Pre-class Reflections

This is quite impressionistic, but here goes:

How do I see information being understood by my audience?  Well, it depends on the information and the presentation.  It also depends on the audience.  In other words, the subject matters so does the arrangement and delivery.  All of these are shaped by the audience.  Mode and medium matters as well.  I find this question, therefore, to entirely depend on the rhetorical situation and all the rhetorical decisions made in response.

How do I approach the invention portion of my projects?  I think first of my rhetorical goals--often, as a teacher, my pedagogical goals.  I am also swayed by my intuitive sense of design--what font, layout, look is appropriate for my rhetorical goals.  I don't do this analytically necessarily. Sometimes I decide to add visuals for secondary reasons rather than primary rhetorical reasons.  I might decide to add a cartoon to a worksheet not because it meets a pedagogical goal, but because it is "fun".  I guess this is a decision based somewhat on pathos rather than logos.  But, yes, these design decisions also have much to do with ethos--who I am as teacher, as a professional, and my relationship with my audience.

What relationship do I seem between the visual and other modes?  I guess a good analogy would be sensory experience.  Our days are spent with a moment by moment influx of sensory stimulus.  We see, hear, smell, and perceive textures, temperatures, and bodily signals of all types.  Some of these are more salient than others at most points in time, but all are present most of the time.  Naturally, human beings will use as combinations of these to communicate--sometimes in an intentionally selective way, at other times in a more global and comprehensive way.  Of course, technology, too, plays a role.  Simpler technologies make only one or two modes available. More complex or sophisticated technologies may make others available.  Nevertheless, smell and taste are still rarely available outside of direct experience.  Performance art, for example, might be capable of using these modes, but technology isn’t yet able to transmit these sensory experiences over distance.  In terms of rhetorical analysis or research projects, I think it is appropriate to investigate one or another mode selectively even when multiple modes are at play, depending on one's research question.  However, we always must recognize that inevitably multiple modes are in operation at any point in time.