A Theory of Contemporary Rhetoric (11 page)

Their
layout
is also important. Some composers (depending on their preferred and principal medium) like to work on a large table, others on a computer screen, and others on canvas or wood or paper. Directors of
theatre productions—to take art forms in the wider sense that includes performance—see the empty three-dimensional space as their frame for composition. The framed space for composition is a key defining feature of the nature of that composition, though we have to acknowledge that the computer screen is itself like a window or panel on to or as part of a scroll. Large computer screens allow for a number of “windows” (usually texts, including images or diagrams and tables) to be open at any one time and thus to be composed—brought together into a new work. Whether on screen, on paper, on a large table, or in a rehearsal space, the
physicality
of composing is felt by all composers.

Next is the art of
contiguity
and
juxtaposition
. Resources have edges. They are brought together, configured, and arranged in order to make meaning. This arrangement may be spatial; it may be linear. But which element goes next to another element is central to the making of meaning. In linear arrangements (most verbal printed works and narratives) the connections between the elements are set out, logically or quasi-logically, and have all the properties and affordances that
sequentiality
gives, including the classical principle of
post hoc propter hoc
. Linearity might also be manifested in time, for example, in the frames of a film that is experienced as continuous motion in time.

(As a further example, although I composed this chapter last in the first draft of the present book and it was originally conceived as coming between the chapter on multimodality and that on digitization, it is placed as
Chapter 4
between one on English studies and one on power in order to suggest that composition might be a central concern to expression and the development of a repertoire of genres. Those are concerns about composition in the larger structural sense. As I actually composed it, the to-ing and fro-ing between the larger structural design and the actualities of writing the words on an electronic page, with attention to accuracy of spelling, the make-up of sentences, and the positioning of sections and paragraphs within sections, all took place. Because I was working on a computer, I could move sections, paragraphs, sentences, phrases, and words as seemed to fit my overall intention.)

In two- or three-dimensional arrangements of a nonlinear nature, the connections between elements are more latent that determined. It is the reader, audience, or viewer who determines the connections between the elements, as much so as, if not more so than, the composer. We might read a website by jumping from one framed box of information to another; we might dive down through hypertextual levels, or follow a link to another website. All the time we are navigating the configuration of text and image that the composer has created for us. The experience of reading a website or a multipaneled work of any kind is thus different from a sequential reading, just as the act of composing these different works is
different. We deploy sequentiality and other types of configured spatial relations as we see fit
in order to make meaning
.

This act of navigating not only what is within each of the framed texts that we “read” but also the lines of engagement and juxtaposition between them—and any spaces that surround or stand between them—is central to the act of composition and reading. The two sides of the communication act—that of the composer and the reader—are reciprocal, and each construes the intentions of the other. For the composer, the reader is often “within” rather than an actual reader or audience without. That is to say, the composer carries within him- or herself the ability and need to listen to, read, and/or view the work he or she is creating in order to help to make it cohere. In these ways, the act of composition is as much an act of decoding and interpreting as it is an act of making and configuring. And the “meaning” is created in the interaction between composer, reader, and “text”—a space that is filled and put together to enact old meanings and to create new ones. Thus rhetoric is the social mapping of relations between ideas and feelings via the composition of modes, media, and other resources.

We have already suggested, and will elaborate further in the chapter on rhetoric and framing, that the immediate limits of a composition are its frame. The act of framing—either using existing off-the-shelf frames (“text types,” conventional genres in any art form or social encounter) or creating a new frame—determines the boundaries of the composition. To give some quick examples: a painting on canvas that is intended to be framed for exhibition provides the parameters for the composition. There is some leeway afforded the painter as he or she works on the canvas, in terms of the bleeding off of the edges of the composition (which a mount and a frame might cover in due course), but the edge of the canvas is the limit of the compositional space. In another nonverbal example, a conventional piece of music is composed in five movements that fit together in a sequence to create some degree of artistic unity. The “edges” of the composition are defined by the score, spatially, in digital format or on paper. In performance, the work is framed by time, with a clear beginning and end, often marked by a moment's silence and (ritual) applause.

Even in these examples, however, we have defined two kinds of framing that mark the limits of composition: one is the actual creation of the work, and the other is the work in performance (if these two aspects can be separated).

The act of composition is a critical/creative act that works toward a product. That product is a poem, novel, playscript, painting, sculpture, installation, score, or other art form. Each of these is driven by an
aesthetic impulse that dictates that the work will have an internal unity, balance, proportion, and elegance that, combined with framing, will distinguish it from non-art. The product can be enshrined in print or digital form (if it is a verbal or musical work), photographed, reproduced, transported, and experienced by an audience. Some of these art forms require performance for their full realization, like musical scores or playscripts. In performance, they take on a different and more multimodal nature and are realized differently each time they are performed. The performances (including recorded performances that are broadcast or recorded on CDs and DVDs) are also “compositions” in the sense that we have been using it in this chapter because they are the result of a bringing together of elements to create a single composition in time. Take the staged performance of Ibsen/Grieg's
Peer Gynt
, for example, that took place at the Barbican, London, in December 2012 and was subsequently broadcast on BBC Radio 3 eight days later. It existed first as a composed score/script. The director of the staged performance worked with an orchestra, a chorus of singers, three solo singers, and six actors to create the performance itself. Following rehearsal of the separate groups in locations around London, they came together for final rehearsals as an ensemble. The coordination of orchestral music, songs, spoken narratives, and choral elements was an act of composition, working toward a two-hour performance (one kind of framing, in time) in a large concert hall (another, in space) in one of London's top arts venues (yet another). Furthermore, the work was recorded by the BBC, mixed and balanced, and broadcast with suitable commentary (further framing) eight days later. In addition to its scheduled broadcast, it was made available for a seven-day period on iPlayer, the BBC's repository of radio and television programs that can be accessed online. These two performances are framed and composed in time, with particular audiences in mind, thus fulfilling the rhetorical/ theoretical space that the “arts of discourse” implies.

