Composition or Compilation?

Johnson-Eilola’s chapter in Writing New Media questions the difference between writing and compilation.  He argues that texts are typically a compilation of others’ writing that we mix together for our own purposes, which is probably a familiar argument to many of us.  However, he also goes a step further by bringing up articulation theory.  According to Johnson-Eilola, “Articulation theory provides a way for thinking about how meaning is constructed contingently, from pieces of other meanings and social forces that tend to prioritize one meaning over another” (202).  In other words, no object or word has a stable, inherent meaning.  Instead, our understanding of objects and words derives from their relationship to other objects and words.  Because these relationships are dynamic, language changes over time and has different meanings in different contexts.  Johnson-Eilola argues that the same is true for all objects: the way we understand objects changes depending on how they are connected to other objects.  Therefore, any communication is bound to previous communication; when we write, we are depending on the associations of words and ideas that other writers have already used.  Our writing is in fact a compilation of relationships.

 
Johnson-Eilola provides several examples of what writing looks like when we expand our definition to include different forms of compilation: blogs, search engine results, multi-media online environments, and audio editing.  The audio editing stands out to me as being the most interesting to analyze.  Johnson-Eilola points out that audio editing supports “experimentation, arrangement, filtering, movement, rehearsal and reversal” (224) and explains how this is directly connected to what teachers encourage students to do.  During the RRGSC, I made a similar argument with anime music videos, showing how mixing scenes from anime with music required trimming clips, adding new clips, moving clips around, and then a final rehearsing of timing.  However, I did not have a specific recommendation about how to incorporate this in the composition classroom, and unfortunately none of Johnson-Eilola’s suggested activities directly relate to this topic, either, although he does suggest that Dreamweaver and Storyspace have possibilities.


So what options exist for composition instructors who want to have students compile different elements and play around with the organization until they create a unified message?  The video commentary that many of us do in English 120 is a step in this direction, but it doesn’t directly require some of the revision techniques mentioned above.  When I took the Visual Culture and Language class as an undergraduate, we had a photo essay assignment where we had to communicate a message through a series of pictures with limited text and no audio.  I think this is a step closer, but unfortunately, I don’t remember paying much attention to the effects I could achieve depending on how I presented the pictures.  Perhaps an assignment with a mixture of pictures, quotations, and audio with no “original” wording allowed would be a good way to show students how to play around with material in order to achieve the desired effect.