Darren Wershler-Henry opens his essay Technologies of Dictation: Typewriting and the Toronto Research Group with an ostensibly straightforward description of the process of collaborative typewriting: Someone dictates; someone types. Sometimes they trade places. Sometimes the typist transcribes the dictation faithfully; sometimes the typist edits and emends the words as he types them. The compositional process the text describes (with each individual taking turns as dictator and amanuensis, and the amanuensis occasionally changing the substance of the dictation) is variable to the point that it begins to affect the grammar itself.
It is at the level of grammar in this passage and the context in which it appears that things become complex. But it’s worth working through those complications now because they reappear in virtually any description of someone typing. (This discussion will require a short digression into the nature of dictation and authorship, but the status of the author is also something that’s worth scrutinizing because the mechanics of typewriting alter it in interesting ways).
Darren Wershler-Henry / Technologies of Dictation: Typewriting and the Toronto Research Group
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other islands in this text-fed stream
