Digital Discourse: How digital communications should be used as effective tools to teach the art of the argument but fail to demonstrate acquired literacy skills in freshman composition courses.
Informative Abstract
Bulletin boards, listservs, and email should be used as tools to teach the art of conducting a structured argument in freshman composition classes. Digital communications allow for a greater number of voices to participate in a discourse. Digital discourse formulates a deeper inquiry than can be achieved by the single author essay traditionally written in freshman composition classes. Considering the "dash it off and post" immediacy of digital communications, the rules and practices of standard written English become lost; therefore, the individual structured essay should remain as the benchmark tool by which educators measure a student's literacy skills in freshman composition classes.
Digital Discourse: How digital communications should be used as effective tools to teach the art of the argument but fail to demonstrate acquired literacy skills in freshman composition courses.
Electronic communication tools such as email, bulletin boards, and listservs have created a whole new means to conduct a discourse. These tools should be used in freshman composition courses for the purpose of teaching the art of constructing a solid argument as exercises only. The single author argument essay should remain as the benchmark tool by which teachers measure a student's literacy skills. In order to replace the freshman argument essay with a digital discourse, academia would have to enforce the same rules of standard written English that are currently used in grading the argument essay: the establishment of a clear thesis statement, establishment of points and counterpoints, the citation of credible sources supporting the author's points, the use of transitional sentences, a conclusion that summarizes key points and ties back to the thesis statement; lastly, proper grammatical structure and use of punctuation.
Digital bulletin boards hearken back to the time of Plato and Socrates. Both philosophers agreed that oral dialogue was the only means by which humans could arrive at the truth due to the interactive nature of speech. Plato and Socrates claimed that the written word was too static for the purpose of conducting an effective discourse. Tyner (1998) agrees with Plato's and Socrates' position that "speech [gives] the author the immediate ability to correct any misinterpretation, as discovered through dialogue with the audience. Unlike the written word, speech [does] not lie around growing ripe with each distortion" (p. 22). The written word cannot not perform the same function as speech because one cannot respond or rebuke text by asking, "What do you mean?" or "Would you phrase that differently?" or state "You have considered A, B, C, and D, but there is premise E that you have not considered." Gee (1991) also agrees with this statement:
Such a request forces the speaker to 're-say'... what he or she means. In the process he [or she] sees more deeply what he [or she] means, and responds to the perspective of another voice/viewpoint... writing can only respond to the question, 'what do you mean?' by repeating what it [the text] has said. (p. 269)
Even though communications on digital bulletin boards, listservs, and email are constructed from the written word, we use these communications practically the same way as oral discourse because of the sheer speed at which these communications are transmitted. Some people consider email as a digital replacement of the letter which is a misnomer. A letter takes a greater amount of time to move from one destination to another, while an email moves instantaneously.
The only delay in email is not when it is received, but rather when it is actually opened and read. Because these compositions can be transmitted quickly, we respond to them with a sense of urgency and immediacy. Emails tend to be terse, riddled with spelling errors, tend to lack adherence to grammatical rules; in addition, emails contain poor sentence structure, depending on the author. The speed at which digital communications can be transferred allows emails to be used as substitutes for oral discourse. When used properly, digital communications have distinct advantages over written and oral discourse. Even though email is written text, the reader can respond to the author's text, add to the author's text, or request clarification on points that are unclear demonstrating email's similarity to an oral discourse. Lundsford, Ruszkiewicz, and Walters (2001) concur with this statement:
They [emails] tend to be 'dialogic,' with a rapid back-and-forth of voices in conversation. When you send an email, you anticipate a quick reply. ...Secondly, the very ease and speed of response in email invite rebuttal that may be less considered than those sent by snail mail. Third, because email can be easily forwarded, your arguments may travel well beyond your intended audience. (p.274-275)
On the other hand, digital communications allow the author to support their argument by citing experts' documents within the text in a linear structure if the author so chooses. The unique advantage for digital communications over written and oral discourse is the author's ability to use hypertext links to refer the reader to supporting media, such as a sound bite, audio files, images, video clips, multimedia presentations, or other hypertext files that will lend support to the author's premises and the ability to create both a linear and non-linear structure. The argument could be constructed in the format prescribed in all freshman composition courses creating a linear format, yet at the same time, the author could make the citations hyperlinks. This allows the reader to interact with the document as they choose. The reader can now examine the support provided and formulate one's own conclusions from the cited evidence creating a completely different experience. As a member of Bartleby's staff for three years, I can provide insight for how a small-scale digital community can be used as a model for conducting a discourse and applied to a larger setting such as a freshman composition classroom setting.
