How Stories Argue: The Deep Roots of Storytelling in Political Rhetoric
Author(s): Andrew Leslie
Source: Storytelling, Self, Society , Vol. 11, No. 1 (Spring 2015), pp. 66-84
Published by: Wayne State University Press
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How Stories Argue
The Deep Roots of Storytelling in Political Rhetoric
Andrew Leslie
Storytelling has long been an important part of both campaigning and
creating and maintaining community. However, the relationship between
stories and rational argument has been problematic in the study of public
moral debate. The question remains unsettled: How do stories argue? How
do stories have a persuasive role in political rhetoric? Rather than the view
that narrative reasoning is based in a different paradigm of reasoning, I
argue that the persuasive use of stories goes back to early rhetorical training
and that stories have always been used along with rhetorical argument as
part of persuasive discourse. Vladimir Propp’s work on the morphology
of folk- and fairy tales demonstrates that stories use topics, or topoi, in a
manner similar to those used to generate lines of argument in rhetoric. I
offer four aspects of narrative that affect the persuasive reception of stories:
performance, adaptation, context, and iconicity. These aspects of rhetorical
storytelling, combined with the topoi of the story, give us a new analytical
framework for evaluating the persuasive potential of political storytelling.
It was said in the old days that every year Thor made a circle around Middle
Earth, beating back the enemies of order. Thor got older every year, and the
circle occupied by gods and men grew smaller. The wisdom god, ‘Woden,’ went
out to the king of the trolls, got him in an arm lock, and demanded to know of
Storytelling, Self, Society, Vol. 11, No. 1 (2015), pp. 66–84. Copyright © 2016 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, MI 48201
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Leslie n 67
him how order might triumph over chaos.
“Give me your left eye,” said the king of the trolls, “and I’ll tell you.”
Without hesitation, Woden gave up his left eye. “Now tell me.”
The troll said, “The secret is, Watch with both eyes!”1
T
he author and critic John Gardner used this mythic anecdote as an allegory
of art and criticism. The artist and critic beat back the forces of chaos, but
those multiply while Thor’s hammer gets heavier to wield every year. In On
Moral Fiction, Gardner uses the hammer on postmodern writers such as William
Gass for spending their talents on fiction that glories only in self-referential irony,
undercutting characters and themes that might strike an ethical chord in their
audience—that might, in short, have a persuasive moral effect.
There has been much speculation over the years about how stories function
persuasively, that is, how they argue. That stories, or to use the more academic
term “narratives,” have persuasive impact has long been understood.2 Yet the
relationship of stories to rational argument structures has to date been rather
muddled. There are a number of ways to approach this relationship, which I
explore in this essay.
There is also broad agreement that narrative is important in politics, though
just exactly how may be somewhat uncertain. In its recent preliminary analysis
of the 2014 election, the Democratic Party found that, while their policies find
favor with the American people, the Republicans create a better narrative, which
makes them more attractive. Thus the analysis suggests the creation of a “national
narrative project” that will “create a strong values-based national narrative that
will engage, inspire, and motivate voters to identify with and support Democrats”
(“Democratic National Committee”). Narrative seems to be the balm in Gilead
that will heal all political ills.
Stories have long been used for persuasive intent, yet the relationship of narrative to argument in public moral debate has remained unsettled. How do stories
argue? This essay addresses that question starting from Walter Fisher’s influential
essay “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm.” Fisher, drawing from
Kenneth Burke, posits two dimensions of judgment that audiences use in evaluating whether narratives offer “good reasons” for the action or motives depicted
in the story. Fisher suggests that narrative is a different way of reasoning from
rational argument: a paradigm of its own. In contrast, I argue that the persuasive
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68 n How Stories Argue
use of stories goes back to early rhetorical training and that stories have always
been used along with rhetorical argument as part of persuasive discourse. Vladimir
Propp’s work on the morphology of folk- and fairy tales demonstrates that stories
use topics, or topoi, in a manner similar to those used to generate lines of argument
in rhetoric. Extending Fisher’s analysis, I offer four other aspects of narrative that
affect the persuasive reception of stories: performance, adaptation, context, and
iconicity. These aspects of rhetorical storytelling, combined with the topoi of the
story, give us a new analytical framework for evaluating the persuasive potential
of political storytelling.
Narrative, Community, and Politics
Narrative is broadly seen to be necessary to forming and maintaining community. For Hannah Arendt, the connection between individual consciousness and
the public of the community is through shared narrative. It is the storyteller, as
historian, who makes public the stories by which the members of a community
understand themselves as a we, a body politic. For the ancient Greeks, the stories
of a heroic past served as a model for the virtues of civic life. Alistair MacIntyre
rejects modernistic subjectivity through an appeal to Aristotelian virtue, in which
communal values are sustained by public narratives that tell us the nature of the
good. The philosopher Jean-François Lyotard abandons any hope of progress
through politics and rejects the meta-narratives espoused by MacIntyre as hegemonic domination. For Lyotard, the postmodern condition means the celebration
of subjectivity through personal stories rather than the communal narratives of
the polis.
