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Blog 3 - Genre in Climate Change Communication and Environmental Rhetoric

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Exploration of Subject Matter

 

My interest in genre within my work culture began with the Swalesian notions of the common ways, goals, and working methods of approved discoursal modes, particularly in regard to academic composition pedagogy and the awareness of genre within academic writing. We are mandated by institutional demands to teach x-number of genres in academic writing; compare and contrast, cause and effect, definition, evaluation, summary-response, persuasive argument, rhetorical analysis, and synthesis. In order for me to try to contextualize these genres for my students, I will often pull up a salient, authentic academic text. “Let’s examine a literature review. What genre is this?” Literature reviews are syntheses. So, teaching academic composition at the undergraduate 1st-year level is largely about this kind of consciousness-raising.

 

Over the past few years, this focus has moved to ideas and approaches to the genre(s) afforded by multimodality. I have taught a course entitled “Writing for Digital Spaces” for a few years now. This course is for 3rd-year English majors. I see it as a kind of stand-alone course in their academic plan, as there is no immediately relevant course requirement, and it does not serve as a course requirement for any other course. For their final project, students must make a website that includes 2 blogs, 2 podcasts, and 2 vlogs. We examine these genres in the first half of the course, as well as various theoretical and practical ideas around the production and reception of these various and variously produced artifacts. I have envisioned it as an open space for any type of writing/composing they may want to do, and encourage them to make their projects as personal as possible; life writing, interviews (now required), literacy narrative (now required), any type of review, non-discursive photo blogs or videos (they are encouraged to try this, but only one is allowed), etc. All public. I try to encourage them to use the course to explore writing/composing multi-modally as an opportunity to engage with writing in English in more experimental ways.

 

For theoretical background, I use (carefully selected, it’s a bit too academically dense for my students) sections of Douglas Eyman’s excellent Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice (2015), mostly sticking to the theory and method. We focus on aspects of visual literacy and visual rhetoric, and although our students clearly have a kind of visual knowledge, Deandra Little notes that “students still have to learn how to analyze or produce visual images in disciplined and disciplinary ways” (88). I also ask them to consider how sound means, and spend a whole week on this. We look at how sound is used rhetorically in films and audio creations, and they analyze podcasts, This American Life episodes, and multimodal news stories for their uses of sound, images, and spoken or written text, and suggest how the interplay of these different modes work in concert rhetorically. One text that I have decided is actually worth reading together and discussing as a whole class is Vivian Maria Vasquez’s “Podcasting as Transformative Work,” which relates to Vasquez’s experience with a very diverse second-grade class writing and producing their own podcasts. This is quite informative as I can connect it to prior discussions of 21st century literacies, and it displays the many modalities of creating, writing, and recording them, as well as the many communicative aspects of revision, rewriting, critiquing, brainstorming, and considerations of audience awareness involved. I use this to instill in my students an awareness of how much is happening in digital composing. I also require them to work collaboratively on podcasts and vlogs, so this article preps them for that.

 

Genre Considerations

 

How do we conceptualize the rhetorical situation in digital spaces? What is a multimodal “text,” and how does discourse work in multimodal, participatory spaces? One quite useful overall construct is the notion of “media ecology,” extending the biological definition of ecology, with its awareness of “relationships, interaction, complexity, and community” (Eyman). I have found it salient to simply point out the window when I discuss the biological definition of ecology, and ask my students to consider the “community” of a tree out the window, or the nearby mountainside, and extend this to the digital sphere. I next ask them to discuss the connections in groups, and I later ask them to discuss these notions in detail via writing. I have been struck by the number of final course reflections that have pointed directly to this tangible and direct metaphorical lesson on digital communication, digital genres, and the inherently participatory rhetorical situation of digital spaces.

 

At my Sino-American university, I have served on our ESL curriculum committee off and on over the past 5 years or so, and as we interpret, revise, and, critically, tailor the Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) and assessments we are beholden to to maintain accreditation in the US but also to best serve our student population at our unique English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) institution, I always push incorporating a multimodal unit and assessment into our instruction. This is a vaguely referred to SLO in our US-derived course outlines, and I wish to make it more concrete. Yet, I always get push-back. Some of my colleagues simply say they don’t know what that is, that our Communications department should deal with that, or other concerns. I understand. The directive from our partner US institution is quite vague in its suggestions here. How do we understand, theoretically and practically, what multimodality is?

