Big Ideas From Chapter 37: Visual and Digital Writing Practices

While I realized there was a bias toward the textual, I had no idea just how virulent that bias was until I read Mitchell (1984) interpreting the writings of G.E. Lessing by "writing that the, 'image is the medium of the subhuman, the savage, the 'dumb' animal, the child, the woman, and the masses" (p.600)

Apparently, Lessing felt that poetry (more largely, words) had the "masculine potentials of theory and action" (Wysocki, p. 600).  Well, the certainly doesn't jive with the whole premise of Reading Don't Fix No Chevys! 

In talking with other teachers or parents about the potential for using graphic novels (especially in social studies), I'd sometimes hear an audible sneer when they mimicked back the term "graphic novel." Clearly, the implication was, "You can call it whatever you want, sister, that book is a comic." But Wysocki elucidates the root of the underlying feeling that graphic novels are some how less because, historically, they were less: "...in the development of comic books, the tension between word and picture is that of class" (p. 600)  Texts that relied more on visual or pictorial information were created to keep defined class lines in place and to keep those in the lower classes from, "...getting ideas of what their lives should be" (p. 600).  Even kids can sense some adults snub comics, as this fifth grader points in an article from Time for Kids, "Usually teachers tell us to put comics away," says Deshaun Osborne, a fifth grader at Magnolia Elementary, in Joppa, Maryland. "I was shocked to hear we'd be using comic books."  But the article describes how some states are actually incorporating comics into their language arts curriculum. 

But, like many "new media" (and I don't know, are these really new media?  My 89 year old grandfather was reading Disney comics at 9 years old), comics/graphic novels not only offer kids the chance to improve their reading skills (I loved this PowerPoint on inferential thinking and comics), but they also offer kids a chance to compose using a medium that is not solely print-based.  This article describes how fourth grade teacher and National Writing Project Teacher Consultant uses a program called Comic Life to help students more easily create their own comics.  In light of the thinking I've been doing about inference and implication, I think this is a particularly powerful idea.  One of the articles I read for my research was by Stephan Petrucha, an author who writes both traditional and graphic novels.  He points out that graphic novelists in particular need to understand the art of implication (showing, and not telling - really) by noting that the author of a graphic novel has to use implication carefully stating, “…in dialogue sequences, I always try to have the characters doing while they chat, from the overt, like setting the fuse on a bomb, to the sublime, like tearing up the last letter from an ex-boyfriend, to the small, like flicking some ice cream off a straw” (Petrucha, 2008, p. 60).  He goes on to describe how he must imply action or meaning carefully by noting, “It is the standard rule in comic writing that one shouldn’t, for instance, show a picture of a car pulling out of a driveway with the caption reading, ‘The car pulled out of the driveway,’ and a character saying, ‘Look, a car is pulling out of the driveway.” (p.62)  But he begins the piece with a quote from a gentleman at a book expo, "Now kids don't have to read them" (p.60)

My guess is that new literacies will be in defense mode for sometime.  Those who will continue to attack are those who (like my mother, God love her) don't know how to use ATMs, refuse to "check email" and teachers who probably use their classroom computers primarily for Accelerated Reader.  (From where did this tone emerge?  I promise, I will return to my congenial self after submitting my paper this Monday.)

I found it interesting that most of the research into the visual aspects of pages emerges from the field of advertising.  I'll admit, I just don't know enough about semiotics, social semiotics and visual culture to have taken much from this section.  I did find some of the ideas that emerged from the New London Group (NLG) in developing a "pedagogy of multiliteracies to help students work with available literacies (visual, linguistic, audio, spatial, and gestural) so that students become 'creative and responsible makers of meaning'" (p. 604) to be totally applicable, especially to some of the thoughts I'd had on the opportunities comic composition offers.

The crux of this chapter for me was the final section on digital reading and writing.  I, too, questioned what constitutes writing now, though Wysocki seemed to focus more on how the "momentary shape of the internet" makes "audiences form and disperse quickly" (p.606).  So too does the internet begin to make fuzzy the notions of author, reader and writer when content can be copied and reformulated so much more easily than it was when it was solely print-based.  In addition, newer writing environments like blogs and wikis expand the notion of authorship to include the reader.  Perhaps the most fascinating and affirming part of what I'd read was that "hypertexts could give even more control to writers than printed texts..." (Wysocki noting the work of Douglas, 1994 and Johnson-Eilola, 1994 on page 606).  This helped to strengthen my own feelings that hypertext can offer the author more opportunities to clarify implied meanings both at the word and sentence (or stanza, whatever thought unit) level.  My hope is to go on and read these works, especially Douglas's.  I've found that the references at the end of these chapters are the best resources for my own research.  I've had much better leads with the citations offered by the authors of each chapter than I've had, say, using Education Research complete or one of the other search tools through the KSU Library.