Delivery and New Media Workshop

Catrina Mitchum, Cheri Lemieux Spiegel, Wil Laviest, & Mathieu Reynolds

Introduction
In his preface to Rhetorical Memory and Delivery, John Frederick Reynolds explains that delivery and memory are classical rhetoric’s two “‘problem canons’”(vii). He maintains that although these two are often overlooked, they are certainly important. Today’s workshop will focus on delivery specifically.

James Porter, in his “Recovering Deliver for Digital Rhetoric” traces the history of this neglected canon. Naturally, he begins his history of rhetorical delivery with a look at classical Greek and Roman rhetoric, wherein delivery was characterized primarily as an emphasis upon the role of the voice, body and emotional impact of a speaker. Issues of delivery were equated largely with these matters of decorum throughout the classical times until a shift in treatment was seen in the 15th century, along with the invention of the printing press.

The printing press itself, Porter argues through the lens of Elizabeth Eisenstein’s The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, created a new form of delivery. Regardless of this new, non-oral form of delivery, scholars continued to refer to delivery as a physical concern (with emphasis on voice and body), and, for reasons he doesn’t elaborate upon, discussions began to overlook the role delivery played in addressing the emotional needs of an audience. This truncated view of delivery as related to these physical characteristics caused it to be seen as irrelevant to printed discourse.

However, Porter, Reynolds and others such as Paul Prior et al are now arguing for renewed attention to the canon of delivery. Porter argues for how this canon can be seen as important to contemporary rhetorical study and how the digital age, in particular, makes this allowance. His framework is composed of five components which he names “Body/Identity,” “Distribution/Circulation,” “Access/Accessibility,” “Interaction,” and “Economics” (208). Body/Identity refers to concerns over the representations of one’s self in an online environment; for example, how one’s gestures, might be represented through online correspondence. Distribution/Circulation addresses technical aspects of delivery related to publishing and distributing texts. Access/Accessibility raises questions of how a population might be able to connect to web-based information, while Interaction refers to the engagement between people and information in the digital space. Lastly, Economics accounted for a concern over issues of information policy, such as fair use, copyright and the like.

Paul Prior et al’s “Re-situating and Re-mediating the Canons: A Cultural-Historical Remapping of Rhetorical Activity” the authors suggest that delivery might be “reconceived as mediation” (6). Their use of the term “mediation” is rooted in the theories of Bolter and Grusin, Vygotsky and Latour and allows the canon to account for far more than psychical characteristics of communication.

The authors suggest that the canon of delivery, conceived in this way, might include two major sub-headings: mediation and distribution. Characterized in this way, delivery might be said to prompt the following kinds of questions:

What mediations, what kinds of detours, might delivery of a text involve? Do we write a text to be read silently, read aloud (as a speech), recorded on a DVD, or performed by various groups of actors on a stage? What typeface do we use? What color? Do we deliver the document on paper, on the screen, or in some other medium? If on paper, by mail or by hand? If by hand, do we do it ourselves or do we have someone else do it? Do we synchronize the delivery with some other event? Or perhaps we deliver it by allowing others to find it in another place. Do we need to deliver the text first to an intermediary (editor, publisher, boss) for review to get it out to a public of some size? Or do we want the text to be distributed in encrypted formats to a small select distribution list? Or do we divide up the delivery of the message so that the chances of illicit use are limited? (Prior et al 6-7).

It is in this vein, with these sorts of rhetorical choices in mind, that we believe that delivery (call it mediation if you will) ought to be brought into the composition classroom.

Relevance to the modern Classroom
The writing classroom today is approached from many different ways pedagogically. Some instructors teach and assign strictly alphabetic text, others teach and assign multi-modal texts, and still others teach and assign a combination of the two. Everything from assessment to how writing should be taught is debated in the field. However, despite these debates over the details of how to teach writing, the constant in these classrooms is the computer. Instructors no longer require (in fact will not accept) handwritten assignments. With the computer (and nowadays be default the Internet) and other digital devices as a central part of our writing culture today, writing classrooms have to consider a wider audience than the instructor and fellow students. This expanded audience and new mediums for delivery require us to rethink what delivery entails.

