An Extremely Tardy Post: Audience and the Rhet/Comp Classroom

As an instructor of Composition and Rhetoric at TAMU, I’ve recently been questioning the freshman comp definition of “audience.” In the packets, lesson plans, and writing prompts given to first semester/year instructors in the English department, our students are informed to write to an “academic audience,” and I’m not convinced that audience still exists (or is still relevant to the composition classroom). I’m especially not convinced that students need to write to the “academy” when increasingly surrounded by a globalized, digital, and information-hungry society (and job market). Having the fall back of “academic audience” is, for an instructor, the easy way out. As graduate students and professors, we write our own prose to academic, scholarly audiences – usually increasingly specialized audiences. While “academic audience” is easy to define, easy to communicate, and an easy way to make students write responsibly and ethically (the “academy” is watching you), following this restrictive definition limits the amount of knowledge instructors communicate in the classroom.

Isn’t media literacy, and the media/digital audience, just as (more) important in our culture as (than) the “academy?”

I would argue: yes. But I know many disagree. However: we are slowly increasing online instruction and distance learning at this university; we offer hybrid classes; we promote the use of blogs, wikis, and multi-media presentations. Have we changed our conception of audience when we assign these tasks – or are we still asking our students to write to the “academy” even while creating a blog, using a digital tool to present an idea, or collaborating with other students through browser-based software? In addition, with the increasing attention being paid to how “audiences” are treated in the digital world (as cogs in the online advertising campaign strategy; as streams of data generated by the cookies resting in your browser), does the digital world redefine or reconstruct a definition of “audience” or “reader” that our students should be aware of?

When I talked through this current research/pedagogical idea in a graduate rhetoric course last week, I was given a few research recommendations. My classmates were incredibly accommodating, and I found Walter Ong’s “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction” (read it online here) immediately helpful to thinking about my pedagogical concerns. Any other recommendations, friends?

Also: as a sidebar, I’ll be attending a Digital Humanities “unconference” called THATcamp this coming weekend. I’m going to introduce these questions into the DH-Pedagogy sessions, and I’ll report back with any updates!

Visual Communication in Images and Text

For my own personal interest / potential future research, I recently read an article by Diana George that appeared in CCC in 2002, “From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing.” George provides a very good, in-depth overview of the history of visual communication in composition classrooms. I’ve been interested in visual rhetoric, visual literacy, visual argumentation (or whatever other “visual + word-based modifier” you can think to combine) for several years now, but only recently have I become aware of the narrow scope of the available research in this field. The narrow scope is highlighted by the combination of the word “visual” with a modifier that comes directly from our word-based communication culture (or perhaps, a communication culture that we perceive to be primarily word-based).

In order to move away from this word-based interpretation of visual communication, though, it is important to know the variety of ways visual communications have been interpreted historically. It is necessary to understand the ways word-based modifiers and, more specifically, the print-based textual culture has been imposed on / applied to standard forms of visual communication over the years. George’s article is a good place to begin building this understanding as it does include a very well presented broad history of the visual in, specifically, college composition classrooms.  

A more narrowed focus of my rhetorical research is centered on the difference between providing a visual and using descriptive language to encourage the conjuring of an image in one’s mind; the first presents the audience with a specific image while the second allows audience members to individually imagine an image, and both require different possibilities for analytical interpretations. With this specific, but not well-understood as of now, research interest in mind while reading George’s article, a very particular moment in the history of visual communication in composition classrooms stood out for me.

At one point in her article, George is presenting the history of a college textbook, Writing with a Purpose, and the introduction of a visual assignment in later editions. In one edition, this visual assignment focused on prints by artist William Hogarth. George says of this assignment, “the Beer Street and Gin Lane prints were meant to teach students the art of observation and develop the skill of creating vivid word images” (20). Of the textbook and its inclusion of pictures, George says, “Though these early texts commonly used pictures … as prompts for students compositions, the aim of each exercise was to bring students to a more vivid or accurate use of written language. Often, the authors made an elaborate case for the advantage or superiority of words over pictures” (21).