Jürgen Habermas contradicts this purely negative critique, demonstrating a
belief in the possibility of a politics that can achieve understanding and consensus
about crucial issues through ethical discussion. Although he focuses on rational
argument, Habermas implies a constructive role for aesthetics and, by implication,
for stories. A story may serve to thematize an issue: that is, to make an issue visible
to a community—to frame it in such a way that it can become the subject of
public debate and argument. Habermas explains modern alienation in terms of a
decoupling of people’s lived experience, their lifeworld, from the abstract rational
systems that steer society, such as the law. Stories are a natural way that people
relate and understand their experiences; thematization is a way of connecting
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Leslie n 69
stories to rational argument. An example of the power of thematization was the
1984 movie The Burning Bed, starring Farrah Fawcett. Based on a true story, it
depicted a battered woman who burned her husband to death in their bed while
he was passed out from drinking. The movie appeared during a period when some
legal theorists were advocating reform of the rules for pleading self-defense in
cases where a woman killed her husband or boyfriend, even though that person
did not have a weapon and was not immediately threatening the woman’s life.
It no doubt contributed to making public issues of domestic violence for those
who were not reading the more technical arguments in law journals (Dowd, 570).
This brief background merely underscores the complex relationship of narrative to rational argumentation. No review of the rhetorical role of narrative
would be complete, however, without mentioning the theorist Kenneth Burke.
Burke took drama as the foundational metaphor for rhetorical action because
the study of drama allows us to understand the motives behind discourse. His
dramatistic “method” allows us to unpack the hidden motives of ontological
systems and the discourses generated by them. Drawing on Burke’s insights,
Walter Fisher published an essay thirty years ago titled “Narration as a Human
Communication Paradigm.” Fisher sought to show that stories also engage in
offering an audience good reasons for the actions and motives depicted within
the story, although these reasons are grounded differently from those offered in
rational arguments. The persuasive aspect of stories, according to Fisher, lies in
two areas of judgment: whether the narrative arc of the story seems coherent and
probable (coherence), and whether it seems to correspond with other narratives
or experiences: fidelity. One important focus of Fisher’s narrative theory is that
judgment is placed squarely with the audience. In this the narrative paradigm is
in agreement with theories of rhetorical argument: that storytelling is an audience-centered art. If the story seems believable to an audience, then the motives
and reasons for human action depicted within it will constitute “good reasons”
that function persuasively like arguments. Fisher’s narrative theory inspired much
scholarship on narrative in the field of communication studies and resituated the
relationship between narrative and argument as a sort of separate-but-equal set
of intertwined grounds of authority.
Fisher’s work also raises problems for understanding the persuasiveness
of stories, however. The attractiveness of narrative as paradigm derived from
Thomas Kuhn’s notion of paradigmatic shifts in knowledge following new scientific discoveries. Fisher’s adoption of the idea of a paradigm ignores the long
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70 n How Stories Argue
history of the persuasive use of stories in the teaching of rhetoric. Everyone I know
can tell stories and make arguments interchangeably; why would the grounds
of believability for stories constitute a different paradigm from the grounds of
argument? Here we get to the philosophical nub of the issue. Fisher’s idea of
Homo narrans, people as storytelling beings, as the root metaphor for defining
humanity, is a very attractive one. Certainly storytelling is one of the oldest uses
of language, and it is a natural capacity of all people. Propositional logic, which
Fisher takes to be the heart of the “rational world paradigm,” must be learned.
What is at stake in comparing these two “paradigms” is the nature of rationality
itself. Fisher notes that “humans as rhetorical beings are as much valuing as they
are reasoning animals” (emphasis his) and that reasoning “may be discovered in
all sorts of symbolic action—discursive as well as non-discursive” (1). Reason,
in short, is broader than rationality. This has been a long-standing principle in
the teaching of rhetoric. For Aristotle, rhetoric was an art directed to general
audiences about matters of human action, which differentiated it from the more
specific forms of what today we would call “scientific” or “philosophical” discourse
that rely on strict propositional logic. When we discuss politics, the grounds of
arguments are certainly not restricted to strict propositional logic: appeals to
the audience are based on emotions, on character, and on popular beliefs. Even
Fisher’s opposition of values to rationality does not ring true: We express and
evaluate values in arguments just as we do in stories. The notion of narrative being
a different, although equal, paradigm of understanding from argumentation thus
seems a bit strained.
If we leave parts of Fisher’s paradigm behind, he still offers us two useful
principles of judgment for gauging the persuasiveness of stories: coherence and
fidelity. In the next section of this essay, I explore the connection of these two
principles with the classical practice of rhetoric and with the source of their
inspiration, the Russian theorists of discourse, particularly Vladimir Propp. But
in so doing, I do not want to lose sight of the central philosophical issue: In considering the discursive practices of politics, how is the polis/public/community
constructed through discourse, and how can reasons derived from the rhetorical
use of stories serve as justifications for action? If we see that stories and arguments
interact in the public imagination, thereby constituting “good reasons” for action,
we will be closer to understanding how narrative functions persuasively.
