Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Rhetoric & Technical Communication
Aaron A. Toscano, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Dept. of English

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Charlotte Debate
  • Conference Presentations
    • Critical Theory/MRG 2023 Presentation
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS 2024 Presentation
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SAMLA 2024 Presentation
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • SEACS 2022 Presentation
    • SEACS 2023 Presentation
    • SEACS 2024 Presentation
    • SEACS 2025 Presentation
    • SEWSA 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • April 10th: Analyzing Ethics
      • Ethical Dilemmas for Homework
      • Ethical Dilemmas to Ponder
      • Mapping Our Personal Ethics
    • April 12th: Writing Ethically
    • April 17th: Ethics Continued
    • April 19th: More on Ethics in Writing and Professional Contexts
    • April 24th: Mastering Oral Presentations
    • April 3rd: Research Fun
    • April 5th: More Research Fun
      • Epistemology and Other Fun Research Ideas
      • Research
    • February 13th: Introduction to User Design
    • February 15th: Instructions for Users
      • Making Résumés and Cover Letters More Effective
    • February 1st: Reflection on Workplace Messages
    • February 20th: The Rhetoric of Technology
    • February 22nd: Social Constructions of Technology
    • February 6th: Plain Language
    • January 11th: More Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Audience & Purpose
    • January 23rd: Résumés and Cover Letters
      • Duty Format for Résumés
      • Peter Profit’s Cover Letter
    • January 25th: More on Résumés and Cover Letters
    • January 30th: Achieving a Readable Style
      • Euphemisms
      • Prose Practice for Next Class
      • Prose Revision Assignment
      • Revising Prose: Efficiency, Accuracy, and Good
      • Sentence Clarity
    • January 9th: Introduction to the Class
    • Major Assignments
    • March 13th: Introduction to Information Design
    • March 15th: More on Information Design
    • March 20th: Reporting Technical Information
    • March 27th: The Great I, Robot Analysis
    • May 1st: Final Portfolio Requirements
  • ENGL 4182/5182: Information Design & Digital Publishing
    • August 21st: Introduction to the Course
      • Rhetorical Principles of Information Design
    • August 28th: Introduction to Information Design
      • Prejudice and Rhetoric
      • Robin Williams’s Principles of Design
    • Classmates Webpages (Fall 2017)
    • December 4th: Presentations
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4182/5182 (Fall 2017)
    • November 13th: More on Color
      • Designing with Color
      • Important Images
    • November 20th: Extra-Textual Elements
    • November 27th: Presentation/Portfolio Workshop
    • November 6th: In Living Color
    • October 16th: Type Fever
      • Typography
    • October 23rd: More on Type
    • October 2nd: MIDTERM FUN!!!
    • October 30th: Working with Graphics
      • Beerknurd Calendar 2018
    • September 11th: Talking about Design without Using “Thingy”
      • Theory, theory, practice
    • September 18th: The Whole Document
    • September 25th: Page Design
  • ENGL 4183/5183: Editing with Digital Technologies
    • August 23rd: Introduction to the Class
    • August 30th: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • December 6th: Words and Word Classes
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2023)
    • November 15th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • November 1st: Stylistic Variations
    • November 29th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Rhetoric of Fear (prose example)
    • November 8th: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • October 11th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 18th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 4th: Form and Function
    • September 13th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 27th: Coordination and Subordination
      • Parallelism
    • September 6th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275/WRDS 4011: “Rhetoric of Technology”
    • April 23rd: Presentation Discussion
    • April 2nd: Artificial Intelligence Discussion, machine (super)learning
    • April 4th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • April 9th: Tom Wheeler’s The History of Our Future (Part I)
    • February 13th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 15th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 1st: Technology and Postmodernism
    • February 20th: Technology and Gender
    • February 22nd: Technology, Expediency, Racism
    • February 27th: Writing Workshop, etc.
    • February 6th: The Religion of Technology (Part 1 of 3)
    • February 8th: Religion of Technology (Part 2 of 3)
    • January 11th: Introduction to the Course
    • January 16th: Isaac Asimov’s “Cult of Ignorance”
    • January 18th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 23rd: Technology and Democracy
    • January 25th: The Politics of Technology
    • January 30th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • Major Assignments for Rhetoric of Technology
    • March 12th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 3
    • March 14th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 3
    • March 19th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 3 of 3
    • March 21st: Writing and Reflecting: Research and Synthesizing
    • March 26th: Artificial Intelligence and Risk
    • March 28th: Artificial Intelligence Book Reviews
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 11th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 18th: Feminisms, Rhetorics, Herstories
    • April 25th:  Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • April 4th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • February 15th: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • February 29th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • February 8th: Isocrates
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 1
    • March 14th: Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women
    • March 21st: Feminist Rhetoric(s)
    • March 28th: Knoblauch’s Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • April 11th: McCarthyism Part 1
    • April 18th: McCarthyism Part 2
    • April 25th: The Satanic Panic
    • April 4th: Suspense/Horror/Fear in Film
    • February 14th: Fascism and Other Valentine’s Day Atrocities
    • February 21st: Fascism Part 2
    • February 7th: Fallacies Part 3 and American Politics Part 2
