Rhetoric of Closed Captioning

Rhetoric of Closed Captioning
Which Sounds are Significant? Towards a Rhetoric of Closed Captioning

SEAN ZDENEK (Texas Tech) offers a way of thinking about closed captioning that goes beyond quality as visual design to consider captioning as a rhetorical and interpretative practice that warrants further analysis and criticism from scholars in the humanities and social sciences. A rhetorical perspective recasts quality in terms of meaning, genre, audience, context, and purpose. Through numerous clips from popular TV shows and movies, and with a special focus on non-speech sounds and captions, Zdenek addresses a set of topics that are central to an understanding of the effectiveness, significance, and reception of captions: overcaptioning, undercaptioning, captioned irony, (in)significant sounds, localized captions and language variety, captioned silences, genre and episodic awareness, cultural literacy, sonic allusions, the backchannel, and the myth of objective captioning.

Sean Zdenek is an associate professor of technical communication and rhetoric in the Department of English at Texas Tech University. His lecture is Monday, February 20 at 4:00 p.m. in Denney Hall 311, 164 W. 17th Avenue. It is open to the public. Contact: Susan, hanson.94@osu.edu.

Immediately following the lecture, Professor Zdenek will lead a 2-hour workshop for faculty, staff, and students on subtitling. Advance registration is required. Contact: Brenda, brueggemann.1@osu.edu.

Co-sponsored by LiteracyStudies@OSU, Disability Studies, the American Sign Language Program, and the Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Program.

Date and time: February 20, 2012
4:00 PM
Location: Area on Campus: Denney 311
Contact: Susan Hanson
Phone Number: 247-6539