Dear Jonathan Alexander, Is it still all about text-based writing?

I kept wanting to really like Alexander’s piece on video games and the composition classroom because the idea, for me at least, fundamentally possess what I see as a lot of potential in the process of redefining what literacy really means. And further, that redefinition seems crucial in the ongoing democratization of the classroom. So, when I read the abstract to Alexander’s work and began the essay, I was excited by the initial promise: to use video games as primary texts in composition classrooms “as a way to explore with our students transformations in what literacy means” (35, Abstract). I guess I thought that by exploring what literacy means, Alexander would also challenge how literacy is practiced. It should be no surprise, based on the sheer number of times that I have cited Gee and his What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy that I see great value in the epistemologically grounded rethinking of “literacy.” And as I have said, Gee argues that literacy could be defined as one’s ability to understand meaning and to make meaning within a certain sign system (or semiotic domain). Literacy for Gee is a two-part process. My disappointment with Alexander’s piece is that for all his progressive work looking at how video games might influence and benefit re-conceptualizations of the understanding-meaning part of literacy, he seems to fall back to far more traditional methods of the making-meaning part of literacy. He examines how video games encourage players to interact with literacy skills like reflection, collaboration, multiculturalism, trans-literacy, and critical literacy, yet in almost all recommendations for how these “literacies” can be articulated in the composition classroom are in the form of alphabetic discourse. In other words, Alexander shows how game players develop new understanding-meaning type literacies through video games, but then recommends that they discuss those new literacies in very traditional written style assignments. This seems to me to be both liberating and confining. It’s a step forward in the assertion of using “new media” in the traditional classroom, but it feels a step backwards in that there is nothing new about how to use that new media, or how to express ideas, meanings, thoughts about that new media. Table 2, which shows how to use the literacy skills practiced in video games in the composition classroom, is all about writing: making meaning is still, in the article, a highly alphabetic practice.

And this is exactly what Selfe is arguing against in both the online discussion and her response to Hesse in CCCs. She advocates a change in the idea of “writing.” Similar to Gee, who says that the making meaning part of his concept of literacy is the “written” part of literacy, Selfe supports a shift in thinking about composition moving it beyond alphabetic expression. And while Hesse, especially in the CCC’s textual discussion, seems to take up some issue with the institutional possibilities and liabilities of such a definitional change, he for the most part seems to see the benefit in moving away from an alphabetic preference to a more multimodal idea of “composing.” And that is, I think, what Alexander misses. He sees the potential for using multimodal texts for reflection, but doesn’t give any room to actual multimodal reflection. In this way traditional notions of literacy are not necessarily challenged. Alexander does good work to see the potential of non-traditional texts in the composition classroom, but fails to see how those texts, and the new literacy skills that they promote, can actually inspire new modes of composition.

Okay, a few more issues/questions with Alexander’s piece:

1. Alexander recommends using on-line games like World of Warcraft and in fact all of his information is based on that game. What about other games? Is this an argument to using mmorpgs, or video games in genera?
2. What are the logistical considerations for playing games in/for class? How much time is given to playing? Do you bring in video game systems? Do you only play computer games?
3. Are Mike and Matt really a representative sample group of which facts can be derived? Does it change things that these are two people? Educated? Males? Etc.
4. Does using the video game and the literacy skills it creates as a metaphor open up the discussion to other non-compositional focused courses?

Sabrina-Feminsim

I have been thinking a lot about Helmbrecht and Love’s article on feminist zines and third wave feminism over this spring break. After spending time at each zine, I was continually struck with what the author’s affirm in their article, that the zines (or at least the parts of the zines I read) worked to absorb feminist history and tradition at the same time as reconfigure that history (151). Most blatantly, in Bust I saw that reconfiguration take shape in how the magazine balanced the presentation of mainstream femininity with progressive feminism. But I’m not a good gage of this kind of thing: admittedly male, reared in a family that placed total credence in the patriarch, I have lived most of my adult life trying to reverse my past. So, in order to try and understand 3^rd wave feminism and/or postfeminism, and to try and make sense of what I was seeing in the zines, I asked my wife a couple questions. Now my wife, Sabrina, is an educated, extremely smart young woman, but she doesn’t care much for “complicated ‘smart’ academic talk.” Which makes her the perfect person to ask complicated academic questions. Our conversation:

Setting: Sunday Afternoon, drinking coffee and eating a pastry, Basketball is playing on TV (though it is muted)

Tim: So, if someone randomly asked you what feminism was, what would you tell them?