Bartleby is UMBC's student run creative arts journal and functions exclusively as an online digital community. The community is broken down into genres: poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and art, each with its own section editor. Each editor composes an introductory post, introducing themselves to the staff reviewers and establishes the rules or benchmarks by which submissions will be graded. The guidelines the editor establishes are the same rules found in the classroom setting for grading compositions in that particular genre. Student writers submit their works through email which are then converted to Adobe .pdf format and posted by the webmaster to its corresponding genre. Section staff members read the submission and post a one page response critiquing the submission providing reasons and support for their critique according to the established guidelines. At the end of the critique the reviewer assigns a score. Digital controls are built into the website to prevent anyone from posting under an assumed name or someone else's name thereby preventing flaming.
Once all the reviews have been submitted, reviewers of that genre have the ability to read everyone else's critiques. If one reviewer does not agree with the community's viewpoint, the reviewer can now choose to argue their viewpoint and attempt to persuade the community to their point of view though the use of a structured argument. For those who are computer literate, the reviewer can hyperlink to supporting documentation to lend support to their position. Because reviewers can post freely, a rich discourse is created.
Moving from Bartleby to a larger scale digital community such as the freshman composition class setting provides for an even deeper and richer discourse for an abundance of reasons. With more people participating within the community there is a wider range of views. There are students within a classroom setting who are not comfortable with oral or written discourse. Some students may have been raised in households where "children are to be seen and not heard." A student raised in such a household is accustomed to having their voice "drowned out" and is highly unlikely to voice their opinion orally or in writing when the instructor is in a position of power and holds the key to their grades. According to Zembylas and Michaelides (2004) silence from students in western cultures is associated with the "inability of a student to answer a question, a shy student's refusal to participate in class discussions, or a bored student's disengagement" (p. 203). Yancey (1994) adds in other factors such as: "a mark of oppression, denial of self, dependency, or at best immaturity" (p. 304). Zembylas and Michaelides (2004) say that "students from some Eastern cultures believe silence is as important as speaking because it provides an opportunity to reflect on the value of what has been said" (p. 196). Still others lack the ability to think, process, and talk at the same time, a process that is vitally necessary in a quick oral discourse. A digital environment allows all these silent voices to speak.
There is also an added dimension to a digital discourse. The participants are no longer limited to the written word. Trupe (2005) suggests that the discourse may be enriched though the use of multimedia, "the movement of information into a digital environment makes audio, video, and graphical files-formerly considered different genre-easily accessible within any digital genre" (n.p.). As an example, how can someone explain what one thinks or feels about Nikita Khrushchev's speech to the U.N. (October 12, 1960) when he removed his shoe and began to repeatedly bang the heel of his shoe on the podium to emphasize his point? First, one needs to see the video clip in order to formulate an opinion. The event is too difficult to explain in words, see Appendix A. Another example is the sound bite of Senator Clinton passionately yelling into the microphone; "If anyone disagrees with this administration...," speaking about the Bush administration (see Appendix B). It was not what she said, but how she said it that gets the senator constant airplay in audio clips. Once again, one needs to experience the support, not just be told about it. This expands the discourse for there are premises that cannot be properly explained no matter how proficient the author is with language.