This digital age has opened up the floor for new ways of delivery, and it’s important to teach these new ways in college comp classrooms because students need to be able to use all “available means” and consider what those means will do for the message they are trying to convey. The modern writing classroom goes beyond the classroom in more ways than one. Students are often in rooms with computers, and if they are not, they are still required to use computers to do their work. Computers (and the World Wide Web by default) facilitate these new delivery opportunities by not only allowing students to rethink what a text is, but also by allowing them to participate in the wider culture.
With so many choices, the concepts of access, support and appropriate media become key to communication with new media. We can’t assume that students know how to produce digital communication simply because they’re exposed to it (Brumberger). The way delivery is taught changes when you consider new media simply because it’s not a last minute thought. The delivery has everything to do with the composition itself. Students need to consider who will be able to access their message based on their mode of delivery, what is being added to the message by the mode, how the audience will (and can) take the message (and in some cases the composition itself) to “recompose” (Ridolfo and Devoss) or “remix” it to create a new message.

Sample Applications
The canon of delivery within the context of digital media combines design, style and presentation. It retains the classical definition of delivery, which is about voice, body gestures and movements, while integrating audio, visual, text and screen design in what has been coined “textured literacy” (Yancey 2004).
Podcasting is one of the obvious areas where new/digital media and delivery come together. Document design can evoke mood in terms of, for example, use of color or font styles (O’Donnell 1998). Others are new media’s ability for collaboration (wikis), immediacy (twitter) archiving for future audiences.
The following are potential exercises/assignment in which delivery could be addressed in new media text:

1. Take a passage of existing text and create hyperlinks on words or phrases that you believe are the authors intended points of emphasis. Explain the choices you made. Compare choices with other classmates.
2. Create a passage of text and incorporate hyperlinks on words or phrases for emphasis. Explain the choices you made.
3. Take an existing passage of text and insert video or photos within the appropriate sections of text where the video or photo expresses the content.
4. Create a slide show with video and text that delivers a message.
5. Create a wiki entry of about 200 words and choose a font style that best represents the tone of the delivery. Explain your choice.
6. Create a wiki that will be a collaborative story. Choose font styles that reflect particular characters in the story as their dialogue appears.
7. Reduce a paragraph down to the length of a max 140-character tweet.
8. Listen to a podcast with an accompanying transcript. Highlight the matching points of emphasis in the text, such as with font changes or hyperlinks.
9. Create a podcast of an oral address that is intended to persuade. Provide an accompanying transcript that includes visual points of emphasis, such as hyperlinks, that match the points of emphasis in the audio version.
10. Review a passage of text and add appropriate sound files to words within the passage.

References:

Brumberger, Eva. “Visual Literacy and the Digital Native: An Examination of the Millennial Learner.” Journal of Visual Literacy. 30.1 (2011): 19-46. Web.

Porter, James E. “Recovering Delivery for Digital Rhetoric.” Computers and Composition 29 (2009): 207-224. Print.

Prior, Paul, et al. “Re-situating and Re-mediating the Canons: A Cultural-Historical Remapping of Rhetorical Activity” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy. 11.3 (2007). Web.

Reynolds, John Frederick. Rhetorical Memory and Delivery : Classical Concepts for Contemporary Composition and Communication. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Eribaum Associates, 1993. Print.

Ridolfo, Jim and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss. “Composing for Recomposition: Rhetorical Velocity and Delivery.” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy. 13.2 (2009). Web.

Yancey, K. (2004). Using Multiple Technologies to Teach Writing. Educational Leadership, 62(2), 38.

Graffiti and the Unpopular or Intolerant Sentiment

Gonos, George, Virginia Mulkern, and Nicholas Poushinsky.  “Anonymous Expression:  A Structuralist View of Graffiti.”  The Journal of American Folklore 89.351 (1976):  40-48.  Print.  

This article presents research into the content of bathroom graffiti in a variety of contexts.  The authors collected graffiti examples from universities, high schools and public locations.  They specifically examined the occurrence of these stall scrawls that contained racist or homophobic language.  Their findings suggest that this anonymous form “serves a special expressive need for some of its users” (47). 

