Delivery of Digital Documents is Now Key

My initial response to the essay by Kathleen Blake Yancey titled Made Not Only in Words: Composition in a New Key is how creative her display of this written talk appears on the pages of the book. She shares information on side panels and in bolded boxes – including a somewhat behind the scenes perspective for her readers and states on the first page this specific paper was more of a dramatic performance than address when given. She questions her genre almost a decade ago in 2004 - when this Chair’s address was delivered alongside a power point slide show of images she had collected - and these were shown parallel and in dialogue with her words. 

Writing and composing have both become diverse in their singular and combined definitions – and composing is more than words composed on the page but also includes word processors, the internet and a variety of new ways readers, students and others are writing on their own – outside of the classroom. In the new millennium writing is interfacing she says – it’s about both technology and the medium according to Yancey, as well as her colleague James E. Porter in his article Recovering Delivery for Digital Rhetoric.

Porter’s paper opens with the desire to position delivery as a Techne, also meaning an art – and to frame delivery in broader ways and terms.  The delivery is the final persuasive force from the human to computer and/or to the viewer.

Reading circles held in the 19^th century that are mentioned in these papers interest me - and show multimodality happening in writing long ago. The performance and delivery of writing still plays a major role in how a text is consumed – and a development of a reading public is happening again …through the Internet and social media web sites.

Yancey shared this sentiment on page 65: “Today we are witnessing a parallel creation, that of a writing public made plural, and as in the case of the development of a reading public, it’s taking place largely outside of school - and this is an age of universal education. Moreover, unlike what happens in our classes, no one is forcing the public to write.”

How the ‘screen’ plays a role in writing stuck with me after reading Yancey’s piece too; it is the third literacy paralleling with oral and print literacy. More folks are finishing on the high school diploma level these days, and folks are using cell phones as mini computers more and more. Yancey states the screen is the language of the vernacular, and the modern/educated student should know how to combine words, pictures, audio and video. And, this would be the reason I took this class despite the learning curve I faced in terms of experience with digital programs. I feel a little bit of fear still…and possible inadequacy in terms of my geeky computer-usage knowledge – but I am determined to crossover digitally to become a writing composer.

According to Porter, the concept of the body plays a key part in the impact of delivery …as a performer myself this intrigued me. His description of certain portraits chosen for promotional reasons to send subliminal messages without words to their audiences is revealing. He says that both the visual and oral play a role in digital documents on page 213:

“Voice and aurality are a central concern in digital rhetoric, as the World Wide Web supports multimedia discourse that enmeshes textual, video/visual, and aural elements. In digital spaces we have to consider not only textual presentation but oral performance, the very qualities of voice that were central to classical rhetoric.”

Porter shares that the human being and technology are merging and the hybrid form is the cyborg – which takes the reader back to circulation relating to how messages are recycled in digital places. Digital messages often have life of their own and are redistributed without the original writer’s input too.

The new model of composing suggested by Yancey involves circulation of composition, canons of rhetoric, and deicity of technology. Circulation equals Intertextuality - hmmm - this is the aesthetic dimension of composing she relates. Yancey then spills these ideas into remediation. I particularly appreciate the story about the professor taking hourly breaks during her editing to work on laundry – and how her writing is better due to the breaks used for reflection. The term deicity is one that is applicable to life in general – nothing remains permanent, change happens fleetingly and as humans our lives are in a constant state of flux.

Envisioning is a term Yancey brings up near the end of her paper; she defines it as taking technology tools and repurposing them - using them in a different way from which they were designed. The action of envisioning appears to be pushing the public along to write more and more on their own, a phenomenon fueled along as well by the screen and the Internet. This idea seems to also include social justice advocacy intertwined in writing, because of delivery to a wider and more interested audience, who might respond and/or act is now more guaranteed. And, Porter finally assures that developing a robust rhetorical cannon for digital delivery is the real key for the continued and future production of effective online documents.