An assortment of ramblings on Wysocki

Of all the articles in response to Kress that we had to read for this week, I found Anne Frances Wysocki’s “awaywithwords: On the possibilities in unavailable designs” to be the most intriguing. I’m not sure if my interest in her work stems from attending the workshop she presented at BSU last year, or if statements like “…were we to consider ‘word’ in this same commonsensical way as ‘image’…limiting it to a particular size and to a set of compositional strategies and means of production, it would be as though we were asking people in our classes to go out in to the world believing that the only writing everyone everywhere ever does is the academic research essay” (58) simply make her my personal hero. In my own personal experience (and I apologize for getting somewhat anecdotal), there has been a lack of incorporating technology and technological awareness until just recently, and even then (with my additions of discussion board postings over paper journals and designing websites instead of final portfolios) my pedagogy for teaching writing always seems to revert back to the standard academic essay. Why? It’s strange that Wysocki mentions “compositional strategies and means of production,” since my emphasis on constant revision, deadlines, and high order vs. low order concerns certainly reeks of teaching a process that will ensure a product; but the product of a standard academic essay? Come on. Students will enter a world involving vastly different forms of writing, reading, and interpretation through a variety of forms and mediums – that much is clear. But how do we as practitioners make this transition? Is it as simple as requiring students to post all of their papers on the web, making hypertexts and links to their sources, and using visuals in a conscious, critical way? In other words, do we still teach the conventions of the academic essay and change the way the product is presented? My guess is that both Selber and Kress would shudder at this prospect. Personally, I thought Wysocki’s assignment of a video essay (which she presented at the workshop) was fascinating and something I would love to try out; but my fear is that I would spend so much class time teaching the program rather than teaching the students about making sound rhetorical choices. Is this fear irrational?

I apologize for the rambling nature of my post. Trying to coalesce all of these different perspectives with my own personal experiences has become a rather rocky undertaking.

"Now, I don't want to get off on a rant here..."

In his article “Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning,” Gunther Kress reiterates several points that he makes in his seminal treatise Literacy in the New Media Age when he states that “Speech and writing tell the world; depiction shows the world. In the one, the order of the world is that given by the author; in the other, the order of the world is yet to be designed (fully and /or definitively) by the viewer” (16); however, this particular quote also embodies several of the difficulties I have been having in coming to terms with the ideas Kress puts forth. In particular, the notion that speech and writing simply “tell the world” seems to be a rather unilateral statement. Anyone who has a creative writing background has heard time and again in workshops to “Show, don’t tell” the reader through descriptive language, metaphor, etc., and although I realize that Kress is expanding the notion of “…words (as) empty entities…to be filled with meaning” (7), my contention (which is by no means a new one) is that all forms of discourse (including visuals) are empty of meaning and can only be filled by the reader / viewers social, political, culture, economic (etc. etc.) background. As I’m writing this (and thinking back to our in-class discussion of Kress), I don’t necessarily think Kress would disagree with me, but the convoluted (and sometimes contradictory) nature of his texts makes it difficult for me to wade through the pools of his scholarship. In trying to think of what he is attempting to convey, in the simplest form possible, I imagine a non-native English speaker trying to read the language and (of course) the words on the page have no meaning because they are merely signs, or signifiers, or whatever term-of-the-week is being used; on the other hand, an image has the capability to convey some type of meaning to the viewer because (to use a tired cliché) pictures speaker louder than words. Okay, I get it. But the notion that “the world is yet to be designed…by the viewer” seems somewhat absurd to me since (although a viewer has more possibilities for reading paths than, say, a text-based reader) the portal, program, browser, website that they are viewing was designed by someone else; thus, the cultural baggage of the designer and the viewer come into contact – thus, the order of the world can never be fully or definitively designed. Am I wrong in my reading? If so, please help me out here.

Better Late Than Never

Google Document (Assignments for Functional, Critical, and Rhetorical Literacy)

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dd3xgm64_05r6rtrdg

Time Versus Space-Based Modes (Nothing New)

In his final chapter of Literacy in the New Media Age, Kress states that “The screen trains its readers in certain ways, just as the page trained its readers in its ways: the latter had its uses and function and purposes, which were the uses and functions and purposes of the society in which it existed. The new form has its uses and functions and purposes in relation to new social, cultural, political and economic demands” (162 – 163). My problem with this statement is that Kress is (to a certain degree) implying that the page never adequately addressed various social, cultural, political, and economic issues, which of course is not true. Granted, I understand that Kress is trying to illuminate the notion of multimodality and that simply by viewing something on a screen (even if it appears exactly the same as it did in print – i.e. scanned books, journal articles, etc.) that there are various societal underpinnings at work, but hasn’t that always been the case with regard to advancements in technology and literacy? The invention of the printing press had huge implications for all facets of life because knowledge (eventually) could be readily disseminated. So, I guess my question is what is Kress bringing to the discussion? Is he simply trying to convey that the incorporation of visual elements (either by themselves or coupled with text) requires a new lens in which to perceive the world (his whole notion of time versus space-based modes)? If so, the point seems rather moot as even he acknowledges that images (although not widely used) were incorporated into texts as early as the Renaissance. Therefore, his time vs. space-based mode of thinking / viewing is really nothing new.

