Defining a (Sub-)Field: Multimodal Composition in Six Keys

In "NCTE Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies," the authors who composed the statement at the National Council of Teachers of English attempt to at least begin to formalize discursive and learning spaces in which instructors and students alike might value multimodal composition as "the interplay of meaning-making systems" (17). According to the position statement, framing multimodal composition in this way requires that instructors and students buy into the notion that "all modes of communication are codependent" (17) and that more stock is placed in "read[ing] critically and writ[ing] functionally, no matter what the medium" (Kist qtd in. 18). In order for multimodal composition to flourish, though, the position statement insists that instructors ought to develop curricula standards and assessment practices in collaboration with their students, who are "often more literate in the technical aspects of digital production than many of their teachers" (19).


In "Contending with Terms: 'Multimodal' and 'Multimedia' in the Academic and Public Spheres," Claire Lauer illustrates the ways in which "[d]efining terms is a situated activity" (22) by making important distinctions between "multimodal" and "multimedia" as they are applied in "academic," "professional," and/or "hybrid spaces." For Lauer, these terms exist on a continuum between "design/process" and "production/distribution," a continuum that dictates how a term and its attendant meanings will or will not be valued in different spaces. The term "multimodal" generally finds a home in academic spaces, where "design/process" is a focal point of the work that students do, a point of emphasis that represents a move away from "grammatical correctness and rigid, formulaic structures for writing" (38). The term "multimedia," on the other hand, remains integral to spaces outside of academia, where "production/distribution" are "most valued because it is only by way of production that companies are able to meet the needs of their clients and stay economically viable" (38). Ultimately, Lauer urges instructors to avoid using these terms interchangeably, and to help students understand the rhetorical dimensions that dictate how terms like "multimodal" and "multimedia" are used, thus using "multimedia" as a "gateway term" of sorts.


In "The Still-Unbuilt Hacienda," Geoffrey Sirc juxtaposes Composition's seeming conservatism and its willingness to serve as a sort of "pre-professional discourse" or "Corporate Seminar" since the 1980s against the more fluid, indeterminate, and liberatory potential that inhered in Composition during the late-1960s. Sirc draws on a contingent of Composition theorists and experimental artists in and around the late-1960s, in order to answer Composition's "narrowing bandwidth" with a call for instructors to imbue their teaching with a more potent and creative approach that speaks to Composition's roots as a decidedly avant-garde discipline. Ultimately, Sirc seems to suggest that the prospects for realizing "Composition's Hacienda" rests on "a crucial need to understand the irreverence, the disgust, for old forms, as well as the passion for rethinking forms" (58).


In "Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key," Kathleen Blake Yancey narrates a moment in composition studies in which discourses around literacy have attempted to move beyond the narrow and stultified annals of strictly written and textual literacies. Indeed, Yancey urges compositionists to embrace and create unique and personalized discursive spaces that are sensitive to shifts in our understanding of literacy, and accommodates the electronic and "screen literacies" that comprise Web 2.0. Ultimately, Yancey's call for curriculum reform rests on a model of composition in which students can reflect more astutely and critically about the role that "real world" genres and different media play in communicating ideas and entering into conversation with a writing public.


In "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures," The New London Group problematizes existing conceptualizations of literacy pedagogy that seem to ignore the prospects for effective and legitimate forms of communication outside of textuality and language. For The New London Group, the notion of "multiliteracies" is therefore predicated on recognizing these different forms of communication as unique and potent gateways for advocacy and social participation. They propose designing literacy pedagogy around four components: Situated Practice, Overt Instruction, Critical Framing, and Transformed Practice. For The New London Group, the notion of "multiliteracies" remains an indispensable concept to enact in its capacity to create a "productive diversity" in and around combined literacy practices, a forum for "learners [to] juxtapose different languages, discourses, styles, and approaches [in such a way that] they gain substantively in meta-cognitive and meta-linguistic abilities and in their ability to reflect critically on complex systems and their interactions" (69).


In "From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing," Diana George extols the virtues of extending literacy pedagogy to include visual literacies in a more robust and meaningful way. For George, existing literacy pedagogies fall short in their seeming incapacity to more explicitly include visual rhetorics in their understandings of the notion of communication and design. Though she is certainly interested in making the relationship between text and image more central to literacy pedagogies in the composition classroom, she seems to meditate on and/or entertain the prospects of re-framing visual literacies as a legitimate and pregnant form of communication in its own right.


[I will post my visualization a bit later when I can get the image function in blogger to work.]

A Multimodal Representation of My Relationship to Writing

Let me preface all of this by saying that the images featured in this post of the multimodal representation of my relationship to writing do not necessarily encapsulate the multimodal representation that I created during class last week. I will explain the implications of these transformations a little later in my post, but it would make more sense to describe the thrust of my multimodal representation and how, specifically, it evokes my relationship to writing.


On either side of a divider is a "Hello Kitty" sticker that represents me as a student, on the one hand, and an instructor, on the other. Both student as well as instructor are being urged to "run," highlighting in many ways the manner in which the demands and expectations of each role are dictated by a pace that is not always comfortable for me to follow. On either side of the divider are eyes and reminders about completing assignments, paying bills, attending events, etc., nodding to the role that audience perpetually plays in and around the work I compose, and the looming deadlines and obligations that comprise balancing academics, professionalism, and economic realities. Underneath the divider, you will find two blown-up balloons that represent "family" and "friends." While these balloons in some ways threaten to collapse the careful and precarious balance that comprises my relationship to writing, they are also that which I seek to be closest to, the constituencies that seem to always hang in the balance as I work to enact and maintain my relationship to writing.


Though the first iteration of my multimodal representation included blown-up balloons that further accentuated the precariousness of my relationship to writing, the once-prominent balloons are now virtually deflated in the iteration this is featured in this post, looking more like dried-up grapes than the vibrant and vital constituencies that they are supposed to represent. Previous to my composing this post, I had plans to purchase new balloons, in order to restore my multimodal representation to its original form. However, many of the demands and expectations that materialized this past week prevented me from doing so. Perhaps, though, I think that is what my relationship to writing is all about: making time to perpetually resuscitate my relationship to my family and friends.


[I am having trouble inserting images on my browser, so I will have to insert my images later on a different computer.]