Yancey’s Multi-Modal Composition

[If my reading of the syllabus is correct, today is the last day of the third blogging period. (I hope I got this right, since I don’t see any new posts coming up, or am I really the last one? Nothing like me waiting for the last minute. Hopefully at least a few of you will have the chance to read this in the midst of final projects and grading student papers]

Our discussion on Yancey on Tuesday was focused more on the idea of remix and the Rhet/Comp program she describes than her CCCC address. So, I thought I’d offer a few thoughts/questions in response to her address.

First…on multi-modal composition…

I think what I’m interested in most with Yancey’s piece is her CCCC address as a multi-modal text (or should I say texts—one version at CCCC and another printed in the journal with her own additions, comments, etc.). First, I’ve read and heard scholars say that that with multi-modal composing, the canon of delivery is revived. This is certainly the case with Yancey’s address. In one of her added side notes, she describes the original delivery of her address:

“While I talked, two synchronized PowerPoint slide shows ran independently, one to my right, another to my left. Together, the two slide shows included eighty-four slides. There was one spotlight on me; otherwise, the theatre was dark, lit only by that spot and the slide shows. Oddly, I found myself ‘delivering’ the Chair’s Address to an audience I could not see. As Chris Farris pointed out to me later, given this setting, the talk was more dramatic performance than address” (298).

Several things really stand out to me in this first version of her multi-modal text. First, is that in the original delivery, Yancey can more easily use multiple modes. She uses lighting, moving images, and of course the way she delivers and speaks the text. (I could not find a video of the actual address). Also, the fact that the slide show is playing while she speaks helps set some kind of visual mood for the address and actually attracts the audience’s gaze away from Yancey.  I think the multimodality was probably more effective for Yancey in front of the live audience than in the text version. Certainly, Yancey admits that the text version is really a different text, with its additions, changes, fewer images, and the absence of the original physical setting, sights, and sounds.

Regarding the CCC version of the multimodal text, we get Yancey’s commentary in the margins. What makes it most multimodal, though seems to be the images. But I wonder: Would the text be just as effective without the images? What do the images add to the text? I’m sure that they really do add something, certainly giving us a better idea of what the original address was like. But what purpose do the images actually serve? Yancey doesn’t stop to explain the images, or comment on why she chose any of them, or how they affect her main argument. Certainly in the original address, and to some degree in the textual version, the images do make the reader perceive the text a little differently, and in the case of the address the images actually change the setting, which is important. But what are we supposed to be taking from the images? I am almost tempted to say that they are there only to make it multimodal. Why was it essential for her address to include the images? I’m not sure that I really know the answers to these questions. Perhaps it doesn’t help that I am often more of an aural than visual learner.

On another matter, but perhaps relating to the idea of deliver… I’m interested in anyone’s thoughts on some of Yancey’s wording for oral delivery. In particular, in every new section, Yancey would repeat the phrase “We have a moment.” This bugged me. If I were her speech writer I would have cut this and replaced it with something else (don’t know what). I thought it was a bit sappy and over the top. Feel free to disagree with me, though. I do like Yancey.