The Third Wave: Technorhetoric or Good Old Rhetoric?

The Medium Is the Message (Or Is It?)

In one of those brief hallway encounters the other day, a colleague countered some silly comment I had made about my students' Web projects with a cautionary: "Content! Content over form!" But what this seems to miss are the connections (the hyperlinks if you will) between "traditional" kinds of readings and writings and the kinds that students are already doing—with television shows, video games, Web sites, or synchronous and asynchronous communications—between, that is, the content and the form it takes (or that it my be forced into). And, of course, the form is in large part a function of the technology we use to deliver/access the message. In other words, the form is every bit as important—if not more so—as the content for the commission, transmission, and reception of a message. Thus, I argue we need to consider the forms we use and how they are rhetorically constructed, perhaps more than many of us already are doing, beginning with consideration of the sometimes venerated and sometimes maligned "academic essay."

Many of my students' experiences with reading academic texts have been limited to those works of creative nonfiction and literature they were required to read in the classroom. Often, students come to the college writing classroom with a distinct distaste for reading in general—and often with little experience at all in reading academic essays. And yet we ask them to learn to communicate in this medium within the span of a semester or two, again often with little exposure to models of what they are being asked to write.

Basically, for print essays, teachers and students have long chosen to follow the tenets outlined for us by organizations such as the Modern Language Association (MLA), but with little consideration given to the "why" behind these elements. By focusing on form—explicitly teaching it as an approach to beginning any writing project—we can help students understand how the rhetorical situation informs writer's choices of organization as well as content.

To this end, I asked my students to write a brief analysis of the MLA document format in terms of the rhetorical situation (e.g., audience, purpose, occasion, and medium) in which it is most often used. They were given the following prompts:

The Rhetorical Situation

Audience

Who is the primary audience for papers written following MLA style conventions? Consider the needs and expectations of that audience. How will this impact what the author has to say? Will it have an impact on what the author chooses to omit? Will awareness of this audience affect how information is presented (i.e., the choice of language, structure, medium, format, etc.)?

Purpose

For what purpose or purposes would someone writing within the frame of MLA style conventions likely be writing? How does this purpose relate to the choice of format (MLA manuscript style)?

Occasion

What would occasion someone to write a paper following MLA manuscript format? Are there other occasions when this form might be followed?

Medium

The choice of medium depends on many factors, not the least of which is the audience's expectations. For this particular audience, what are the usual choices of medium? Why would this format be appropriate for only certain types of media and not for others? As you can see, these choices are predicated upon an author's determination of audience, purpose, and occasion. The choice of medium will also impact how your message is presented. Can you think of some examples to include in your paper?

Unfortunately, most students completely missed the point. For the most part, they argued that the MLA document format was the "right" format for all audiences. This, they argued, was why English classes taught them to follow it. Applying the same analysis to Web sites, magazine advertisements, and television commercials, however, resulted in some very astute and successful observations; most students began by arguing whether or not the point (or purpose) of a particular Web site or advertisement was clear to the reader and whether or not it was easy to navigate. Unfortunately, however, students still had difficulty approaching the traditional essays they were required to write from the same vantage. That is, while they were quite adept at analyzing the forms with which they were familiar out of class, they were (mostly) unable to apply this same understanding to traditional academic forms (e.g., the "essay").

Content! Content Over Form!....