Tag Archives: English 4320

Annotation: Mary Hocks’ “Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments”

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Free Choice image from 2geeks-at.

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These (linguistic) annotations were completed prior to the explanation of visual annotations needed for class…

Recently, using Hypothes.is has become a bit challenging.  Certain documents, such as Mary Hocks’ “Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments,” are protected behind the GSU library server and do not wish to load for the annotation server.  Therefore, I have typed my annotations for this paper and will post them below:

“Visual rhetoric, or visual strategies used for meaning and persuasion, is hardly new, but its importance has been amplified by the visual and interactive nature of native hypertext and multimedia writing” (629).

Technology has shifted the visual into a spotlight, not just with the use of images, but layout and format in general. Whereas before the thought behind the presentation was transparent, just disregarded; however, now at times, the thought is out in the open and the format is an element of the composition in a way it had not been before. Transparency.

“…new media requires a complex relationship between verbal and visual technologies” (630).

Images and words work together, replace on another, or distract. It is a fine balance to say what you want to say and show what you want to show in a clear manner. Another level of consideration for the composer.

“internetworked writing” (631)

the process viewed as writing and not just the product

“…looking at the computers around us and analyzing them as intensely visual artifacts. The screen itself is a tablet that combines words, interfaces, icons, and pictures that invoke other modalities like touch and sound” (631).

Typically the only times we notice or think about computers themselves is when they are either outdated or brand new. But to think about the computer as a tablet, an artifact, a physical thing you are working with surprises me. I think I typically consider what is on the computer instead of the computer itself.

“…the Web inherits book page design, it embeds the cultural assumptions about order on a page that come from our history with print texts” (634).
“…what order is reinforced by a design, and what designs give us chances to re-order?” (635).

It is called a web”page” after all.

If “cultural assumptions about order” are passed from print to Internet, what other societal practices and power structures are within the Internet as well? What forms of “tradition” or “oppression” exist within the web? And why is it “inherited”?

“Audience stance describes hot the work visually gives readers a sense of agency and possibilities for interactive involvement” (635).
“…reinforce the audience’s sense of agency and interaction” (636).

A topic that keeps coming up this semester and in particular interests me. How much agency does the audience really get? Is it true choice or the illusion of choice?

“Transparency refers to how the writer designs a document in ways familiar and clear to readers” (636).

In print this is typically overlooked. On web pages designed like book pages, again it is typically overlooked. Is this because we are used to it? It certainly doesn’t catch our attention. I was thinking that this was only challenged in the digital realm, but then I read the two articles in this section about comics. I think the comics highlighted in the articles challenge the typically print design and allow the design to become part of the purpose. Perhaps in traditional documents the design is part of the purpose too, but it just seems to play a much larger role in the comics and online.

“…creates an experience of open-ended possibility with these proliferating texts and interpretations” (640).

In A Sin of Color one of the main characters is an author and talks about how once you write something it lives beyond you and takes on a life of its own. This seemed like the same idea to me. It then exists outside of the author.

“At every turn, then, readers are offered multiple choices, allowing them to construct very different readings of the text” (641).

I wonder what an experiment in this would reveal: Would there be a myriad of ways people interacted with it or are we as authors only thinking that people would branch out and try differing paths? Is it likely that since people are creatures of habit they would tend to interact with the site in a narrow number of possibilities?

“…‘critical technological literacy’ in its recognition of the political implications of technological literacies and its commitment to diversity” (644).

Access is not equal. Economics and politics affect the ability of people throughout the United States and throughout the world to be online.

“Design shapes the future” (644)

As we move away from traditional print standards. Interactivity creates possibilities.

Interesting and powerful.

“…‘double-consciousness’ that Knadler saw in his student’s portfolios and that teachers often find in students working to assimilate personal voices with disitanced and objective academic discourse” (648).

Mainly due to the lie that academic discourse is objective.

I find myself with this problem. How do you own your writing but not sound cocky? And how do increase your confidence enough (as student and writer and thinker) to not rely too heavily upon the research that you have no voice? It seems like a catch-22 to me. I suppose it’s rather a fine (and difficult) balance.

HTML and CSS 2 Class

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Screen Shot 2016-03-08 at 9.35.48 AM

On February 18, 2016, Georgia State University held the second of its HTML and CSS classes: HTML & CSS 2: Adding Style to Pages 2016.

