Kairos 17.1: Lauer, What's in a Name?

Audience-Oriented

Introduction
"Talking outside the field"

Cynthia Selfe (1:40)

Talking outside the field (2007)

When I’m talking to people like my sister-in-law, my brother-in-law, my mom... people like that. What I say is: I’m having students do videos, I’m having students do audio essays, I’m having students do written compositions.

I don’t use the term multimodal composition. Because for me, multimodal composition is a little bracketed term that we use within our discipline, just shorthand. To me its shorthand for texts that take advantage of multiple semiotic channels. And, you know, since not many people discuss semiotics or channels of meaning, of course they wouldn’t understand what I said, any more than I would understand if someone is talking to me about a carburetor; I don't know what a carburetor is or what it does. But if I talk to people about—in fact I do, a lot—that I'm having students create videos; if I talk to them about students writing scripts; if I talk to them about students doing audio essays; if I talk to them about students doing webpages, podcasts... not a problem in the world. So, the shorthand I would use outside the field is not the shorthand I'd... I wouldn’t use the shorthand of multimodal composition outside the field to describe what I do. There are other words for that.
"Ham Sandwich"

Jason Palmeri (:28)

Ham Sandwich (2008)

When it comes to my administrative self, I would call what I do a ham sandwich if people would give me money and approval to teach that ham sandwich.

Certainly in my scholarly life I pay a lot of attention to those terms, to terms, to what terms I use.

[As an administrator what terms do you use?]

I use multimodal and I call it digital writing, as an administrator seeking money, just because that's been the brand of my program lest I confuse them by calling it something else.
"Emphasis and audience"

Jonathan Alexander (1:54)

Emphasis and audience (2007)

I often find myself using the terms multimedia, and another term that you didn’t use: the new communications technologies, which I know some people think of as a social-sciency kind of term. And it probably is, because I know I’ve been heavily influenced by people in cyberculture theory, cyberculture studies and other sociologically-valenced modes of thinking about media, multimedia, and the Internet.

So just by virtue of the scholarly work that I’m most familiar with, I tend to use that phrase new communications technologies or Internet-enabled technologies. I’ll often find myself using the word enabled—electronically-enabled—in order to highlight the particular technological modality through which the media is being rendered or manipulated. And so those are terms which I think, kind of, often lie outside of the C&C or Computers and Composition crowd, but, as I said, those are terms that I’m sociologically familiar with.

Within the C&C or C&W, or whatever we’re called this week, I would tend to say digital media. And with students I really like to use the words multimedia or multimodalilty. For them, the idea is to emphasize that we need to be thinking rhetorically about the multiple ways in which information, communication, meaning-making, meaning-breakage, actually occurs.

So, I guess for me, as is probably not untypical of what you’re discovering, the audience is important in thinking about which term is going to come to mind.
"Talking with students"

Cheryl Ball (1:23)

Talking with students (2007)

What I’ve come to realize is that, even though I value the term new media in my own scholarship, that’s not how I talk about it, that’s not how I talk about composing with students.

So when I’m teaching a class, I tend to use the term multimodal because they are familiar with the term multimedia already typically and then from there I can extrapolate and help them understand what multimodal composing is and why we’re doing it in the context of an English dept.

Usually though, in typical classes I would teach, like video production or documentary work or something like that, we build up using different kinds of media and so in that way I can say okay, well here’s a still photo and then if we add music to it, what happens. So we have two media, that’s multimedia, that’s multimodal composition.

But often by the end of the semester I’m interchanging those words and using multimodal and new media. Rarely do I use digital media because I want them to understand that they have flexibility, for students who don’t have access to technology, that they can produce multimodal texts that are scrapbooks or collages or whatever they need to that don’t have to be digital.
"Every second time"

Gunther Kress (1:23)

Every second time (2010)

I agree with you that one has to think about who one is talking with or to.

Because I’m mainly an academic, rather than a kind of rhetorician in the public domain, I think for doing academic work, for being precise, the term [Multimedia] is, I think, a hindrance; it’s an obstacle. But if you’re wanting to talk to parents in schools or to politicians, it may be that you don’t go through the kind of mire of attempting to educate them, but you go straight to what you want of them and you know they understand it. Enough for the purposes you want from them or enough for you to give to them some other kind of understanding. So I’d agree with that.

So when I talk, for instance, the term that bugs me is literacy used in all sorts of ways. But I think when you talk to parents, if you can say visual literacy they might feel, kind of, somewhat less worried about the fact that their children are not necessarily interested in image... politicians or policy makers.

But I think it ought to be accompanied by a process where every second time you use it, you use a term which might be more precise or more accurate.
"'Getting' multimodal"

Scott DeWitt (1:37)

'Getting' multimodal (2007)

Multimodal is a term that in this program, entered when we hired Cindy. It was a term that we were not using very much in the program and it’s a term that Cindy uses all the time in all of this work. And so it’s been very interesting to see in the last two years how it’s become very common and people are getting more and more comfortable with it.