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Leslie n 71
The Topoi of the Storyteller
In a seminar at Northwestern University taught by Lee Roloff, more years ago
than I care to remember, I proposed in a short paper that storytelling depends on
topoi, just as does classical rhetorical argument. The concept of topoi, or topics,
is itself a rather difficult one. The first confusion comes from our colloquial use
of topic and subject interchangeably. Topical invention is used to generate things
to say, or lines of argument, concerning a subject. Numerous systems of topical
invention have been created across the history of rhetoric. General topics are
called commonplaces (koinos topos or locus communus), although the meaning
of “place” is problematic: It could mean a conceptual space, such as that created
by asking a question of the subject, or a place in memory (akin to accessing
a computer file), or a metaphorical place, such as imagining a place where all
matters of degree could be contained. Commonplaces are generic materials used
for creating specific discourses.
In classical rhetorical education, students were taught to compose a number
of different genres, and each genre had topics particular to it. For example, for an
encomium—a speech of praise (typically of a person)—the topics include origin
and birth, nurture and education, accomplishments and deeds, and comparison
with others. These topics are further divided; for example, deeds are composed of
deeds of the body, deeds of the soul, and deeds of fortune. Because the encomium
is a speech of praise, these topics can be interpreted as virtues: physical virtues
(e.g., strength and beauty), intangible virtues (wit, courage), and virtues of luck
(fame, wealth, friends, children, a good death). Furthermore, these topics were
deployed in order, so that they became the arrangement for explaining a life. Some
of the genres taught were basically stories, such as anecdote (chreia), narrative,
fable, and maxim. Aristotle listed maxim as a logical proof but had little to say
about it except that it should only be used by someone of advanced age, since
wise sayings are more credible from elders. What is often forgotten about maxims
is that they are usually morals taken from stories, particularly from fables such
as Aesop’s. The story itself may be long forgotten. How many times have people
called something “sour grapes” without knowing the fable of the fox and the bunch
of grapes? Composing an anecdote was usually based on a famous saying or action;
the anecdote would illustrate the validity of the saying or action. A narrative was
a story that would move the content of the speech forward: It was supposed to
be concise, persuasive, and perceptive and demonstrate good (clever, engaging)
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72 n How Stories Argue
style. A fable was a story ending with a definite moral. All of these story forms
were intended to be deployed persuasively in conjunction with arguments to
make a convincing overall composition.
How are these rhetorical topics related to other kinds of stories, those not
composed for rhetorical effect? In answer, I turn to the work of Vladimir Propp.
Russian and Eastern European theorists, including Mikhail Bakhtin and Tzvetan
Todorov, had a tremendous influence on twentieth-century theories of narrative.
Propp’s analysis of the morphology of folktales focused on two dimensions:
syuzhet and fabula. These are usually translated as “theme” and “motif.” They come
from the French sujet (subject) and Latin fabula (fable). This dichotomy, like many
similar dichotomies of discourse (e.g., langue/parole; syntax/semantics; énoncé/
enunciation, etc.), has entered into the study of narrative in some confusing ways.
Following Bordwell, syuzhet is thought of as plot while fabula is considered the
story being represented, that is, the “backstory,” or the implications of events not
depicted. Theme and motif make the use of these concepts plainer: Motifs are the
elements of plots, whereas the theme is the sequential ordering of these elements.
Propp’s insight into traditional stories was this: Whereas different versions
of a story may use different motifs, the order in which those motifs are deployed
stays the same. One can think of the stereotype of Broadway musicals: boy finds
girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again. The motifs can be varied—for example,
girl finds boy, girl finds girl, boy finds boy—but these elements must follow the
same order because to have the girl lose the girl before she first finds her will
violate the principle of coherence. The fabula are then often misinterpreted as the
“real” story being represented, but this is to make a leap of inference. The motifs
themselves must correspond either to experiences the audience has had in the
world—meeting one’s eventual spouse, for example—or to other stories that are
stored in public memory. The link is thus not necessarily to events in the world
but to conventions of narrative that are accepted as plausible. It becomes apparent
that Propp’s categories of theme and motif map neatly onto Fisher’s dimensions
of coherence and fidelity. What may be less apparent is that the motifs, which
Propp called “functions,” are a set of topics applied to traditional narratives.
For example, many fairy stories include a transformation made by a magical
object. There are many different such objects with different specific effects, but
the magical transformation is like a topos, an inventive resource that can generate
many different specific plot turns. Themes are arrangements of topics, very similar
to the example of the encomium given above.
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Leslie n 73
While arguments often use examples or stories as support, many stories use
oratory to make a point. Most movie dramas and stage plays rely on a scene in
which the hero/heroine makes a speech that relays the central message of the
drama. One notable example is that of Euripides’ Trojan Women. First produced
in 415 BCE, the play depicts the fates of four noble women who have become
slaves of their Achaean victors. Each woman gives a speech lamenting her fate
from her own perspective. Andromache, the loyal wife of Hector, is concerned
for her honor—she has always striven to be the model wife and mother, and
now that she has lost her husband and is about to lose her son, she still worries
about how to uphold her dignity as property of a new man. Cassandra raves with
mad joy at the fate she foresees: the murder of her captor and herself by his wife
Clytemnestra. Helen blames everyone else for her fate and attempts to seduce
her husband Menelaus now that he has recaptured her. Treating her captors with
fine contempt while threatened with death, she alone escapes a horrible fate.
Hecuba, wife of the dead king Priam, saves her anger for Helen, blaming her for
Troy’s catastrophe and demanding her death. Each woman represents a type: the
conventional wife, the prophetess, the seducer, and the wise and noble queen.
