief time in American history when that wasn’t as true as it is now, during the “lyceum movement,” when lecturers traveled on circuits—people like Emerson—and people would attend the speeches for entertainment and self-edification. And here we are now at some sort of new industrial revolution, in which our media require new composition theory as we find new ways to entertain and educate ourselves and others.

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