Situation and Context, rewritten

I suppose this title doesn't necessarily bring to bear what I may talk about in this post (and I've always believed the title entry box should fall after the body entry, per HCI/usability/cognitive design/composition pedagogy, but I digress), but I thought I'd start with Krista and our discussion of situation and context in terms of distinction.

It seems that a rather crude distinction can be made in terms of paraphrasing attribution, "Logie says that the author has not changed over time," direct attribution, "Logie said that 'the author has not changed since Quintilian,'" and indirect attribution "according to many 19th century authors, the author and the text were inextricably connected" and outside "conditions" within an individual speech act. In all kinds of communication, it seems, that there are strings (using 'links' as a buzz word here doesn't get us where we want to be) connecting previous speech acts and positing future speech acts (anticipation).

Ex: In my novel, I have channeled, for example, Hemingway, Wittgenstein, Gorgias, and Anna Nicole Smith, and 19th century society as writing influences, characters, and representing cultural values. If I was writing poetry, the connection between Wittgenstein and myself would be very indirect. Maybe Wittegenstein's ideas shaped the way I express myself, but it is still my expression. Conversely, if I write a novel, I may use Anna Nicole Smith as a character, and amongst her drug-induced hazes, she will probably stand out as a "Anna Nicole Smith"-like character. The values and attitudes I introduce, for example, from a 1901 uneducated young male factory worker, as such might be recognizable. Here, the author seems to take the backseat to society or social characters driving. Though other areas of the novel might be wholly artistic, much like the poem, the novel allows a higher level of attributory existence.

In a research paper or philosophical work, the relationship between texts seems more direct and much farther on the end of attributory. I think that situation represents this "tension" between texts or between the novel and its attributory characters. In this sense, I think we can demarcate situation as existing as the attributory environment, whereas the "context" offers not only heteroglossia (voices, including several speech acts and actions) but also the general environment of interactions and feel for the author (kairos).

Switching gears, I thought I might wax philosophical on Derrida. I wonder if "time stamping" or "snap-shotting" a text's existence really does offer a structuralist interpretation, per se. Would we see Gorgias delivering his "Encomium to Helen" (of course, assuming this particular speech was not delivered according to a textual script) as structural? Whereas we assume the fixity of the text, it seems that authorial influence, situational influence, and contextual influence (what I think we can all lump into 'kairos') influencing the author in writing the text leaves its mark on the text at the moment the pen leaves the paper, so to speak. I think that this mediation between the presence of the Author and the existence of the Text, not this picture of, for example, the newest "ann rice" Novel [note intentional downplaying of the author] floating in a vacuum, but rather Ann Rice's signature splashed across the dust cover, novel swimming in a contained box of its own time-captured context, the Artifact of the artificer/s.

I don't think it's surprising here, as I've already mentioned kairos, to make a sweeping connection from Gorgias to Derrida. Because of kairos as a constant, ever-changing "time and due measure" (according to Kinneavy), it seems that the speech act itself (the encomium in total) also exists in its own time-captured context box. As Krista mentions in an earlier post, Gorgias' "Encomium" could clearly be recognized as Gorgias' encomium, and Gorgias probably saw himself as the original author. Regardless, individuals repeated his encomium, not necessarily word-for-word, but potentially with similar rhetorical forms or ear ticklers to make it recognizable or reminiscent of Gorgias' "Encomium."

Though this conception seems more readily accepted in oral cultures (the speech itself, as being a figment of a well-honed yet imperfect memory, changes each time its told), how does Gorgias personally giving the speech differ from a personal signature on a book? Are both and/or all structuralist? Does Ong's secondary orality fit in here somewhere? Let me know what you think...