Diana George talks about the importance of visuals in the classroom. They are not trying to define what makes something visual literacy, but instead argue that “the visual and the verbal are the same, are read or composed in the same way, or have the same status in the tradition of communication instruction” (George 14). George uses the history of media and talks about the neglect it got within classrooms until cultural theory came into play. A connection to the multiliteracies articles to this article is the idea and influence of design on writing. The idea of text being a visible language relates back to the idea of composition and how it should be designed. Much like text, a webpage or movie should also be coherence and have a navigable design for example. Understanding the benefits of visuals and their structure can be a powerful resource for students and their future with a technological world.
Author: acoul029
2/6 Blog Post 2
A short audio video explaining multiliteracy and how language changed due to a globed environment and new communications. It goes into depth on the cause and effect of new media to communication in a short video. Although the video itself is just audio, there is a transcript in the description.
Another short video with images and audio describing the role of multiliteracies in education and how the design will affect the future. This is including how to make something multimodal, and uses the video as an example in itself.
This video focuses on important vocab to know for what makes up multiliteracies. From there it goes on to discuss what benefits of multiliteracy. Once everything is explained, the video goes into how to incorporate the main aspects of multiliteracies as a teacher. It uses audio to explain, as well as visuals and text to go with the audio.
2/6 Blog Post 1
Multiliteracies is a new term coined by the New London Group in order to address the melting pot of languages within a society. There are two parts to multiliteracies, “the first argument engages with the multiplicity of communications channels and media; the second with the increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity” (Cope, Kalantzis 5). The first part being that the world is rapidly changing as more cultures are recognized through the media, which leads to the second part of creating social diversity. Communications are changing and becoming more connected to the world globally instead of locally, so there cannot be a fixed standard that encapsulates all literacy learning.
1. Literacy Pedagogy: “traditionally this has meant teaching and learning to read and write in page-bound, official, standard forms of the national language” (Cope, Kalantzis 9).
As the quote states, traditionally literacy pedagogy meant learning one standard language. This was in order to create learning conditions so that there is equal social participation. Now knowing this, the definition needs to be broaden to fully understand context of cultures and the linguistic diversity as it is today.
2. Civil Pluralism: “Access to wealth, power, and symbols must be possible no matter what identity markers, such as language, dialect, and register, a person happens to have” (Cope, Kalantzis 15).
Multiliteracies is about creating a social diversity through communications, whereas civil pluralism is the ability to be presented in the society without discrimination. This is the result of successful multitiliteracies within a society.
3. Metalanguage: “A language for talking about language, images, texts and meaning-making interactions” (Cope, Kalantzis 24).
Metalanguage should be used to recognize and properly describe the distinction between texts in order to relate it back to the context of cultures. Although metalanguage still needs to have some set criteria, it should be flexible in the way it can be taught, such as through a variety of tools. This then creates a design for understanding of concepts within that culture.
2/4 Blog post
Eyman reiterates the definition for digital rhetoric as, “the application of rhetorical theory (as analytic method or heuristic for production) to digital text and performances” (Eyman 44). Because of how Eyman decides to define digital rhetoric, he believes it can be used in any rhetoric fields or methods being traditional or contemporary.
One focus of this chapter is the complex idea of literacy, and how it should not be limited to writing with letters. This goes against the rhetoric literacy tradition. Due to this, other terms such as “literacies of technology” are also used for referring to literature, but Eyman states he prefers “digital literacy”. Eyman chooses to use that term because, “the literacy practices referred to are enacted in digital spaces” (Eyman 47). Other terms for digital literacy are either to board, narrow or does not properly describe what it should encompass. Understanding digital literacy is essential to digital rhetoric. It follows the tradition but goes beyond the text aspect of literacy.
Eyman also talks about how visual and digital rhetoric are similar in various ways, and it can be used as a part of digital rhetoric. Although visual rhetoric does not cover all topics such as new media. New media is discussed further, such as what is new and when does it stop being new. Overall it is assumed that new media is digital because it is computer-accessible, which challenges traditional classification.
