On "Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments"

I agree with Mary Hocks in “Understanding Visual Rhetoric in Digital Writing Environments,” that a focus on digital rhetoric in the composition classroom will involve a “profound” change in the way those who want to teach will “think about both writing and pedagogy”. But, again, as with many aspects of higher education, the discussion of Visual rhetoric with regard to digital writing environments, feels like another way to alienate people who just want to learn to write well. Even the language involved in trying to understand a visual rhetoric as it could be taught, I am assuming, with regards to simply using a computer to write, is intimidating, and feels as far away from English 1101, as rocket science.

My computer skills are basic. Sure, I surf the net, occasionally update my status, I’ve even created a couple of blogs and an avatar on Second Life, but language is something more than pictures, colors, fancy forms, and applications. I can envision using aspects of digital writing in a composition class. But, developing an overall Visual rhetorical pedagogy seems important only if you are teaching primarily about digital writing environments.

What I found interesting in the essay on “the Materiality of Writing,” by John Trimbur was the idea of “transparent text,” being communication that lacks an obvious “mode of production;” and that “true literacy” replaces visuality with “abstract representation of sounds”. That the origins of this may come from the bible itself, a book considered to be the actual word of God, a book initially written and published primarily by literate men, reeks of classism, sexism, and insight to the possibility of its use as a tool to control masses of people who were visually literate.