Rhetoric of the Mind

The blogging cat is back on my lap, so I guess it's time to blog. 

Jess pretty much summed up my reaction to this week's readings/viewings.  They also nicely fit in with a session I attended at Cs talking about multimodal learning in FYC.  Alexander's article does echo much of Gee's work and I think  reintroduces the concept of play in the classroom.  No one takes issue with children playing; in fact, most primary school classes are designed around daily activities that are "fun" for the students.  They can "play" at being different people, taking on different roles in the classroom.  I learned all about good and evil and racism and questions about race/identity issues through my model horse battles with my childhood best friend.  The elaborate back stories and ongoing duals we "wrote" -- albeit verbally and in our minds -- were very similar to what players experience in WOW or other MMORPGs. 

One interesting question Alexander brought up is one I can answer:  he asks, "whether the game designers are consciously inculcating particular values in their game designs, or if their narratives (such as storylines involving race conflicts) arise out of a political unconscious" (52).  At least in the professional world of game design, the answer is absolutely a "yes" -- on both accounts.  My cousin designed the number one selling PS3 game last year.  While he admits that his focus on values became much more of a conscious effort once his children were born (they're 2 and 4 now), he said many times he'd be partway through a design and suddenly realize a political point he had unintentionally built into it. 

Alexander also brings up (and fails to answer) two other key questions about online gaming and the Internet in general:  "What, exactly, is extended from one 'world' to the next, and is the 'real world' perhaps its own extension of the 'virtual world'?  More specifically, and critically, whose 'worlds' are we talking about, in terms of both the 'real' and the 'virtual'" (58)?  Since this nicely ties into my Cs presentation, I have to ask, is there really any way to separate our experiences in these worlds?  Are experiences any less "authentic" in a virtual realm?  Certainly I don't believe so.  Vivian Sobchack states that since the Internet is “[a]ll surface, electronic space cannot be inhabited by any body that is not also an electronic body” (Carnal Thoughts 159), so in order to participate in online worlds, we have to create an electronic self.  But in keeping with phenomenology (and paraphrasing Merleau-Ponty), we can't think of a space without existing in it -- without some part of our selves being in that space.

 

Selfe's literacy narratives project also reminded me of the multimodal learning in FYC session at Cs.  One lady presented on the videos she has her FYC students do for their final project -- in place of a final paper.  These videos are 2-5 minutes long and can be about anything.  She stated that her students had a lot of fun and became much more aware of visual rhetoric; in fact, the project had received so much attention that now, at the end of each semester, they hold a public viewing and the entire school administration shows up.  However, I didn't see a lot of the reflective literacy in her examples that Selfe highlights.  One of these videos was just the camera following a guy running sideways and flapping his arms about; he ran across campus, into a dorm, into the elevator, got out of the elevator and ran past other students, then it cut to a shot of the dorm exterior where you could see the guy through the windows and he ran out of side, and then through 3 stories of windows, he falls, head over feet, to the first floor, then we see him run out the door, still flapping arms and running sideways, out of the shot.  What is the purpose of such a video?  The instructor was particularly proud of it and how the students used a dummy for the fall, but she seemed more impressed by the videography than any meaning the piece may have had.  I think I would consider such a project, but if it was going to be the final work of the semester, I would have the students include a written rhetorical analysis of the piece

.

So, do I side with Hesse or with Selfe?  Selfe, for the most part, but since I am teaching Technical and Professional Writing (I inform the students on the first day that it is Technical and Professional Communication, and that there's going to be much more than just writing involved), the need to focus on certain forms of writing is essential.  Interestingly, Julie Meloni does not teach her 402 students anything about web design, because she feels like they'll mostly be writing memos, lab reports, etc., and web design and visual design will be taken care of by experts in those fields.  If the students end up working for large corporations, that's pretty much how it will be.  However, my first permanent job out of college was for a small office design firm, and I quickly went from executive secretary to Novell network manager, and then to migrating their ancient accounting system into a integrated software package that began with the proposal, through design, electrical, delivery, setup, and the accounting.  And so far, my students have agreed that learning basic web design (if it's only google sites) is beneficial, because that's one more skill they have that might help them get a job or move up the ladder. 

I really liked Selfe's emphasis on writing being one rhetorical tool and that "'writing is not simply one way of knowing' but rather 'the way'" (609).  In 402 we deal with the CRAP principles throughout the semester (contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity), because corporate newsletters and write-ups from science experiments or even building plans always have photos and/or graphs imbedded in the text, so we consider how to best present text and graphics to "sell" the project or findings.  Students quickly see the differences in resumes with borders versus those without -- anything that brings a visual element to the text is more likely to be memorable.   And I then have them extend those principles beyond tech writing to other visuals, such as this photo of my cousin taken by her husband:

The students can immediately see the CRAP principles at work, and how important they are to all visual design. 

I think incorporating other media into rhet/comp classrooms is essential.  In my 101 classes, I use the adbusters website to show students how powerful rhetoric can be -- a simple picture can say far more about our society and our values than a 1,000 word essay.