After creating a HTML document, we wrote a CSS document that coincided with and stylized the HTML document.  Having only learned how to make a website through coding in a class two weeks prior, this class took the knowledge to another level adding complexity and creativity to the process. I added borders, changed margins, altered color, font, and size of text, and changed background colors.

 

The HTML text is as follows:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<head>
<title>Website</title>
<link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”main.css”>
<style>
body{
background-color: blue;
font-family: “Verdana”;
}
.definition {
background-color: #99999A;
border: black 0.2em solid;
margin: 1em 0em;
padding: 0.5em;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class=”wrapper”>
<h1 id=”website-title”>My Dictionary</h1>
<div class=”definition”>
<h1 class=”def-title”>Ice Cream</h1>
<p class=”def-message”>
A <span style=”color: red; border: black 0.2em solid”>soft frozen</span> food made with sweetened and flavored milk fat.
</p>
</div>
<div class=”definition”>
<h1 class=”def-title”>Dog</h1>
<p class=”def-message”>
A <span style=”color: red”>domesticated carnivorous mammal</span> that typically has a long snout, four legs, a tail, and an acute sense of smell.
</p>
</div>
</body>
Screen Shot 2016-02-18 at 12.28.14 PM

 

The CSS text is as follows:

#website-title {
text-align:center;
color: #FFFFFF;
margin-bottom: 1em;
}
.def-title {
font-size: 1.5em;
text-align: center;
color: white;
}
.def-message {
text-align: justify;
}
h1, p {
margin: 0.5em 2em 0.5em 2em;
}
.wrapper{
padding: 1em;
}
Screen Shot 2016-02-18 at 12.28.23 PM

Critical Thinking Through Writing 2

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“Assemblage theory . . . emphasizes fluidity, exchangeability, and multiple functionalities. Assemblages appear to be functioning as a whole, but are actually coherent bits of a system whose components can be ‘yanked’ out of one system, ‘plugged’ into another, and still work”

–“Assemblage Theory,” University of Texas

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The pieces of the pie.

The parts that are able to combine and make meaning, change, evolve, or exchange and create alternate meanings are assemblages.

This also defines media flow. A flow that is not a linear path, like a river, but is instead a series of things that are linked to one another, connected, and interact (Reeves 316). The flow can move back and forth connecting one idea or bit of information to another.

It is the parts rather than the sum, yet all the parts combine to create meaning of some sort.

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Media flow is the main idea of Joshua Reeves’ “Temptation and Its Discontents: Digital Rhetoric, Flow, and the Possible.” Reeves explores the “flow” of digital compositions on the World Wide Web, examining how presentation of multimodal compositions impacts audience interaction with the composition, and how the audience is both liberated and constrained by it.

Traditional rhetorical texts possess a linear flow that leads the audience down the author’s intended path. Through the rise of multimodal compositions online, texts now have images, videos, links, and advertisements; there is information everywhere, leading the audience on divergent paths.

Like this…

Having options in a text provides audiences with a sense of autonomy and choice, however Reeves’ thinks that choice is an illusion and that texts are still carefully crafted to provide an audience with specific information.

After reading Reeves’ article I began to look differently at websites. Specific things are linked and embedded to create a structured flow where the options of what you can follow are carefully selected for you. For example, on the University of Texas website, “Assemblage Theory” cited above, the only linked words are “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.” Why are other words not linked, such as “Gilles Deleuze” or “Organismic Matter”? Are they any less important? What are the purposes of choosing which words to link and which to not link? By leaving things out, either purposefully or coincidentally, the composer is altering the possibilities.  While we feel like we have control as the audience (we get to chose whether we click or not), the composers purposeful presentation controls our experience and knowledge acquisition (by limiting what we can click).

So, what does this mean for our interactions with texts?  How did the previous video alter the flow of this composition?  How have my linking decisions (to link or not to link) affected your choice to click or not?  How, as the composer have I altered your interaction with this text?

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Teresa Rizzo in the article “Television Assemblages” uses the assemblage theory also in relation to media, but focuses on the evolution of television into a multiplatform model. She explains how television had been viewed as a single static entity, but it is really just a sum of parts. Those parts have changed and taken new forms into what is now a “network of connections” with the Internet and technology disrupting the television consumption algorithm (Rizzo).