 

Gunther Kress asks these questions: “What is it that we want to mean, and what modes and genres are best for realizing this meaning…[and] what social representational and communicative function do genres have?” (39). Kress examines two hand-written artifacts produced by high school students, part of the curricular project to “induct young people into the idea of scientificness” (48), hand-written, yes, but still “multimodal” in the sense that they contain both visual and linguistic elements, as well as a mixing of generic understanding and approaches in their social and communicative functions. Kress notes that although these students’ design decisions seemingly have nothing to do with the digitized multimodal communication systems our students live within, they actually have everything to do with them, as they are representational and rhetorical decisions our students may be intuitively informed of already; “the young are attuned to a differently configured communicational world” (48). Kress notes that generic mixing has already been happening, but educators need to recognize what older, more stable genres and their traditional mixing are giving way to newer, more flexible approaches to social and communicative functions. “This is a much more ‘generative’ notion of genre: not only where you learn the shapes of existing kinds of text alone, in order to replicate them, but where you learn the generative rules of the constitution of generic form within the power structure of society” (53). So, I think that how we approach multimodality as educators should be a function and component of our building of critical literacy in our students, and awareness of the creative and open potential of multimodal communication. Critically examining and rhetorically analyzing multimodal texts is a prerequisite to beginning to create them with real purpose. Following this reasoning, creative experimental design (small “d”) in persuasive or informative writing/composing multi-modally should be a strong component of our composition and ESL courses. Kress concludes that “the young who experienced that kind of curriculum might feel at ease in a world of incessant change. A social theory of genre is one essential element in bringing about that shift” (54).

 

John Trinnell has some provocative ideas in student eco-blogging practice. One idea in particular that I would like to take on is the notion of how “middle-voice” works in publicly open interactive digital spaces, and raising students’ awareness of this, and giving them practice in using it. Another takeaway is the notion of raising affective awareness and connection to a given environmental issue case study writing through the practice of seeking out visual documentation of the (non-)-human populations, but then connecting a given environmental crisis through reflection to a childhood memory. This allows the students to “feel the lessons of just sustainability and hopefully these feeling impact their perceptions of ecological issues well into their lifetimes” (238). Like Kress, Tinnell sees the social and communicative nature of multimodal productions, with the addition of new approaches to student voice (not readerly-oriented, but an open and dialogic “middle”) and affective invitation as part of the writing process.

 

Interrelations

 

Ironically, despite teaching a class on the theory and practice of developing multimodal texts for 4 years, I do not have a strong background in making them myself. I am a great consumer of them, and I feel quite comfortable talking about them theoretically and practically. I have produced very little. I have been able to reach out and discuss many of the issues I relate above, and my approach to the how and the why of the course I teach, to small regional English Teaching Forums for local k-tertiary English teachers in the cities of Shenyang and Kunming in China, as well as at the AsiaTEFL International Conference 2023 in Daejeon, South Korea. I hope that these opportunities presented food for thought and a few good ideas for some of the participants.

 

Eyman, Douglas. Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice. University of Michigan Press, 2015.

 

Kress, Gunther. Literacy in the New Media Age. Routledge, 2003.

 

Little, Deandra. "Teaching Visual Literacy across the Curriculum: Suggestions and Strategies." New Directions for Teaching and Learning 2015.141 (2015): 87-90.

 

Vasquez, Vivian Maria. "Podcasting as Transformative Work." Theory into Practice 54.2 (2015): 147-153.

 

Ward, Adrian F., et al. "Brain Drain: The Mere Presence of One’s Own Smartphone Reduces Available Cognitive Capacity." Journal of the Association for Consumer Research 2.2 (2017): 140-154.