One problem with using digital communications as a measure of having mastered literacy in academic terms is that most writers do not comply with the conventions typically used in constructing argument essays. As is the case in Bartleby, some reviewers chose to enter their messages right into the posting text box instead of using their word processor to check for simple spelling errors and punctuation errors, therefore the posts are littered with grammatical problems. Sometimes posts are not as complete or as thoughtful as they should be. There is no way to control these factors other than through self-discipline.
There is also the problem of computer literacy. No teacher can assume that all the students who walk into the classroom have equivalent computer literacies. Those who posses the necessary technical knowledge can link to supporting documentation on the Web easily, but this can lead to simply referring the reader to an associated document without illustrating how that document supports their argument. Trupe (2005) cites that, "Writers of email conference posts, or web documents often refer readers to other documents, through links which the reader can decide to follow or not or through pasting messages into the message at hand. Thus the ability to elaborate is reshaped in electronic environments" (n.p.). Case in point, Trupe's hypertext web document was filled with hyperlinks throughout the text referring one to various types of support and footnotes.
In addition, such an argument when constructed within a digital community lacks the congruency of having one unified voice in its construct. Cutting and pasting together everything that was said would leave the reader's head reeling because the voices would vary so greatly that the fluency of the read would be lost. Writing styles would vary widely making it difficult for the reader to follow the argument.
On the other hand, the digital version has a broader range of human experience providing different perspectives based on gender, race, culture, and experience that cannot be captured by one author. The digital version is also more immediate and provides a medium for all voices within a community to respond making everyone not only a reader, but also an author within the process of the discourse.
The main problem in using digital communications as a measure of literacy is convention. The rules by which we now construct formal argumentative essays in composition classes would have to be applied to the digital world in order to maintain a sense of congruency throughout the discourse. When it comes to digital communications, all of the traditional conventions we adhere to and consider to be the cornerstones of good writing will have to be enforced. Currently in digital communications it seems that all the conventions we were taught to use in composing standard written English seem to go by the wayside. Communications in email, bulletin boards, or listservs become more of a pop culture communication. We no longer adhere to proper rules of grammar and spelling and seem to gravitate to a T.V. dinner style of writing: just heat and eat, or in the case of digital communications, compose and post. If the meaning is unclear or wrought with spelling and grammatical errors, a second post will remedy the problem.
Digital communications media can be used for the expressed purpose of teaching the art of the argument as exercises in freshman composition classes. In order to use these communications to replace the standard argument essay, academia would have to establish conventions similar to those already established for the construction of the argument essay. The problem with the digital version is that it would become a collaborative work and would not demonstrate the literacy of an individual author, therefore I advocate for maintaining the status quo, using the individual essay as the measuring tools of literacy in freshman composition classes.
Appendix A
Nikita Khrushchev and the Shoe Banging Incident in the UN
The shoe that the world thinks Khrushchev banged at the United Nations is one of history’s most iconic symbols. It may never have happened according to Khrushchev biographer William Taubman. The celebrated shoe was allegedly banged on October 12, 1960. [According to the New York Times Late City Edition October 13, 1960, New York Times correspondent, Benjamin Welles, reported that Khrushchev was "infuriated by a statement by Lorenzo Sumulong, a member of the Philippine delegation Mr. Sumulong said in debate that the peoples of Eastern Europe had been "deprived of political and civil rights" and that they had been "swallowed up by the Soviet Union" (NY Times, 10/13/1960)] According to Welles, Khrushchev “pulled off his right shoe, stood up and brandished the shoe at the Philippine delegate on the other side of the hall. He then banged his shoe on his [Khrushchev's] desk.”
Yet another Times man, James Feron, who was at the United Nations but did not write a story, recalls, “I actually saw Khrushchev not bang his shoe.” According to Feron, whom Taubman interviewed in 2002, the Soviet leader “leaned over, took off a slip-on shoe, waved it pseudomenacingly, and put it on his desk, but he never banged his shoe.”