They demonstrate that graffiti on these specific topics is more commonly present in contexts wherein the social norm is intolerant of public displays of these offensive types of language.  They explain that during times when racism and homophobia were considered accepted by the majority, there was no need to express these sentiments in an anonymous medium.  

The authors acknowledge that their research provides only a glimpse into the complexity of the issue of these special expressive occasions and only examines the occurrences in select contexts.  They suggest that to create better understanding of this issue they would need to continue this type of study as society values and acceptance continue to evolve.

This article gives a unique look into the exigence of graffiti.  It clearly demonstrates that at least one motive for graffiti writing is to give individuals an avenue to express the unpopular or unheard opinion.  Unfortunately, this article, like many others, focuses on graffiti used for unflattering purposes.  Since one of my interests is in re-imagining how we talk about graffiti work, I chafe at this article’s emphasis upon these graffiti writers with negative messages.  However, it does make me ask an important question:  what types of graffiti occur during times of uniform tolerance of a oppressive concept?  are positive graffiti instances always a sign that something negative is occurring in society at large?  Overall, I think this article gives me a firm starting place from which I can continue to explore the exigences that motivate graffiti writing.  

Recently in one women’s bathroom stall at the college where I teach numerous graffiti scrawlings have appeared over a short period of time.   Their appearance has been the subject of a number of office discussions about graffiti and the need to control it.  What interests me about these discussions (which I have yet not participated in) is that I have not heard anyone address the fact that the expressions are largely of a positive nature, including quotes by Eleanor Roosevelt, for example. I wonder what the exigence for this positive expression might be, but more so, I wonder what is implied in the desire to censor positive messages.  It seems that McLuhan is right in these contexts:  the medium is the message.  The content is overlooked as a result of the form.  

Roundtable Presentation Handout

To access my handout for today's English 821 roundtable presentation, click the image below.

Texts in the City--a clever title. See what she did there?

Carrington, Victoria. “I write, Therefore I am: Texts in the City.” Visual Communication 8.4 (2009): 409-425.

The piece explores the means in which graffiti texts are linked to key issues in contemporary urban life as well as how these texts create narratives about communities and places where they reside. To make her argument, Carrington first briefly overviews the history of graffiti. She acknowledges the fact that while graffiti is often seen as a sign of “urban decay and a youth culture spiraling out of control” (411) this form of expression actually dates back to a least the Roman Empire (which is why I think I will order the disks of Rome from Netflix, watch them and call it “research”—thanks, Kevin! ☺). Her point in addressing the roots of graffiti is to indicate the way texts have always been used as an urban message system.

Next, she addresses the multiple genres that fall under the umbrella term. She then explores different types of “tags” (calligraphic vs. “throw ups”) and the more all-encompassing term of “street art,” which includes expressions that are stencil or sticker-based, or include street furniture or other types of urban fixtures.

Drawing on comments from graffiti artists and scholars, she paints a picture of how graffiti operates within the city. Carrington demonstrates how graffiti is unwelcome and contested and how those qualities are what make it useful to study. Through examining graffiti we can raise important questions about private/public space and identity. For example, she quotes an interview with graffiti artist Swoon who addresses the complexity of public versus private space when she says “I want to be a part of the town center that I live in” (417). While she belongs to the space, the space does not belong to her. How can this be? Swoon also points to her work as a response to commercial expressions in the city. She hopes to create something that, unlike advertising, does not ask for something in return (417).

The way in which Carrington constructs graffiti paints it not as urban decay, but rather an artifact “of a DIY narrative” (420). This construction is, in part, a result of the way in which she uses the phrase “I write, therefore I am” to explain how graffitists write themselves into existence.

Thus, her argument demonstrates the cultural value of graffiti—in helping urban citizens to construct identity and navigate the contested spaces they inhabit. One particularly valuable piece of her argument is in the way she constructs graffiti in a positive light. Commentaries that continue to focus on the illegal quality of graffiti are short-sighted in their ability to fully address graffiti as a text. I think it’s important to understanding the role of graffiti in studies of composition and rhetoric to understand graffiti as a text that happens to be illegal, rather than an illegal text that resembles text. When we look at graffiti in the later sense, it seems that it is more difficult to access it as a rhetorical practice.

