First, let me say that I don’t study Native American rhetorics, nor do I really focus on what classification is the vogue, PC term for a given group of people. With that in mind, please forgive me if this particular entry serves to reflect my ignorance. I do, however, feel compelled to comment on issues or race/racism/language use in New Media, given a conversation I observed today.
Several of my friends and colleagues study what’s described as the rhetoric of “New Media.” That is, new technology that changes, or has potential to change, the way people communicate, are represented, express themselves, etc. It used to be Facebook, but within the last year or so, Twitter has become the new big thing people want to discuss. I’d like to add that I really dislike Twitter on a personal level. I think it’s interesting enough as a form of media, though I wonder why it exists, especially considering the fact that many synch their Twitter accounts to Facebook, MySpace, or some other site that has a wider range of capabilities. Really, the fact that I use Twitter by itself is pretty archaic (which is a funny thing in itself). Still, I’m reasonably addicted to it, even though I hate the thing. The friends and comedians that I follow on Twitter are far too entertaining for me to give up at the moment. I haven’t used it terribly long (less than nine months), and I use is pretty sparingly, so I suspect I’ll have to get bored of it before I’m able to kick the habit.
But that was a digression.
Representation in New Media is a hot topic. How do people construct their own identity in something like Twitter? What assumptions to other users make about an individual based on the limited information provided on such site? And what does all this say about cultural ideologies that we are subject to and operate under? Much of these discussions have to do with race, sex, sexuality, colonialism, gender, and other such topics. With this in mind, take a look at the following conversation between a New Media scholar (Person 1) and a colleague who doesn’t study New Media, but does cover sex and race issues in their work:
Person 1: Reading Stuart Hall and replacing every instance of "black" with "American Indian."
Person 2: It would be interesting to see what a Brit like Hall has to say about AmerIndians in terms of race, to see what their views are.
Person 1: my pov only, "AmerIndians" is probably not a label you want to use.
Person 2: Well thats Twitter shorthand forcing abbreviations.In Twitterspeak whats the dif betw "American Indian" & "AmerIndian"? Am I dumb?
First, to help put this in context: the “Stuart Hall” mentioned by Person 1 is a newer version of this book, which is
really quite interesting: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. (Though one should note that this work isn't really "by" Hall, but is rather a collection that includes some works by him and some articles that discuss his works).
First, I take issue with the reading proposed by Person 1 because Hall is British, talking about racism in relation to black people living in England. Definitely a different context when considering any oppressed group in the US. Second, I stand by what Person 2 has to say; it would be interesting to see what a British scholar has to say about American Indians because they have a different perspective than American scholars.
I’m not sure, though, that Person 1 understands Person 2’s initial response, however. Person 1 seems to think that her colleague is endorsing the use of, or typically uses the term “Amerindian” as interchangeable with “American Indian.” I would tend to agree that using a term like “Amerindian” isn’t really a good idea. It’s kind of like saying “Afro-American” or something like that (which, as a side note appears in the first edition of a very popular text, The Rhetorical Tradition. A surprise, considering the fact that I assumed that term had died out by the 1990s). However, Person 1 really should have noticed the difference between “Amerindian” and “AmerIndian” and taken in to consideration the fact that Twitter often forces unnatural abbreviations, misspellings, and other space saving techniques because it only allows the user to type a maximum 140 characters per entry. This is why, in his second entry, Person 2 uses shortened versions of words such as “betw” instead of “between” and “dif” instead of “difference.” Why choose to read one term as a potentially-offensive abbreviation and read the rest as Twitterspeak-forced abbreviations that are common?
This blog isn’t meant as an attack on Person 1. Rather it’s an example of something I think New Media scholars need to be very careful of. That being the fact that language used on sites such as Twitter, like text messaging, are not necessarily mirror reflections of what a person is communicating. One must use translation skills to see what the person in question is saying as opposed to what they are typing. For example, how should a text or Twitter message that reads “wut r u doing?” be translated? If it is translated literally, it makes no sense. “r” and “u” are not words, but they do mean something. We all know this. And I’m not typically one to criticize scholars of social concerns for looking at something too closely, but when discussing New Media, especially Twitter, one must be aware of the constraints that force particular language use. After all, no one forces people to use insensitive or offensive terms in interpersonal speech. It’s a completely different story when discussing Twitter in particular.
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