A Theory of Contemporary Rhetoric (36 page)

In the case of the translation of the narratives and sketches of Lydia Cabrera (Milsom 2012), the rhetorical and multimodal affordances are explored differently. The original core of the activity that is captured consists of the oral stories of Afro-Cuban heritage, as told to Cabrera and transcribed by her in field notes. These transcriptions, many of them in original note form but some worked up into fully fledged written stories, are stored in archives in Miami. In investigating these archives, Milsom has not only fulfilled the requirements of the written convention of the traditional thesis or dissertation, but also provided a CDRom, the “front page” of which is a representation of her desk, complete with computer, folders of stories, post-it notes, “how to navigate” guidance, a CDRom, and a brown envelope of instructions. The written thesis is accessed through the computer screen and is there in its entirety. The
whole submission, then, is a combination of the conventional written thesis and the material available by exploring on the accompanying CDRom. It is multidimensional, multilayered (in terms of showing the different types and stages in the production of text), multimodal (it contains readings of the stories as well as images and written texts of different kinds), and multimedia (printed thesis/CDRom).

Rhetorically, the completed artwork and thesis provide a rich insight into the research question: how to represent the life and works of Lydia Cabrera. Unlike moments of performance, the thesis and its CDRom can be accessed at any time. It becomes live in the moment of reading and interpretation. The same could not be said of a “pure” presentation of the thesis as a printed and bound volume: one format that hidebounds many researchers who are working with multimodality and/or multimedia. The reason is that much is lost in the transduction into a single mode and medium: the sense of tactile exploration of folders of short stories; the visual exploration of the desktop on which the work was completed; insights into the processes of research. Indeed, the very topic of
transcription
(see Kress 2010, 96–102) is revealed as a fascinating aspect of research when the drafts and processes are made evident, related as it is to
translation
from Spanish to English in this particular project.

In education terms, from the point of view of production, the CDRon allows different points of entry, different stages of the process, and dif ferent types of research product to be represented. From the point o view of the reader or audience, there is no single sequence in which th material must be read, no single argument that is represented (though the main one is in the text of the thesis itself), and a closer engagemen with the original material than is possible in conventional formats. Such
engagement
is crucial to the learning potential of the work. This is work to visit and revisit, not only for its intellectual perspectives on th stories of Lydia Cabrera and the problems of translation, but also fo the pleasure of exploring the archives via routes that the researcher ha created.

These two examples indicate the complexity and the possibilities in the representation of research at advanced levels in education. They move the practice of education beyond abstract considerations of ideas in single modes of expression and beyond the framing of knowledge and knowledge systems in single modes. Rather, they invite the audience and reader to engage in
live
interaction with the performance or archive, getting closer to the core of cultural experience in all its sensory and intellectual dimensions. One could argue that the closer one gets to the core of such experience, the harder it becomes to capture or distill the messages that are at play. But the distance that has been created between everyday lived experience and culturally framed experiences on the one hand, and academic and educational mediation of those experiences on the other, has
become too attenuated. Rhetoric and education can thus operate more closely together if the modes and media of the engagement are reflected upon and a proximity to the core experience is attempted. For example, conventional practice in interviewing for research is to undertake audiorecorded interviews, and then to transcribe them laboriously. A rhetorical approach to this activity would be to ask, how many of these interviews do you need to transcribe in order to see the pattern that is emerging from the data? Despite the fact that a written transcription and analysis of an interview may enable the researcher to see patterns that would not have been observable otherwise, the main bulk of the recorded data might just as well be retained in its “original,” in digital audio files that can be copied to CDRom or, indeed, accessed via a website that is indicated by a url address or live link in the thesis.

We have seen in this chapter, and in previous ones, that a key element of a rhetorical view of communication is multimodality. For medieval textual practices in relation to learning in universities, the multimodal nature of texts was unwritten and unacknowledged in explicit terms (as far as we know). Now that multimodality has been given new prominence in thinking about the social semiotics of communication, there is a need to address questions of learning and assessment from both a multimodal and rhetorical perspective.

Kress (2009, 38) comments on the relationship of multimodality and learning to assessment:

Multimodality by itself is not a theory of learning, though it does focus on the need to attend to all the modes through which meaning is made and learning happens. Adequate forms of assessment need to address these givens. In systems of assessment that have hitherto focused on the pre-eminence of the linguistic modes of speech and writing as the secure route to understanding of meaning and learning (or of specific canonical modes in other disciplines—numbers, chemical formulae, etc.), this demands a conscious attempt at recognition of meaning-making and learning in all modes involved, in which signs of learning are evident. A theory of learning that aims to be adequate to contemporary forms of communication and engagement with the world, with contemporary views of power and authority by those who are (seen as) learners, and in fact, that wants to be adequate to the facts of human communication, needs to pay close attention to the actions of learners in all environments of learning. These are prerequisites for any serious attempt at assessment of learning. Only what is recognised and accorded full recognition as means and modes
for learning can be assessed. What is not recognised will not and cannot be assessed. That leads to severe misrecognition of learners' capacities and actions.

The challenge to curriculum designers and to educationalists, to teachers and policy makers is clear: what would a curriculum predicated on a multimodal and rhetorical view of learning look like?

