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

Resources and Daily Activities

  • Conference Presentations
    • PCA/ACA Conference Presentation 2022
    • PCAS/ACAS Presentation 2021
    • SEACS 2021 Presentation
    • South Atlantic MLA Conference 2022
  • Dr. Toscano’s Homepage
  • ENGL 2116-014: Introduction to Technical Communication
    • February 1st: Reflection on Workplace Messages
    • 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
  • 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 24th: Introduction to the Class
    • August 31st: Rhetoric, Words, and Composing
    • Major Assignments for ENGL 4183/5183 (Fall 2022)
      • Rhetoric of Fear
    • November 16th: Voice and Other Nebulous Writing Terms
      • Finding Dominant Rhetorical Appeals
    • November 2nd: Rhetorical Effects of Punctuation
    • November 30th: Words and Word Classes
    • November 9th: Cohesive Rhythm
    • October 12th: Choosing Adjectivals
    • October 19th: Choosing Nominals
    • October 26th: Stylistic Variations
    • October 5th: Midterm Exam
    • September 14th: Verb is the Word!
    • September 21st: Coordination and Subordination
    • September 28th: Form and Function
    • September 7th: Sentence Patterns
  • ENGL 4275: Rhetoric of Technology
    • April 13th: Authorities in Science and Technology
    • April 15th: Articles on Violence in Video Games
    • April 20th: Presentations
    • April 6th: Technology in the home
    • April 8th: Writing Discussion
    • Assignments for ENGL 4275
    • February 10th: Religion of Technology Part 3 of 3
    • February 12th: Is Love a Technology?
    • February 17th: Technology and Gender
    • February 19th: Technology and Expediency
    • February 24th: Semester Review
    • February 3rd: Religion of Technology Part 1 of 3
    • February 5th: Religion of Technology Part 2 of 3
    • January 13th: Technology and Meaning, a Humanist perspective
    • January 15th: Technology and Democracy
    • January 22nd: The Politics of Technology
    • January 27th: Discussion on Writing as Thinking
    • January 29th: Technology and Postmodernism
    • January 8th: Introduction to the Course
    • March 11th: Writing and Other Fun
    • March 16th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 1 of 2
    • March 18th: Neuromancer (1984) Day 2 of 2
    • March 23rd: Inception (2010)
    • March 25th: Writing and Reflecting Discussion
    • March 30th & April 1st: Count Zero
    • March 9th: William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984)
  • ENGL 6166: Rhetorical Theory
    • April 12th: Knoblauch. Ch. 4 and Ch. 5
    • April 19th: Jacques Derrida’s Positions
    • April 26th:  Feminisms and Rhetorics
    • April 5th: Knoblauch. Ch. 3 and More Constitutive Rhetoric
    • February 15th: Isocrates (Part 2)
    • February 1st: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Books 2 & 3
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 2
      • Aristotle’s On Rhetoric, Book 3
    • February 22nd: St. Augustine’s On Christian Doctrine [Rhetoric]
    • February 8th: Isocrates (Part 1)-2nd Half of Class
    • January 11th: Introduction to Class
    • January 18th: Plato’s Phaedrus
    • January 25th: Aristotle’s On Rhetoric Book 1
    • March 15th: Descartes, Rene, Discourse on Method
    • March 1st: Knoblauch. Ch. 1 and 2
    • March 22nd: Mary Wollstonecraft
    • March 29th: Second Wave Feminist Rhetoric
    • May 3rd: Knoblauch. Ch. 6, 7, and “Afterword”
    • Rhetorical Theory Assignments
  • ENGL/COMM/WRDS: The Rhetoric of Fear
    • 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
  • LBST 2212-124, 125, 126, & 127
    • August 21st: Introduction to Class
    • August 23rd: Humanistic Approach to Science Fiction
    • August 26th: Robots and Zombies
    • August 28th: Futurism, an Introduction
    • August 30th: R. A. Lafferty “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965)
    • December 2nd: Technological Augmentation
    • December 4th: Posthumanism
    • November 11th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2)
    • November 13th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 2 con’t)
    • November 18th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 1)
      • More Questions than Answers
    • November 1st: Games Reality Plays (part II)
    • November 20th: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Part 2)
    • November 6th: Salt Fish Girl (Week 1)
    • October 14th: More Autonomous Fun
    • October 16th: Autonomous Conclusion
    • October 21st: Sci Fi in the Domestic Sphere
    • October 23rd: Social Aphasia
    • October 25th: Dust in the Wind
    • October 28th: Gender Liminality and Roles
    • October 2nd: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • October 30th: Games Reality Plays (part I)
    • October 9th: Approaching Autonomous
      • Analyzing Prose in Autonomous
    • September 11th: The Time Machine
    • September 16th: The Alien Other
    • September 18th: Post-apocalyptic Worlds
    • September 20th: Dystopian Visions
    • September 23rd: World’s Beyond
    • September 25th: Gender Studies and Science Fiction
    • September 30th: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
    • September 4th: Science Fiction and Social Breakdown
      • More on Ellison
      • More on Forster
    • September 9th: The Time Machine
  • 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 (Spring 2021)
    • April 13th: Virtually ‘Real’ Environments
    • April 20th: Rhetoric/Composition Defines New Media
    • April 27th: Sub/Cultural Politics, Hegemony, and Agency
    • April 6th: Capitalist Realism
    • February 16: Misunderstanding the Internet
    • February 23rd: Our Public Sphere and the Media
    • February 2nd: Introduction to Cultural Studies
    • January 26th: Introduction to New Media
    • Major Assignments for New Media (Spring 2021)
    • March 16th: Identity Politics
    • March 23rd: Social Construction of Gender and Sexuality
    • March 2nd: Foundational Thinkers in Cultural Studies
    • March 30th: Hyperreality
    • March 9th: Globalization & Postmodernism
    • May 4th: Wrapping Up The Semester
      • Jodi Dean “The The Illusion of Democracy” & “Communicative Capitalism”
      • Social Construction of Sexuality
  • Science Fiction in American Culture (Summer I–2020)
    • Assignments for Science Fiction in American Culture
    • Cultural Studies and Science Fiction Films
    • June 10th: Interstellar and Exploration themes
    • June 11th: Bicentennial Man
    • June 15th: I’m Only Human…Or am I?
    • June 16th: Wall-E and Environment
    • June 17th: Wall-E (2008) and Technology
    • June 18th: Interactivity in Video Games
    • June 1st: Firefly (2002) and Myth
    • June 2nd: “Johnny Mnemonic”
    • June 3rd: “New Rose Hotel”
    • June 4th: “Burning Chrome”
    • June 8th: Conformity and Monotony
    • June 9th: Cultural Constructions of Beauty
    • May 18th: Introduction to Class
    • May 19th: American Culture, an Introduction
    • May 20th: The Matrix
    • May 21st: Gender and Science Fiction
    • May 25th: Goals for I, Robot
    • May 26th: Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot
    • May 27th: Hackers and Slackers
    • May 30th: Inception
  • Teaching Portfolio
  • Topics for Analysis
    • A Practical Editing Situation
    • American Culture, an Introduction
    • Efficiency in Writing Reviews
    • Feminism, An Introduction
    • Fordism/Taylorism
    • Frankenstein Part I
    • Frankenstein Part II
    • Futurism Introduction
    • Isaac Asimov’s “A Cult of Ignorance”
    • Langdon Winner Summary: The Politics of Technology
    • Marxist Theory (cultural analysis)
    • 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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