How Speech Lost Its Voice: The Informational Turn in US Free Speech Law.
In influential strains of late twentieth-century US legal discourse on free speech, speech and language have been disconnected from sound, and speech rendered as a form of writing. The effect of this is a free speech jurisprudence in which analysis of speech is less concerned with speakers and more...
| Published in: | History of Humanities Vol. 6; no. 1; pp. 179 - 198 |
|---|---|
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
University of Chicago Press
Spring2021
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=150636455&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 150636455 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 23793163 JDN6 jtl: History of Humanities issn: 23793163 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Spring2021 vid: 6 iid: 1 pid: 415 pub: University of Chicago Press artinfo: ui: 150636455 10.1086/713262 ppf: 179 ppct: 19 formats: tig: atl: How Speech Lost Its Voice: The Informational Turn in US Free Speech Law. aug: au: Petersen, Jennifer affil: Annenberg School of Communication, University of Southern California, USA su: Freedom of speech Legal reasoning Binary codes Legal discourse District judges sug: subj: Freedom of speech Legal reasoning Binary codes Legal discourse District judges ab: In influential strains of late twentieth-century US legal discourse on free speech, speech and language have been disconnected from sound, and speech rendered as a form of writing. The effect of this is a free speech jurisprudence in which analysis of speech is less concerned with speakers and more concerned with messages. The article explores this situation by examining the legal reasoning in a 2001 case in which federal district court judges ruled that computer programs written in binary computer code (1s and 0s) were a form of "speech" covered by the First Amendment. They did so by equating speech with writing, drawing on a theorization of language in terms of information rather than as embodied social practice. The article argues that this logic follows the popularization of information theory and the rhetoric of disembodiment that grew out of this popularization in the latter half of the twentieth century. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y dt: @attributes: year: 2021 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|