On Multimodal Composing

When prompted to create, to compose, in something other than alphanumeric writing, I’ve found that I and other students tend to balk at the suggestion. Why would we take a chance by creating something ‘artistic’ when we could stick to the old tried and true method of writing it out? Now, after having taken WRD 533, a course which focused specifically on composing across modalities, I found that there were countless ways in which one can make rhetorical moves effectively.

In starting the course, we read, watched, and listened to various rhetoricians share their experience, research, and compositions while exploring the realm of New Media. Starting off, we were introduced to Cheryll E. Ball, Jennifer Sheppard, and Kristin L. Arola’s work in their work Writer / Designer: A Guide to Making Multimodal Projects. In their work, Ball, Sheppard, and Arola point out the various modalities as well as ways that a rhetor can take advantage of the medium in which they are working.

For instance, here are the following modalities, or modes and what they entail: 

• Linguistic Mode: 

Word choice, the delivery of a text, whether spoken or written, the organization of writing or speech into phrases, sentences, paragraphs, etc., and the development and coherence of individual words and ideas (13).

• Visual Mode:

Color, layout, style, size, perspective, and framing (15).

• Aural Mode:

Music, sound effects, ambient noise/sounds, silence, the tone of voice that a language is spoken, the volume of a sound, and the emphasis and accent used. (16-7)

• Spatial Mode:

Arrangement, organization, and proximity between people or objects (18).

• Gestural Mode:

Facial expressions, hand gestures, body language, and how people interact (19).

Broken down simply, when creating something that bridges between two of these modes, you’re composing multimodally, and should consider the affordances of such modes. 

But how could this be implemented? In continuing to look at other’s work, I was intrigued when DeVoss et al. explored what it would mean to bring all these modalities into the classroom, with goals to:

• “play in the spaces where multiple media and rhetorical practices rub up against one another;
• explore the design, composition, and rhetorical elements of different types of texts;
• read some of the key—and peripheral!—texts related to multimodal composing and explore the theory and methodology that frames multimodal composing, pedagogy, and research.”

It is this attitude that I think writers — composers! — as a whole, should work to bring into their own works and compositions, seeing what other modalities they could consider and account for.

For those looking for further investigations and explorations of multimodality and composing, I would urge you to simply check out their website, full of countless multimodal creations: Kairos 21.2: DeVoss et al., On Multimodal Composing – Index 

Something not to be dismissed or forgotten amongst this talk of modalities, new media, and working all this, is the idea of multilingual/translingual composing, as Jody Shipka brings up in her own work, Transmodality in/and Processes of Making: Changing Dispositions and Practice. Especially at writing centers, tutors must navigate both institutional as well as writer expectations, and considering all this, I know that there is room for experimentation and creation. 

We have the potential to enable writers and ourselves to recognize, utilize, and strengthen their skills with “varieties of language, practices, and technologies students may be familiar with using, although perhaps not for academic purposes” (253). For instance, what might we learn from attempting to fit an entire essay’s worth of content into a Tweet? Are there not rhetorical restraints and considerations to be mindful of and think critically about when negotiating?

Speaking of the academy and what is often neglected or brushed aside, when we think about ways to compose, write, create, we as tutors, students, composers, should also push ourselves to not just push beyond modalities, but also language expectations; we should push against a monolingual culture in which the US exists. Shipka champions this work, proposing that by bringing more multimodal work into courses and composing, will “[include] the production of more familiar/traditional, seemingly monomodal/monolingual texts as well as those that employ multiple semiotic resources and language varieties” (253). 

Further delving into what multimodality can look like is a website full of several compositions by various scholars, their analysis of their creations, and then a conclusion that brings things together. Words are not enough to describe exactly what this site is, what you can discover on it, and what you might gain, but if you’re interested, check it out and let me know what you think: Kairos 21.2: DeVoss et al., On Multimodal Composing – Introduction. The following video is one such project connected to the entire Kairos website and is definitely worth a watch!

From what you’ve seen so far, I hope that by bringing these academics’ voices and ideas into our own writing center practices, we can make our writing center, as well as the institution at large, into a place where more people can express themselves in their compositions. That isn’t to say that we haven’t started, but as always, there is room for growth. Multimodality is always changing shape and meaning, evolving based nexisting technologies and mindsets. With this in mind, I invite you to think about modalities as they exist around you, how you encounter them daily, and what more could be done with them! 

References

Ball, Cheryl E., et al. Writer/Designer: a Guide to Making Multimodal Projects. Bedford/St. Martins, 2018.

DeVoss, Dànielle Nicole. “On Multimodal Composing.” Kairos, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 15 Jan. 2017, kairos.technorhetoric.net/21.2/praxis/devoss-et-al/index.html.

Shipka, Jody. “Transmodality in/ and Process of Making: Changing Dispositions and Practice.” College English, vol. 78, no. 3, Jan. 2016, pp. 250–257.