Journal 7

I agree that adherence to only alphabetic composition constrains anyone who has the
ability to communicate through multimodal constraints. Todays environment allows people to
communicate messages in a much more communicative format. Music, sounds, video, graphics,
and words can relay a much stronger message than black and white words on a page. The
question is when is these formats accepted?
I disagree that professors lose sight of the way young adults communicate. Instead, they
are attempting to instruct the students how to communicate with words on a page. Not all
communication is done in a park with the car stereo blasting in the background. That is one type
of communication and there is nothing wrong with it. However, in a corporate world, the stereo
is turned off and there is a more formal style of communication. If young adults want to be able
to communicate in this environment, they must learn how to use words to create a viable
message for others to understand. Once this is achieved, they students may learn to combine
words and other modalities to create an even stronger message. A web page using too much
street slang and many graphic pictures is hard for some people to understand and the message
may get lost.
I hope to encourage teachers to develop an increasingly thoughtful understanding
of a whole range of modalities and semiotic resources in their assignments and
then to provide students the opportunities of developing expertise with all
available means of persuasion and expression, so that they can function as literate
citizens in a world where communications cross geopolitical, cultural, and
linguistic borders and are enriched rather than diminished by semiotic
dimensionality (Selfe 662).
I believe this is a lot to ask of instructors, professors, and teachers. Today, America struggles with
the No Child Left Behind set of regulations trying to teach students to just pass tests to measure a
teachers ability to teach. How are they going to be able to teach students all of these different
forms of communication when they struggle to just get them to pass standardized testing?
As for college professors, many of them are trying to embrace new technologies, but
struggle with these technologies themselves. What type of training programs should we use to
help the teachers/professors get up to speed on the technologies that are available to teach with?
Then, how do we convince the Federal Government to change their ways of thought when most
of the people in the government are over the age of 65 and do not understand anything more than
the basic email system. The government was trained with paper, pencil, and nothing more, now
we want the world to catch up to the technology that is available. It is hard to have the world
keep up to speed with the technology that is changing every day.
We have to attempt to catch up on the speed of technology as well as understand that
people are not born writers. Teaching Literature and then expecting students to be able to write
well is not the way things should be anymore. Teachers need to understand that writing is
something that develops and grows over time. A red pen with marks and one chance writing does
not help students who dream of becoming a writer.

Writers are developed through collaboration and nurturing. Training to pass a single test
does not develop anything but stress. Today, writers have an abundance of things to help a writer
convey their messages. It is not a skill of just learning to write on black and white pages, but
there is sound, pictures, photo editing, sound editing, html formats, and many other things that
can come into play for someone to develop a truly dimensional writing. Many of these things
must be learned out of the classroom unfortunately, and other parts could come from their peers.
The instructor only plays one part of the instruction process.
Should instructors be teaching all of the different formats to communicate? Or, should
they just instruct on good writing, and allow other professionals teach the other areas all with the
ideal that each of these areas can be combined to create new styles and types of messages?
Once again, I have to ask not can we, but should we use all styles to communicate our
messages? Having a button for a deaf person to allow for captions is a great feature; audio files
for a blind person help them hear what someone is trying to say. Using all of these items is
wonderful, but a blind person cannot see a picture, and how can someone describe it for the blind
to see? By describing the picture, is the blind only getting one persons version of the painting,
and whose vision should be used if pictures are left for interpretation?
All of these different situations must be considered when placing a piece of
writing/communication on the web. Each message must be thought out and the audience thought
of at the same time. Each time something is created, the question that must be asked is, will this
communicate my message to the best of its abilities to all audiences I want to connect with? If
the answer is no, then something else needs to be added, or deleted. This could be a music file,
audible messages, pictures, or even simply colors. Each of these different things can help make
communication stronger or weaker. Learning to do these things correctly can be tricky to say the
least. This is why I feel that writing is just one part of it, and the rest of it needs to be taught by
another expert. One person cannot teach everything at the same time. A certain amount of skill
must be brought to the table before learning how to add more to the writing than just words. It is
the way messages can be as strong as possible when everything is combined.
Adding speech to a written document can be difficult. Speeches are not always the same
as a written document and are not perceived to work in the same format. Teaching these two
items as two separate entities needs to be done. Audio files can help make a point, but it still
requires the reader to stop and click on a link to start the audio files. This can slow or stop the
reader and become a distraction as much as an addition to the reading. At what point does the
author decide when the momentary pause in the reading is worth the audio files being presented.
If a person is a slow reader and an audio file is preprogrammed to, start at a specific time the
message could be lost as well. Exclusive audio files means the audience can do something else
while only listening to the file so the message could be lost due to the distractions of the
audience.
Keeping the attention of the audience can be a struggle and this is why one single format
does not always work, especially in todays styles of communication.