The play is widely seen as Euripides’ commentary on the tragedy of war, written
in reaction to Athens’s callous destruction of their erstwhile ally Milos earlier in
that year. Rather than directly criticizing the leadership of Athens, Euripides uses
a classical story from the mythical past to show the horrors of their actions; the
speeches of these Trojan women mirror the oratorical practice of agora—from
which, ironically, all women were excluded.3
Another rhetorical use of stories is as exemplars: analogies to the present
case. A pre-eminent example is Machiavelli’s The Prince. Machiavelli’s masterwork
is often interpreted as the first modern treatise of political theory. It would be
more fitting to call it the first handbook for “spin-doctoring.” Machiavelli offers
the prince of a “new state” (a republic) advice on how to govern, in large part
through managing his image. As evidence for his advice he offers many examples,
little stories, drawn from the ancient past and from contemporaneous politics.
Furthermore, The Prince is constructed very much like a rhetorical handbook,
often with paired topics for debate—as if for student exercises. For example, in
chapter 17 Machiavelli sets a debate as to whether it is better for a leader to be
feared than to be loved. In typical fashion, his answer is: It depends on the context.
It is desirable to be loved but more reliable to be feared as long as it does not
inspire hatred. His example is that of Hannibal waging war against Rome; his men
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74 n How Stories Argue
loved him because of both his valor and his cruelty, yet without cruelty his other
virtues would not have sufficed. He compares Hannibal to Scipio, the general who
defeated him, as an example of a general with many fine qualities but who lacked
cruelty, being too generous to his underlings. This was Scipio’s downfall, as the
insubordination of his officers led to his recall (Machiavelli 132–33). These little
stories allow Machiavelli to tailor his political advice to particular circumstances,
which was no doubt a result of his own rhetorical training.
If the elements of narrative provide topics that can be used persuasively,
then we have the foundation for an understanding of how stories argue. In the
following section I set out some key elements for persuasive storytelling and offer
examples of stories that have had political impact.
The Argumentative Dimensions of Narrative in Politics
As I mentioned above, one of the most persuasive aspects of stories is that they
help us understand the motives for action. Following Burke, the principle mechanism connecting the audience to the characters’ motives is identification. It
has been argued that Burke adopts identification from Freud (Wright), but it
seems just as likely to me that he hit on the concept from his reading of George
H. Mead. For Mead, identification was a key process of empathy that is the basis
of the communicative gesture. One person’s gesture elicits a response from the
other; in the context of stories, the relationship of story to audience is dialogic:
The listener identifies with the intention or motive of the gesture and responds
appropriately (I am in mind of the Punch and Judy shows, in which the children
are encouraged to cheer or boo in response to the characters’ acts). Theorists of
narrative sometimes seem to forget that stories are performed: Whether written,
told, or enacted, the performative dimension of narrative is crucial—something
equally true of rhetoric.
Of the key dimensions of persuasive storytelling, I first turn to performance.
Following performance, the adaptation of stories from one context to another is
an important consideration, as well as the nature of the specific context. Finally,
some stories or images from stories achieve a certain iconic status: Iconicity is
the final dimension I will address.
The charm of a story is in the telling. With a vast literature on performance
available, I will only stress a couple of points. Performance includes oral, written,
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Leslie n 75
and visual storytelling. Regardless of the medium, the topics of the plot are expressed through gestures: symbolic acts that elicit a sympathetic response from the
audience. The performative aspects of discourse create the tone of the discourse.
Tonality reveals the speaker’s/author’s/character’s attitude toward what is being
presented. It gives the audience cues to a meta-discourse: How are they to judge
what is being presented? Is this text comic, or dramatic, or ironic? Quick twists in
tonality achieve comic effect by surprising the audience’s assumptions. Recently
I heard a comic open his act by saying, “My grandparents have been married
for sixty years.” The audience predictably begins to applaud, at which point he
says, “No, no, not happily!” If the story builds to a slow turn in tonality, it can
produce a sense of dramatic suspense, even horror. What at first appears normal
is gradually perceived to conceal threat. Ironic tonality juxtaposes the speaker’s
depiction of positive or idyllic events with cues to her disdain for those events.
While it is necessary to analyze stories in terms of their formal characteristics, it
is a mistake to ignore the tonality of specific performances of the story, since one
teller may bring a different tone to a story than would another.
Adaptation is another crucial dimension of storytelling. Of course stories are
adapted from one medium to another. Outside of remaining, and dwindling, oral
cultures, most of our interactions with stories are through print. Oral storytelling
largely relies on adaptation of printed stories, as does most visual storytelling. As
Bordwell would put it, the elements of narration are changed to tell the “same”
story. But there is another aspect to adaptation: the audience’s adaptation of the
story to their own uses. The traditions of oral storytelling depend upon people
learning stories from hearing them and retelling them. Stories in print are adapted
from one context and placed in another, giving the story a different salience.
Take the example of the Bluebeard fairy tale genre. Jack Zipes points out that
Bluebeard stories have been adapted thousands of times in various media and to
various purposes, from a basic horror/suspense story to feminist tale. He uses this
dizzyingly prolific tale as an example of the concept of mimetic evolution: cultural
change through imitation. The idea of the meme was coined by Richard Dawkins
as a cultural analogue to the gene. It is supposed to be a “unit” of cultural behavior
which is replicated through imitation. While the meme is an interesting idea, its
use has become overblown and is not necessary to theorize cultural reproduction.
