I’ve deliberately waited almost two weeks to process this information before writing my own blog post, but I find that even two weeks’ worth of thinking has not been enough to fully process my own understanding of what exactly constitutes a text. This is not a new problem for me: I have been trying, lately, to include more popular culture artifacts, such as film, music, and other media, into my own research, and in the process I have been fighting—and sometimes embracing—my urge to refer to an episode of a television series as “the text.” After this module’s readings, I think I will stop fighting that urge.
Eyman refers to the criteria of a text as defined by DeBeaugrande and Dressler: a text, according to these two, is a “communication event” (qtd. in Eyman, 21), that has “cohesion, coherence, intentionality, acceptability, informativity, situationality, and intertextuality.” Eyman makes a point of noting, however, that DeBeaugrande and Dressler “are working in the discipline of linguistics rather than rhetoric” (21). I think this distinction makes all the difference. These criteria are all great, and they can help us differentiate what exactly we mean by text, but there is one criterion that I personally am not sold on just yet: intentionality.
This feature of intentionality seems to stem back to DeBeaugrande and Dressler’s earlier definition of a text being a “communication event.” In the field of linguistics, I suppose a communication event must be intentional to count. Eyman explains this criteria by quoting DeBeaugrande and Dressler’s example: “talking in one’s sleep would not count as a text” (21). I would agree with that assessment, but what about an unintentional expletive? When someone accidentally, unintentionally, drops the f-bomb, isn’t that a communication event? Aren’t they communicating, unintentionally, that they are angry or frustrated or startled? This question of an unintentional communication event is more obvious when we consider non-linguistic communication events. Facial expressions are an especially easy way to see unintentional communication. Raised eyebrows or a smile are not always intentional—in fact, I might argue that genuine facial expressions are never intentional—yet they are communication events that meet all the other criteria listed by DeBeaugrande and Dressler. The opposite end of intentionality, “acceptability,” is the only thing that matters in a communication event as far as I am concerned. The receiver of the communication has the right—and the responsibility—to read into all of the information they can receive, whether it was intentional or not. I’m thinking also here about an activity we did my first year of college in an English literature class (and I think it’s a fairly popular activity for professors to do). We performed a rhetorical analysis of the
classroom. The ways the desks were arranged with the professor’s desk, the size differences between desks, the lack of any lefty desks, the board at the front of the room, all communicated to us what the expectations are for students. Now, the classroom was built and designed intentionally. But it wasn’t designed to communicate anything. So does this count as intentionality? I’m not so sure, but I’m leaning toward no. Anyway, I suppose my grapple with intentionality as a criteria of a text is all just to say that I think anything and everything is a text, or could be considered a text if it falls into hands marked by acceptability.
I want to also (quickly, hopefully) talk about Arola, Ball, and Sheppard’s discussion of multimodal texts. By defining a text as any communicative thing (linguistic, physical, artwork, etc.), it has become a lot harder for me to broadly say that I agree that all texts are multimodal— but I am still inclined to agree. I’ve taught a first year writing class for several years, and we always spend a bit of time talking about MLA format. Many students come into college with an inclination to turn in essays in “fun” fonts, “fun” colors, or any formatting they want. When we talk about using size 12, Times New Roman font with one-inch margins all around, one of the reasons I give for this seemingly arbitrary guideline is that it helps your reader take you seriously— it adds to the authority of both the text itself and the writer. Honestly, I always felt that I was making that up a bit (I believed it, but had never seen anyone else give that reason), so I was thrilled to see Arola, Ball, and Sheppard say something similar: “Even the font choice is an important but often subtle visual signal to the audience” (4). Certainly, I believe linguistic texts are always multimodal; if the words are typed, what font is used? If the words are spoken, how are they spoken? How does the speaker hold themselves? Is the speaker dressed professionally or casually? I am inclined to extend this to nonlinguistic texts, too—works of visual art, for example, can use multimodal techniques, or can incorporate multimodal elements depending on how they are framed or displayed, or what the little write up beneath the displayed artwork says.
One more note on multimodal texts— I’m wondering how multimodality might apply to social media in my area of study. Most social media posts are multimodal, combining photos and videos with written text, and paired with a profile picture to help your audience read you as a rhetor. But I’m wondering
whether the multimodality of social media posts can help me/us to understand the grieving process or the experience of grieving. What kinds of texts are paired with what kinds of images? The words, very often, are sad in tone, but the images generally seem more happy: smiling pictures of the deceased, or peaceful stock photos of nature. Does multimodality, here, simply contribute to a “vibe,” or is the multimodality seeking to convey a larger message about happy and sad feelings being inherently woven together? Or conveying a larger message about hope? I don’t have answers to this, but it’s something I’d like to think more about, and if you have any feedback or ideas on this, please let me know in the comments!
