As I read these articles, I kept returning to Aristotle's definition of rhetoric: "the faculty of discovering in any particular case all of the available means of persuasion." Indeed, Kress and Van Leeuwen seem to recall Aristotle when they state: "discourses appear in very many modes...[A]ll the semiotic modes which are available as means of realization in a particular culture are drawn on in that culture as means of the articulation of discourses." Thus, my definition of New Media would be something such as "New Media is the faculty of discovering and using in any particular case all the available semiotic modes and appropriate media to create meaning through signs or ideography, ideally to facilitate discourse."
Blogmates, what do you think about having to read Kress and Van Leeuwen upside down? Interesting modality. I loved the Sorapure article as a testament to the effectiveness of multimedia in either teaching or conveying meaning.
Educational Gaming
16 years ago
3 comments:
I like your definition, Judy; I wonder, though, whether it's possible to use all the available semiotic modes. I can't even think of all of them sometimes. I'll keep thinking about that one. =)
I had to print out Kress and van Leeuwen so it was right-side up. I might have been able to handle it if it weren't for my sinus pressure...
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So sorry about the upside down pages in Kress and van Leeuween. Jen emailed me about that and it got lost in the shuffle. Thanks for using it as a "teachable moment" for talking about multimodality.
As for your definition, I loved the discussion of Aristotle and the way Kress and van Leeuween take up the idea of available means of persuasion. This is certainly a key part of why new media matters to us as teachers (and rhetoricians) and is a subject worthy of attention. I wondered, though, if it might be important to incorporate concepts beyond modality into the definition, such as interactivity, extent of distribution, or shifts in power of people both producing and consuming these texts?
Judy-
I like your note in K + L about ancient rhetorical aims in new media. It seemed to me to be a kairos thing - right place, right time, right media, right message, right audience.
I agree with Jenny in wondering about the importance of interactivity when it comes to new media. What do you think about the importance of new media's ability to reshape and recombine existing "old" media?
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