Final project for Eng 517
Alison Bennett

People only see what they are prepared to see.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Two years ago, there was a fight in our teacher’s lounge. I should hasten to explain that I don’t mean a gangland rumble with weapons, or fists, but merely a heated verbal exchange. This clarification, however, does not lessen my embarrassment at being involved. The memory is even more painful when I recall that the subject of the dissension was neither politics, religion, nor even gay rights; the subject was homecoming queens. The local high school student body had just bestowed the title upon a personable young woman, but distinguished in appearance by the fuchsia highlights in her hair, pierced nose and eyebrows, a number of visible tattoos, not to mention the tattered fishnet stockings and combat boots that were usually part of her daily costume. She was not elected by a narrow margin either. She had, as politicians would say, a mandate. Not a few of the elementary teachers were scandalized, taking up the age-old argument that the holder of this honorary title should be representative of the school to the community at large. This meant someone with a more conventional personal style. After all, it was common knowledge that such bizarre choices in personal appearance are reflective of antisocial values, rejection of authority, and a wide range of undesirable behavior. But controversy arose when a small contingent of us maintained that this “common” knowledge was uncommon to us; the young woman was not reputed to be a troublemaker, so if the student body thought her a good representative, that ought to be enough. Shameful though it is to admit, there were folks who avoided each other’s company for several weeks as the result of that day.
Trivial as it was, the above incident is an example of our need to make the package correspond to the content. The kind of correspondence we anticipate is shaped by experience, culture, and personal beliefs. Our homecoming queen’s unconventional sense of style suggests that our need for dependable relationships between appearance and content can be thwarted as a result of someone’s deliberate choice. This being a reality, it is also reasonable to conclude that the same need can be supported as a result of deliberate choice. ***** This issue has not, till recently been given much study This lack of attention is probably because writing has, traditionally sported particular appearances for so long, it has never occurred to us that it could look any other way. We forgot that this came about because of choices; choices made to serve the academic and social climates of a previous time, choices that may not be viable in the academic and social climates of this time. Until relatively recently, students had a limited range of options available with which they could shape the form of their compositions. The proliferation of digital technology, however, has made writers more aware that there are choices to be made concerning what Wysocki refers to as the “materialities” of text (Writing New Media), a term I will explain in more depth shortly. In this paper, I will examine some of the elements that comprise the materiality of new media texts, investigating their rhetorical potential. I will then conclude with some thought about why composition pedagogy shouldn’t ignore the rhetoric of materiality, and how teacher can increase their students’ sensitivity to its presence.
At this point, it seems reasonable to provide readers with a working definition of what I mean by the term “new media texts”. Since I specified the growing use of digital technology as responsible for the increased range of choices available to writers in how their compositions should look, it’s logical to think of new media texts as exclusively digital productions. While this definition works, it is limited because of its implication that visual rhetoric is technology dependent as opposed to technology enhanced. In truth, there is a visual component in the rhetoric of all texts, regardless of how they were composed. Therefore, the most reasonable definition of new media texts come from Anne Frances Wysocki's “those that have been made by composers who are aware of the range of materialities of texts and who then highlight the materiality...” (New Media, 15). It includes in the category, all texts produced by authors who demonstrate an awareness of the form/content relationship. Even with this clarification in mind, however, most of the following discussion will center on products of digital media, such as websites, since these are the compositions addressed with increasing frequency by educators and composition scholars.
This leads me toward a more through discussion of the concept of textual materiality. In ***Writing New Media, Wysocki quotes Bruce Horner’s expansive definition of materiality that includes socioeconomic conditions under which composition is done, distribution mechanisms, global power relations which shape content, as well as physical attributes such as illustrations and style of type. Since the scope of this paper is much more limited, my use of the term will be confined mainly to visual elements.