I find the inclusion of images and pictures in college composition textbooks for the purpose of teaching better vivid language an interesting one. While this type of assignment ignores and undermine the worth and meaning of the art and the artist, I must admit to being interested in the language and descriptions students might use to textually represent the art. Is it possible for a description to create in a reader’s mind an exact, or close to exact, replica of the print? Is this even the purpose of practicing this sort of vivid language assignment? And why might a writer want to use description instead of providing the visual of the print? What is lost in the description? In choosing descriptive, vivid words, is the author of the description intentionally or unintentionally framing interpretation of meaning?

George’s article is certainly leading me further down the visual rabbit-hole, but as I continue researching, I will keep in mind “the skill of creating vivid word images”.

Works Cited

George, Diana. “From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing”. College Composition and Communication 54.1 (2002): 11 – 39. Print.

Symbolic Violence Conference Schedule

 CONFERENCE CALENDAR
 (All plenary sessions will be held at the Cotton Exchange; all contributed paper panels will be held either at the Cotton Exchange or at the La Salle Hotel)

THURSDAY, MARCH 1, 2012

4:00-7:00 pm	REGISTRATION, COTTON EXCHANGE
7:00-8:30 pm	Keynote Address/Annual Kurt Ritter lecture: David Zarefsky, Northwestern University, “When, If Ever, Is Symbolic Violence Justified?” Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, University of Minnesota, respondent Martin J. Medhurst, Baylor University, Chair WELCOME RECEPTION, COTTON EXCHANGE

FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 2012

8:30-9:00	MORNING COFFEE, COTTON EXCHANGE
9:00-10:15	Randall Bytwerk, Calvin College, “Symbolic Violence in Nazi Anti-Semitic Propaganda” Trish Roberts-Miller, University of Texas, Austin, respondent Jennifer Jones Barbour, Texas A&M University, Chair
10:30-11:45	Christian Lundberg, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, “Evangelical Publics” Respondent:  Ryan Stark, Corban College Chair:  Dustin Wood, Texas A&M University
11:45-1:15	LUNCH, ON YOUR OWN (see list of restaurants within walking distance in your conference folder)
1:15-2:30	Robert L. Ivie, Indiana University, “Political Antagonism and Rhetorical Complementarity” Respondent: John Murphy, University of Illinois Chair:   Kurt Ritter
2:30-3:00	COFFEE BREAK, COTTON EXCHANGE
3:00-4:30	CONTRIBUTED PAPER PANELS Panel 1: (COTTON EXCHANGE) Chair:  Jennifer Mease, Texas A&M University Theorizing Violence and Culture Jeff Kurtz, Denison University, “Civility American Style” Pat Gehrke, University of South Carolina, “Propaedeutic to a Rhetoric of Violence” Isaac Clark Holyoak, Texas A&M University, “The Mormon Reformation and Collective Violence, Rene Girard and the Scapegoat Mark Ward, Sr., University of Houston-Victoria, “The Violent Organization:  Toward a Theory that Accounts for Violence as an Organizational Value Panel 2: (LA SALLE HOTEL) Chair:  Leandra Hernandez, Texas A&M University Mediated Violence Kristen Hoerl, Butler University, “Remembering the Rage and Regret of the Weather Underground in Televised Crime Drama” Kathryn Olson, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, “The Epideictic Function of Symbolic Violence in Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’” Glen Williams, Southeast Missouri State, “Primed for Mayhem and Glory” Cheryl Lozano-Whitten, Texas A&M University, “Arguing Moral Panics and Symbolic Violence: Healthcare Reform Protests and the Media”
4:45-6:00	Dana Cloud, University of Texas, Austin, “The Violence of Civility” Respondent:  J. Michael Hogan, Penn State University Chair:  James Arnt Aune, Texas A&M University
6:00-7:00	COCKTAIL HOUR, Enjoy Art Walk in Downtown Bryan
7:00-9:00	BBQ DINNER, Catered by J. Cody’s

