Joe, the plumber, and Sara, the Sky-Way cook

Yancey and Joe, the plumber

Yancey’s article made me really reflect on composition. Her comparison of what is happening now with writing (that it is increasingly becoming a public, or mass, activity) to the 19th century development of a reading public really hit home for me. However, this nicely aligns writing technologies with the average “Joe, the plumber,” the underdog hero of an American (Dream, or wishful thinking) metanarrative, which appeals to us socially-construct-ed/-ing academics who believe in the power of the Word (not John’s, of course—that of the de-voiced, or muted, marginalized) to redeem the world dispatching the Beast (i.e., the Hegemony) to its eternal grave which will usher in the Kingdom of Heaven (i.e., socialism or some other new world order that is more just).

Yancy makes the point that technology is where the people are by quoting Elizabeth Daley saying, “the screen is the language of the vernacular” (305). Even though access to computers and internet is (rapidly?) changing, there are still many that would be considered on the lower end of the digital divide. Joe, the plumber, himself may be such an individual. Certainly, many of the women (and men) I taught at Brown Mackie college (demographically 80% female) many of whom were in Section 8 housing and survived off of state-issued food cards did not have computers in their home. These women may be a statistical anomaly or the self-report data I received was unreliable. Nonetheless, it gives me pause (a cognitive dissonance, a felt difficulty) when I read this article. It may be no surprise that many of the women who did not have computers in their homes were African Americans.

As Gee repeatedly points out in his book Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourse, the distribution of “social goods” is an ethical (he says “moral”) issue. Technology is a social good that is unevenly distributed. Still, change is coming (if not for everyone at the same rate). University Heights up in Cleveland near Case University is one of a growing number of cities to offer free community wi-fi. I’m certainly not raising the digital divide as a red herring to avoid discussion of the changing face of composition. However, an untempered optimism concerning this shift continues to gnaw (maybe that’s too strong of a word; nibble, perhaps) at me. Or, maybe I’m just being the self-righteous white knight of liberatory pedagogy and its correlative ideology that we discussed in literacy class.

Moving from Joe, the plumber, to Sarah (pseudonym), the Sky-Way cook

This is the point in the semester of my 21011 course where I assign the visual argument, which I use as a way for students to build toward their final research paper. I ask them to develop one reason that their target audience would find appealing (through ethos, logos, pathos) and would lead them to more likely accept the position of their paper in this assignment using images and words together. I also ask them to write a short (1-2 page) composing choices reflection to explain the functions of their design. They submitted these on Vista Wednesday and we talked about them on Thursday.

The collective response was a writing teacher’s dream! The following are not their exact words but what they amount to through a writing teacher’s lens: “It helped me focus on my topic.” “The pictures made it easier to be more specific.” “The pictures gave me new ideas about my topic.” “The pictures helped me to think about my audience and why it is important to have a particular audience.” “It was different and fun (i.e., engaging).”

Sarah is a quiet and brilliant student. Her first paper (a work literacy narrative) focused on how being at work (a forced social environment) helped her to open up and talk to people, to come out of her shell, just a little bit. Part of my comments on that paper encouraged her to continue to participate in class, which she does on rare occasions. I see the strain in her face and hear it in her voice when she does participate. Nonetheless, she made the comment above about audience—something she had been struggling with when we did an audience activity in class.

The response of this class (the most vocal response I’ve ever received from this assignment) illustrates Yancey’s discussion of remediation. She argues that students should practice using different media for the same message because it helps develop students’ ideas and brings an awareness of the affordances of each medium: “As they [students] move from medium to medium, they consider what they move forward, what they leave out, what they add, and for each of these write a reflection in which they consider how the medium itself shapes what they create” (314). Now, I’m thinking of using visuals at different points in the semester to generate new ideas and consider audience in different ways. I’d also like to incorporate her suggestion about using power point as a drafting and organizing tool (319). Since I use these blog posts as a way for me to organize my thoughts and to remember key ideas that may be useful later in my understand of writing (an act of envisioning ☺), I want to note her quotation of Prior and Shipka on revision and laundry.