VISUAL MATERIALITIES AND THE MEANING THEY MAKE
The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.
Publilius Syrus
For most of us, the earliest reading experiences involve what are popularly referred to as “picture books”. In fact, illustrations in basic readers serve as more than just ways to hold the interest of young readers. The “Whole Language” approach to reading instruction encourages reading teachers to utilize pictures (in addition to phonetic instruction) as “cues” to help new readers decode unfamiliar words. As readers grow more skillful, the materialities of their books change. Reading teachers encourage them to read books that feature more complex plots, unfolding over the length of several chapters, with simpler and fewer illustrations. After the primary elementary years, the academy appears to display a prejudice against writing that elevates pictures from the role of mere illustrations to actual accomplices in making meaning.
Forms of writing made possible by new technologies are making some scholars call this prejudice to account. Gunther Kress has noted that “ writing, whether on the screen or on the page, is accompanied more and more by image, whether as ‘picture’, diagram or map” (Literacy in the New Media Age, 65). Rather than being an almost exclusively textual creation, writing is becoming more of text/image mix. Yet, Sean Williams points out the paucity of articles about new media writing in three major journals of composition scholarship between 1990 and 1998, the very period which first saw the explosive growth in this type of composition. Williams observes that in that period, College Composition and Communication published only six articles about writing with computers, none of which concerned composing “nonverbal” texts. College English, according to Williams, published even fewer articles about the role of computers in writing. Only the Journal of Advanced Composition, out of six articles about computers and writing, contained three which addressed a concept of literacy, which extended beyond the boundaries of traditional verbal media. (Thinking out of the pro-verbal box, 24). So, if like Williams we concur that this evidences a pro-verbal bias in composition study, and consequently in the writing classroom, it becomes necessary to acknowledge the rhetorical role of image and other non-verbal elements so that we can arrive at a definition of literacy that can include new media texts.
Writers make conscious decisions about what they wish their writing to communicate, regardless of the medium they use. Among these decisions are what to write about, what words to use, and what words to omit. The same decisions are operative when including images. Selecting images is far from an arhetorical practice. Increasingly freed from being viewed as servants to words, illustrating various points in the text, images should be considered carefully as meaning makers. News photographs for instance, can tell war stories in a variety of ways, depending upon whether they show pictures of the technology that allows missiles to hit targets with pinpoint accuracy, or whether they show the devastation that results from those hits. Pictures of the same football game show either joy, or despair, depending on whether the camera is aimed at the winning bench, or the losing one. As Faigley, George, Selfe, and Palchik point out, “if we point the camera in one direction, we don’t point in another” (Picturing Texts, 25).
Apart from their perspective, images contribute rhetorical effect within their very design. Repeating patterns within an image, for example, function in the same ways that topic sentences and consistent use of terms work in text. They create a unifying structure that helps the audience identify and stay focused upon the main idea. (Picturing Texts 25). When these patterns are arranged symmetrically within the image the viewer is aware of a sense of balance, which simply means that the elements in the image are evenly distributed across the picture’s surface. Symmetrical placement is only one way of achieving balance, however. Juxtaposing contrasting subjects can also balance an image, as can the use of continuous line and/or space. Whatever way balance is achieved, the effect upon the audience is gratifying because normally, we are psychologically programmed to expect balanced. Unbalanced images create subconscious tension in the viewer (Picturing Texts, 26). This tension can be exploited to further the authors’ argument by jarring the viewers’ sense of order.
The concept of balance does not imply, however, that all ideas expressed have equal value for the author, or that the audience is intended to view all ideas equally. Traditional text utilizes a number of devises to emphasize some points over others. Printed text creates emphases by using bolder type, using italics, using special effects, or combinations thereof. Visual communication has it’s own techniques for drawing its audiences attention toward some points, at the expense of others. The proportion with which each part of the image is represented carries heavy rhetorical ramifications. The greater portion a given element occupies within the whole graphic, the greater its emphasis for the viewer. Such emphasis carries a sense of importance of that element which is not necessarily reflective of reality.
The world maps featured on the website, http://www.petersworldmap.org/ give us an excellent example of the rhetorical function of disproportion. The Mercator world map, drawn up in 1569 and customarily used even today, shows a picture of the continents skewed to advantage the European colonial powers. The Northern hemisphere appears to be of equal, or even larger mass than does the Southern Hemisphere, and the countries of Europe appear to be centrally located. Compare this map to the one drawn by Arno Peters. The Peters map, drawn from information supplied by the United Nations, is believed to offer a more accurate representation of continental, as well as national proportions. The rhetorical implications are obvious, and disturbing, when we reflect upon how many generations of students in both hemispheres have come of age, forming their worldviews, in accordance with the Mercator map.
