In Cynthia Selfe’s “Aurality and Multimodal Composing”, Selfe makes the argument that the U.S. has a limited understanding of composing as a multimodal rhetorical activity because of our focus on the medium of writing on print. In the late nineteenth century to the twentieth, writing gained more and more privilege and esteem in the U.S. classroom. Because of this, the mode of oral expression was absorbed into writing. Selfe goes on to say that our education system’s way of teaching has perpetuated an imbalance in the language arts, as the heavy focus on print has lessened the importance on other methods of composition, like aurality. This issue comes with some high stakes for both the teachers and the students. This print-focused system minimizes the effectiveness of the teachers’ instruction as it fails to give the students a holistic understanding of semiotic systems. On the other hand, students are given less tools to express their needs/feelings, and understand themselves. They will grow up, only possessing a few of the skills they need to survive in this world. Selfe says that her hopes is that we can elevate the mode of aurality to the high place that we hold writing. They believe that we shouldn’t heavily focus on one or the other but, rather a focus on both together. I quite agree with Selfe’s statement because I wish that I had more teaching on the subject of speaking orally in elementary/junior high/high school, myself. I feel that I would’ve been more equipped, then and now, to better express myself.
Mary E. Hocks and Michelle Comstock’s “Sonic Rhetoric as Resonance” is an article that describes sonic rhetoric and the analysis of sounds in a way that is helpful towards students in developing ways of multimodal composition. Hocks and Comstock define sonic rhetoric as a study of sound and its properties through the lens of rhetorical theory and practice. They define sonic resonance as a term to describe the “…intimacy, presence, and movement (the “verb-ness”) created by a sound’s qualities, like tonality, amplitude, or cadence” (Hocks and Comstock 138). In their teachings, they have quite an emphasis on sonic resonance as they use it as a means of sonic rhetorical engagement. The article also explains three modes of listening: casual, semantic, and reduced. Casual listening entails a listening to receive information about the source material. Semantic listening interprets for meaning within the material. Reduced listening combines the previous two modes, and has the subject listened to the sound itself.
Joshua Chung 