Unpublished 1958 paper by Marshall McLuhan, written for Harry Skornia in connection with the proposed NAEB-funded research project . Available in the NAEB archive files online.
Across the dialogues
Surfaces as McLuhan's 1958 breakthrough — media as languages, each with its own grammar — the thought Cameron reads as the exit from the cul-de-sac
The paper marks McLuhan's arrival at his leading thought for the next twenty years — that each medium must be read as a language with its own grammar.
"we need to look at all of the different media… as if each were a language with its own grammar… that's 1958, he's going to live for another 20 years, that becomes his leading thought."
The paper resolves the question McLuhan had been working since the 1940s — how to rigorously tell rhetoric from dialectic from grammar — by turning those categories onto individual media.
"this will only work if you can find a rigorous way of identifying what is rhetoric, what is dialectic, and what is grammar."
For Cameron, specifying media as grammars is what unlocks everything — the exit from the cul-de-sac.
"how do we specify what a grammar is… and that sort of unlocks everything and gets us out of the cul-de-sac."
Connections
Unpublished 1958 paper, written for Harry Skornia.
Written in connection with the proposed NAEB-funded research project; available in the NAEB archive files online.
"That sort of unlocks everything and gets us out of the cul-de-sac" — Cameron reads the grammars-of-media idea as the way out.