Sabrina (looking up from her Facebook page): It’s just standing up for the dignity of women. (Goes back to the computer screen).

Tim: So, would you consider yourself a feminist then?

Sabrina (not looking up from her Facebook page): Sometimes.

Tim: What does that even mean? So feminism is situational?

Sabrina: Well, I don’t know. I guess not. I’m always for the dignity of women. I just don’t always actively do things, like protest and stuff.

Tim: Well you should check out these feminist zines called Bitch and Bust.

Sabrina: Okay, I will.

(Ten minutes goes by)

Sabrina: It’s cool.

Tim: What’s cool?

Sabrina: The Bust zine. It’s pretty sweet.

Tim: Well, what did you like about it?

Sabrina: I liked they had projects.

Tim: Projects? What do you mean?

Sabrina: They had craft projects on the site, things to do, crafts to make.

Tim: Oh.

(Sabrina leaves the room)

Sabrina (from down the hall): Ughhh, we’ve got to do laundry today.

Tim: I know I gotta get ready to go back to Pullman tomorrow.

Sabrina (laughing): Well you can do your own damn laundry.

Tim: That’s not what I meant.

The conversation does not define third wave feminism, nor would Sabrina ever want to be the voice of a movement, but it does highlight some of the paradoxical playfulness that I see in third wave feminism (at least through the lens of Bust). In Sabrina’s case, her initial satisfaction with Bust was located in its “domestic” offerings, its craft section. And yet to Sabrina, her pleasure in and desire to participate in the domestic activity of making crafts, does not dissociate her with the larger notion of feminism. For her, they don’t have to be separate. And though Helmbrecht and Love seemed to slightly criticize this oscillation between domestic tradition and feminist theory, for Bust, as well as for Sabrina, it doesn’t seem to register a theoretical disconnect or a even a problem. Now, I don’t know if this good or bad, beneficial or harmful (though I suspect a mixture of both extemes) but it is interesting that contemporary feminism can even exist in that paradoxical middle. And, further, it seems to be conscious of its dwelling place. This is only highlighted in the above conversation when Sabrina asserts domestic independence by suggesting I clean my own clothes. Now, I was going to clean my own clothes anyway, and Sabrina knew that, her comment therefore was not an intentional command, but self-conscious parody, it was political playfulness; it was her way of saying, through humor, that she understands her power, and though she may like crafts and other domestic activities, she is not going to stand for or allow traditional gender roles. That may not be third wave feminism or postfeminism, but it is Sabrina-feminism. And if feminism encourages personal agency and empowerment than that seems good enough.

A quick story on rural literacy:

My father-in-law (sorry this is turning out to be a family posting) loves the now discontinued TV show My Name is Earl. If you haven’t ever seen the show, here is a clip (link). The show is about stereotypically low income, rural people. I never got the humor of the show, but whenever I asked my father-in-law what he found so funny he would reply, “they’re (the characters) just so stupid.” Now the show is a kind of comedy of errors and does include a lot of rather stupid or low level humor. But my father-in-law was not just talking about the humor, he was also talking about the people doing the humor: everyone in the show is just dumb, according to him. And yet, there have been countless times where we have been doing something together and my father-in-law will relate the situation to a situation from Earl, then using the example from the show to explain how we should proceed with our own situation. And then I would sarcastically say, but Rick, they’re all so dumb, how can what they do make any sense?” And he would wryly respond, “they may be stupid, but there is a weird logic to them.”