    • January 10th: Introduction to the Class
    • January 17th: Scapegoats & Conspiracies
    • January 24th: The Rhetoric of Fear and Fallacies Part 1
    • January 31st: Fallacies Part 2 and American Politics Part 1
    • Major Assignments
    • March 28th: Nineteen Eighty-Four
    • March 7th: Fascism Part 3
    • May 2nd: The Satanic Panic Part II
      • Rhetoric of Fear and Job Losses
  • Intercultural Communication on the Amalfi Coast
    • Pedagogical Theory for Study Abroad
  • LBST 2213-110: Science, Technology, and Society
    • August 22nd: Science and Technology from a Humanistic Perspective
    • August 24th: Science and Technology, a Humanistic Approach
    • August 29th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 2
    • August 31st: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 3 and 4
    • December 5th: Video Games and Violence, a more nuanced view
    • November 14th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes. (1964) Ch. 27-end
    • November 16th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Preface-Ch. 8
    • November 21st: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Ch. 9-Ch. 16
    • November 28th: Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. Ch. 17-Ch. 24
    • November 30th: Violence in Video Games
    • November 7th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes Ch. 1-17
    • November 9th: Boulle, Pierre. Planet of the Apes, Ch. 18-26
    • October 12th: Lies Economics Tells
    • October 17th: Brief Histories of Medicine, Salerno, and Galen
    • October 19th: Politicizing Science and Medicine
    • October 24th: COVID-19 Facial Covering Rhetoric
    • October 26th: Wells, H. G. Time Machine. Ch. 1-5
    • October 31st: Wells, H. G. The Time Machine Ch. 6-The End
    • October 3rd: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 12th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 7 and Conclusion
    • September 19th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Prefaces and Ch. 1
    • September 26th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 2
    • September 28th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem at Large (Technology), Ch. 5 and 6
    • September 7th: Collins & Pinch’s The Golem (Science), Ch. 5 and 6
  • New Media: Gender, Culture, Technology
    • August 19: Introduction to the Course
    • August 21: More Introduction
    • August 26th: Consider Media-ted Arguments
    • August 28th: Media & American Culture
    • November 13th: Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Part 3
    • November 18th: Feminism’s Non-Monolithic Nature
    • November 20th: Compulsory Heterosexuality
    • November 25th: Presentation Discussion
    • November 4: Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Part 1
    • November 6: Hank Green’s An Absolutely Remarkable Thing, Part 2
    • October 16th: No Class Meeting
    • October 21: Misunderstanding the Internet, Part 1
    • October 23: Misunderstanding the Internet, Part 2
    • October 28: The Internet, Part 3
    • October 2nd: Hauntology
    • October 30th: Social Construction of Sexuality
    • October 7:  Myth in American Culture
    • September 11: Critical Theory
    • September 16th: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • September 18th: Postmodernism, Part 1
    • September 23rd: Postmodernism, Part 2
    • September 25th: Postmodernism, Part 3
    • September 30th: Capitalist Realism
    • September 4th: The Medium is the Message!
    • September 9: The Public Sphere
  • Science Fiction and American Culture
    • April 10th: Octavia Butler’s Dawn (Parts III and IV)
    • April 15th: The Dispossessed (Part I)
    • April 17th: The Dispossessed (Part II)
    • April 1st: Interstellar (2014)
    • April 22nd: In/Human Beauty
    • April 24: Witch Hunt Politics (Part I)
    • April 29th: Witch Hunt Politics (Part II)
    • April 3rd: Catch Up and Start Octavia Butler
    • April 8th: Octavia Butler’s Dawn (Parts I and II)
    • February 11: William Gibson, Part II
    • February 18: Use Your Illusion I
    • February 20: Use Your Illusion II
    • February 25th: Firefly and Black Mirror
    • February 4th: Writing Discussion: Ideas & Arguments
    • February 6th: William Gibson, Part I
    • January 14th: Introduction to to “Science Fiction and American Culture”
    • January 16th: More Introduction
    • January 21st: Robots and Zombies
    • January 23rd: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • January 28th: American Studies Introduction
    • January 30th: World’s Beyond
    • March 11th: All Systems Red
    • March 13th: Zone One (Part 1)
      • Zone One “Friday”
    • March 18th: Zone One, “Saturday”
    • March 20th: Zone One, “Sunday”
    • March 25th: Synthesizing Sources; Writing Gooder
      • Writing Discussion–Outlines
    • March 27th: Inception (2010)
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • How to Lie with Statistics
    • How to Make an Argument with Sources
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Judith Butler, an Introduction to Gender/Sexuality Studies
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Oral Presentations
    • Oratory and Argument Analysis
    • Our Public Sphere
    • Postmodernism Introduction
    • Protesting Confederate Place
    • Punctuation Refresher
    • QT, the Existential Robot
    • Religion of Technology Discussion
    • Rhetoric, an Introduction
      • Analyzing the Culture of Technical Writer Ads
      • Rhetoric of Technology
      • Visual Culture
      • Visual Perception
      • Visual Perception, Culture, and Rhetoric
      • Visual Rhetoric
      • Visuals for Technical Communication
      • World War I Propaganda
    • The Great I, Robot Discussion
      • I, Robot Short Essay Topics
    • The Rhetoric of Video Games: A Cultural Perspective
      • Civilization, an Analysis
    • The Sopranos
    • Why Science Fiction?
    • Zombies and Consumption Satire
  • Video Games & American Culture
    • April 14th: Phallocentrism
    • April 21st: Video Games and Neoliberalism
    • April 7th: Video Games and Conquest
    • Assignments for Video Games & American Culture
    • February 10th: Aesthetics and Culture
    • February 17th: Narrative and Catharsis
    • February 24th: Serious Games
    • February 3rd: More History of Video Games
    • January 13th: Introduction to the course
    • January 20th: Introduction to Video Game Studies
    • January 27th: Games & Culture
      • Marxism for Video Game Analysis
      • Postmodernism for Video Game Analysis
    • March 24th: Realism, Interpretation(s), and Meaning Making
    • March 31st: Feminist Perspectives and Politics
    • March 3rd: Risky Business?