Audiences and storytellers are not imitating stories or motifs; they are interpreting
them and adapting them to various purposes.4 A neglected theory of rhetorical
adaptation would be more useful here: that of Ernst Bormann’s unfortunately
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76 n How Stories Argue
named “fantasy theme analysis.” Bormann posited that stories and metaphors are
adapted by hearers and chained out through retellings and elaborations, much
like the game of telephone. When a story enchants the listener’s imagination it
has an echoing effect as it is passed along. Years before the Internet, Bormann
anticipated the phenomenon of a discourse going “viral” and being mashed up
with other images/texts/discourses. Bormann’s idea of chains of fantasy spreading
across rhetorical space is in accord with Douglas Hofstadter’s notion of theme and
variation as the basis of creative adaptation. We all take themes and motifs from
our experience and adapt them across contexts: It is the very heart of invention.
Although context is perhaps the broadest of concepts, it will be the briefest
here. For persuasive storytelling, the context of the story involves its use for persuasive ends. A story may be included within a persuasive discourse as evidence,
as in the example from Machiavelli above. It may also exist in complementarity
with other discourses, as the movie The Burning Bed existed in popular discourse
alongside psychological discussions of battered woman syndrome and legal discourses about a battered woman defense. It could further be constructed as a
didactic tale in a series of discourses concerning a subject; I offer an example of
such a story below. Context of performance is always important for judging the
persuasive aspect of a story.
Finally I address the dimension of iconicity. An icon is something that represents something else through resemblance, what Nelson Goodman in Languages
of Art called “exemplification.” In language iconicity can function either through
style or through content. One example from Kenneth Burke is the representative
anecdote: a little story that represents a complex situation or attitude. Its iconicity
rests in the resemblance of the story to the set of attitudes it depicts. Barbara Tuchman, in a wonderful article about Speaker of the House and raconteur Thomas
Bracket Reed, relates that in an after-dinner story he claimed he’d had a dream in
which the Constitution had been changed so that the president was to be elected
by the Senate, from among its members. They held the first such election and,
said Reed, “each senator received one vote” (Tuchman 34). A staunch partisan
of the House and critic of the Senate, Reed crystalized his impression of senators
with that story—and many would still agree with him.5 Michael Leff (no small
storyteller himself ) pointed out that style can function iconically, as in an example
from Longinus’s On the Sublime. Longinus uses a passage from Homer to illustrate
stylistic iconicity:
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Leslie n 77
He rushed upon them, as a wave storm driven,
Boisterous beneath black clouds, on a swift ship
Will burst, and all is hidden in the foam;
Meanwhile the wind tears thundering at the mast,
And all hands tremble, pale and sore afraid,
As they are carried from under death.
(qtd. in Leff and Sachs 259)
Leff notes that Longinus explains how the style imitates the experience of the
waves: The wave-like syntax imitates what the words describe (Leff and Sachs
259). In analyzing a political speech by Edmund Burke, Leff demonstrates that
the interplay of style and content opens up a range of persuasion that a purely
rational analysis of argument misses. It illustrates “the power of discourse to blend
form and meaning into local unities that ‘textualize’ the public world and invite
audiences to experience that world as the text represents it” (Leff and Sachs 270).
In short, the iconic dimension of stories affects the audience through showing,
depicting, rather than explaining.
With the elements of motifs and with the dimensions of performance, adaptation, context, and iconicity, we have an adequate theoretical framework
for understanding how stories function persuasively. I now turn to some short
examples of persuasive political storytelling in order to demonstrate the pertinence of this framework.
In American politics, the candidate biography has been a standard of campaigning since early in the republic. The topoi or motifs of the biography are
similar in some ways to those of the encomium. They touch on the ancestry and
parents of the candidate, on her youth and simple hopes and dreams, the challenges that the youth must overcome, military service, preparation for statecraft,
and character traits of a devout citizen. For the nineteenth century, the motif of
birth in a log cabin was de rigueur—regardless of the background of the candidate.
Humble birth generates a thematic line for the everyman: the politician as ideal
citizen. The story of the candidate’s life is not an argument; it is a framing device for
arguments about character and fitness. It may thematize issues that the audience
has experienced.
The 20-minute biographical film made for the 1992 Democratic convention,
The Man from Hope, which told the story of Bill Clinton’s life, utilizes several of
these motifs (Clinton). The log cabin is replaced by a “house with an outhouse.”
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78 n How Stories Argue
His ancestry is touched on—his grandmother and parents. Among the obstacles
faced by the young Clinton is his stepfather’s alcoholism and occasional abuse
of his mother. The most dramatic moment of the story is when the teenaged Bill
confronts his stepfather after one such episode and tells him that he will never
let him do it again. The drama is heightened by the dual telling of the story by
both candidate Bill and his mother in sequential scenes. This performance of
the story by different voices and perspectives increases the heroic quality of the
anecdote. The young man drives supplies into the city of Washington after Martin
Luther King, Jr.’s death and the city “burned”: the motif, briefly deployed, of the
hero’s journey into danger. The courtship with Hillary Rodham and birth of the
princess—or, rather, Chelsea—come next: Bill as father compared with his own
father who died when Bill was an infant and, pointedly, not compared with his
somewhat deficient stepfather.
