Stuart Selber: Multiliteracies for a Digital Age

Part 1:

Write a 2-3 paragraph summary of your key takeaways from Multiliteracies for a Digital Age and make sure to include 5 metadata tags for the book

I really enjoyed reading Selber's Multiliteracies for a Digital Age in its entirety. I used excerpts from his book last year in my seminar paper for our other course in considering what a computer literate student should be able to do, but this time I was able to read from start to finish, conceptualizing how Selber's discussions about literacy fit into our discussions about multimodality, new media, and the role of computers within the composition classroom. 

Selber offers three different types of literacy in approaching computer literacy initiatives at the institutional, curricular, departmental, and pedagogical levels: functional, critical, and rhetorical. Within each of these literacies, Selber breaks them down further to explore the different components that contribute to each. The only problem I had for Selber's text was that the charts did absolutely nothing for me within each chapter. I am an especially visual person, so I always appreciate when information is presented to me in such a way that I'm able to conceptualize the information in ways that are spatial or categorical (in that they also extend the information that the text may offer). However, I felt as though all Selber did with the majority of his charts was organize the same text in a top down approach (sometimes literally word for word). It wasn't until the last chapter where we were given a more circular graphic to represent the computer literacy application (p. 185) that I felt as though I gained something from the visual. 

I also was a bit disgruntled with how little time Selber spent on graduate student computer literacy. We got a bit of discussion about the online teaching certification in the end of the book and a brief nod towards graduate student computer literacy within the functional literacy chapter (with also a discussion about access to technology based on rank, which made me think of Northern Michigan University and how as an adjunct you have to teach a certain amount of credits to get a "newer" Thinkpad and classrooms that have/don't have technology access, which is something that affects us greatly based on which building we teach in at WSU). I felt this was a bit of a hole in the conversation and one that is important and worth spending more time on. 

My personal opinion aside, I really appreciated how Selber attempted to complicate and extend the notion of functional literacy to mean something much deeper than the material hardware and proficiency in operating the machine. It was also interesting to me how Selber discussed that people often associate functional literacy with a working incentive, stating "people inevitably link functional literacy with literacy for work, especially with concrete training in technological skills, because such a commonsense linkage capitalized on the economic benefits that could be derived from investments in literacy initiatives" (34). I thought this was important to mention in juxtaposition with the classical notion of function as an attempt to "living the good life", which is a particularly Platonic notion. 

Critical literacy extends this conversation in that it "interrogates biases, power moves, and human implications" (86). It is also important to note that within each discussion of the different literacies, Selber plays with the metaphors that are commonly attributed to each (functional= tool, critical=cultural artifact, rhetorical=hypertexual media, which breaks down even further to encompass nonlinear, nodes, and associative links). Selber mentions that although the literacies to do not have to be linear, in considering computer literacies, functional and critical literacies often feed into rhetorical literacy.

 Rhetorical literacy deals primarily with interface design and asks students to assume the role of producer. In creating, analyzing, and mapping interface design, rhetorical literacy asks us to move beyond purpose, audience, and occasion and calls for action. Selber maps out particular components of rhetorical literacy as persuasion, deliberation, reflection, and social action (146). I was particularly taken by the reflection component in that it asks students to be critical of interface design in considering questions such as "who gets left out? To whom is this designed for?". I found it interesting that Selber both cites and references critique to Selfe and Selfe's The Politics of the Interface. as this is a central text that I think of in considering critical reflection of interface design. 

Selber ends his book with a discussion as to how to implement his notions of literacy into an institution, department, curriculum, courses, and pedagogy. I thought he had some really good takeaways here and he reminded me a bit of Palmeri in how he focused less on theory, but rather more on praxis (I liked the discussion of analyzing a listsrserv). One thing I found interesting is that throughout his book, his makes mention of how all of these literacies are pertinent to writing classrooms, yet almost all of his examples are overtly for a technical writing classroom. How can we envision these types of assignments and philosophies to extend to first year comp? I found myself often writing DTC 101? in the margins, because I see this as something that appropriately fits into an introductory DTC 101 course, but I'm struggling with ways to extend some of the theory to EN 101 (I did however like his discussion about email etiquette as a part of computer literacy and this is something i've done with comp courses in the past). 

Part 2:

 How is (or is) the way Selber works with multiliteracies compatible with how other authors we've read this semester have engaged with multimodality?