The Rhetoric of Graffiti...hypothetically.

Banksy's "Brinngg"

D’Angelo, Frank. “Sacred Cows Make Great Hamburgers:  The Rhetoric of Graffiti.”  College Composition and Communication 25.5 (1974):  173-180.  Print.

Like “Oscar Mayer Ads Are Pure Baloney:  The Graffitist as Critic of Advertising,” an article that D’Angelo published a year after this one (see my previous blog entry), this article addresses the means in which the aims of graffiti parallel those aims of other forms of communication.  While his subsequent article compared graffiti to the work of critics of advertising, this piece puts graffiti in comparison with proverb writing. 

D’Angelo explains that both proverbs and graffiti, at least propositional graffiti, are  “concise, direct, pithy, and incisive” (173).  While the two types of writing have similar traits, graffiti is said to make its point through “ridicule” rather than “folk wit” (173).  The author argues that because graffiti’s approach is entertaining, it can be an effective vehicle for teaching students style.

He suggests that while rhetoricians of the Middle Ages used proverbs to teach style, our contemporary cultural equivalent for teaching stylistic matters might be found in works of graffiti.  As a result, his article first comments upon multiple rhetorical strategies used by graffiti artists, and then discusses how those techniques operate as instruments of satire.  Specifically, he examines following techniques (which he calls “figures of style”): allusions, puns, irony, alliteration, rhyme, antithesis, parallelism, apposition, and parody.

In the end of his article, D’Angelo begins to explore the means in which these observations might be applied to the teaching of writing.  While the promise of this application was of most interest to me in selecting to read this article, it is the portion that is least developed.  This discussion of application accounts for one paragraph of the article—the concluding paragraph.  In this paragraph, D’Angelo states that the analysis of graffiti can be useful in linguistic and social criticism, and that it can help students understand stylistic choices.  He suggests that we help students understand their rhetorical choices more thoroughly through the analysis of these choices and by urging them to make their own such choices “conscious and meaningful.”   

Much in the way that I felt after reading his piece on the graffitist as critic of advertising, I am once again underwhelmed by the evidence D’Angelo provides to convince his reader.  The article contains multiple “graffitos,” an apparent blending of the word motto and graffiti, which provide examples of how a graffitist might write a proverbial statement with a satirical undertone.  However, there is, once again,  no proof that any actual graffiti has taken place in this manner.  In this article, like his other, the graffitist still seems theoretical.  In addition to the lack of evidence, that graffiti operates in this manner, the piece begs for further elaboration into why graffiti is an effective tool for introducing linguistic and social criticism and how it can be of used to help students understand rhetoric choices in a practical manner.  The practitioner in me wants examples, lesson plans or at least a detailed praxis oriented discussion.

The Graffitist as Critic of Advertising...at Least Theoretically

Banksy's "Because I'm Worthless"

D’Angelo, Frank. “Oscar Mayer Ads Are Pure Baloney: The Graffitist as Critic of Advertising.”  College Composition and Communication 26.3 (1975):  263-268.  Print.
 
In this piece, Frank D’Angelo makes the argument that graffiti artists sometimes operate as critics of advertising.  He explains that they reveal the subliminal messages made by the
advertising industry.  Of course, these artists construct their critiques through edgy parodies of the ads, rather than using genres that other critics of advertising might select.

D’Angelo’s article walks through various types of appeals that are made through advertisements and explains how graffiti artists might critique those appeals.  The author examines, for example, appeals to sex, adventure, and, fears and anxieties.  For each type of appeal, the author provides examples of an ad that uses the type of appeal in question, explains the type of subliminal message at work, and then suggests the type of response a graffitist might have.

For example, D’Angelo discusses the Virginia Slims ads that included a the line “You’ve come a long way, baby—Virginia Slims” and argues that the word choice (come, long and baby in particular) is meant to be sexually suggestive.  He then says that the graffitist wishes to make the audience aware of the subliminal sexual message by creating a parody of the original such as “You’ve come a long way, baby—Vagina Slims.”