Such rhetorical implications are of special concern because maps belong to a genre of images that are generally viewed as objective representations. Photographs are also examples of what we usually credit as representing what it “real”. The type of technology used to create images has a major influence upon the meaning viewers take from that image (Picturing, 103). Perhaps this is why we are prone to ascribe a sense of reality to some images more so than to others. Viewing an oil, or water color painting for instance, we are aware that the subject represented has been filtered through the artist’s interpretation. The technology used to create that painting, is one that can be manipulated in accordance with the skill of the creator, to produce a product which is an enhanced representation. We understand this about art, so we don’t necessarily expect graphic reproductions. But we expect more objectivity from other types of image –making technology. In addition to maps, photographs belong to a genre of image that we tend to credit as “real” representations. This way of thinking has, perhaps always been naive, since competent photographers have been able to manipulate their medium by controlling shutter speeds, subject compositions, shot angles, etc. to influence the meaning their work holds viewers. The advent of digital technology, however, has increased the ways the photos can be manipulated, and the ease of doing so, to the point that even those of modest skills can produce credible results. Such undetected manipulation can serve a variety of purposes.
The digital enhancement of outer space pictures sent from the Hubble telescope serves as a case in point. In some of the Hubble pictures, photographic instruments failed to faithfully reproduce some of the colors and details as scientists theorized they would actually appear in space. To correct this, the images were enhanced to make the colors as bright and the details as crisp as the scientists thought they should look. But there were also political and economic benefits to be reaped from this enhancement. Impressive images from outer space could spark the public imagination, which in turn could fuel more support for government expenditures on the space program. In her article, “Even Scientific Images Have Trouble Telling the Truth”, Vickie Goldberg comments upon the digitalized enhancement of the space pictures sent from the Hubble telescope:
“To many of us who are not in the sciences, pictures like the Hubble images or the Visual Human
project have seemed like the last refuge of photographic “ truth” in the current flood of image doubts.
A three-day conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in June---‘Image and Meaning :
Envisioning and Communicating Science and Technology’----almost sneakily suggested that there is
no refuge, that scientific images are more subtly but just as surely subject to interpretation, deconstruc-
tion and manipulation as the nearest billboard”.
Goldberg, (Picturing Texts, 362).
Photographic tampering is not a practice that rode in on the shoulders of the new media. Nor have its motives always been benign. Totalitarian dictators have been known to have removed from photos, the images of those fallen from favor as if to make it seem as if the individuals had never existed. What makes the practice more worrisome now, is the way that digital technology has made alterations so easy and so virtually undetectable. Clearly there are ethical issues at work here, even when the original motives behind photo altering are not particularly sinister. The Hubble telescope pictures were transmitted in a medium in which we don’ expect to find alterations. Some were enhanced to compensate for failures in image reproducing equipment. But when we consider that enhancements like this are made according to human interpretation, and that human interpretation is subjective by nature, we have to wonder about the guiding spirit behind these enhancements. As Faigley, et al observe, “Making autumn leaves a brighter yellow or a clear sky a deeper blue hardly seems dishonest. The question is, When does alteration become falsification?”(321).
If there is argument in the images contained within a text, there is also argument contained in the visual presentation of text as a whole; argument that, in reality has always been present even in traditional print based text. If this seems a novel concept, it is because we are so attuned to the visual rhetoric of conventional print text, that we have become desensitized to its presence. Possibly, the demphesis of this visual rhetoric is a natural consequence of our academic tradition of privileging the verbal over the visual. According to Wysocki and Jasten, “The design of print pages has been made as invisible as possible so that it seems only the disembodied meaning of the words shines through” (43). This invisibility is not surprising when we consider that in the past, writers concerned themselves with the layout of their texts, only in the most minimum fashion. . Gunther Kress, in Literacy in The New Media Age, notes that the tasks of making printed pages look good, were the responsibilities of typesetters, typists, and printers (65). The decisions made by these professionals regarding margin widths, spatial arrangement of images and text, and print style have been accepted at large as the conventions of print. These conventions carry what Kress calls a “visual grammar” (Literacy 65). Visual grammar dictates that the way all elements, both images and text are placed upon the page or screen convey meaning and contribute to the composition’s “visual entity” (Literacy 66). However, the meanings conveyed are contextual because visual grammar is culturally influenced. Kress offer the following example:
“In Western alphabetic cultures.....not, however, in alphabetic cultures such as Arabic or
Hebrew,.....the reading direction of written texts is from left to right. ................The left is ‘where we start
from’, whether it is the chapter or the line; it is the starting point. The right is then ‘the point to which we
are moving’, ‘where we will get to’”.