Although, some argue that new media is the digital rhetorical process that occurs when the interface and human-computer interaction (HCI) cross. The connection between HCI and digital rhetoric is empowerment for the two users, which is how digital rhetoric follows tradition of rhetoric. HCI focuses on the programming of interfaces and hit many aspects of the cognitive science because it is targeting the user’s wants and needs. Ultimately it falls under computer science and the purpose of using of technology to accomplish a task. Whereas digital rhetoric main purpose is self-empowerment but uses the tools of HCI to perform the self-empowerment. Chapter one ends with stating that digital rhetoric can benefit many fields in one way or another, but due to rhetoric no longer having a distinct definition, many theories and methods opportunities are lost.
1/30 Blog Post 2
This is a short video that uses visuals and comparisons, to describe how digital rhetoric works. It also gives a simple definition to the term itself as well as a time line of how its changing. The timeline explains why it is important to understand all of rhetoric because it will keep advancing and changing with the times.
Goes into depth telling what methods rhetoric uses and how it has developed to digital. This in turn has changed the relationship between writers and readers. The video also goes into some current examples of digital rhetoric in life today and how people use daily.
An animated timeline that uses both visuals and text to explain how to use rhetoric. Describes a few of the different types of rhetoric and looks at the rhetoric in the terms of future. As well as how they can use Aristotle’s rhetorical appeal to make persuasive arguments in any situation.
1/30 Blog Post 1
Digital rhetoric has a long struggle to be defined to just one field due it having an analytic method or heuristic for production side to it. This is partly due to rhetoric having various definitions by itself, making it such a wide topic. The other reason is because of the changing times where rhetoric transitioned from its original use of public speaking, to private discussions and now digitally. Richard Lanham coined the term ‘digital rhetoric’ and began understanding how the digital movement affected rhetoric. Eyman states that the definition can be simplified, “as the application of rhetorical theory to digital text and performances” (13).
1. Visual rhetoric “focus outside of the tradition of written and spoken argument” (Eyman 18).
This is important because Eyman is recognizing the similarities of visual rhetoric and digital rhetoric. Traditionally rhetoric was mainly used for public speaking but this excludes the digital aspect. The modernized digital rhetoric has integrated visuals which broadens the topic to even more technical fields such as computer science. Without this recognition, these technical fields would lose out on the benefits and impact that come with visuals.
2. Text “A communicative event that meets seven specific criteria of textuality: cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informality, situationally, and intertextuality” (Eyman 21).
Eyman expresses that he thought that text was a limited term, until he started working with it. Much like rhetoric, the word text has undergone a change due to the advancing technology and times. Text began with print media, but overtime it has become much more than that with multiple different standards of what text is defined as. It is important to understand what is general criteria of text is and how it has expanded past print text.
3. Intertextuality “Align theories and methods of classical and contemporary rhetoric to network texts and new media as objects of study” (Eyman 34).
This section starts off with an explanation from Warnick saying that digital text is to different from print text to be grouped together and will need to be adjusted. While Eyman agrees it will need to be adjusted, he believes, “it is not a sufficient answer in terms of developing digital rhetoric as a field” (Eyman 34). This is important to realize because intertextuality should encompass all text and create new theories and method from it.
1/28 Blog Post 1
As someone who needed an additional ENG course, I took digital rhetoric and writing. Now having no idea what rhetoric even meant, I ask my mother who explained it as “persuasive speaking.” Mixing that explanation with the digital aspect gives me the impression that this course will teach skills to make my digital content coherent. It is important for any major to learn this skill set. For example, as a computer science major my main focus would be that the functionality of a website works. Nevertheless, it’s also just as important that the website is logical and simple enough to use. There are certain rules for websites that have become a standard, such as putting the login/logout feature in the top right corner of the page. This rule ranges from popular websites like Google to smaller sites like D2L for Kutztown. Another example to look at is the formatting, which can include things such as fonts, bolding or italicizing to add an emphasis affect. Interacting with digital text is a daily activity for most people and could be as simple as writing a tweet or commenting on a YouTube video. I personally try to keep my digital footprint down, so I do not compose and post much on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Through this class, I believe I will gain a better understanding of digital rhetoric and writing that in return will enable a better structure to any piece of digital work.
ENG/WRI333 