Contact Me

Office: Fretwell 255F
Email: atoscano@uncc.edu
Topics for Analysis » Fordism/Taylorism

Fordism/Taylorism

Below is an excerpt from a wonderful book on the rhetoric of technology. The section below focuses on Taylor’s contribution to industrial efficiency. The comparison between Taylor’s text and F. T. Marinetti’s Futurist texts (avant-garde modernism) demonstrates how pervasive the push for efficiency was for early 20th century societies. For class, let’s concentrate on the red text. References are below the excerpt.

From pp. 122-124 in Marconi’s Wireless and the Rhetoric of a New Technology:

Although denying the past and stressing progress(ion) were avant-garde characteristics, these were also the tropes of business. Taylor (1911/1967) asserted that “great gain, both to employers and employés,” will come “from the substitution of scientific rule-of-thumb methods in even the smallest details of the work of every trade” (p. 24, emphasis added). Taylor’s text was also a manifesto of sorts. He, as did Marinetti, placed the onus on the individual to eliminate sloth and inefficiency. Inefficient workers were guilty of dereliction of duty. Taylor argued that “[t]he enormous saving of time and therefore increase in output…can be fully realized only after one has personally seen the improvement’’ of Taylor’s scientific application (p. 24). One major goal of Taylorism was efficiency from ‘‘[t]he general adoption of scientific management’’ to achieve ‘‘the increase, both in the necessities and luxuries of life, which becomes available for the whole country’’ (p. 142). Also, another goal would be “the elimination of almost all causes for dispute and disagreement between [management and workmen]” (p. 142). According to Taylor, applying scientific principles to the factory led to efficiency and benefits all because science touched all workers and helped produce goods efficiently. Likewise, Marinetti found a similar attitudinal change because ‘‘Futurism is grounded in the great discoveries of science’’ (1913/1973, p. 96, italics mine). For both men, science was a good organizational strategy for either factories or art.

Although Taylor (1911/1967) directly addressed managers and workers, the results of his system were to be a benefit to all industrialized nations: ‘‘Is it not the duty of those who are acquainted with these facts, to exert themselves to make the whole community realize this [study of scientific management’s] importance’’ (p. 144). Taylor’s text had a certain avant-garde quality inherent in its hyper-industrial fervor, but it was hardly the polemic of Marinetti’s art. Taylorism (and its famous put-in-practice system, Fordism) adhered to early twentieth-century ideology—speed, efficiency, evolution, and ahistoricity; it was, in fact, a product of the time period. Besides promoting progress, Taylor chastised his inefficient audience as morally defunct, thus satisfying Renato Poggioli’s (1968) definition of the avant-garde:
‘‘Ideology, therefore, is always a social phenomenon. In the case of the avant-garde, it is an argument of self-assertion or self-defense used by a society in the strict sense against society in the larger sense’’ (p. 4). Taylor’s manifesto was a product of the time, and a rubric for adhering to the value of efficiency. Factories needed only follow the principles Taylor put forth, and they would assert their productive dominance in the market. Taylor advocated his “primer’s” value for the larger society would be modernization, the same argument Marinetti made when he advocated “killing” any connection to the past would help Italian modernization.