Television is no longer dependent upon a large broadcast network, confined to a set schedule, or stuck in the living room. Shows and movies can now be watched anytime, anywhere, as mobility emerges. Interaction and participation are prevalent as audience members create their own content and comment on what they are watching. This generates all kinds of possibilities. What will be actualized is yet to be seen and depends upon the configuration of assemblages.

This stance on possibility, what could happen and what actually happens, is linked to linearity.  Rizzo thinks that linearity does not exist within assemblages, rather a “linear cause and effect logic” is only in hindsight, once you already know what happened—“it only has determinacy when read retroactively; it could always have happened otherwise” (Rizzo). If assemblages are all about “an infinite number of possibilities” then it leaves no straightforward linear path (Rizzo). While I find this to be interesting, I wonder if anything can be truly linear then? Can the concept of linearity even exist? If not, then has linear composition been a false idea in rhetoric all along?  Perhaps it is the lover of narrative in me, but I have a difficult time believing Rizzo’s point here.

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Besides debating the concept of linearity, the articles are in conversation with each other concerning customization.  Personalization enables a device to respond to the likes and dislikes of that particular person. While this concept seems like a great filter, I wonder what costs are associated with it.

Personal data collection is everywhere. Rizzo speaks of children using devices to watch television, well then what sort of information is being collected on our kids? Reeves thinks that “[v]irtually every move we make on the Web is being captured and analyzed by strategists who are designing ever more refined ways to govern our lives on and offline” (326).  Composers, producers, and advertisers are purposefully structuring our media flow to achieve their own goals.  Based on the ads that pop up on my computer, I’d agree.

Despite the wealth of information available in the world, both theorist worry that websites and applications will become so personalized that people will not continue to be exposed to new knowledge and differing opinions. Reeves calls this the “echo chamber,” where we only see and hear things that agree with us, stunting our growth and prohibiting ourselves from emerging into our potential.  I believe people do this anyway.  Our environment and our personal choices affect what we see and hear.  Some people chose to tune out what they don’t agree with.  Through the emergence of personalization in technology, I think that the audience still has a legitimate choice, to close things out or to open to possibility.

As media continues to change, reorganizing its assemblages and flowing through the channels of technology, it will be interesting to see how rhetoric in these spaces emerges. I tend to think that much will stay the same, with adaptions here and there to fit the needs of changing technology.  As more and more websites and applications are developed, the way in which we interact with compositions evolves.  By going mobile and breaking with linear tradition, there is no telling where it will go from here.

Oh, the possibilities.

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Photograph:

The class-distribution of another library’s collection by Mace Ojala, complements of Creative Commons and Flickr.

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Works Cited:

“Assemblage Theory.” Texas Theory. University of Texas, 2010. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.

Reeves, Joshua. “Temptation And Its Discontents: Digital Rhetoric, Flow, And The Possible.” Rhetoric Review 32.3 (2013): 314-330. Academic Search Complete. Web. 23 Feb. 2016.

Rizzo, Teresa. “Television Assemblages.” The Fibreculture Journal 24 (2015): n. pag. The Fibreculture Journal. Open Humanities Press. Web. 22 Feb. 2016.

Critical Thinking Through Writing

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Written centuries apart, one would not automatically connect Plato’s Phaedrus with Liz Lane’s “Feminist Rhetoric in the Digital Sphere: Digital Interventions & the Subversion of Gendered Cultural Scripts.” However far apart they appear in subject, time, and space, they do contain some similar qualities worth noting. Essential to each piece is the definition of rhetoric and rhetoric’s place within society; however, each text focuses on rhetoric in different ways.6770069607_d25621ce65

 

The Works

In Phaedrus, Plato speaks through a dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus, who discuss the art of rhetoric. This one-scene play incorporates example speeches and discourse to examine the definition of rhetoric, its purpose, and how one uses it. The beginning is filled with a rhetorical challenge in which Socrates refutes the value of a speech by Lysias. The resulting speeches by Socrates create a bit of a cumbersome beginning in which the knowledge that comes later in the text is needed to fully understand and appreciate. Readers are forced to read the text several times in order to comprehend the intricacies presented by Plato. Filled with examples and comparisons, it explains the role of rhetoric in a society, which history tells us, limited participation based upon gender and class.