Although Selber is talking about multiliteracies, I saw a lot of connection between the scholarship we've read in regards to new media scholarship, collaboration, and the extension of literacies outside of the classroom with the literacies developed within. As an overtly obvious connection (one that's even referenced within the text) Selber and Yancey make similar arguments in their attention to 21st century literacies. I also saw a bit of a connection between Cheryl Ball's discussion about distinguishing between scholarship about new media and new media scholarship and Selber's notion of nonlinear text (168). With this notion of nonlinear text, he's really talking directly about what Ball refers to as new media scholarship. 

In addition, I saw a lot of nod's to Kress in Selber's arguments about how computer literacy is always considering the social implications about design, power, and action (I found myself writing "Kress" multiple times within the margins). There's also a nod to Marback within the rhetorical literacy chapter with Selber's discussion of the "wicked" problems of design (though he doesn't cite Marbeck). In addition, Selber talks within the rhetorical literacy chapter about speed and that "speed might be manipulated to achieve certain rhetorical effects" (138), which made me think about DeVoss and Ridolfo and rhetorical velocity. In short, although the text doesn't explicitly mention "multimodality" there are many connections going on within the text in reference to past readings and conversations centered around the role technology plays within the writing classroom. 

metadata tags: #praxis, #functionalliteracy, #criticalliteracy, #rhetoricalliteracy, #interfacedesign

Ball, Fraiberg and Ridolfo & DeVoss

Cheryl Ball "Show, Not Tell: The Value of New Media Scholarship" 
& Steven Fraiberg "Composition 2.0: Toward a Multilingual and Multimodal Framework"
For me, these two have to go together. I had them separately at first but I found myself talking about them together. I read Cheryl's article first and thought for sure I would not return to this in my blog post for this week because I whizzed through it so quick. However, this article really stuck with me in how I understood a lot of the applications in the other chapter's (mostly within the Sheppard piece). I see a lot of the same structure in the Lauer piece in how Ball attempts to map out a framework and ideology for how we not only situate terms, but also how we categorize different extensions of new media scholarship. Ball offers important distinctions and is (justly) critical at other compositionists attempts to create "new media scholarship" but instead are rein-scribing traditional linear print conventions in a new media landscape. I was however surprised to see that there was really a lack of discussion concerning culture and the rhetorical agency new media scholarship offers composers who either contest Westernized composing practices (or who truly don't use them). I thought that Fraiberg kind of extended Ball's conversation in considering the globalization of composing and how multimodality alongside multilingual composing is inherent in regards to new media scholarship (though I'd argue in his example it more reaffirms Western notions in how Israel situates itself alongside America in how it remixes English and Hebrew.

I was drawn to Fraiberg because I'm not really familiar with multilingual composing or ESL theory and practice. I thought this marriage of multimodality alongside multilingualism was important, and Fraiberg uses it to consider globalized rhetorical practices and consideration in new media composing. Fraigberg also discusses this notion of "home literacies" and "classroom literacies" (though he doesn't use those terms, that's me), stating "moving toward a practice-based framework are studies of the ways digital youth use new communications technologies, text-messaging practices in national and international contexts" (499). I thought a lot about Fraiberg alongside Rhodes and Alexander and how we might ask students to explore and play with digital technologies and how we may collaborate with ESL students in understanding different rhetorical ways of composing and situating ourselves within the world. I also thought a lot about Kress and his discussion of discourse and how multimodality is a social semiotic theory and how resources and signs are culturally specific. In looking to the future and my work with emoji's, Fraiberg was an important article for me to read in considering colonization, globalization, and affect.

 In returning to Ball, I felt as though this piece was important in considering the articulation of how our final projects are to be envisioned. According to Ball new media are text that "juxtapose semiotic modes in new and aesthetically pleasing ways and, in doing so, break away from print traditions so that written text is not the primary rhetorical means" (165). My final project has text as the most underrepresented mode within the argument of my project, so for me I truly feel if I were to describe my project as either scholarship about new media, or new media scholarship, I would be falling on the spectrum of new media scholarship that makes an argument ABOUT scholarship within new media. I hope that makes sense. While the readings for this week are looking at new media scholarship, I'd argue none of them enact the ideology they advocate, with even the web texts containing a primarily textual overtone in order to convey meaning (Ridolfo and DeVoss was certainly intentional though in their press release).