​Blog 2 - Discourse Communities, Environmental Discourse, Ecolinguistics, and Intersectionality

 

 

Discourse Communities and Ecolinguistics

 

James Gee’s discussion of big “D” Discourses suggest that they are living and breathing entities. They are rule-bound (around issues of legitimacy and who can speak), yet changing and changeable. Gee frames discourses as socially and politically embedded within culture, and that “it is sometimes helpful to think about social and political issues as if it is not just us humans who are talking and interacting with each other, but rather the Discourses we represent and enact, and for which we are ‘carriers’” (18).  Gee uses the metaphor of the dance as a frame for helping us to understand both the material nature of the Discourse enacted, the co-ordinations “of people, places, times, actions, interactions, verbal and non-verbal expression, symbols, things, tools, and technologies that betoken certain identities and associated activities” (23), but also function rhetorically (“the work we do to get certain things recognized in certain ways and not others”), hence social practice, primarily, but not always, enacted through language. James E. Porter presents a similar notion to Gee that discourse communities span professional, public, and personal spheres, and that we are always actively engaged in and members of many overlapping communities. Like Gee, Porter also notes that gate-keeping nature built into many/most social discourses: “a discourse community shares assumptions about what objects are appropriate for examination and discussion, what operating functions are performed on those objects, what constitutes ‘evidence’ and ‘validity,’ and what formal conventions are followed. Porter is primarily concerned with discourse as enacted through writing, and indicates how a socially-situated identity (within a Discourse community in Gee’s sense), is both constrained and yet also a free actor insofar as they “follow the rules” of the discourse, perhaps in order to change or break them. “We are constrained insofar as we must inevitably borrow the traces, codes, and signs which we inherit and which the discourse community imposes. We are free insofar as we do what we can to encounter and learn new codes, to intertwine codes in new ways, and to expand our semiotic potential – with our goal being to effect change and establish our identities within the discourse communities we choose to enter” (230, emphasis added). Thus, Porter and Gee suggest that responsible membership in a discourse community, guided by the gate-keeping “masters of the dance” (Gee) to ensure the legitimacy and authority of the enactment of a given discourse, may have as a goal social change, both within the discourse as well as within ourselves.

 

The Australian environmental linguists Peter Mühlhäusler and Adrian Peace posit an environmental discourse writ large (which they define as “the linguistic devices articulating arguments about the relationship between humans and their environment” (458)), and they distinguish between discursive and metadiscursive practices – “discourse refers to specific ways of talking about particular environments and their futures. Metadiscourse refers to practices of theorizing, which categorize issues to establish their significance” (458). (Although I might be writing within the discourse of environmental rhetoric, this blog post is metadiscursive thought.) Given the radical complexity of climate science and ideology, and the radical uncertainty of competing accounts of what is happening now, and future claims in light of that uncertainty, Mühlhäusler and Peace “interpret environmental discourse as an attempt by risk society members to make sense of the global changes that affect them” (459). Mühlhäusler and Peace conceptualize their field of ecolinguistics as an integration of “language with its cultural and natural environment…We begin with language because one can use language about all effable aspects of the world; but the converse is not the case. There is discourse about the environment, but no environment without discourse” (467). The nod to the cultural inclusion, the sociolinguistic element in environmental rhetoric, is key. In discussing the high degree of ambiguity around the very notion of the term “environment,” they note that “environment in essence is an anthropocentric notion” (458) – the “nature” in the “environment” we envision through language is both a sustaining mother-like provider (Gaia) and a (real and potential) threat to human life and longevity. Mühlhäusler and Peace analyze the what and how of environmental discourses through an ecolinguistics lens, which helps to reveal the potential and peril of environmental messaging. Messaging at the commercial and corporate level can devolve into green tokenism

 

Success and Challenges

 

Mühlhäusler and Peace analyze the what and how of environmental discourses through an ecolinguistics lens, which helps to reveal the potential and peril of environmental messaging. Messaging at the commercial and corporate level can devolve into green tokenism, and their notion of greenspeaking – “replacing or postponing environmental action by just speaking about it in ‘green’ language” (467) colors corporate and media discourse to the extent that is largely style over substance at these macro levels of discourse. Greenspeaking, coupled with the compounding static that endless messaging of environmental doom, in the context of its complexity and uncertainty, can be nothing other than ultimately confusing. How is this language being understood by the audience? “Hearers are exposed to messages they do not completely understand even when ‘ecoliterate’ and numerous conflicting messages are encountered. This concept suggests a classification of hearers into those who are ecoliterate…and those who ignore or filter out messages, or suffer from ecofatigue” (461). I would argue that many of us fit both categories.

