Conference Proposal Final Draft

Expanding Student Awareness of Audience: An Exploration of the Uses of the “Rhetorical Triangle” in Multimodal Video Assignments

In their chapter of Multimodal Composition (ed. Cynthia Selfe) entitled “Responding and Assessing,” Sonya C. Borton and Brian Huot discuss the importance of the student’s awareness of their audience in the creation of multimodal assignments. Borton and Huot state that utilizing the concept of “audience” is an essential component and the driving force for instructor assessment and evaluation of multimodal assignments. Accompanying this, in “Among the Audience: On Audience in an Age of New Literacies,” Andrea A. Lunsford and Lisa Ede expand upon the creator’s perception of their audience, readers, discourse community, or “public.” By empowering students as the authors within their own discourse community, students are able to become active players in their “writer” role within the “Rhetorical Triangle.”

My presentation examines potential avenues for expanding student perception of audience from beyond the concept of the singular multimodal evaluator as the lone “reader” within the “Rhetorical Triangle.” By focusing on C. Selfe’s “Sample Assignment 2” entitled “Video Biography: Literacy Values and Practices,” I will explore the approaches in video biography assignment creation that promote the “writer’s” awareness of a larger discourse community of “readers.” These approaches will include, but are not limited to, discussions of video assignment creation that entail community interaction, the concept of publicly accessible media, and cooperation of willing “readers” within the university setting.