These instances, along with the rural literacy piece from this week’s reading, seem to highlight the fact that it can be easy to credit the sophistication of one’s epistemology at the same time as seeing them as highly unsophisticated. I’m not saying that My Name is Earl actually deployed rural discourse or even rural epistemologies, but it did at least show that “dumb” people make interesting and valuable decisions. My father-in-law, through all the stereotype, understood that. What he didn’t understand was that those “dumb” people were not necessarily dumb, they were just different.

Written thoughts on Orality

Though I don’t have an overwhelmingly strong argument in response to the readings this week, I did find a number of things interesting. So, in true blogosphere style, I am just going to go through some of these thoughts, knowing that they probably will not amount to a total thought.

One: On page 323 of Barbara’s article (which, without sounding like a suck-up, was quite beautiful at the same time as being highly informative and challenging) she writes, “In brief, Plateau discourse speaks to one overriding value in Plateau Indian life: the primacy of experience-based knowledge.” In many ways, this felt to me like a statement that suggested a phenomenological epistemology, or a way to make sense of the world through the perceptive interaction with it. This seemed to call back to Barbara’s storytime on the reservation piece, in which she showed how perceptive activities in the home (i.e...watching TV, film, etc.) shaped literacy abilities in the classroom. Though Barbara’s two pieces are working towards different goals through different means, this little statement, admittedly worded completely different in each piece, is a solid reminder of what new media theorists like Mark Hansen and Katherine Hayles argue: that perceptive experience often times shapes/forms/informs epistemological practices. Now, I know that Barbara is talking about a specific history and a specific group of people and that the epistemologies of other people groups are most certainly shaped differently and appear differently, but it is nonetheless challenging to be reminded that 1) people do not make sense of things in the same way and 2) that changing environmental factors can have great impact on epistemological practices (as seen in the case of the students Barbara cited in her “story time” piece who were effected by the presence of the television). However, I want to be clear, because in many ways I am conflating two discourses: where phenomenologists might argue that everyone’s understanding of the world is shaped by their perceptive interactions with it, I understand that everyone does not use that phenomenological information in their discursive practices.

Two: Is understanding visuality, or understanding how a culture understands visuality, an important precursor to trying to understand oral culture? In other words, if oral cultures are among other things, as Ong suggests situational (49), reliant upon formulas (35), aggregative (38), etc. does not understanding how they “view” the situational, view the symbols in the formulas, view the pieces of the aggregate collections become necessary to truly understanding their underlying discursive patterns?

Three: We have spoken about the black church and its influence on African American discourse, but what about the predominately white evangelical church? Our classrooms probably have a large constituency of white evangelical, either practicing or not, students. And though the rich oral tradition of the black church is not necessarily seen in the white evangelical church there are certainly still strong oral traditions that must have strong epistemological shaping impacts on the congregations. What can we gather from the expository methods of preaching, the highly structure of traditional hymns, the sit-and-listen methodology of the actual services practiced at evangelical churches in America? Though the students, coming from these churches, also are invariably influenced by western rhetorical traditions, which also invariably have influenced the actual practices of the churches themselves, the epistemological influences of these orally discursive patterns are undoubtedly strong.

Four: Driving across the state twice a week for a couple months now, I have been opened up to the incredible world of podcasts. Radio stations like Chicago Public Radio, Public Radio New York have produced these incredibly rich, probing pieces of storytelling and argumentation. And what has amazed me more than anything is that the podcasts are not simply stories that are read, or films played on the radio, but they are their own unique genre. I wonder how using podcasts in a composition classroom could 1) allow people with strong oral epistemological traditions to use some of the oral discursive patterns in academic settings and 2) allow people without strong oral epistemological traditions to explore a new genre and a new set of discursive patterns.

Literary Theory meet Composition Theory

So, reading Lunsford and Anzaldua this week I was reminded how it seems like so commonly postmodern theory does not align with traditional compositional theory.

I tried something different for this week: I made a short comic strip, probably not funny and not that interesting, but nonetheless it highlights the main thing I was thinking about after reading this week's readings.