First, it would accept that communication goes on, not only within the classroom and the school, but beyond it. Indeed, communication before and outside school prefigures communication within the confines of the school, the classroom, and the curriculum. This apparent truism has been the focus of research and practice since at least the 1950s, viz. that what the child brings to school in terms of their language and communication is the foundation of what can be achieved and built upon in school. But thinking about what the child brings to school has, to date, been largely in terms of speech and prewriting. The child also brings exposure to family discourses, television and other media, and engagement with the world beyond the family home. He or she also brings production: drawings, made objects, scribblings, early attempts at writing, and all the accrued speech acts that he or she has been engaged in. Following Vygotsky, a rhetorical perspective on early childhood would suggest that the young learner is rhetorical in his or her actions from the start: a cry, initial engagement with the mother's breast, reciprocated looks, giving and taking—all of these early acts of communication use the multimodal tools of rhetorical engagement. But these acts develop as the child develops as a social being. Such development, as well as the modes accounted for previously, includes physical positioning and dynamics through movement, touching, and feeling: aggressive as well as consensual acts. The child who enters the classroom at age 4, 5, or 6 has a repertoire of learned communicative moves that are already part of his/her rhetorical world. How to build on this in the school curriculum?

The conventional stripping down of the modes into teachable and seemingly discrete “languages” or codes—writing, reading, and so on—can be countered by a more inclusive approach to communication. So, second, there would need to be a “communications arts” curriculum in which there were not only clear accounts of progress in the individual modes of communication, but the facility for exploration and commerce between the modes. This proposal has more behind it than a mere “crossover,” organic, or “whole language” approach. The very act of transduction between modes (e.g., the repurposing of a told story as a written one, the creation of a painting to represent what is seen out of the window, and all receptive acts of interpretation) is a learning act in itself. Learning is instantiated in such transductions.

Third, a curriculum founded on rhetorical principles would engage beyond the classroom to audiences and contexts in the “real world.” At primary or elementary school level, these audiences could include parents and family as well as figures from the local community (police, traffic wardens, shopkeepers, artists) who could provide real audiences for produced work, as well as come into the school and classroom to bring their own expertise and experience, thus inspiring children to engage socially and politically in communication with them. Such community engagement can be taken into the secondary or middle/high school level, too, and widen its scope to include regional, national, and international engagement.

Fourth, assessment of such activity cannot be undertaken in examinations or even by coursework or portfolio assessment. Evidence of social engagement via communication can be recorded, and the presentations of such engagement can take a number of formats: written-up reports, displays, audio-recordings, films, showcased plays, and other performances. Even the most inclusive of assessment methods—the 100% portfolio— has limitations in that work must be transformed into something that can be stored or presented in a portfolio. This act of presentation for assessment could be a worthwhile act in itself in learning terms, in that it does involve transduction and transformation from one or more modes into another. But there is another dimension in a rhetorical approach to learning and assessment that must be taken into account.

The fifth aspect of curriculum and assessment design is fitness-forpurpose in a world in which the economics of attention are at a premium (Lanham 2006). If it is the case that the economics of attention are crucial to understanding the nature of and capacity for learning, then time spent on producing material for assessment must also be subject to economics of this kind. How valuable is it to re-present work for assessment when a better use of time would be to put the findings of a small research project, say, into action, or to use the constructed stories of 9 year olds, composed over weeks with oral and written dimensions, in retelling them to 5 year olds? The notion behind such application of knowledge in communities of learning that will in itself, improve the quality of human life and/or generate further positive responses has to be weighed against the needs of assessment systems, which partly have a diagnostic function but which primarily are used to grade performance in preparation for entry to further academic or vocational study and ultimately to the world of employment. Politically, in a period of history in which young people graduating from education systems have much less prospect of employment than previously, the endgame of assessment in education is exposed for what it is really is: a means of ordering, controlling, and defining (not always accurately) the nature of individual human potential.

Kress's (2009) notion that “what is not recognised will not and cannot be assessed,” which “leads to severe misrecognition of learners' capacities and actions” (38), challenges us to think about the way in which assessment systems not only aim to define what the outcomes of learning are, but often miss what these outcomes are. The problem of the mismatch between what is taught, what is learnt, and what is assessed is acute. But it is compounded further by the fact that such assessments often have little bearing on the nature of communication in the real world—a world that includes schools and classrooms. A rhetorical view of learning, curricula, and assessment suggests that what we need to do, at the very least, is provide more engagement between schools and the real world, value what young people bring to school in the whole range of its multimodal nature, see the school as a reflection of its communities, generate possibilities for action and thought, and design assessment systems that enable us to review individual and collective achievement and progress. Computerized versions of drill or multiple-choice schemes do not get close to the range of communicational possibilities that are envisaged in such an approach.

14

The rhetoric proposed in the current book is different from Aristotle's rhetoric, as framed in the
Rhetoric
and the
Poetics
.

There are a number of ways in which Aristotle's conception of rhetoric as the art of persuasion, or as a general theory of the persuasive, is different from the conception set out here. The
Rhetoric
takes the form of three books: two on thought, one on style. Although the two major elements are related, the division indicates that the bulk of the work focuses on thought, taking into account philosophical and emotive considerations and grounding issues of style in a more general theory of the responsibilities and powers of the speaker in relation to his or her audience. The
Rhetoric
also builds its theory of persuasion on syllogistic mechanisms or micro-logical arguments like the enthymeme. These deductive approaches, deriving as they do from philosophy or logic, are not central to the theory of contemporary rhetoric outlined in the present book, largely because the scaling up from the enthymeme to dialectic encounters in everyday life does not work.