Literacy (69)

Therefore, to Western readers, the symbol “>>>>>>>” would probably suggest a progression or a going forward, while the symbol “<<<<<<<” would likely be understood as a regression, or going backward. But we couldn’t take it for granted that these meaning would be universally applied.
Do texts whose visual grammar fails to conform to cultural expectations then risk their credibility? In her article, “Practicing safe visual rhetoric on the World Wide Web”, Patricia Sullivan examines the considerations which inhibit new media writers when shaping the designs of their compositions. In situations when they don’t feel comfortable taking risks with design, writers, Sullivan found, felt “safe” by following the advice of design manuals. That is, they felt they were conforming to acceptable standards and as a result, their compositions would be neither rejected nor viewed with suspicion by readers. Sullivan notes that this concept of “safe” design reflects a tendency to credit the advice offered by design manuals as universal standards, rather than just sound advice. e in all contexts. Design customs vary, according to the purpose for which they are employed. Decorative, playful text such as this, for example would be out of place in an academic treatise, but appropriate on a theater marquise. Additionally, the technology with which readers will view a text may not be entirely compatible with the technology that created it. Different web browsers, for instance, can presents texts in different ways. Consequently, even within the same culture and genre, “safe” design practices are not always dependable.
Anne Wysocki finds that often, popular design manuals fail to address this contextuality. She comments that, while these manuals offer principles which allow users to analyze design as something that is rationally planned, they fail to comment upon context, making principles of design seem “ neutral and timeless ” (Writing New Media 151). This lack of attention classifies the interaction between design and content, as what Wysocki and Jasken refer to as an invisible interface; a zone where the two elements meet and interact in the ways that have not been called to the viewer’s attention (Unforgettable face 32). Lack of visibility allows readers and writers of new media texts to remain naive about the rhetorical shading inherent in all communication. It deceives them into seeing each of the selection in the array of visual choices that technology makes available as equal and interchangeable, which according to Kress’s observations about visual grammar, they are not.
The technology of the World Wide Web gives writers a medium through which they may communicate with individuals far removed from their normal venue. The far reaching potential of Web authorship makes the socially situated nuance of communication a more salient point. Writing in hypertext involves dealing with all of the decisions about use of image and layout of elements that can be involved in more traditional media. Hypertext paired with digital technology, however expand the range of choices available. Kress concludes, “On the screen, the textual entity is treated as a visual entity in ways in which the page never was” (Literacy 65). Writers may, for instance, employ moving images, sound, and most commonly hyperlinks to serve their message. This last feature, the hyperlink, is among the most significant of all the visual qualities of hypertext. Not only is the use of the hyperlink unique to Web composition, but also it is significant because, aside from being rhetorical in themselves, hyperlinks work to alter the actual reading processes with which we have become comfortable.

Visually Shaping Readers
Signification luxuriates in the inclusion of the free play of these associative
rhetorical and semantic relations.

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Nicholas Burbles, author of “Rhetorics of the Web: hypereading and critical literacy”, describes hyperlinks as “part of what can turn information into knowledge, suggesting causal associations, category relations, instantiations, and so forth.......” (109). Like doors in a wall, hyperlinks allow readers to escape the linear progression of traditional Western reading methodology, allowing them to meander onto various side paths of associational content. Readers can choose to detour at any point in which a hyperlink appears, choose to follow only selected links, continue on their journey uninterrupted, or they can defer exploration of all links until they have completed the page. Because hyperlinks are distinguished graphically from the rest of the text, readers are always aware of when and where they can choose to stray from the beaten path.
Burbles describes hyperlinks as functioning like tropes, and describes a number of ways in which they fulfill this function (111- 116) Links can be used to suggest a cause and effect relationship between a particular point in a text, and the content of the link as a whole, or single portion of that content. Links can highlight perceived commonalities shared between the subjects of different compositions. Links as behave in antistatic fashion by using a specific word or phrase to maneuver into a different context. Links can also act metaphorically, by juxtaposing textual points which may initially seem unassociated (111). It is significant that the associations suggested by these juxtapositions can have a factual basis, or they can be created by the author to serve a particular message. It is a cultural reality that objects or ideas which have no natural affinity, will develop a rhetorical association because of the frequency with which they appear together (Mom and apple pie comes to mind).
Hyperlinks exercise their power to make meaning by means of their graphic situation within a text. Authors of hypertexts decide between which items they wish to build inferences, and at what point to build them when they decide where to place hyperlinks. Joseph Janangelo compares the author who makes meaning with hyperlinks to the artist who creates collage. Both forms construct arguments by assembling materials made elsewhere, and build inferences of relatedness between them by the ways in which the juxtaposition these materials (“Joseph Cornell and Hypertext” 27). Juxtapositioning works contrary to traditional Western analytical reasoning, inviting us to think associatively, “beyond linear models of argumentation” (Janangelo, 260). For readers trained in the Western traditions of logic, hyperlinks present the challenge of remaining intellectually engaged with a concept, while keeping enough mental energy free to follow the association offered by hyperlinks. To be successful, it is likely that new reading methods will need to be employed.
Like words and images, hyperlinks also make meaning from what they exclude as well as what they include. Burbles points out that, when critically reading hypertexts, readers need the ability “to read the absences as well as the presences of information” (119). This is to say that readers need to be able to move away from the limitations of those associations offered by links to imagine associations that have been suppressed. Such as stance is necessary because, in addition to shaping information by weaving relationships, links also control access to information (Burbles 105). This point is illustrated by observing the way search engines work. We in Western cultures, have a mind-set, which places greater significance upon that which, in any series, appears first (Kress, Literacy 70). Because advertisers understand that we tend to think this way, many will commonly pay fees to have their sites appear near the top of search result lists. They know that if the search results are particularly extensive, the majority of readers will not spend the time needed to peruse the entire list. By granting the most prominent rankings to those willing to pay for them, the search engine controls access to information.