There are works that are both products and performances simultaneously, such as improvised dramas, art installations, opening/closing ceremonies, and films. These are also compositions in that they require the bringing together of different elements to create a whole “work,” in time.

Much of what we have discussed as composition is multimodal, by default. Multimodality and rhetoric are discussed fully in another chapter, but here we continue the exploration of what it means to compose—in this case, multimodally. First, it can be said that
monomodal composition
is rare because each mode (speaking, writing, movement, graphic symbolic languages, still image, moving image) is instantiated physically. The simple act of speaking, even in everyday conversation, is grounded
in the physical body, its vocal chords and resonance chambers. Sound waves travel through the substance of air, in various acoustic settings, to be decoded and interpreted by the listener. When spoken conversation is mediated by wireless or telephonic means, a different medium is brought into play; and when recorded for playback on a voice mail or in a speech recording for research or aesthetic purposes, the seeming monomodality of the speaking voice is still mediated through physical means. Equally, a poet working with a pencil on a blank sheet of paper is (a) responding to the size and shape of the paper itself, (b) placing the words of the poem in lines to indicate rhythmic identity, and (c) using the white space around the poem to indicate that the work is framed by space and is thus special in some way. Here, the media (pencil and paper) and the affordances of those media (the identification of surrounding space, the propensity to draft and re-draft) come into play in the act of composition. “Pure” modes are rarely experienced, either as composers or as audience.

Second, multimodal composition operates via
bricolage, juxtaposition
, and
rearrangements
to create communication. Behind bricolage—the gathering together of a seemingly disparate range of modes or materials to make an artistic statement—is the notion and practice of collage. Collage and bricolage both assume a frame within which to work. They bring together material of the same mode/medium, like pieces of fabric for example, or from different modes, like scraps of text that are woven (the metaphor is from fabric again, like the term
texture
) together to form a new whole. A play such as
The Laramie Project
(Kaufman 2001) or a novel such as Ian McEwan's
Sweet Tooth
(2012) uses textual bricolage to forge letters, personal testimonies, third-person narrative, and the authorial detached and reflective meta-voice into a hybrid form: the docudrama or novel, respectively. When more than one mode is employed, such as the combination of word and still image, not only is bricolage at play, but juxtaposition comes to the fore as one of the key elements of composition.

Juxtaposition
—the placing of one element not just with, but
next to
another—involves careful choreographic decision making. The exact alignment is important, not only for the elements themselves but for the space in between them and the meaning that is generated by their juxtaposition. The formula
word + image
is not the same as
image + word
, and even such balanced equations do not do justice to the possibilities of two- and three-dimensional juxtaposition. Sometimes the placing of one element next to another is complementary; sometimes antagonistic and critical. Take the mounting of an exhibition of paintings or photographs in an art gallery. There are at least two ways in which word and image combine to create the whole experience. One is in the mounting of the artworks themselves, almost always accompanied by written captions or
statements alongside them. At minimum, these statements simply denote the artwork:
Still Life with a Curtain
/Cézanne/1895. Usually, they contain a little more information: the painting “illustrates Cézanne's increasing trend towards terse compression of forms and dynamic tension between geometric figures” (Wikipedia 2013). Sometimes, but more rarely, the plaques or statements contain questions or counterarguments that force the viewer to take a more critical stance toward the painting itself: “Imagine a different set of objects for the still life, or a circumstance in which Cézanne was unable to secure the time for such studies—or was influenced by photography.” Each of these challenges suggests a re-framing of the experience in order to encourage the viewer to see the actual framing that has gone on in the making of the piece. In such cases there is a tension and deliberate distancing of the image and its text to invite the viewer/ reader to inhabit that intermediate space.

Exhibitions of artworks also usually are accompanied by catalogs. The catalog is a different composition, driven by the exigencies of the printed book with its sequencing and domination of the verbal text. The image then becomes accessory to the text. A narrative and/or argued text is created, and the images are either appended to the end of the book, or set within the text. Only where the catalog is arranged like an exhibition itself, with the images given pride of place and the verbal text accompanying it, does the catalog mirror the exhibition. It is a different experience, requires different juxtapositional/compositional skills (including, traditionally, that of the “compositor” or arranger of text), and is read differently. Interestingly, the computer as compositional tool and the website as accompaniment to the printed catalog changes the compositional dynamic yet again. In these situations, word and image are brought together and can sit in a balanced relation with each other so that neither predominates. The emphasis then is on the reader to navigate the composite, multimodal text as he or she is inclined. Some may read the verbal text first and then look at the images; others may take the opposite route. The experience of engaging with the whole text, however, is a dynamic and changeable one. In compositional terms, the act of making the digital text as a whole is one of finely tuning the balance between the modes.

Rearrangements are commonplace in communicational design. It has already been mentioned that this chapter was written late in the composition of the book as a whole, requiring rearrangement of other chapters in order to find a proper place for it. But the act of composition itself is an act of arranging and rearranging of existing material. Rearrangement, then, is a concatenation of different voices, different modes, and different materials in order to “say something new.” The new statement adds to the existing living archive of communication that can be drawn down as material for a further remaking.