Click link to go to comic strip:

http://timhetland.com/Comicstrip1.html

Putting your business on the Information Highway

I just read Dr. Will Hamlin’s essay appearing in the most recent edition of Washington State Magazine entitled, “Language, Money and Loss.” It’s a beautifully written essay that takes up a number of issues surrounding language use. Though the goal of the essay is not necessarily in line with the reading for this week, Dr. Hamlin’s musings on social networking language is seemingly pertinent. After discussing how his father learned to suppress/abandon his own linguistic drawl and voice patterns as a way to help him “succeed” in mainstream culture, Dr. Hamlin asks if the kind of pressure his father experienced to adapt his language and accent still exists today. He writes:


“Perhaps this wouldn’t happen nowadays. Perhaps American society has moved beyond such trivial pressures. But I doubt it. I think, rather, that the manipulation of language habits has taken on more insidious forms. Consider, for instance, the linguistic norms of social networking sites. Here’s a random “tweet” I found on the internet: “OMG thats hystrical cn u believe he sd that!!! ;-).” Granted, there’s a certain density of expression here, but I wouldn’t say that the comment tells us much about the tweeter’s unique individuality. If anything, it does just the opposite. There’s great safety in merging one’s identity within collective forms of expression—and greater ease of interpretation for those encountering such discourse. But the loss is also tremendous.”

http://wsm.wsu.edu/s/index.php?id=767


Certainly, the tweet that Hamlin found on the internet is written in a text short hand script, and seems to not resemble any specific cultural or individual language markers, making the speaker appear almost anonymous and the text completely acontextual. However, the very fact that the writer has adroitly used the text short hand, not to mention emoticon’s and symbols, does speak to their ability, comfort and knowledge within that linguistic pattern, and thus does actually point to whom the individual might be. Admittedly though, that information does appear vague and not concrete. Further, what Hamlin does not speak to (for obvious rhetorical reasons—as his essay is largely about a different topic) is the rhetorical strategy of the tweet’s content, the fact that the tweet is rather intimate and expresses the feelings of the individual in a very open manner. It is obvious that though the world may have access to this tweet, what it actually says is very personable and seems to be intended for a specific audience—one who would know what “hd” originally said. So though the tweet’s linguistic pattern and use of language might point towards authorial ambiguity, it contains a message of individuality.

This is rather interesting in thinking about Dr. Monroe’s chapter from this week’s reading. The idea that members of different cultures hold different views on sharing personal information, or “putting one’s business on main street” seems to take on a slightly different context in the age of on-line social networking. The way that the email correspondence was viewed by the largely white tutorial staff at UM and the African American tutees who were submitting papers in Monroe’s chapter, might be somewhat different today (but, might not). I just wonder, and I understand that technological access is still going to be a large contributor to how far the tendrils of social networking sites have spread, how the renegotiation of personal and private space that social networking sites have facilitated over the past ten years might have changed cultural understandings of information sharing. In many ways, the signifier of which Dr. Monroe said was required for African American students to share information could now largely come from the very existence of sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. Or, in putting that as a question, do the existence of these sites act as the signifier, prompter, coercer to individuals to open and share personal information to others, audiences that are intended (friends, family, etc) and audiences that are not intended (profile searchers, etc.)? Of course each of these sites dictate just what kind of information a user can post and how the user can post that information, and they do not demand that users in fact post information at all. But what they do is encourage the sharing of private information in public spheres. Your personal business no longer on Main Street, but on the super information highway.

For Dr. Hamlin the way of which that personal information is shared is shrouded in collective shorthand. However, I think if he randomly looked again for a tweet, he might in fact find one that shows more individual language markers. The language of these sites is not so homogeneous as Hamlin supposes. Different people do in fact use the short hand language differently. But beyond that, the collective nature of these sites and the rhetorics that come with them is also further complicated by the way individuals structure their bios, information and media samplings. The individualization process does in fact take shape inside the design confines of the of the site, but that does not mean that it does not take place at all. I agree with Dr. Hamlin that the pressure his father felt to change the way he spoke is now seen in the way that people speak on the social networking sites. Where I differ with Dr. Hamlin is the fact that those sites at least provide a space, albeit a dangerous one at times, for individualization and the use of mixed discourses. And I wonder how we might as instructors learn to use these sites, not merely as a form of communication, but as a form of discourse, one that allows for collective gathering and individual voicing. Though, as Dr. Monroe’s chapter says, we have to be cognizant of the ways that different people will share their information on these sites, I think we also need to be aware that these sites are potentially changing the way that people in fact share their information.

