“To Just Make Everything More Powerful”:

1. “To Just Make Everything More Powerful”: Why Students Need a Metalanguage to Talk About their Use of Music in Multimedia Composition Crystal VanKooten University of Michigan vankootc@umich.edu Image by JAS_photo (CC: BY NC)

2. Students use music in multimedia compositions, but… Problem 1: They don’t think critically about the music. “I like this song.” Photo by Dierk Schaefer (CC: BY) “This song goes along with what I want to say.”

3. “I used serious music for the serious part. For the hopeful part, I used hopeful music.” Problem 2: Students rely only on common ways music is discussed in popular culture and society: to appeal to emotion or to “set the mood.” “When I used a sad song, people felt sad. When I used a happy song, shockingly, people felt happy.” Photo by Lin Fuchshuber CC: BY

4. Problem 3: Students don’t have the specific language to talk about the rhetorical work that music can do. (See problems 1 and 2…) Photo by Feuillu (CC: BY NC)

5. One example: Kaitlyn Patterson’s video composition Composed for English 125: College Essay Writing Final Course Assignment: The Revision Essay The video uses music written words still images video footage To view Kaitlyn’s video, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8aXZt1GL2s

6. Writing with Sound: The Rhetoric of Music

7. Lyrics that point out irony A Hook Evokes cultural themes and associations Lyrics that bring evidence in support of an argument Contrast Lyrics that argue An upbeat, interesting introduction Image by Vectorportal (CC: BY) A conclusion A transitional and organizational tool Plays to audience emotion Lyrics that highlight themes

8. “I definitely wanted the images to dominate because that was, I thought, the best way to capture my argument. And the words were more of transitional tools to keep the audience up to speed with what was going on so it would make sense. And the music was more for emotional effect and to just make everything more powerful.” Image by Candie_N (CC: BY)

9. What can I do as an instructor to help students like Kaitlyn develop language to discuss the complex and rhetorical use of music? Kaitlyn uses music in complex ways, but lacks language with which to describe these ways. This is not an error. What can I do to encourage other students to think critically and rhetorically about the use of music?

10. The New London Group (1996): Pedagogy of multiliteracies includes situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformed practice (7). Overt instruction = scaffolding of learning activities focusing the learner allowing the learner to gain explicit and relevant information (34). Overt instruction includes the use of a metalanguage: a language of reflective generalization that describes the form, content, and function of the discourses of practice (34)—“a language for talking about images, texts and meaning-making interactions” (23-24).

11. Starting to build a metalanguage for using sound and music: Clearly articulate goals to students: Become a conscious composer who is aware of all rhetorical choices and makes effective choices based on purpose and audience. Image by Virgile Vebrel (CC: BY)

12. Use rhetorical theory as a foundation: Purpose and Audience Persuasive appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos Redefinitions of rhetoric at the nexus of technology and literacy (Selber 2004) Image by Paul Goyette (CC: BY NC SA)

13. Image by Cuito Cuanvale (CC: BY) Multifaceted, evolving logics: Wysocki “Unfitting Beauties of Transducing Bodies” 2010 Sirc “Serial Composition” 2010 Rice The Rhetoric of Cool 2007 Welch Electric Rhetoric 1998

14. Layers of Media Expose, analyze, consider, and use the audio, visual, and linguistic layers that can exist in multimedia Image by sniffles (CC: BY NC SA) Image by Sunday Williams (CC: BY NC SA) “We need to be writers. And we need to name the choices available to writers in order to have power over them. Otherwise, we will be stuck seeing and hearing the multidimensional rhetoric of 21st Century writing as being all there at once—not as layers of discrete rhetorical elements” (Halbritter, Mics, Cameras, Symbolic Action, forthcoming).

15. Rhetorical and Figurative Devices: • Metaphor, • Metonymy, • Synecdoche, • Irony • (Sorapure 2006, • Horn 2004, • Nichols 2010) • Juxtaposition and • Association • (Sirc2010, • Staley 2010) • Links and patterns • (chora) (Rice 2007) • Appropriation • (Rice 2007) • Persuasive appeals • to logos, pathos, • and ethos • (Halbritter 2006, • VanKooten 2011) • Use of counter- • arguments • (Young, Becker, and • Pike 1970) Image by Marty Portier (CC: BY SA)

16. Questions for discussion: Reactions to my partial metalanguage? What works and what doesn’t? Additions to the metalanguage that have worked in your classrooms? What if Kaitlyn had some of the language I explore here? How would her learning be enhanced? Image by the.sprouts (CC: BY NC SA) This PPT is licensed under CC: BY NC SA