Weekly Response #3

Danielle Donelson
Dr. Kris Blair
English 7280
September 21, 2015: Weekly Response

In some way, nearly all of these scholars in our readings have seemed to echo one another, or at least least make similar claims. To me, their overarching premise is this: rhetoric and composition in the 21st century is a complex field and one that involves areas of multimodality, which extends to aurality, digital media, technology, hypertexts, etc. Consequently, as pedagogues, we ought to continue or start exploring these areas, building on our own expertise and knowledge, while also bringing multimodal assignments into our classroom curriculum(s). Failure to do so essentially limits our students' education, their growth and development as rhetors and their understanding of how our field and this required composition class relates to their current globalized, technologized world.

Selfe, in her piece, "The Movement of Air, The Breath of Meaning: Aurality and Multimodal Composing," points out the fallacy, how composition scholars have too easily accepted that "writing is not simply one way of knowing; it is the way" (p. 619-620). However, as Selfe points out, and we have discussed in previous classes, while writing and public speaking have been divided into separate classes in the US, both have a deserving place in this broad category of rhetoric. Though doxa would suggest otherwise, oratory and aurality are equally important elements of composition teaching, and thus ought to be reflected in our assignments and curriculum. Selfe emphasizes that she is not claiming to eliminate one or push for one at the expense of the other; however, as both represent the broad world of rhetoric, both our to emphasized in Rhetoric and Composition courses. I do agree.

Though, at the same time, I appreciated Alexander and Rhodes' urge to more critically consider the "how to" question. In other words, while involving multimodality and hypertext and movies and sound and recordings may seem creative, fun, helpful, and innovative, to simply assign these tasks without any understanding of how they relate to rhetoric, critical thinking, production of an argument, how they will be evaluated, is to not effectively make use of multimodes of teaching. I applauded their insight, as they did not blindly hop on the bandwagon but more critically approached the question of "how" and "why," as well as the very real possibility that the use of multimodality and digital media in composition classrooms is not inherently good or productive. (Granted, it is not inherently limited either, but a fair balance and more critical analysis ought to be examined from all angles).

Nevertheless, aurality in composition classrooms may/does have a relationship to literacy. And though we are still fighting against the misconception that writing skills and abilities may be equated with intelligence, as Selfe points out, and I would add, with mastery of rhetoric, in general, we are making progress, strides in the right direction. Though we do need "all forms of communication available to us" (Selfe) to make meaning from this ever complex, ever changing, multimodal world, both in the classroom and outside.