The Message is the Massage

This essay reappraises conventional distinctions between oral-like and literate-like discourse, particularly Tannen's (1985) distinction between involvement focus and message focus. Rather than seeing message in tension with involvement, this query treats message as an embodiment of involvement. Cohesion particularly is treated as an aspect of a developing writer-reader relationship, an outgrowth of a thickening commitment to a mutual orientation. Speculations are offered for rethinking what is called “literate orientation.”