The Forms of Popular Culture as Ways to "Make" Meaning

I know I talked a bit about Gee and his work in What Video Games have to Teach us About Learning and Literacy in an earlier blog, and I know that we read another piece from Gee this week; but, nonetheless, I think that some of his ideas on literacy and what he calls semiotic domains from that specific book further complicate ideas and concepts from the this week’s readings, namely the chapter from Barbara’s book. In Gee’s What Videogames he defines literacy not as one’s ability to simply read and write, but as one’s ability to understand and make meaning in their own unique semiotic domain. Now obviously, as Gee points out, these semiotic domains are not natural but highly socialized, structured and influenced by outside pressures, internal struggles and un-written, negotiable characteristics. Further, one’s affiliation with a semiotic domain does not prohibit them from an association or participation with another semiotic domain: domain groups overlap, as do affiliations. Enough summary. Ultimately, what I want to pull out of Gee’s work in What Video Games for the use of this blog is the fact that semiotic domains not only dictate and/or influence member epistemologies, but also dictate and/or influence what kind of action comes from the epistemology. In other words, as Gee says, semiotic domains prescribe how meaning (or knowledge) is understood/learned as well as how meaning (or knowledge) is made.

This “made” part is what I think is important to consider when thinking about Barbara’s work in “Storytime on the Reservation” from Crossing the Digital Divide. In the chapter, Barbara explains how traditions of “storytime” in the domestic sphere heavily influence children’s epistemologies and consequently their literacy performances in school settings. Showing how traditional school institutions and assessment standards privilege the literacy learned from white middle class rituals of storytime, Barbara points out how group variations in “storytime” rituals can actually lead to students understanding discourse differently. Consequently, that difference in “storytime” and the subsequent difference in epistemology can have detrimental impact on how the student’s literacy is assessed by educators. However, just because the discourse of a student is assessed as poor or struggling, does not mean that the student is actually struggling with literacy; instead it might mean that the student is working from a different variation of home literacy education and that home education is reflected in their discourse. For instance, as Barbara shows, many students in her research population did not experience traditional storytime, where a book is read to the child accompanied with contextual questions, but instead spent more time watching television or watching films. Student’s who experienced this different “storytime” showed different literacy capabilities, though not necessarily less sophisticated or intelligent when compared to the students who had grown up being read to. Barbara then challenges educators to introduce these different epistemological-forming agents, namely popular culture artifacts like TV shows or films, into the classroom.

Okay. I get this and I see the benefit of this (here comes the inevitably foreseen “but”), but I want it to go further. Even though I don’t necessarily know how. This is what I mean: if we know that semiotic domains influence how we get meaning and how we make meaning, then should we not also find ways of promoting students’ use of the forms of popular culture to make meaning. And I don’t think that Barbara is not not suggesting this. I just greedily want more of it. If we introduce popular culture into the classroom, understanding that it is a mechanism of epistemology, then can we really turn around and ask students to make sense of popular culture through the discourse of which the popular culture does not support and did not help form? Or, more simply, if popular culture is how students have come to understand meaning then should the forms of popular culture not also be used to make meaning? The introduction of popular culture into the classroom is good start to expanding ideas of literacy and allowing much larger populations of students literacy “success” but it cannot stop there. If literacy is really a two headed beast, as Gee suggests above, then we must find ways to allow, promote, encourage the use of popular culture forms in discursive activities. I just don’t think that we can bring in popular culture and then ask students to discuss it in more traditional and conservative methods and forms of discourse. Whether this means using programs like Comic Life in the composition classroom or the film review genre in the fourth grade classroom, I don’t know. But if we are trying to meet students at their own epistemological development then I feel like we have to use the forms of their own epistemological development as ways for them to not only understand meaning, but to also, and maybe more importantly, make meaning.