Finally, the film addresses the most challenging moment of the primary
campaign: the moment when Bill and Hillary were interviewed on 60 Minutes to
dispel the effects of allegations of infidelity by Gennifer Flowers. The interview
had righted the campaign ship, and in the video biography he called it “pretty
painful,” especially since Chelsea had watched the program with her parents.
Bill Clinton relates that he asked Chelsea, “Whattaya think?” and she replies,
“I think I’m glad you’re my parents.”
“After that I knew whatever happens it would be all right,” concludes the
candidate.
The performative dimension of this motif—it becomes another challenge
faced and overcome—is extraordinary. Just before Bill says “Whattaya think?” he
pauses dramatically to build the tension of the scene; it is masterful storytelling.
The video finally segues into a bit of rhetorical argument: clips from Clinton
campaign speeches. “The hits I’ve took [sic] in this election are nothing compared
to the hits the people of this state and this country are taking every day of their
lives from this administration.”
While the motifs deployed in this short campaign biography are standard
and traditional, the specific stories generated are unique to Clinton’s life. In the
thematic plot, the first moment of crisis—standing up to the alcoholic stepfather—mirrors the tonality of the campaign in which the youthful Clinton was
hammering the older George H. W. Bush: It reprised the conflict of generations
and stood as an iconic representation of principled youth opposing an erring if
kindly elder.6 In Fisher’s terms, the film supplies “good reasons” why Clinton
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Leslie n 79
would make a virtuous president and frames arguments that can be made based
on the principles and virtues he evinced. The motifs of the fairy tale to some
extent fulfill the same functions in the campaign biography: the hero’s journey,
the moment of transformation, a magical inheritance given by a powerful spirit
(Clinton praises Martin Luther King and the “I Have a Dream” speech, which,
Clinton’s brother relates, Bill learned and recited by heart while a teenager). The
elements are adapted to a new context: the political campaign.
Campaign narratives are one context of persuasive political storytelling. There
are many others. I want to briefly mention two. Asymmetrical power differentials
across class and ethnic lines mean that those in subordinate social positions may
not feel that they can make overt claims criticizing the powerful. James C. Scott
studied political dynamics in Malaysia and realized that those who have less power
will say one thing to the face of those in charge and another among their peers.
He calls these “public transcripts” displayed by subordinates in the face of power
and “hidden transcripts” shared only among the poor. He notes that elements of
folk or popular culture can make public acts of ideologic insubordination and
that people draw upon folk materials, gestures, and metaphors to indirectly, and
sometimes directly, manifest criticism of the powerful:
Their members, in effect, select those songs, tales, dances, texts and rituals that
they choose to emphasize, they adopt them for their own use, and they of course
create new cultural practices and artifacts to meet their felt needs. (Scott 157)
Recently in Ferguson, Missouri, a gesture of resistance has achieved iconic status:
“Hands up, don’t shoot.” While not an argument, it visually frames a motif, a
storyline that becomes the basis for making arguments about justice, authority,
and resistance. It is part of a story, abstracted and unelaborated, but clear and
powerful nonetheless. It too offers “good reasons” for action.
Lest we think that narrative always has a positive role in relation to rational
argumentation, it is important to note that it has a dark side. Apocalyptic storytelling has been a powerful engine, especially in the history of Western religions.
Stephen O’Leary argues that the influence of apocalyptic narrative can hardly be
overstated. The principal topoi of apocalyptic eschatology are time and evil: Time
must come to an end, and evil—the suffering of the innocent—must be eradicated
or redeemed at the end of time (O’Leary 31). The motifs of these narratives usually
include a divinely inspired charismatic leader who has a moment of revelation,
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80 n How Stories Argue
evil authority figure(s) who block the path of the righteous and inflict suffering
on the innocent, signs of the end-times, and a final battle between good and evil.
Currently, the group ISIS (Islamic State in Syria) is fighting with fair success
across Syria and Iraq, driven by an apocalyptic narrative to acts of horrific brutality. Malise Ruthven in a post on the New York Review of Books blog describes the
stories of French Muslim parents whose children slip away to join ISIS’s struggle.
Through the stories of these parents we see the anguish and confusion faced by
the families of teenagers who have been seduced by the ISIS narrative.
It is impossible for most of us to understand how there could be any appeal
to a group that commits such barbarous acts, but the appeal of ISIS especially to
some younger European Muslims is manifest. According to Graeme Wood in an
article in the Atlantic, the particular motifs of this apocalyptic narrative include
the proclamation of the Caliphate, which is an area of righteous rule by the true
leader, the chosen one, and which presages the end times and final battle. How is
this narrative persuasive? It may be useful to remember Victor Turner’s model of
interaction between social and ritual drama. In an essay in Critical Inquiry, Turner
described his theory of social stress, threatened schism, and ritual reconciliation
in an African community. He supplied a diagram (see fig. 1) to illustrate a kind of
feedback loop in which fictional dramas supply motives and roles as resources
to social actors, who can then take them up and act out a plot that reifies the
fictional narrative.