SATURDAY, MARCH 3, 2012

8:30-9:00	MORNING COFFEE, COTTON EXCHANGE
9:00-10:15	CONTRIBUTED PAPER PANELS Panel 1 (Cotton Exchange): Chair:  Cheryl Lozano-Whitten, Texas A&M University Violence and Public Address Tiara Foster, Syracuse University, “Sights on Palin:  the Revealing of an American Enemy by Means of Enemyship and Metaphorical Analysis” Bryan McCann, Wayne State University,  “’Chrysler Pulled the Trigger’:  Black Rage, Objective Violence, and the Saga of James Johnson, Jr.” Adam J. Gaffey, “The ‘Flaming Sword’:  Violence, Speech and Henry A. Wallace’s 1948 Southern Tour” Jay Childers, University of Kansas, “Inciting Violence through Rhetoric in the Weak-Minded Foreigners:  The Narrative Explanation of Leon Czolgosz’s Assassination of President William McKinley” Panel 2 (LaSalle Hotel) Chair:  Catherine L. Langford, Texas Tech University The Law and Symbolic Violence Suzanne Condray, Denison University, “Symbolic Violence and Symbolic Speech:  Virginia v. Black” Brad Serber, Texas A&M University, “How Speech Laws Might Hurt Rather Than Help:  A Response to Mari Matsuda” Jeremiah Hickey, St. John’s University, “Death by Adjective: The Supreme Court’s Attack on Legislative Regulations of Violence, or, How Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia Stopped Worrying about Symbolic Violence by Employing Aesthetic Claims to Limit Legislative Restrictions on Violence” David Richardson, Texas A&M University, “Victimage Discourses and Snyder v. Phelps”
10:30-11:45	Theresa Beiner, University of Arkansas, Little Rock College of the Law, "Incivility in the Supreme Court Nomination Process Resulting from Support for Minority Group Members" Respondent:  Eileen Scallen, William Mitchell College of the Law Chair:  David Richardson, Texas A&M University
11:45-1:15	LUNCH, ON YOUR OWN (see list of restaurants within walking distance in your conference folder)
1:15-2:30	Adria Battaglia,  San Angelo State University,” Free Speech, Affect, and the Performative cases of the Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist and “Rape Lists Respondent:  Jeremiah Hickey, St. John’s University Chair:   Kristan Poirot, Texas A&M University
2:30-3:00	COFFEE BREAK, COTTON EXCHANGE
3:00-4:30	CONTRIBUTED PAPER PANELS Panel 3: (COTTON EXCHANGE) Chair:  Luke Lockhart, Texas A&M University Symbolic Nonviolence? Scott Stroud, University of Texas, Austin, “The Severity of Symbolic Non-Violence:  A Jain View on Argument and Intellectual Ahimsa” Meredith Neville, University of Kansas, “Rejecting Violence in Democracy:  An Analysis of Norman Morrison’s Self-Immolation” Catherine L. Langford, “The Displacement of Violence and the Violence of Displacement:  Discourse Not to Stop a Beating Heart”
	Panel 4: (LA SALLE HOTEL) Chair:  Adam J. Gaffey, Texas A&M University Case Studies Rosa Eberly, Penn State University, “’MamaDio! Austin, Austin, Austin:  Dallas and Dallastown;  Or, Getting from Point A to Point B” Kate Lockwood Harris, University of Colorado, Boulder, “Leaks and Tweets:  Rape Allegations, Intersections of Violence, and Julian Assange” Jeremy Rogerson, Texas A&M University, “Torture:  America’s Newest Form of Symbolic Violence” Heather A. Hayes, University of Minnesota, “Living to Die:  The Relationship between Discourse, Violence, and Unruly Arab Bodies”
4:45-6:30	Kevin de Luca, University of Utah, “ Beyond the Violence of Civil Disobedience: Practicing Activism with Rhetorical Force in a World of Infinite Violence”  Respondent:  Rosa Eberly, Penn State University Chair:  Sara Rowe, Texas A&M University
6:30-7:30	RECEPTION, COTTON EXCHANGE

SUNDAY, MARCH 4, 2012

8:30-9:00	MORNING COFFEE, COTTON EXCHANGE
9:00-10:30	Erin Rand, Syracuse University, “’Gay Boys Kill Themselves’:  Engendering Violence in the Figure of the Suicidal Queer Teen” Respondent:  Dan Brouwer, Arizona State University Chair:  Isaac Clark Holyoak, Texas A&M University
10:45-12:00	Chair:  Jennifer Mercieca, Texas A&M University Joshua Gunn, University of Texas, Austin, “MARANATHA” Respondent:   Claire Sisco King, Vanderbilt University
12:00-12:15	Concluding Remarks