Why It Matters
Whoever controls the media- - the images- - controls the culture.

Allen Ginsberg

So why should visual rhetoric become a consideration in writing classrooms? We could argue that those who are the most ignorant of its presence are those who are at the most risk of being manipulated by it. In the specific instance of World Wide Web writing due to the technological and hence, scientific associations, many students tend to view texts on the Internet as an unimpeachable sources of information. An example of their faith in the veracity of the Internet is documented by Christy Desmet in ‘Reading the Web as fetish”:
When asked on a test to explain the series of legal acts by which Henry VII divorced Katherine of
Aragon. . . . . .70% of the class regurgitated the online definitions of those acts in an impressive act of
rote memorization, 20% could explain the acts in their own words, and 10% could not answer the question
at all; presumably this last group neither came to class nor consulted the Web site (67).

It is clear from the above incident that these students believed that generally web sites can be trusted to give all of the information there is to give upon their subjects of content. Desmet characterizes her students’ attitude toward the Web as “a debilitating sense of reverence before the icons and links connecting them.. . .” (67). If we can concur that Desmet’s students are reasonably representative of the student population at large, we can see the necessity of teaching critical evaluation of new media compositions.
One of the student composed websites linked to Desmet's class web page, http://virtualpark.uga.edu/cdesmet/ /class/engl4830/spring2k/. serves as a good model for the kind
of critical evaluation we need to cultivate in our students. This website references its composer’s membership in a campus sorority. Recalling previous discussions about the rhetoric of image and layout, it is apparent that this site meets the traditional criteria for competent design in its genre. It adheres to recognized principles of good design, in the arrangement of items upon the screen, readability, and ease in which the viewer can navigate the page. In viewing this site, the following questions come to mind for critical analysis:
How do the visual attributes of this site contribute to a sense of order?
Considering the author’s use of images and links, what is she telling readers about
her sorority?
What values might be conveyed by the author’s choice of images?
What cultural or factors might influence the ways a viewer could interpret this web page?
What, if any, information about sorority life might be conspicuous by its omission?

These questions (and many others) could be answered in a number of ways, which is a good starting point for a discussion on visual rhetoric.
As readers, students need to be alert to the rhetorical presence in the materialities of text, so that they may better evaluate what massages are potentially being transmitted, and how effectively that transmission is being accomplished. As writers, students need the same awareness to become effective communicators in a multimodal society. Furthermore, to limit the kinds writing strategies our students can access is to limit their effectiveness as writers. If we decline to help students learn to employ visual devices to make meaning, our students “will not be able to recognize that verbal forms and visual forms ---or better yet their combination---- carry an equal degree of complexity, representative richness, and rhetorical power” (Williams,Part 1 29).
Finally, failure to integrate the study of visual rhetoric in our pedagogy jeopardizes our students’ position as literate participants in the society that is to come. “In a postmodern world”, writes Cynthia Selfe, “new media literacies may play an important role in identity formation, the exercise of power, and the negotiation of new social codes” ( Writing New Media 51). Some research suggest that members of some minorities have been shut out of new media literacy due to lack of access to the technology which fosters it. Referring to Ginsberg’s statement at the beginning of this section, such groups, plus some others are at risk of becoming more marginalized, should efforts not be extended to prepare them for the literacy of the future. The classroom seems to be the logical place to extend this effort.