“Designerly =/= Readerly:Re-assessing Multimodal and New Media Rubrics for Use in Writing Studies” by Cheryl Ball.

Summary

Cheryll Ball defines Kress and Van Leeuwen’s and Manovich’s theories as designerly. These theories are meant to help readers see the design processes shape new media text, but they don’t help in examining how multimodal texts make meaning. Kress and Van Leeuwen’s strata can help teachers understand the design process behind new media texts. Manovich’s principles are about the underlying concepts that make up new media and is most useful as a technological checklist for if a text is new media or not.

Ball examines a literary, multimodal hypertext called “While Chopping Red Peppers” in order to examine how these new media theories play out in an analysis. Kress and Leewen’s strata can lead to rhetorical questions, but ultimately limits analysis to looking at the design choices. Using Manovich’s principles limits an analysis to the technological aspects that are often not visible to the reader. Cheryl Ball then does a “readerly” interpretation using literary and rhetorical traditions in which she connects different choices and expressions to different meanings. Her argument is that the last analysis is most useful in seeing how multimodal compositions create meaning and how each mode of discourse contributes to the overall text.

Discussion

This text provides a way of interpreting new media texts that could be quite useful. Kress and Van Leeuwen and Manovich are interested in the nature of new media and the processes that are inherent to them, but not on interpretation. In Ball’s “readerly analysis” portion where she interprets the text using a lot of rhetorical and literary theory. The way she connects each mode of discourse to a specific moment and a possible meaning would be a good way of getting students to organize, or attempt to interpret a new media text.

I wonder how many classes are teaching students how to interpret new media texts. I have written about websites and television before for composition classes in my undergraduate career, but I definitely did not know anything about new media theory until I went to graduate school. Cheryll Ball’s strategies could definitely help teachers create a pedagogy centered on interpreting new media texts, but it makes me wonder how much time should be spent on interpreting new media. The goal of many courses is not just to create  readers, but also to create writers. While being part of a good writer is being a good reader, the best way to get better at writing is to practice. How do we create a balance between time spent on interpretation and time spent on composing in new media?

Works Cited 

Ball, C. E. "Designerly != Readerly: Re-assessing Multimodal and New Media Rubrics for Use in Writing Studies." Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 12.4 (2006): 393-412. Web.

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