Figure 1. Turner 154.
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Leslie n 81
Turner gives us model for understanding how narrative elements interact
with public events to produce a community that understands itself in terms of the
narrative’s thematics.7 Perhaps something similar is driving the persuasiveness
of ISIS’s apocalyptic vision. Turner supplies another way of thinking about Bormann’s fantasy chains: As people take up the roles made available by narrative,
they reenact a story, within their own specific context, that has been enacted by
others in their social sphere.
Conclusion
When we ask how stories argue, we open a complex set of relationships involving
narrative elements and themes, audience judgment, and performative aspects of
telling, making, and adapting stories. Stories can frame or thematize an issue, and
their “good reasons” can open the way for more rational arguments. Stories can
make us more receptive to persuasion—for better and for worse. Although stories
and storytelling have been around, no doubt, since we thought of ourselves as
human beings, there is a new force in world culture that serves as a reservoir of
stories: the Internet. Conspiracy theories and apocalyptic narratives can thrive
within online communities without having to compete in a truly public sphere.
The politics inspired by these stories has dark and sometimes horrific implications.
Yet the Internet is also a conduit for people to share stories that bring us to a better
understanding of ourselves and one another, especially through sharing video
stories—a subject for another day.
Narrative does not stand in opposition to rhetorical argument. Rather, the
two have a complementary relationship going back to the earliest days of rhetorical practice. Storytelling and oratory share a broad spectrum of aesthetics and
rationality in which both are necessary: Both interact to form the basis of human
understanding and political community.
Andrew Leslie is adjunct assistant professor of communication studies at Davidson College
and of communication at Wake Forest University. He is also a storyteller.
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82 n How Stories Argue
NOTES
1. Gardner 3.
2. I will not here deal with the difference between “narrative” and “stories.” In general,
“narrative” has been considered a term that dominates or overpowers stories, in the
sense that narrative is a scheme that subsumes stories for an overarching purpose.
While this may be an interesting difference, it is not germane to this essay.
3. I am grateful to Professor John Poulakos for these insights into the speeches of the
Trojan Women. Any faults in interpretation are strictly mine.
4. It would be a serious digression to formulate here a criticism of Dawkins’s notions
of both mimetic and genetic evolution. I will simply note that Dawkins’s model of
evolution is based on competition between genes, rather than the standard neoDarwinian model of competition between organisms. To say that stories or motifs,
as memes, compete against one another for successful colonization of cultural
environments seems to me to be an inadequate account of cultural adaptation, which
depends more on variation and recombination than on imitation.
5. Stories by and about Speaker Reed are a favorite of mine. When a Democratic
member of the House was appointed to fill the term of a senator from his state, Reed
bid him farewell on the floor, saying that his appointment would raise the average IQ
of both bodies.
6. I would like to express my gratitude to Professor Thomas Farrell of Northwestern
University, now deceased, who first expressed this interpretation in conversation
back in 1992.
7. My thanks to Meg Zulick for reminding me of Turner’s essay and of its salience to
narrative.
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The Burning Bed. Dir. Robert Green. NBC, 1993. Film.
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Leff, Michael, and Andrew Sachs. “Words the Most Like Things: Iconicity and the
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Machiavelli, Nicolo. The Prince. Trans. W. K. Marriot. New York: Dutton, 1908. Print.
MacIntyre, Alistair. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. South Bend, IN: U of Notre
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The Man from Hope. Dir. Jeffrey Tuchman. Clinton Presidential Campaign, 1992. VHS.
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O’Leary, Stephen. Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric. New York:
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Propp, Vladimir. The Morphology of the Folktale. Austin: U of Texas P, 1968. Print.
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Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New
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Turner, Victor. “Social Dramas and Stories about Them.” Critical Inquiry 7.1 (1980):
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Communication Teacher
ISSN: 1740-4622 (Print) 1740-4630 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcmt20
“Nobody puts baby in a binder”: Using memes to
teach visual reason
Emily Stones
To cite this article: Emily Stones (2017) “Nobody puts baby in a binder”: Using memes to teach
visual reason, Communication Teacher, 31:3, 137-142, DOI: 10.1080/17404622.2017.1314525
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17404622.2017.1314525
Published online: 25 Apr 2017.
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COMMUNICATION TEACHER, 2017
VOL. 31, NO. 3, 137–142
https://doi.org/10.1080/17404622.2017.1314525
ORIGINAL TEACHING IDEAS—SINGLE
“Nobody puts baby in a binder”: Using memes to teach visual
reason
Emily Stones
Department of Communication, Regis University, Denver, Colorado, USA
Courses: Visual Rhetoric, Political Communication, Media and
Society, Argumentation
Objective: Students trace a social hierarchy created through the
visual reason of memes.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 6 May 2016
Accepted 22 July 2016
Introduction and rationale
Images are the foundation of contemporary life, and the communication field is frequently
called upon to make sense of how images affect our sociopolitical environment. Our students possess valuable skills and knowledge of social media and other new technologies,
but because of their intimacy with these technologies, they sometimes lack the reflective
space that is needed to assess them critically.