I am not arguing, however, that Taylor shared Marinetti’s ahistorical stance against cultural markers and artifacts. While Marinetti’s work was prone to violence, exaggeration, and performance, Taylor appeared more practical, systematic, and industrious. Taylor privileged the worker and management’s role in maintaining a well-organized firm. Ultimately, he does not fit Poggioli’s (1968) definition of an avant-garde artist because his work was not absorbed into ‘‘the demagogic moment,’’ which Poggioli argued fueled the ‘‘[avant-garde’s] tendency toward self-advertisement, propaganda, and proselytizing’’ (p. 34). Although Taylor’s lack of gross exaggeration and ferocious polemical stances mitigated his avant-garde status, his importance for gauging industrial practice is without question: His text existed as a heuristic for industrial progress. Simply put, progression toward increased production and profits mirrored part of Marconi and the popular press’s rhetoric of technology. The wireless, besides often being ‘‘praised’’ for its potential, reflected human advancement and commercial/industrial success. In this historical moment, Taylor (1911/1967) claimed,

our larger wastes of human effort, which go on every day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed, or inefficient, and which Mr. [Theodore] Roosevelt refers to as a lack of ‘national efficiency,’ are less visible, less tangible, and are vaguely appreciated (p. 5).

Marinetti provided a symbolic transition. Instead of looking to the past’s supposed
‘‘summit’’ or ‘‘fullness of time’’ as a goal for avoiding ‘‘a fatal infelicitous fall
back to barbarism’’ (Poggioli 1968, pp. 72–73), Futurism experimented with the
new.

These new experiments, although brash and violent, glorified new technologies that were unconsciously accepted by industrial cultures. Of course, a cultural studies lens cannot identify all values a society in a particular time period had. However, prevailing values appear during cultural studies research. Technologies expose ideological tenets because they do not come to be without group acceptance. Because researchers have the benefit (or burden) of historical hindsight, we know that the wireless extended the reach of communication—it was heralded as a genius product of modernity. Likewise, automobiles became accepted as beneficial technologies, ‘‘liberating’’ individuals in industrialized nations because of their potential for allowing greater mobility. Today, wireless transmissions, automobiles, and other technical objects are more than just tools; these technologies are prostheses for human activity in industrial, hyper-technological societies.

Technologies do not have to be accepted universally in order to become realized. We cannot claim every member of a society uses such technologies only that they are popularly seen as efficient, necessary products we cannot live without. As long as large enough groups accept a certain technology, these tools will be seen as useful and, therefore, be realized. In fact, these technologies (and “universal” technologies like computers, PDAs, or mobile phones) can really only be said to be prostheses for middle, working, and wealthy classes. Claiming ‘‘everyone has a mobile phone’’ marks the chauvinistic impulse in dominant society to ignore the material conditions of poorer groups. Such chauvinism appeared in Futurism specifically and avant-gardism generally, which “is by nature solitary and aristocratic” (Bontempelli as cited in Poggioli 1968, p. 39). Marinetti claimed “I do not care for the comprehension of the multitude,” and that poetry, avant-garde or traditional also “requires a special speaker if it is to be understood” (1913/1973, p. 106). Likewise, because new technologies provide markers for civilization, a citizen must acquire the appropriate artifacts to be in accord with the well-to-do members. Consumerism allows individuals of any background to “buy into” the aristocratic image. An aristocratic technology such as the wireless held a certain regal aura because of how favorable relevant social groups rhetorically constructed it. Marconi and the popular press documented when royalty and national leaders used the wireless, constructing it as an aristocratic or ‘‘elevated’’ technology. However, for a small fee, any individual could send a wireless telegram (Baker 1902, p. 12), allowing him or her access to an aspect of an aristocratic lifestyle.


Baker, R. S. (1902). Marconi’s achievement: Telegraphing across the ocean without wires.
McClure’s Magazine, 18(4), 4–12.

Bondenella, P., & Bondenella, J. C. (1979). Dictionary of Italian literature. Westport:
Greenwood Press.

Marinetti, F. T. (1913/1973). Destruction of syntax—[Wireless imagination]—Words-in-freedom. In U. Apollonio (Ed.), Futurist manifestos (pp. 95–106). Boston, MA: MFA
Publications. (R. W. Flint, Trans).

Poggioli, R. (1968). The theory of the avant-garde. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press. (G. Fitzgerald, Trans.).

Taylor, F. W. (1967). The principles of scientific management. New York: Norton. (Original work published in 1911).

Toscano, A. A. (2012). Marconi’s wireless and the rhetoric of a new technology. Dordrecht: Springer.

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