My final project has to do with the body, and how bodies are often left out within new media scholarship and composing. In reading Fraiberg, I'm extending this notion to consider if particular bodies (identities more specifically) are left out of the conversation concerning multimodal composing and what we can learn from multilingual composing alongside multimodality. In considering this notion alongside Ball, I think that these pieces have asked me to not only consider myself and where my project stands alongside scholarship in the field, but also what colonizing narratives I may be rein-scribing or contesting in how I choose to structure my project. As I discuss below, I also consider notions of how that project may be repurposed or remixed, and what they may mean for a layering of audiences.


Jim Ridolfo and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss "Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery"

I was interested in this article primarily due to how frequently it came up within our classroom conversations. However, I found it to be really salient in some of the research question's i'm asking within my scholarship having to do with snapchat. I think that rhetorical velocity is really important in considering the role the remixing plays within composition practices. Ridolfo and DeVoss extend this notion of remixing beyond merely copying and pasting and instead offer it as a WAY of composing, which makes me think of Kress and his notions of production and distribution. Ridolfo and DeVoss offer up remix as a composing practice that is MEANT for what they refer to as "recomposition". I believe that Ridolfo and DeVoss also share Kress's framework in discussing authorship in the digital age. Ridolfo and DeVoss acknowledge that what it means to compose is strongly informed by the rewrite or remixing, mashing, merging, and pasting of a digital culture. Kress also affirms this notion and acknowledges that traditional notions of authorship are complicated in a digital age (though he never really offers what we are to do with this, I made my critique of this clear during our presentation last week).

Instead of offering ways to situate this notion of authorship, Ridolfo and DeVoss instead extend it, arguing that there is no such thing as single authorship in reference to rhetorical velocity and delivery, arguing that ethical considerations are not at the remixing stage, but rather fall within the delivery. I appreciated the example of Wikipedia as a platform that embodies the notion of authorship and collaboration. "What does it mean to compose with recomposition or remix in mind?" To me this question is really important in regards to how fully we consider our audience in regards to the composition we produce and how we deliver content (by the way, I also super appreciated the discussion on classical rhetoric because I'm finding the connections between Victor's 509 and our course to be tied together through the notion of delivery).

 I thought about this notion alongside my final project for this course and how I might envision turning it into a piece for a publication within Kairos or Enculturation. How would my multimodal piece by remixed or recomposed for particular audiences? How might the feedback I receive for review rein-scribe the cohesion, argument, and structure of my work? Will I compose my final project with my end-user as someone in Kairos? Or will I compose with an audience that situates itself within my seminar? In considering the role of authorship, how might I extend to make my final project a collaborative piece? Will I consult users outside of my class? institution? rank? 

Gunther Kress: Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication

Part 1:

Write a 2-3 paragraph summary of your key takeaways from the first half of Multimodality and make sure to include 5 metadata tags for the book. 

For me this book was much more tangible than the co-authored text by Kress and VanLeeuwen. While Kress and VanLeeuwen provided a lucid conceptual framework for how multimodal text are disseminated/created, Kress brings us back to the root of multimodality in Multimodality: A social approach to contemporary communication through a semiotic approach grounded in social and cultural context (for me, this book continually brings us back to the discourse phase, emphasizing how it is always a factor in every step of communication). 

I flew through chapter 1 and fell in love with Kress's attention to rhetoric and identity as well as the construction of power. Who has the power? How is it disseminated? What does power mean in reference to the designer or the audience? With this, Kress stresses that "communication isn't really the issue, power is" (3). In reference to power, Kress does an excellent job of defining his terms as he moves through his social semiotic theory noting that resources are culturally defined and constantly remade. Because of my interests, I found a lot of currency in what Kress was theorizing in reference to emojis as a socially constructed resource that is constantly changing. With these constantly changing resources that are culturally bound, Kress asks us "what about a translation of a movement, an action, a gesture that is entirely understood in one society and either entirely misunderstood or nor understood in any way or another?" (11). In considering this I return to Kress and Van Leeuwen and think about articulation and interpretation and think that somewhere within this stage of their conceptual framework is where meaning becomes refigured and transformed. In considering this alongside emoji use, we see different interpretations that are internalized in new ways based on social construct and cultural signifiers (I think here of how someone sends me a "fried shrimp" emoji and how I may think it is a signifier for "random" when the sender is really using it in a literal fashion to mean "food"). 