This article is useful in depicting the means in which graffiti might accomplish tasks similar to those who select other genres for expression.  However, the article falls short in terms of building credibility for its argument through evidence.  While the author cites specific advertisements to deconstruct, his treatment of the graffiti artist is less specific.  Has an artist ever actually made the above parody of the Virginia Slims ad?  It’s unclear.  He speaks throughout the article of a nameless graffitist and the way in which this individual (presumably male) might treat or parody various ads, but gives no evidence that actual graffiti artists ever have parodied ads.  His argument is disconnected from the practice of graffiti and seems to only imagine a theoretical graffitist. 

Rather than providing evidence of this connection, he ends his article by saying that we ought to “study the appeals and the language that advertisers use to shape public tastes and desires and to look carefully at the graffiti which criticizes these appeals” (268).  His rationale for this recommendation is rooted in his sense of morality and a hope that graffitists can bring about social change by unveiling immoral usage of rhetorical appeals.  While he seems convinced that graffiti can “save” us (--of course I still believe it will be Rock 'n' Roll, not graffiti…), the strength of his article comes from its ability to draw our attention to how graffiti artists respond to exigencies that other communicators also address.  I believe it leaves contemporary readers in a position to seek out examples to serve as evidence for his claims, and to consider what this might mean for the composition classroom.

Graffiti As a Case Study for a Revised Writing Model

Edbauer, Jennifer H.  “(Meta)Physical Graffiti:  ‘Getting Up’ as Affective Writing Model.”  JAC 25.1 (2005):  131-159.  Print.

Jennifer H. Edbauer expands compositionists’ understanding of writing models through her analysis of graffiti and affect. She attempts to use graffiti writing as a case study to argue that traditional models of rhetoric and composition are lacking.  In particular, she aims at demonstrating how the rhetoricity of texts results from an interplay between signification and affect, despite the fact that affect is often neglected in traditional characterizations of what writing does.  She reveals the role of affect in writing through her analysis of “three familiar topoi—context, style, and signification” (134).   This analysis reveals how the concept of affect is inherently tied to what writing does and how it should not only exist in the theoretical discussions of composition, but also in conversations about praxis.

Edbauer explains how context is often examined by considering the circumstances that brought about a particular instance of writing.  Rhetorical scenes, she explains, are the product of conversations within discourse communities.  However, she maintains that we ought to consider that which “calls” one to write in addition to that which “culls” one to write.  She explains that being “culled” means being “involved in the writing, which allows for the ‘call’ to get heard in the first place” (139).  It refers to the way in which viewing graffiti might captivate a viewer and to the bodily sensation, the affect, that causes a rhetorical scene to “strike” an individual.

In discussing style, Edbauer explains that it addresses “certain rhetorical goals by answering the call to write” (142).  Drawing from Strunk and White she indicates that style is a matter of being distinguished.  For the graffiti artist, accomplishing this task is done in opposition to the suggestions of Strunk and White—through overdoing it.  By “getting up” their work in as many places as possible, they create an “aggregate of sensation” (144).  In this way, the style of graffiti artists is seen as experiential. 

To introduce the idea of signification and affect, Edbauer builds upon one answer to the question “what does writing do?”  Graffiti, she explains, has multiple layers of significations.  However, she explains that graffiti does something beyond signification—it creates a visceral effect outside of its meaning. 

Her treatment of these topoi demonstrate “’other processes’ that are present to the writing scene” (153) that our pedagogies have previously ignored.   She proposes that an affective writing model would serve to purposes—exploring the meaning and the impact of sensation that are brought about through rhetorical scenes. 

This article provides an example of how nontraditional rhetorical scenes can inform the composition classroom and deepen understanding of how composition practices take place.  In an age when new genres are quickly evolving and becoming important to public rhetoric (e.g. Twitter), I believe it is important to understand how we might evolve our praxis through consideration of what we might learn from the “strangeness” of genres we do not often invite to our classrooms.