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

This post continues the discussion begun in Part One of the article, published on March 14, 2011.

Cynthia Haller (2010) conducted a study on three student research papers in an upper division research—junior level—writing course. She questioned the manner in which students learn to recognize academic arguments in source materials and how they integrate and use them in their own writing. She asks, “What does it mean to construct an academic argument using disciplinary discourse?” (p. 34). Haller found that “[o]nly students who had had extensive experience with reading and writing within their disciplines and across a range of disciplinary contexts were able to successfully identify, explain, and engage discipline-based criteria for writing” (p. 36). Her focus on an upper-division course is relevant to a study that focuses on FYC because it is in FYC where students begin to learn their way around the academic discourse community to then compose for their specific disciplines. If they continue to present with problems understanding academic arguments beyond FYC, then it is possible that educators are not approaching the subject in a way that encourages students to retain knowledge to carry forward into their disciplinary studies. Haller addresses to some degree the Toulmin method of argumentation when identifying the logos of academic arguments (p. 35). This is perhaps a good place to start addressing the validity of asking FYC students to conduct a rhetorical analysis of visual argument in the form of print ads, televised ads, magazine covers, movie posters, etc. to then compose and produce their own.

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.