Genrefication: Discourses Change, so to should Pedagogies

When I was writing my thesis on the torture porn sub horror genre, people would ask me “what about The Passion of the Christ? Does that count as torture porn?” My immediate response was always that while The Passion obviously involved graphic and prolonged sequences of visual torture, the film’s purpose and intentions did not align with the traditional motives of the horror genre. Then the person would generally follow up my response with this question, “Well, then what makes a horror movie a horror movie?” Genre theory is tricky. Certainly there are things that genre films, like the western or film noir films, always include. But there are also things that change in genre films. For instance, while the fact that horror films have almost always had a monster figure at the narrative center, the setting of the monster’s violent escapades have changed, especially in the last twenty five years, from isolated, gothic places to more suburban and even urban environments. Genre distinction and definition is illusive, squarely and ultimately not fixed. In other words, as Walter Kendrick has said, the process of “genrefication” is a process of some attributes sticking and a lot of attributes changing to better reflect the cultural milieu or sociohistorical moment.

But we’re not supposed to be talking about film theory or horror theory; we are supposed to be talking about discourse theory and composition pedagogy. But I think what Bizzell’s piece “The Intellectual Work of “Mixed” Forms of Academic Discourses” acknowledges is something very similar to the theory of cinematic genrefication described above. After having read a number of Bizzell’s older pieces on “hybrid” then “mixed” discourses in the academy, this piece seems to possess less polemical suggestion and a more honest diagnosis of academic discourse. However, in that honest diagnosis, Bizzell finds some support for her earlier radical pedagogical proposals. Last week in class and on the blogs we discusses a lot about “allowance”: who is allowed to use non-traditional academic discourse, how much mixed discourses should we allow students to use, how much mixed discourses should we be allowed to teach in the composition classroom, are we as young scholars allowed to use these discourse. While many of these questions seem(ed) impossible to adequately address, Bizzell, in this essay, at the very least approaches a simple answer to the fundamental underpinnings of those “allowance” questions: discourse (genre) is not fixed, it is always changing (1). Therefore, Bizzell continues, “’alternative’ discourses have always been knocking around the academy” (1). In other words, we don’t have to think of alternative discourse as new or revolutionary, but as already existent, as already a part of the discursive, or generic, process. Of course, there are pieces of academic discourse, just like with the horror genre, which remain as necessary, stable components, namely what Bizzell calls the intellectual work of the academy, but there are also parts of the discourse that change with time, rhetorical purpose and aim. It is not that we need to think about allowing students write in mixed discourses, because they, like others in the academy at large, already do and will. What we need to do is encourage and provide space for pedagogies that help students learn to use, what Bizzell says, “their own discursive resources to bear in the intellectual challenges of the academic disciplines” (9).

That student-centered approach is exactly what the second essay we read for this week discussed. Jacqueline Jones Royster, in “Academic Discourses or Small Boats on a Big Sea,” argues for a shift of focus in literacy pedagogy. Moving away from “traditional discourse” centered pedagogies, or pedagogies of “correctness,” Royster suggests that literacy instruction be a people-driven enterprise (26). Royster says that a people-centered literacy pedagogy helps people “forge connections between what they already know as language users and the more that is available to be known” (28). What Royster is talking about, in many ways, is facilitating the evolution of discourse (genre). In encouraging the use of personal language in combination with the learning of other linguistic, rhetorical, and informational tactics, Royster is describing a pedagogical technique that uses, as Bizzell described, the natural (and not in the organic or biological sense) change of discourse, in the classroom setting. Sorry, bad sentence. What I mean is, Royster describes a pedagogy that involves what Bizzell outlines as happening over time. Not sure that was any better than the other sentence. Sorry.

Despite my inability to really say what I am trying to say, these two pieces both are hopeful for and reassuring to students and teachers: Bizzell’s demystifying alternative discourse by detailing how those kinds of discourses are already being used in the academy is freeing for a student; Royster’s paradigmatic shift towards a people-centered literacy pedagogy is encouraging for a composition teacher. Ultimately, in both cases, the authors’ move away from questions of “allowance.” For me, that move is the most reassuring and hopeful thing of all.