Again, I think it does…at least for the time being I think it’s going to suffer a public perception problem, even at the university when we step outside of this program, even sometimes in the department itself, and we use multimodal, people don’t have a clue what we’re talking about. And there it’s the word “modal.” You know, they don’t know what “modal” means and even when you have people who do get it, it gets caught up a lot of times with the “modes” of writing, which has really negative connotations in the field of composition—comparison/contrast, the definition paper, those kinds of things.

So it is also a problematic term but what has been interesting is to watch somebody who is so committed to it, like Cindy, introduce it in conversation very consistently in this program, and once you get it, it makes sense. It’s very descriptive like multimedia is descriptive. And once you explain it to the students, they get it too, they understand what you’re talking about as a blending of that multi part there. But it’s not happening as quickly. It’s taking a little more work.
"Writing grants"

Scott DeWitt (1:29)

Writing grants (2007)

If I were to write a grant, for example, there’s a computer company that has invited me to write a grant to get some equipment.

These people are not from English, they’re not from the university If I used terms, I might use a term like multimodal, but I’m going to have to define that and I’m going to have to talk about why this is something we’re doing and why we’re using that term. I think I could get by with multimodal and digital media and defining those terms and I think they would get it.

[Question: You would use multimodal in an external grant application?]

You know an external grant application, what they want to know is: why aren’t students just doing word processing in a writing class because they all have a perception of what a writing class is. What’s going to be more important in that grant proposal is for me to be talk about not only the kinds of work we want students to do but why we want them to do it. And it’s in that part of the argument that I might say, we need to prepare students to become multimodal composers and then I would define what I mean by that. But I would certainly never send something to Dell Computers and have multimodal in the title.
"Why 'digital media' works"

Scott DeWitt (1:31)

Why 'digital media' works (2007)

You reflected back to me that everything I have been talking about has been about public perception. And that’s because it has become an all-consuming part of my job as the director of this program.

The only way that we can sustain the work that we’re doing here is to make sure that people understand what we’re doing here, and that they continue to be engaged. And so, in the end, I think the defining force here, that gets people’s attention and that gives them something to grab onto to start to understand the work we’re doing is this concept of digital media.

People know the term media; they now know the term digital as things that are happening typically on the screen. So what I like about it is that it signals a big part of what we’re doing, not everything, but a big part of what we’re doing.

If this were the Center for Multimodal Composition, I don’t think people would have anything to grab onto with that. If we were the New Media Project, a little bit more, but I think people would think that... they would want to know what the “new” means on that . At some point what I want to do is give people something familiar to grab onto as a way of coming here, and then to learn really what’s going on and to kind of expand their ideas.

So my answers are about public perception because as the director of this program it’s very much a part of what I do.
"Primitive machines"

Cynthia Selfe (2:15)

Primitive machines (2007)

There’s one more reason that I don’t use new media. I don’t want to fool myself into thinking that what I’m doing is new and I don’t want to suggest to other people that what I’m doing is new.

When I suggest to other people what I’m doing is new, all I do is scare them. Because they are already unsettled enough in English departments at the thought of using computers that the last thing I want to do is to unsettle anybody more, to make them feel more inadequate vis-a-vis technology. So I don’t want to talk about "new" anything. I want to talk about it as if it’s relatively commonplace, old and primitive.

And in that way, what I try and do, is when people have difficulty, If I talk about the machines being primitive, then the people don’t feel like they’ve made the mistake. Because people don’t make the mistakes. Machines are really too primitive to do what we want them to do, they only do what we tell them to do. So that’s another reason I don’t like to use new anything.

Introduction

The audience to whom a term is being directed plays a large part in what term is chosen and how it is defined (Lauer, 2009).

Having an awareness of the values and priorities of those to whom we are directing a message is essential to how we choose to craft that message and how that message is ultimately received and acted on. An effective appeal to audience can mean several things. It can mean deliberately choosing specific terms to use (or not use) to describe our scholarship, teaching, and research, for students, colleagues, administrators, and funding agencies. It can mean recognizing how certain terms may (or may not) be understood by those audiences, and it can mean being open to adapting the meaning of something entirely as circumstances and values and needs change.

Ultimately it can mean seeking to maintain the most open and generous lines of communication by using terms that people are comfortable with, recognize, or can learn from. Using terms that include people is essential for sustaining engagement with the many messages we seek to share in our scholarly and pedagogical work.

The excerpts included in this section illustrate just how important audience can be.

Cynthia Selfe discusses her practice of reserving terms like multimodal composition for those inside the field, while forgoing such terms and just describing the work she and her students do when talking with those outside the field.

Jason Palmeri suggests that terms are not nearly as important as the ideas behind the terms, though using terms people are familiar with can be helpful.

Jonathan Alexander talks about how he tends to use terms according to what he is trying to emphasize, which varies among students as well as within the many scholarly traditions of which he is a part.

Cheryl Ball discusses what terms she uses in the classroom and how those terms are different from those she uses in her scholarship.

Gunther Kress discusses the reality of having to use terms that non-academic people can connect with, while continuing the effort to be precise.

Scott DeWitt talks about the public perception problems that some terms can have when used within larger contexts.

Cynthia Selfe suggests that our choice in terms is important because the terms we use can affect people in ways that may not be useful.

References