To begin by addressing some of the concerns Leta raised in her post: I must have started my English career on the cusp of something new (not that I am *soooo* much younger than everybody in the cohort or anything), or else I had really great professors who encouraged my desire to pursue a burgeoning field of study. I love books, as we all do, but sometimes I feel like everything has been done there for so long that I just want to read pictures for a change. I really have had the impression that visual media "reading" is a growth market, but I may be totally wrong. Maybe I've picked up after the wave crested. My point is similar to the one Court made in his lesson plan exchange: these are media our students are going to be familiar with. Why not reach out?
Why not? Because we've been steeped in traditional texts. I like Wysocki's terms "alphabetic" and "non-alphabetic texts" (41). Still, and Jenn and I had this discussion today in the WL, I feel that Wysocki et al. have created a book that introduces a lot of new strategies very quickly that many "alphabetic text" proponents will not be ready to accept. Also, for proposing to be progressive in terms of defining visual media/argumentation, I think many of the assignments in this book are very prescriptive and inflexible (for example, why do I have to use Anthony Blair's essay in assignment 6?).
I seem to be resisting a lot of Wysocki's techniques for this reason, too. If we move entirely towards "non-alphabetic," must it all be intuitive or sensory? Is it scholarly enough to "just have a feeling" about an argument? Of course I will expect my students to be very passionate and emotional about certain topics that they will argue, but it isn't enough for an argument to look pretty to be convincing. Could you imagine? "You have no textual evidence, but that drawing of a puppy is very persuasive."
I saw a student in the WL today who was writing an advertisement analysis to address the prompt "How does this advertisement portray our cultural values?" The student picked out a lot of values that the advert (for Jose Cuervo Tradicional tequila) was exhibiting, but did not really know how to talk about *how* the advert was demonstrating those values. It could have been that particular student, but I find that in a lot of these types of assignments, the students lack the basic knowledge of how to talk about the visual components and why they do what they do. Also, the problem with assessing adverts is so many students get to the point of: "Nobody's going to pull the wool over MY eyes! This is trying to sell me something! I am going to be very cynical about the agenda of this piece, because nobody can sell me happiness!"
One problem may be that the students do not know how to make words and images cooperate. This definitely gets at what Leta was mentioning, as well as the disjunction I noted between Wysocki's visual/emotional appeals ("What colors do you associate with what you listed?" (39)) and verbal/rational appeals. Can images appeal to reason, or are they appealing because there are no word connotations to interfere with our interpretations? If a picture is worth a thousand words, how can we find the vocabulary to discuss them in a 3-5 page paper?
For the sake of my own sanity and schedule, I am going to stop here. I'm sure you'll all be hearing me natter on about visual media in the future, so I will save the rest.
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3 comments:
I find the connection between images and reasoning questionable too.
I don't know to what extent I am right but it seems like written linear texts are universal in some way. If we watch a movie or see a picture, we first react on it via speaking, and if we write down, polish and back up this speaking, we eventually create a text. I don't know if there are alternative ways of the equal importance.
On Youtube there is an option "Post Video Response". Here is the way to respond not in text, but most people write responses, not draw or film them (it's faster too!).
Irina, this is a good point- no matter how much visual media/hypertext is overtaking print, we still need to speak about it, and spoken language would seem to be as alphabetic and linear as the much-maligned 8.5x11 sheet of paper.
It's not exactly visual, but I'm reminded of a commercial I've seen recently (don't even know what it's for) where two people at an airline counter "speak" via MP3 clips coming out of their mouths. Is this like the "video response"?
Kate, I think you're right about the problem of throwing the freshmen to the visual wolves without knowing how to talk about how images create argument. Finding the right readings to prep them for that task is key.
Katie, that's a great point you make about the problem of talking (or writing) about a visual text. It's like translating a message written in another language.
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