Liz Lane directly addresses the gender gap of Ancient Greece touching upon the history of rhetoric and how women have been excluded from this realm in her text, “Feminist Rhetoric in the Digital Sphere.” Lane continues into the present day discussing how women are still culturally excluded from rhetoric. When women enter the public debate, they are often threatened and abused. She examines how women are using digital technology to increase feminist rhetoric and open dialogue surrounding women’s struggle for voice. As with Plato’s dialogue, the reader must pay close attention to Lane’s presentation; she jumps around between examples, names, and details, which are relevant to her particular points, but require a diligent reader.

Both authors use the same techniques to make their arguments work. By clearly defining the terms with which they are working, the authors keep their arguments clear, and make sure their audience is with them before moving forward. Throughout each piece, questions are asked and examples are provided.

 

The Conversation

Ancient Greece was the birth place of rhetoric, therefore, Plato’s Phaedrus is a foundation of the rhetorical texts that have come after. While Socrates and Phaedrus never openly exclude women, and Socrates does mention women in his line “Ancient sages, men and women, who have spoken and written of these things…” (Phaedrus by Plato), we know through historical studies that women were typically excluded. Therefore, Liz Lane’s text, while an extension of Plato’s work is taking the argument for rhetoric in a different direction, imploring the access of women to public dialogue.

Lane also explores technologies that Plato could never have imagined. Socrates states in Phaedrus that he thinks writing is detrimental to memory, one of the five canons of rhetoric. I wonder what Socrates would have to say about the internet and cell phones? Apparently, however, Plato did not share Socrates’ opinion, since Plato wrote Phaedrus. Lane examines the use of the written word, but in a modern sense where the written word is accepted and expected, and has gained a new level of audience reach through the Internet. The spoken word also has renewed vigor in this digital age with cameras and video dissemination online. Therefore, I would define “Feminist Rhetoric in the Digital Sphere” as a contemporary extension of Phaedrus, taking the definition of rhetoric and applying it to the standards and struggles of today.

 

The Embodiment

Both authors are concerned with the embodiment of rhetoric. Lane examines this in the context of women, linking body and voice, “Digital representations of the body (profile pictures, usernames, biographies,) cannot be divorced from the speaker’s voice, and even when a speaker’s presence is seemingly neutral, gendered attacks are hurled at an assumed body” (Lane). Rhetoric is the embodiment of voice, and the body is the figure of the voice; therefore, rhetoric represents not just the words but also the person that puts forth those words. Historically the only bodies with the right to speak where male, but Lane addresses the growth of female voice and the rise of feminist rhetoric as “Increasingly, feminist activists have begun to explore disruptive technologies and to assert a powerful voice in commonly exclusive public spheres” (Lane).

Plato, through the character of Socrates, is concerned with truth in rhetoric. He attempts to clarify the use of rhetoric by philosophers (inspired truth seekers, such as Socrates himself) versus Sophists (speech writers for hire who sell lies and sow evil), and the appropriate ability of each to use the art. Socrates states, “who being ignorant of the truth aims at appearances, will only attain an art of rhetoric which is ridiculous and is not an art at all” (Phaedrus by Plato). Those who seek and know the truth can possess the art of rhetoric, and those who peddle words are deemed ridiculous; therefore, it is philosophers who embody rhetoric.

Plato used the term Sophists as an insult in Phaedrus, whereas Lane looks upon the teachers and speechwriters a bit differently.   She sees the Sophists as trying to open up rhetoric and social dialogue, no longer keeping it exclusive to rich men—“The Sophistic movement, for example, was rooted in teaching commoners and those outside of the realm of traditional education how to speak and defend themselves in courts of law” (Lane).

This is one of many differing viewpoints between Lane and Plato. What they do have in common, though, is the desire to understand rhetoric’s place in the society in which they live. Lane has the benefit of knowing about and learning from history, whereas Plato is history.

 

The Conclusion

Whether Ancient Greece or twenty-first century United States, rhetoric is crucial to fostering dialogue, defining terms, establishing common ground, and shaping society. I think both Plato and Lane could agree to that.

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Works Cited

Lane, Liz. “Feminist Rhetoric in the Digital Sphere: Digital Interventions & the Subversion of Gendered Cultural Scripts.” Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology. University of Oregon Libraries, 2015. Web. 23 Jan. 2016.

Phaedrus by Plato. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. The Internet Classics Archive, 2009. Web. 23 Jan. 2016.

Many thanks to Flickr and Tetra Pak for the incredible photo!