Hocks, Mary E. “Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments.”
College Composition and Communication. 54:4 2003.
In this seminal article in the field of Visual Rhetoric, ” Hocks argues that composition is shifting from a focus on solely on writing to a focus on design: “Critiquing and producing writing in digital environments actually offers a welcome return to rhetorical principles and an important new pedagogy of writing as design” (632) Hocks considers the hybrid nature of writing with technology. She writes, “. . . new technologies simply require new definitions of what we consider writing” (630). She argues that new media is redefining literacy, and that historically writing has always been hybrid in that it “is at once verbal, spatial, and visual” (630). Hocks states that it is necessary to recognize that visual and print literacy co-exist and compliment one another rather than exist as opposites.
By recognizing the impact of the visual on digital writing environments, compositionists will allow students to critically interpret the multimodal texts of our digital age. Further, it is our responsibility as teachers to instruct our students to become critical observers of new media texts. She states, “To establish a balanced rhetorical approach, then, we must offer students experiences both in the analytic process of critique, which scrutinizes conventional expectations and power relations, and in the transformative process of design, which can change power relations by creating a new vision of knowledge” (644-645). Once they improve their analytical skills, they can then apply those skills to their own productions, “This approach to pedagogy asks teachers not only to incorporate new kinds of texts into our classrooms but new kinds of multimodal compositional processes that asks students to envision and create something that perhaps does not yet exist” (645). Hocks sums up the potential and challenge of incorporating new media into the composition classroom, “Design projects require writers to look at successful models, to think deeply about audience, to design visual and verbal arguments together, and to actively construct new knowledge. Because the process of design is fundamentally visual and multimodal, it can be challenging, but it leads students to a new understanding of how designed spaces and artifacts impact audiences . . . When designing digital documents and also seeing how people use and interpret them, our students can then see themselves as active producers of knowledge in their discipline” (652). When we bring an understanding of digital rhetoric to our electronic classrooms, we need to expand our approach not only to rhetorical criticism but also to text production and “this approach to literacy education reinforces the value of teaching students to think of themselves not just as critics but as designers of knowledge. (644)
Allowing students to become designers of multimodal texts gives them the power to use new media to voice their opinions, state their arguments, and become involved in a discussion. No longer must they sit back on the couch and mindlessly consume the media of the masses. They are given the skills to produce their own media, and enhance their critical thinking skills in the process. “This approach to pedagogy asks teachers not only to incorporate new kinds of texts into our classrooms but new kinds of multimodal compositional processes that asks students to envision and create something that perhaps does not yet exist” (Hocks 645).
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