Kress, Richards, and Nietzsche

Much like Jeff, I had issues with some of the assertions Kress makes regarding “images…being full of….meaning, whereas words [are] waiting to be filled” (4); in particular, I had qualms with the fact that Kress doesn’t seem to adequately extrapolate the subjective nature of meaning with regard to the visual (though he does acknowledge the social, cultural, and economic factors that may influence interpretations of meaning). Instead, Kress seems to be implying throughout his treatise that the visual supersedes the written word in terms of allowing a multitude of people to achieve some commonality of meaning, but (again, as Jeff stated in reference to I.A. Richards) there can be no consensus of meaning since our individual perceptions of a word / image / element differ considerably. Consequently, this lack of consensus or truth reminded me of Friedrich Nietzsche’s text On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense where “what is usually called language is actually all figuration” (Bizzell and Herzberg 1169), and Bizzell and Herzberg further explain Nietzsche’s argument “that ‘truth’ is a social arrangement necessitated by the powerful tendency to tell lies…we put our subjective impressions of things into our words and therefore must negotiate their meanings…(while) social pressures reinforce the conventional ways of speaking of things and also encourage us to regard those ways as truth” (1169).

Although Nietzsche is qualifying language as the written and spoken word, his notions of language as figuration (and the resulting lack of universal meaning) can easily be adapted to the visual (particularly with our changing definitions of literacy and language which attempt to include images). As Nietzsche states “Every word [or image] instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather a word [or visual] becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases – which means…cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal” (1174). Through this lens propagated by Nietzsche, words and visuals, subjects and objects, have no causality, no correctness, no true expression, and any semiotic relationship is reduced to mere aesthetics (1176).

Links for Rhetorical, Critical, and Functional Literacy

http://www.google.com/notebook/public/10651211465049229100/BDQdBIgoQ-ePg1Pgi?hl=en

Did You Know 2.0

I think this is an interesting clip that really demonstrates the growth of technology within the past 20 or so years (though, to some degree, I question the agenda of the people who made it). Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U

Selber, Technology, and Constructivism

Although there were several aspects of Selber’s final chapter (“Systematic Requirements for Change”) that I found intriguing, his section on curricular requirements was of particular interest to me. More specifically, Selber mentions the “…wide array of informal channels students use in order to learn about computers” (211), and the examples he provides (i.e. roommates, other students in various courses, discussion forms, and simple trial-and-error experiences) effectively demonstrate that technological knowledge is of a constructivist nature (a veritable hodge-podge of individual and socially assembled information, if you will) primarily because (for example) the knowledge gained from a classroom and a friend are equally valued. Such an observation seems obvious enough (particularly after having been immersed in theories of constructivism since entering graduate school), but for some reason I never quite made the connection that how I utilize and interact with technology is derivative of (say) what my father taught me on a Commodore 64, or the cheat codes I learned from friends playing video games, or (perhaps most important) what I have learned from students – one example being last semester when I required students to make an online portfolio and I had no idea how to help those with Mac’s (fortunately, the more technologically savvy students helped those that had less knowledge of the web design program they were using – including myself). I think my apparent oversight of constructivism in technology stems from (as Selber describes) technology being viewed as something to be use and not something to be questioned or analyzed (aside from perhaps data analysis). Nevertheless, this book provided me with a bit of an “ah-ha” moment.

Selber and the Practitioner

One of the things that I appreciate about Selber’s Multiliteracies for a Digital Age is that he has the practitioner in mind throughout the text, referencing several times how he himself has applied notions of functional, critical, and rhetorical literacy to technology within the classroom, but I wonder if parts of the text are just another example of “lore” being passed off as research. Granted, Selber points out several times and in various contexts that he wants teachers to view his suggestions “...as an imperfect heuristic rather than as a rigid prescription for action” (183), so perhaps it is a rather moot and arbitrary point I’m trying to put forth (since the majority of the treatise is really attempting to contextualize how the approaches of written and oral communication – i.e. literacy – also apply to digital mediums). Nevertheless, I can’t help but think of how I might utilize some of Selber’s approaches in my ENG 103 classrooms, though (as Nikki mentioned in her post) I feel as though what Selber describes is somewhat ambitious, if not unrealistic (and I doubt the examples he provides occurred in a freshmen composition classroom). It’s hard enough to get freshmen to question, well, anything, let alone the political implications of interface design, yet I understand (and value) why such problem-posing questions are pedagogically necessary.

First Post

Well, I suppose this is where it all begins. I will admit that I have a bit of apprehension coming into this class, even though I was one those kids that grew up with technology and my father always pushed for me to be rather literate in technology. I'm not sure what the impetus is for this uneasiness, but I'm sure (as the semester progresses) I'll find out. See you on the back-end of cyberspace.