Did he or didn’t he? A KGB general remembered that Khrushchev banged the shoe rhythmically, “like a metronome.” A UN staffer claimed Khrushchev didn’t remove his shoe ("he couldn’t have,” she recalled, because the size of his stomach prevented him from reaching under the table), but it fell off when a journalist stepped on his heel. The staffer said she passed the shoe wrapped in a napkin to Khrushchev, after which he did indeed bang it. Viktor Sukhodrev, Khrushchev’s brilliant interpreter, for Soviet leaders from Khrushchev to Gorbachev remembers that his boss pounded the UN desk so hard with his fists that his watch stopped, at which point, irritated by the fact that some “capitalist lackey” had in effect broken a good watch, Khrushchev took off his shoe and began banging.
When Taubman talked about Khrushchev to veterans of his era in Washington, one eyewitness confirmed the banging. But another eyewitness confirmed the nonbanging. A third, who said he’d been standing several feet behind the premier, insisted that the heel of the hand that held the shoe slammed the desk but that shoe never actually touched it.
John Loengard, former picture editor for Life magazine, wrote Taubman that he was in a General Assembly booth, along with 10 or so photographers from New York city dailies and national wire services. Loengard is “certain” that Khrushchev “did not bang his shoe on the desk,” but that “he certainly meant to do so.” According to Loengard, Khrushchev “reached down and took off a brown loafer from his right foot and put it on the desk. He grinned to delegates from the United Arab Republic who sat across the aisle and mimed (with an empty hand) that the next time he’d use the shoe to bang. Loengard said that every camera in the booth was trained on Khrushchev, waiting for him to use the shoe. He only put it on again and left. According to Loengard "None of us missed the picture - which would have been a serious professional error. The event never occurred.” A woman whose parents emigrated from Ukraine wrote to say that her husband, who was getting ready to go to work, happened to see it as he was walking past the TV. “He told me to run quickly to watch, and we stood there transfixed,” she wrote. “We had a house guest at the time - my cousin Sonia, who was here from the Soviet Union on a visit. When we told her what had happened she didn’t believe us. Eventually, other relatives who had also been watching told her they had seen it, too, so she finally conceded he must have done so.”
One might think that the controversy could be resolved by television or photo archives. Several years ago, Khrushchev’s son, Sergei, asked NBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for a tape of the event, but neither could find one. A former CBS Moscow correspondent told me that his search turned up nothing either. Taubman's own Internet quest unearthed a photo of the shoe (a light brown sandal, it turns out) on the UN desk, but none of the former colliding with the latter.
Source: http://newmexiken.com/2004/04/nikita-khrushchev-2/
It is interesting to note to date January 8, 2006 I have not been able to find any images of this incident on the Internet. If memory serves, I saw film footage of the incident on the History Channel a few months before publishing this paper which showed Khrushchev at the podium shoe in hand, but never acutually banging the shoe.
Microfilm of Thursday, October 13, 1960 New York Times Late city Edition was consulted. There were two articles published in the New York Times that day reporting on the alleged Krushchev shoe banging incident. One by Benjamin Welles and the other by Thomas J. Hamilton. Both articles claim Krushchev did ban his shoe on his desk. On the other hand, the image published in the newspaper that day on page 13 shows a different story.
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This confirms Taubman's statement of a photo of the shoe (a light brown sandal-like shoe) on the UN desk. Krushchev was not considered to be a "polished politician” to begin with having come from a poor family and the communists were enemies of the U.S. which may be the reasons why the reporters may have embellished their accounts of the incident. In other words, this may not only be a case of “yellow journalism,” but also the perpetuation of a “myth” in order to make the Soviets/Russians appear as being “backwards and unsophisticated,” i.e. “country bumpkins,” and a way of pushing “Capitalism” as a superior economic ideology.