 

Yet Mühlhäusler and Peace’s project is to argue for potential ways out of these frustrating and negative (theoretical) metadiscursive trends. Through ecolinguistic and ecocritical lenses, scholars are situating the intersections of language, culture, and politics as a re-visioning of the metaphor of an ecology of language. The interconnections and community implied by the term “ecology” and a valuing of linguistic diversity allow for positive potentialities in communicating across cultures and languages. Noting the unequal messaging seemingly privileging the more photogenic and anthropomorphically attractive charismatic megafauna (“whales, seals, wolves, tigers, koalas, pandas, and dingoes”) over “biologically equal or more important species” (463), or the accusation that “Euro-American discourses often ignore the plight of inhabitants of developing nations,” Mühlhäusler and Peace report a shift to redress these imbalances, a move towards a biocultural diversity framework, which “implies that the well-being of languages is a prerequisite for the well-being of natural species” (463). These new models of linguistic ecology and biodiversity give space for connections between the discoursal domains of language, culture, science, and politics. They are answers to critiques of the traces of environmental discourses which wittingly or not function to exclude diversity in accounts of the human and non-human experiencers of climate crises.

 

Personal Experience

 

I have been hearing and reading the doom and gloom messaging around environmental discourse my whole life. It’s a feature of our cultural inheritance. As a child, it was both frightening and awe-inspiring in scope, and competed with science fiction in that regard, for that very reason, in my cultural imaginary. It seemed too fantastical to be real, really.

 

As I got older and began to understand the complexity a bit, it was the human complicity of narco-capitalist impulses and deliberate propagandist obscuring of the science in/against environmental discourses which became most infuriating. But…what can you do? What can you do when low-level terror or apathy are your options? Where does your focus lie when work, family obligations, health, personal tragedy, all the stuff of our day to day, drives away the terror and uncertainty of that stuff out there, far away from us (me!) in both distance and time, beyond the time of our lives even…what can you do?

 

What I can do. Locally. In small ways, at the very least. Asking my friends and colleagues what they do. Take a course on environmental rhetoric and do some deep thinking and meditation on the issues we are reading about. Discussing environmental issues in China and Asia with my students. Instilling a critical awareness of what greenspeaking and green tokenism are as necessary tools in their critical literacies. I can do more, of course. But I am doing this. It’s something.

 

Understanding Intersectional Climate Urbanism as a Component of all of our Urban Communities

 

Gee and Porter, in their discussion of discourse communites (plural) imply a recognition of what has come to be known as intersectionality. Rachel McArdle writes that intersectionality is “based on the recognition that factors of identity can combine, intersect, and interact in different situations for different people, creating landscapes of discrimination and privilege” (303). I think McArdle helpfully expands on conceptions of the intersectional with the addition of the framework of kyriarchy. Race, class, gender, ethnicity all have their concomitant systems of oppression, and kyriarchy accounts for these systems en masse. (It’s not all about patriarchy and “the man.” A lot of it is, though.) What McArdle is doing is expanding climate concern to not exclude the marginalized whose experiences of climate realities may be quite different from the “mainstream” often addressed by the media. Coupling intersectionality with kyriarchy shows how “groups already battling with systems of inequality and marginalization are more likely to be affected by the negative consequences of climate change” (303). What McArdle is doing by re-imagining climate urbanism in this way is revealing potential blind spots the mainstream might not see, and the particularities, complexities, and realities of marginalized groups in light of climate change. The challenge would be to frame what is uncovered using both an “altruistic” and “biospheric” value system (Armstrong et al.) that might be both intelligible and palatable to a mainstream audience.

 

 

Armstrong, Anne K., Marianne E. Krasny, and Jonathon P. Schuldt. Communicating Climate Change: A Guide for Educators. Cornell University Press, 2018.

Gee, James Paul. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. Routledge, 1999

McArdle, Rachel. "Intersectional Climate Urbanism: Towards the Inclusion of Marginalised Voices." Geoforum 126 (2021): 302-305.

Mühlhäusler, Peter, and Adrian Peace. "Environmental Discourses." Annual Review of Anthropology 35.1 (2006): 457-479.

Porter, James E. "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community." Rhetoric Review 5.1 (1986): 34-47.

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