Kress also calls attention to the ethical considerations in communication and how access and dissemination need to be cognizant of the "affordances and facilities that they offer....of what is socially possible at any one time" (19). If communication is to be successful, there needs to be some type of internalization taking place from sender to receiver.  Kress calls attention to the global market and the "Westernization" of how we consume and disseminate information and the power of choice. With this, new notions of authorship and plagiarism have surfaced and the resources that way may use are constantly being remade and refashioned in how we ethically view/use information. 

I'm going to clump chapters 3 and 4 together in one paragraph because for me, they both had a lot to do with rhetoric. Kress provides a solid foundation for how communication is orchestrated under Saussure's methodology of communication. For Kress the semiotic sequence for communication is "attention-->framing-->interpretation"(32). In considering this sequence Kress stresses that design is "the servant of rhetoric....or to put it differently: the political and social interests of the rhetor are the generative origin in shaping influence for the semiotic arrangements of the designer" (50). Where rhetoric is the political and social considerations, representation is rather concerned with the individual. Communication on the other hand is more concerned with the societal implications of the design, specifically considering who has the power. Within social semitoic theory, Kress stresses that signs are "made, not used" (62). Kress contrasts and discusses Saussure alongside Peirce, noting that the Peirce is more concerened with the individual whereas Saussure contrasts the inner with the outter world. Kress ends the first four chapters with different examples of salt and pepper packets and how social considerations and rhetorical implications greatly influence the designs in which produce the labels. 

Part 2:

Choose a multimodal text you've created in this class (preferably the one from in-class on 9/21). Work to describe this text through K&V's terms from last week (discourse, design, production, distribution). Do your best to see how you might talk about and/or analyze your text through this terminology.

Discourse: For my multimodal piece, I chose to look at instagram and the affect instagram plays within my life. For me, discourse surrounding my multimodal piece situates the technology of instagrm in how I use it was a social construct. Instagram is a paticipatory platform in which users engage in to share, communicate, and collaborate in a visual way. For me, the discourse is really the language of the platform. Using the hashtags and also participating within the genre of visually communicating is a big consideration of the "culture" that surrounds this piece. For example, I chose to select a picture of food because this is a common cultural signifier of Western instagram use. Instagram has become a "topoi" for shared recipes and dissemination for how we are eating and living our lives. I wanted to represent that in my multimodal piece so rather than take a picture of myself (a selfie), I wanted to represent my primary social use of instagram, which is to share (and participate) in a culture that visually communicates around the social construct of recipes and healthy living. 

Design: For me the "blueprint" and rhetorical considerations of my multimodal piece was really about capturing the linear form of communication that Instagram represents in how the sender projects the message, the receiver views it, and then they internalize its content and project their understanding of it (they can "like" comment, or even choose not to participate in it at all"). For me I wanted to make those blueprints visible, so I chose to use arrows to represent the path of communication in the platform of instagram. I also chose to put the pros and cons list under the sequence of communication because I wanted the audience to internalize the process before they were either critical or complimentary of it. 

Production: Within the production of this piece, I found that it was relatively easy for me to produce this multimodal text within the software of Piktochart. I knew I wanted to create a document that could encompass all of the information I wanted within one frame. I knew already that I wanted my multimodal text to really represent the nature of instagram, so I wanted to include visual, text, and video (all of which are features that you can use in instragram). Having visual be the focus was important to me, so I wanted to make sure that my linear flowchart was the biggest focus for my text (as our visual compositions are the biggest emphasis within the platform of instagram). For instagram, the text almost becomes supplemental to the image, so I wanted that same ideology to mirror the way in which my multimodal text represented that technology. In production, I also wanted to have my content be the focus, not the construction of the materials, so I chose a soft background. In addition, I chose specific hashtags attributed with "foodie" pictures so that my audience could make the connections based on a cultural signifier (provenance). The experiential meaning potential is the representation of the flowchart with the arrows in that the action (the posting of the picture) becomes the knowledge (the image is internalized and processed in a way that allows the receiver to articulate their knowledge of it by commenting or liking).

Distribution: Within this last phase, the re-production of this text could take a physical form in being disseminated as a poster or flyer. I thought about potentially making this a movie on jing, where I move through the text explaining it as it could be a resource I could even embed within instagram. As I consider the distribution phase, I think of the features of piktochart and how to even share the image, it needs to be recoded as either a jpeg or a png. In addition, there are more features to share the image but they require you to pay. With this I consider issues raised in the Kress book about ethical considerations and access and how I might work to distribute this text in a way that allocates access for the public. 

Part 3:

NOW, describe how what you've read so far in Kress adds to this analysis in any way. Does it? How so? If not, why? The gist here is to try to figure out what this book adds to your/our understanding of multimodality.

