The Question of Multimodal Composing: What’s That (Visual) Argument? (Part 1 of 2)

Currently, multimodal composing is ongoing and is becoming more accepted in the academy. However, there is still some suggestion that the primary goal in first year composition (FYC) is to produce alphabetic [written] texts that look and feel much like the texts today’s educators produced in their undergraduate years. Pamela Takayoshi and Cynthia Selfe (2007) argue the point that conventional print texts “do not resemble many of the documents we now see in digital environments that use multiple modalities to convey meaning [. . .] and that are distributed primarily, albeit not exclusively, via digital media” (p. 1).  Scholars such as Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen offer a social semiotic approach to multimodality through the lens of visual rhetoric and visual literacy.  More recently, Anne Wysocki offers a definition of new media that also encourages a social element to composing in new media. If writing instructors are to welcome and encourage the use of technologies in the classroom, it is imperative they assume a critical stance themselves, encouraging students to develop technological literacy skills while composing multimodal texts.




In the 1990s when educators began using technology to hold both synchronous and asynchronous online discussions, they discovered that many students who might not normally voice their opinions in face-to-face discussions, suddenly began “speaking” in online discussions, and they were quite comfortable doing so in a digital environment. Likewise, an informal survey reveals that when students translate their alphabetic texts to visual texts in a digital or other medium, they tend to present stronger and clearer arguments and are quite comfortable composing in a digital medium.


In 1999, Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe suggested that computers “are not simply tools; they are, indeed, complex technological artifacts that embody and shape—and are shaped by—the ideological assumptions of an entire culture” (p. 2).
In today’s technologically enhanced educational environments, Hawisher and Selfe’s argument maintains relevance because as educators continue to inform their pedagogies based on current paradigmatic and “ideological assumptions” about technology, they must fully consider technology as enablers, enabling students to compose in ways not previously conceived of.


While it is clear and has been firmly established in much scholarship that the business of teaching writing has evolved beyond composing alphabetic texts on the printed page, what is not clear is in what way multimodal composing impacts the critical thinking of students when assimilating themselves to the academic discourse community. When thinking about multimodal composing, instructors often do not consciously consider what part of the writing and research processes students are mimicking.  For example, when I ask my students to compose visual arguments, I require them to cite all sources to include images, but I’m not convinced that I effectively make a correlation to documentation as is required in scholarly research. My students translate their argumentative research papers into visual arguments, usually in the form of a video presentation—PowerPoint, Windows Movie Maker, iMovie. However, they still need to present their arguments in visual form with the elements of argumentation in mind: claim, counterargument, warrants, backing, and they need to conduct research by finding relevant images instead of arbitrarily dropping images into their presentation. All of these activities in some way reflect the research process and the components of argumentation. Most recent scholarship has not fully examined whether composing, using new media, in visual or other modes, is a true form of academic discourse. This prompts me to question whether instructors and students are consciously considering the writing and research processes—from invention to delivery—when composing visual arguments, and if so, do they then take this thinking further to consider how their projects mimic more conventional essays and arguments?


As educators more consciously realize efforts to employ multimodal composing as a means to teach the writing and research processes and to teach argumentation, it is possible that such composing will lead to a more effective assimilation into the academic discourse community. David Bartholomae (2002) in his now oft-cited “Inventing the University” proposes that students have

to appropriate (or be appropriated by) a specialized discourse, and [they have] to do this as though [they] were easily and comfortably one with [their] audience, as though [they] were a member of the academy [. . .] mimicking its language while finding some compromise between idiosyncrasy, a personal history, on the one hand, and the requirements of convention, the history of a discipline, on the other hand. (p. 74)

It is important, then, to identify how first year composition (FYC) students begin to maneuver in the academic discourse community through the means of multimodal composing. Because students begin to learn their way around the academic discourse community in FYC, understanding how they address formal academic arguments in visual form will reveal their levels of comprehension earlier in their academic careers as opposed to later.

--Beth Bensen-Barber

Professor of English

References

Bartholomae, D. (2002). Inventing the university. In T. R. Johnson & S. Morhahan, Teaching Composition: Background Readings. (pp. 73-02). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Haller, Cynthia R. (2010, Fall/Winter). Toward rhetorical source use: Three student journeys. WPA: Journal of the Council of Writing Program Administration, (34)1, 33-59.

Handa, C. (2004).  Introduction.  In C. Handa, Visual rhetoric in a digital world:  A critical sourcebook. (pp. 1-5). Boston:  Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Hawisher, G. & Selfe, C. L. Selfe. (1999). The passions that mark us: Teaching texts, and technologies. In G. Hawisher and C. L. Selfe, Passions, pedagogies, and twenty-first century technologies. (pp. 1-12). Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.

Hobbs, C. L. (2004).  Learning from the past:  Verbal and visual literacy in early modern rhetoric and writing pedagogy.  In C. Handa, Visual rhetoric in a digital world:  A critical sourcebook. (pp. 55-70). Boston:  Bedford/St. Martin’s.

Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Kress, G, & van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Introduction. Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. (pp. 1-23). Part of Hatchette, UK: Hodder Education.

Martinez, M. (2010, November). New literacies for a new era. Phi Delta Kappan, (92)3, 72-73.

Takayoshi, Pamela & Selfe, Cynthia L. (2007). Thinking about multimodality. In C. L. Selfe (Ed.), Multimodal composition: Resources for teachers. (pp. 1-12). Creskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, Inc.

Wysocki, A. F. (2004). Opening new media to writing: Openings and justifications. In A. F. Wysocki et al. (Eds.), Writing new media theory and applications for expanding the teaching of composition. (pp. 1-41). Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.

Yancey, K. B. (2008, September). Planning for a future very different from our past.  Council Chronicle, (18)1, 28-29.