Elocute me, baby

"Staged-ness": The sense that what you are viewing is not unfolding naturally, but has been prearranged for some rhetorical effect. The feeling that you are being duped. This sense often emerges from over-use of gesture, metaphor, or crescendo. See, "Elocution."

Behind this is a fear that there is a lack of truth in the words themselves. If movements are natural, then the speaker must be speaking truth (it's ethos-based). And if there is truth, we assume the audience will act upon it, or change their attitudes. This link between truth and action is so assumed, so obvious, that when we say we are "raising awareness" about some event or misunderstood stereotype, we assume there will be an automatic change in the scene. That when we see the Truth of the dystopia we now live in, we will react against it. I'm not so sure. Wish I were.

Late nights at the Wit: Design content vs images. Hierarchies set up, lines drawn, emotion in the boldlines. Paragraph breaks tell us what is connected to what. Pull out quotes do what? (Other than give us more column space).

Elocute this: are there elocutionary gestures in online, moving avatars? The winking smiley on MSN?