The Kress book really helps my analysis in that it helps me to situate my terms and where the rhetoric takes place within the design phase. Whereas the rhetor is considerate of the political and social affects, the convention and interpretation are mindful of the power. I felt as though the Kress and Van Leeuwen was really missing a conversation centered around power and what power does to communication. Kress really helped me to contextualize power and rhetorical considerations and how cultural and social semiotics are a continual factor in how we design, produce, and distribute our text (and how they are constantly remade and remixed resources in which we use to articulate meaning). I really liked the Kress book and I thought it was a nice build to the framework that Kress and Van Leeuwen laid out, it allowed us to zoom in on the semiotic framework, recognizing the essential humanizing that takes palce within communication, and how we need to consider the ideologies and cultural frameworks that people come to communication with, and how these social semiotics asks us to be more rhetorically aware in how our choices impact others. 

Kress and Van Leeuwen: Multimodal Discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication

Part 1

Briefly explain how you see this book intersecting with what we've read so far. 

For me this book really made sense to read after Alexander and Rhodes and Shipka. Whereas Palmeri's book was more of a foundational text for understanding the historical stake multimodality has had within composition and its movements, Alexander and Rhodes reconfigure those historical conceptions to be more critical of multimodal and new media use. In asking our students to reconceptualize new media and to play and explore, we open up the classroom as an avante garden of rich theoretical and conceptual affordances in how to not only make meaning, but also understand the metacognition behind our multimodal compositions. Shipka also resonates with metacognition in how she asks students to explain their composing process with her SOGG statements. I see Kress and Van Leeuwen pairing up nicely with Shipka in the discussion of semiotics and the different affordances modes offer to our conceptions of technology. Like Shipka, Kress and Van Leeuwen are skeptical to limit our notion of multimodal composing to merely the digital (in fact, I would argue that they don't even begin to really conceptualize the digital until about the design/production phase of their conceptual framework). Although there are cultural and socioeconomic considerations about technology within discourse, Kress and Van Leeuwen instead place much more emphasis on the material (much like Shipka) in looking towards the semiotics and the sensory experiences in how we make meaning. 

One thing I really enjoyed about Kress and Leeuwen is their argument that the digital makes our compositions (that perhaps were once multimodal) monomodal in the limiting of our ability to experience these compositions in the distribution phase. I think Shipka would have a similar take on how notions of curation and reproduction of text, and how the medium really does impact the message. Rhodes and Alexander would agree with this as well, though I think they would further advocate for a return to the design phase once distribution is considered. Palmeri for me returns to the pedagogical implications of such semiotic considerations. I was tempted to do a handout for my multimodal response to Kress and Van Leeuwen in considering how this translates to the classroom (which I think is always what Palmeri was thinking about in Remixing Composition). However, I resonated much more lucidly in Kress and Van Leeuwen's ideology of moving through the different phases (I know some found this book challenging, but for me this is how my brains works and it was much more tangible to me to think in these terms then some of the dense-theory that Alexander and Rhodes stated to touch on.

Part 2

Post a 3-5 sentence summary of the book (give us the gist) and include 5 metadata tags for the book. 

Within Kress and Van Leeuwen's Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication we're provided a framework for understanding the methodology of multimodality within semiotics. This methodology is rather linear and moves in a way that begins at considering social/cultural and place (discourse) and moves to designing, producing, and then distributing (re-articulating for a macro-audience). Within the text a variety of examples are introduced to help synthesize the information in a way thats tangible to readers. Kress and Van Leeuwen stake most of their emphasis in the material, referring to sensory experience and rules of semiotics and linguistics to help ground their framework. Though complex in their phrasing and articulation, Kress and Van Leeuwen asks meaningful and critical question of the digital and how our (re)production affects the initial composition and in doing so, how we may 'flatten' an object in our attempts to move from the interpretation of a text to the articulation of a text within a public sphere. 

metadata tags: #semiotic, #discourse, #provenance, #experiential meaning potential, #sensory

Part 3

Work to create a table or chart that sets up Kress and Van Leeuwen's framework. If you're feeling befuddled on how to set it up, imagine you are going to use their language to analyze a text, what terms/questions would you need to ask? Or imagine you're giving your students a handout to use to analyze a text through the lens of K&V? What would this handout look like?

I realize that my chart might be kind of hard to read, if you want to head to the original so you can view it bigger, click here