Gi Gina,
Your blog post is so thoughtful for this week’s module. I actually think that facial expressions although sometimes might be unintentional communication are still a nonverbal form of communication. From personal experiences, I tend to think more that unintentional communication comes usually as a form of dissatisfaction and although it can be considered as “unintentional” I still want to think that it is associated with negative feelings that are “unintentionally” expressed through body language or facial expressions.
Your question if multimodality contributes or not with the grieving stage in our life is very interesting. Personally, I didn’t think so much about this from my own experiences. As humans we are all different, so losing someone can be experienced and processed differently for everyone. When I lost my stepmom three years ago (who raised me since 3 years old) I felt devastated and I thought I was completely shutting down emotionally. While visual imagery was not a huge help and I like how you mentioned they always give you more of the “happy vibe” however, in my process of grieving music, poetry and painting were the only artistic multimodal forms that help me cope with grief. However, it’s important to say that they will help through the critical stages and eventually they are just there but you learn to live with grief rather than being completely healed.
Hi Gina,
While there are so many awesome ideas to address in your post, I’d like to first acknowledge how much I can relate to the introduction; when I was writing my own blog post, the word “media” began to creep under my skin. Did media require an intended audience to act as media, or could something private be recontextualized into it? At what point does, for instance, an X-Ray move from private guideline into media (if it ever does, or can)?
While I’m still parsing the various nuances here, your thoughts on intentionality’s role help quite a bit.
Intentionality does seem to decide which forms of expression can be viewed as “texts,” but it is as you say: When there is an audience, their interpretation may deviate from the speaker’s intentions. Therefore, I wonder if “articulacy” might also be required to distinguish a text. While I don’t suggest that expression must be “done well” (or be particularly articulate), I do get the sense that what is asserted as communication might need to, in some cases, be more than intentional to communicate, and to make itself available for study. For instance, if the classroom photo was replaced by a horrible-enough drawing of a classroom, might it thwart our attempts to comprehend it as communication? I look forward to the Educational Design module, as it should help me make sense of my thoughts.
Hi Gina,
I found your post super thought-provoking and generative; thanks so much for sharing your ideas. On the topic of people using social media to express grief, I’d like to respond to your first question. But I’d like to start by saying that I think exploring this subject in social media sounds really productive in helping people become more socially aware of this process’s intricacies to assist others and ourselves. When I read a grieving post paired with a happy image, I agree that I never thought of the text as responding directly to that image. I read the post as reflecting (usually) on the person’s life overall. For instance, when someone mentions a specific moment, like an experience at one particular place and day, my first reaction is that this special moment describes something larger about the person’s character. But your post has me wondering if I should read the text “on its own terms” and in-depth rather than receiving the information in terms of breadth to understand better. When it comes to pairing a happy photo with the sad text, I find your mention of this contrast fascinating. For me, the picture hints at something larger about the person’s character, much like the text, but I’m sure there are other ways I should be looking at it that I’d be happy to learn. Is it that there is seemingly something more “permanent” and enduring about the visual picture over when dealing with this subject, especially on a social media platform? Meaning, this might play one role in wanting to show the best possible image of the person?
Gina, this was a wonderful post that gives me many interesting things to think about. I think your concern about intentionality is spot on, and I would also challenge Eyman’s claim that a text must be intentional always. This claim is out of sync with, for example, many forms of literary criticism that dissuade us from putting too much weigh on an authorial claim of intention for a short story, poem, etc. This is just for literature, but when we begin to broaden our view of what a text is, it becomes even more clear that they are often comprised of communication events that cannot be viewed as intentional, unless they are the intention of a higher power or the universe which we clearly don’t want to get into here. There is also the issue of collaborations, like feature films, that may embrace in their final form competing and contrasting intentions. There was that film where the actor George C. Scott made an acting and delivery choice and got into a screaming match with the director of the film who wanted him to change it. He refused and told the director to “shove it.” The director caved and eventually put the contested scene in the film, and Scott won an academic award nomination (source https://youtu.be/wVMFrH-_H_s?si=XFpscGyTS2WIlkz8) If an analyst in 2023 views this film, unless they have a historical knowledge of the making of the film, they are likely to attribute intention to the director that is basically a hallucination. It’s not real. So, intentionality if definitely problematic.
I study social media as well, and think that posts can be read as multimodal texts. That does not necessarily, in my view, mean that they should be read in an isolated manner. I don’t think formalism works for social media. It’s so dependent on context, and our view of context is always limited when it comes to social media posts. Also most social media posts are based on partial knowledge of the context to which they are responding. Twitter/X is a great breeding ground for the Dunning-Kruger effect! So to look at Rachel’s comment about what we can learn from posts related to the grieving process, it may be difficult or impossible to accurately assess intention from a post although we can attempt to do so, and have a better chance of accuracy the more we know about the patterns of discourse from an account or the information that we can gather about it. However, the effect of a post related to the words and images chosen by the poster certainly tell us something about the effect that the writer made on the audience, whether or not this was their intention. We can also view how others responded to that post in real time.