Tesi di D. Fiormonte

[11-3-1996]

The Influence of the Computer on Writing: Theory and Experiments
(summary of unpublished dissertation, University of Rome "La Sapienza", April 1994)

This research deals with the influence of the computer on the writing process and particularly about its effect on Italian contemporary prose.

The work is divided into two parts: Theory (I: Building a theory of computer writing) and Experiments (II: The tool-text relationship: case studies of Italian writers). The section on theory dwells upon the relationship between writing, literature and technology, attempting to explain the special tie which exists between the medium and the creation. It follows a series of experiments conducted in this field in France (Anis-Lebrave 1991) and the USA (Bridwell 1987, Hilligoss-Selfe 1990, Halio 1990, etc.) and a survey of the theoretical debate over the problem of electronic writing which has been going on in Italy and abroad since the early 80's.

The central chapter of part one attempts to provide a classification of the writing phenomena which occurs when we change from traditional tools to the use of the computer. As the final product of writing differs from the act of writing we can divide the influence of the computer into three groups: reading, writing and production.

* READING: limited visualization; dispersion of attention because of the high pulverization of the text; EFFECT: possible negative influence on understanding; lack of comparison (Popper-Eccles 1981: 563); decreased access to text memory; loss of coherence.

* WRITING: planning flexibility; polished look of writing; micro-editing; high granularity of written text (Eco 1986); secondary orality (idioms, stock phrases, etc.); EFFECT: fluency (synonyms, better lay-out, spelling, etc.); scarce tendency to reformulation of the text (conservatività, cf. Scavetta 1992 and Fiormonte 1993); prose "shrinkage"; waste of depth (expressive stereotypes, stylistic iteration); loss of the memory of the whole text; loss of consistency.

* PRODUCTION: increase of individual production; desktop publishing; increase of the lenght of the documents (electronic edition, collective electronic edition, phenomena of "textualization" (Gallino 1991: 11); incompleteness of the electronic text (Landow-Delany 1991: 13); the development of procedures of production and access to the knowledge changes the concept of copyright (Lyman 1989: 30); spread and formalization of the "enframing" (mise en abyme) as a literary genre (Benedetti 1991); multisequential vs. hierarchical processes (Vacca 1965: 97).

The first part is concluded by a short excursus on the theories of the Hypertext where I try to rebuild the theoretical and practical origins of this new writing form, starting with some mainstreams of the modern contemporary European novel (cf. Landow 1992 and Barrett 1988).

We will consider now the analysis made in the second part on word-processed texts which some authors allowed me to observe and study.

1) VINCENZO CERAMI

Vincenzo Cerami is a scriptwriter, a poet and a narrator from whom we received a series of tales in two versions: a first one published in a newspaper ("Il Messaggero") in the summer of 1991 and a second revised and corrected version collected in a volume in 1993 (La gente, Torino, Einaudi, 1993). We have various intermediate editing of both the versions. I compared the various editions noting down the differences in a traditional way --collation, critic reading, etc.-- and with computer software (punctuation, incipit of phrases, division of phrases by length and their percentage in the texts). The program of the analysis was obtained working with UNIX (realization by Lanfranco Fabriani from data processing services of the Faculty of Letters). Finally, I effected linguistic and stylistic research (e. g. the use and the frequency of the stylistic stereotypes) inside a corpus of selected works.

2) FRANCESCA SANVITALE

From Francesca Sanvitale we have a brief portion of the recent novel completely written by computer, Il figlio dell'Impero, in four drafts, and the work in progress (eight drafts) of an entire tale, Orient-Express, published in "Tuttestorie", 3\4, November 1991, pp. 62-7. The eight passages coincide to the same number of developmental stages and they are the result of a kind of "post-variantism" experiment by means of which I tried to find the traces of revision and writing.

At the beginning and the end of each work session the author saved or printed for me a certain portion of the document in the state it was at that time. With these eight drafts --from the first lines to the definitive editing-- F. Sanvitale let me make a decisive operation: the description "frame by frame" of the various phases of the writing process. Every sheet in my possession with corrections, additions and hand-writing variants represents a stage of the development of the text and gives us the possibility to delineate the composing strategy of the writer.

3) ROBERTO VACCA

R. Vacca is the author of best-seller essays and fictional novels and began to use the computer in 1983. I analyzed the type of work and the compositive habits of the author to define the kind of evolution of his prose (see, the difference between the typewritten editions and the word processed ones).

This second part is concluded by an interview with Spanish literary critic and novelist Juan Felipe Villar and by a poll conducted in the Italian national newspaper La Repubblica about the use of the word processor.

Villar's case is particularly interesting since he wanted to publish a tale written ten years before and because he could not find the original text, he was compelled to write it again by heart --this time with the help of a computer. Both these texts written the first time with typographical and linear tools, and the second time with electronic ones, offer useful points of reflections both on the theoretical plan and about the more specific one of language and style.

Conclusions

Although the word processor may not revolutionize writing guidelines, it may however influence the writer in various ways. A computer may, most of all, effect the literary direction (a sort of trend choices) of the writer. Rapidity of writing, extreme attention to the formal level of the text (fonts, lay-out, etc.) are all options offered to the professional writer for the first time and all of them, according to the forma mentis of the author, may influence either the level of the process (act of writing) or the level of the product (text).

Only by following this principle, it may be possible to analyze further the style of every writer in greater depth and the differences between the pre-computer and the computer assisted production.

Regarding this, with the collation of Cerami's works emerges a clear trend towards a kind of prose more colloquial and less related to literary standards. As a consequence of this change, we observe in his writing an increase of colloquial forms as idioms, stock phrases, clichés, etc. Moreover, for the first time since the author bought the computer he decided to begin to write short tales and went so far as to publish two volumes in two years. We will never know how this choice was influenced by the use of the new medium; nevertheless, the same writer admitted the possibility that the computer affected his initial options of writing (see the interview, p. 129).

In the case of Roberto Vacca, prevalently an essayist, it seems that the modifications of the style were due essentially to two factors: 1) the discovery by the writer (about 1980) of the index of readability of Rudolph Flesch; 2) the adoption of the computer. Flesch has a definite influence on Vacca's syntax, pushing the author to break all the sentences longer then 30 (or more) words into two or more phrases. The computer, instead, supports the theory on "granularity" of writing (more paragraphed texts, etc.) and encourages an increase of the extension and structuring of the indexes.

With respect to the second issue (2), we should say that the control on readability was expanded when the author passed from a manual control conducted on a few pages to a global check-up of the text conducted with a specific program (italian adaptation of R. Flesch's index of readability by R. Vacca and V. Franchina).

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