Also noted in this edition of the New York Times, the American public would have been focused on the last round of the Presidential candidate debates between Richard M. Nixon and Robert F. Kennedy to be held this evening.
Appendix B
Annotated Bibliography
Gee, J. (1991). The legacies of literacy: from Plato to Freire through Harvey Graff.
Language issues in literacy and
bilingual/multicultural education,
Reprint Series No. 22. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gee provides support for one of the focal points in the argument; how the oral argument is superior to the written argument. This lends credibility to the assertion that the digital argument can be used the same way as the oral argument.
Lunsford, A., Ruszkiewicz, J., Walters, K. (2001). Everything's an argument. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's.
This textbook was an accidental find. In performing some research to write a journal log for ENGL 395 Writing Internship, the topic of arguments in electronic environments popped out. This provided credible evidence that many universities are leaning towards teaching digital arguments within the classroom and that many universities consider digital communications as a feasible substitute for oral argumentation.
Ringrose, D. (2001, February). Beyond amusement: reflections on multimedia, pedagogy, and
digital literacy in the history
seminar. History Teacher, pp.209-
228.
Ringrose shares teaching experiences in developing a student-centered approach by instructing the students to create a digital portfolio as a semester long project in the exploration of Urban History. Ringrose highlights many of the hurdles both the students and instructor had to clear in order to create a viable product, demonstrating that creation of a digital multimedia product can be used as a measuring tool to demonstrate literacy gained within a discipline. Even though the topic was History, the insight provided was extremely valuable to this argument.
The way we will have become: the future (histories) of computers and writing. 1998
Computers and Writing Conference.
Retrieved September 26 from
http://english.ttu.edu/Kairos/3.2/coverweb/townhall2.html
Even though this was the oldest of the documents directly related to the argument, it demonstrates how early in time instructors of various disciplines, especially writing disciplines, were contemplating how to use these new forms of writing. This group envisioned electronic media as a way of getting around the gatekeepers-the publishers and that digital writing did not mean the death of writing, rather it meant the birth of new forms of writing and the opportunity for more authors to be read.
Tyner, K. (1998). Literacy in a digital world. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbam Associates.
Provided support for the superiority of the oral argument over the written argument which planted the seed of using digital technologies to further enhance the instruction of the art of the argument. Judging from the publishing date Tyner was not the only one thinking about how to use these new digital technologies.
Trupe, A. (ND). Academic literacy in a wired world: redefining genres for college writing
courses. Retrieved September 26,
2005 from
http://www.bridgewater.edu/~atrupe/AcadLit/WiredWorld.htm
Trupe's paper helped to formulate the argument, but takes a different position. Trupe argues for following a student-centered approach. The instructor sets the guidelines, instructing the students to build a portfolio to be submitted at the end of the semester. This may be six out of twelve journal entries, a web site, a web site evaluation exercise or other various electronic media within the portfolio. The student decides which of their materials best reflect their academic literacy and submit them as a portfolio at the end of the semester.
Zembylas, M., Michaelides, P. (2004). The sound of silence in pedagogy. Educational Theory, 54 (2), 195-210.
Provided the support for the argument as to how Eastern society and Western society views differ in argumentation and the meaning of silence within classrooms when participation is expected. This was vitally necessary because of my own awareness that there is a difference, but I could not be the expert for such support.
Yancey, K., Spooner, M. (1994). Concluding the text: notes toward a theory and practice
of voice. In K. B. Yancey (Ed.),
Voices on Voice: perspectives, definitions, inquiry. (p. 304). Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
Provided support for the reasons why some students never participate in class discussions. Provided valuable support as to why some students cannot participate in an oral discourse. Also provides support for who is most likely to speak in a digital discourse.
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Trupe, A. (ND). Academic literacy in a wired world: redefining genres for college writing courses. Retrieved September 26, 2005 from http://www.bridgewater.edu/~atrupe/AcadLit/WiredWorld.htm
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