Oral traditions of Native Indians and the

Hispanic population show how we can communicate
with people in a vastly different format. Indians tell
stories with dance, fire, and costumes to tell stories of
their ancestors. Americans have struggled with this
technique because our traditions are not as noble as
the Indians in my opinion are. Americans never
seemed to embrace the oral tradition except within
their own family setting. Once again, oration of a
story is a different form than writing and should be
taught in a speech class instead of a writing class. The
true art is converting the story so it could work in a
digital format on the internet so someone could
experience the whole story with written, oral, and
video styles.
While talking about how colleges slowly
changed to remove aural speech deteriorated from the college campuses, I think Mike Rowe
explains it best.
QVC had confused qualifications with competency. Perhaps America has done
something similar? Look at how we hire help - its no so different than how we
elect leaders. We search for work ethic on resumes. We look for intelligence in
test scores. We search for character in references. And of course, we look at a
four-year diploma as though it might actually tell us something about commonsense and leadership (Rowe).
Mr. Rowe is talking about how society is more focused on test scores than looking at the actual
person and their skillset. A diploma means more than what the person can actually accomplish.
The English departments did a similar thing with the English language. Colleges were so focused
on writing they did not care if someone could communicate in a different fashion. All forms of
communication should be in writing and that was all that mattered. It did not matter that great
people from the nineteen hundreds were not just great leaders; they were great writers and
speakers. People could adapt to the crowd to get their message to them without memorizing a
piece a paper. They knew the speech had to adapt and change so their message would be heard
by looking at the crowd and thinking before they ever spoke a single word. Today, we are trying
to get back to that same style of communication using many multimodal type tools. These things
can be done quickly with some of the internets capabilities, but the question that needs to be
asked is if speech is the best way to communicate with the audience or if several modes needs to
take place so everyone can hear the message being said, verbally, visually, and orally.
I hear a lot of communication through cars. The sounds cars make most people ignore as
they drive by. When I stand next to the street I can hear the different types of cars, size of engines
they have, and what is possibly wrong with them, all within a few seconds of them whooshing
by. When I am at home, I can tell when my son drives up just because of the distinct sound of his
engine. See Caption Lukes Car. It is nothing fancy, but I can tell it is his even if a similar car
with the same engine drives by too. I can tell the difference. I cannot see the cars only hear
them. When I am driving in the car with the stereo on and my family all talking I will suddenly

turn the radio off and have everyone be quiet because I can hear something within the engine that
does not sound right. No one else will be able to hear the sounds, but I can. My ears are tuned to
cars and have been for many years.
Today, I can go on Magnaflows website and hear how
my car will sound depending on which muffler I want to put on
my car. They use basic recordings of the exhaust and include
sounds from inside the car on some models. Do I want a deep
throaty sound or a mean aggressive sound coming from my
engine on my car? With the click of a button I can find out
which exhaust will do what sound I choose.
These same sounds bring back memories for me as a
child. These sounds cannot be recreated with words no matter
how good the linguist is in their description. How do we add
sound to creating a story without interrupting the story itself? If
a story is completely read to the audience they could be
distracted or not like the sound of my voice. How do I keep my
audience and utilize all types of multimodal formats?
Looking at the internet today and all of the different
forms of communication, aural seems to be the least involved
unless it is included in a video. Graphics and words are
everywhere and sound comes in last. The only time sound is
Luke's Car (Decker)
exclusive is when it is in the form of a song or an audiobook.
From time to time I am finding web sites with voice-over type communications. These are done
more with commercials and advertising sales pitches than anything else, but they are becoming
more prevalent. I wonder if this is because the technology is getting easier, or is it because more
people have high speed internet so these types of items are easier to download these days. Less
than ten years ago picture barely loaded on a screen with typical dial-up technology. Now, full
videos load on cell phones in a matter of seconds.
The question is how do we integrate sound into our message to create a viable
communication to our audience? Each time many different factors must be considered. One way
is through speech where many people still listen to the person on the podium. Public speaking
can reach a great deal of people with use of a single voice through emotion, pitch, and tone. Is
public speaking viable the way it has always been, or do we need audio effects to create a better
message; or, will the extra sounds just be another distraction while we all pretend we heard the
message?

Works Cited
Decker, Gabriel. "Firebird." Benton, 25 June 2014. Digital.
Rowe, Mike. "Off The Wall." 16 February 2015. Facebook. Web . 16 February 2015.

Selfe, Cynthia L. "The Movement of Air, the Breath of Meaning: Aurality and
Multimodal Composing." CCC (2009): 616 - 662. Document.