Visual rhetoric scholarship offers us a rich and nuanced understanding of visual
culture, as academics have vigorously responded to what Mitchell (1994) calls the “pictorial turn” in Western societies, one that alters not just our modes of representation (from a
primarily linguistic/written culture to a highly visual one), but also changes the nature of
power structures, ways of knowing, and our means of communicating with others. Indeed,
scholars often emphasize the primacy of images in our meaning-making activities of
everyday life and the visual imperative such actions demand (Birdsell & Groarke,
2007; Debord, 1994; Finn, 2012; Hartley, 1992; Hill & Helmers, 2004; Olson, Finnegan,
& Hope, 2008; Parry-Giles & Parry-Giles, 2002).
Hariman and Lucaites’ (2007) articulation in No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs,
Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy of how a visual democracy functions best captures
the concept of visual reason.1 They claim that democratic discussion and decision-making
takes an epideictic form, and political issues must be negotiated through the social
relations we imagine ourselves as part of, even if we never come face to face with those
we perceive as fellow members. The authors explain,
The visual public sphere activates public identity as a web of associations rather than as structure of arguments. Arguments are not erased, but they have to work through social networks
… One sees who is being discussed, and the act of seeing them activates one’s own sense of
social awareness. Critical reason is intertwined with social reflection. Images become mirrors,
arguments are set in the context of social knowledge, and conclusions have to fit with or
motivate adjustment of one’s own relationships with others. (p. 301)
CONTACT Emily Stones
estones@regis.edu
© 2017 National Communication Association
138
E. STONES
Their assertions about societal dynamics magnify the importance of viewer-viewed
relationships and expand on the notion that images “choreograph a space between the
observer and what is observed” (Garland-Thomson, 2001, p. 339), or what Mitchell
calls the “recognition scene” that frames much of the discipline’s analysis and theory
(p. 33). The concept of visual reason also articulates the connections between social
order, the performance of mainstream values, and the complexity of verbal-visual
rhetorics.
When initially presented, visual reason can appear abstract and amorphous, and therefore potentially confusing to students. Concretizing this concept through a hands-on
activity helps students explore the impact of perceived relations and social order in political discourse. It also enhances student reflection about the interplay of cultural knowledge
and visual communication in their own decoding of political issues and events.
The activity
Preparation
Prior to class, the instructor spends some time browsing sites such as Know Your Meme to
get a sense of political meme series that are familiar to the students. Two meme series that
have proven to work well in past iterations of this exercise include “Binders Full of
Women” (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/binders-full-of-women) and “Casually
Pepper Spray Everything Cop” (http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/casually-pepperspray-everything-cop). The instructor makes copies of 8–10 memes in each series to distribute during the activity.
In class
The activity typically takes 45 minutes from start to end. Using “Binders Full of
Women” as an initial example, the instructor shows a clip from a 2012 presidential
debate to contextualize Mitt Romney’s controversial response to a question about
pay equity for women (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfXgpem78kQ). The
instructor asks students to speculate why some critics deemed his statement about
“binders full of women” inappropriate. Students may struggle at first, as the
comment does not sound overtly offensive in the original context. They will eventually
suggest it is somewhat objectifying or does not pay homage to the skills these female
employees had to offer.
One way to introduce the meme series (see Figure 1) is to describe the images as individual interpretations of Romney’s statement, contextualized within mainstream cultural
knowledge. The instructor emphasizes that the purpose of the exercise is not to judge
Romney’s statement as prejudicial or not, but to see how members of the public made
sense of Romney’s statement by imagining him within a particular social order. To start
the analysis, the instructor distributes the memes to groups of three or four students
and asks them to rank Romney’s “treatment of women” in comparison to other cultural
figures. Students can create a numbered list or lay out the images in a visual hierarchy.
When the class reconvenes, they compare their rankings. Students will organize the
figures differently, depending on their age, knowledge, and differences in perceptions,
COMMUNICATION TEACHER
139
Figure 1. Example memes from “Binders Full of Women” series.
but certain themes will emerge, especially in the upper and lower echelons of their hierarchies (see Appendix A). The instructor asks students to explain their rationale and
debriefs the exercise (see the next section).
The second meme series is inspired by a 2011 incident at the University of California,
Davis, in which campus police officers pepper sprayed Occupy UC Davis student
protesters that refused to leave the campus. The instructor shows students a video of
the events (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmJmmnMkuEM) and explains the
context. The instructor asks students to formulate an argument against Officer Pike’s
actions, which transpires as something similar to “his actions are an unnecessarily
cruel retaliation against a peaceful protest.” The instructor gives each group sample
memes from the series and asks them to create a hierarchy that charts “how cruel”
his actions were compared to other cultural figures. Many memes will show Officer
Pike spraying children and animals, emphasizing his abuse of power on “innocent”
victims. The more remarkable memes will feature Pike in an already distressing
picture (such as in a WWII concentration camp), spraying someone who has already
been wronged and therefore suggesting that Pike is even worse than the original
perpetrator.
140
E. STONES
Debriefing
Binders full of women
After completing the first activity, the instructor asks students to revisit their initial assessment of Romney’s statement. What do students learn from the meme series in regards to
valuing, respecting, and empowering women in meaningful ways? Compared to someone
like Ryan Gosling, where did Romney go wrong with his comments? The instructor points
out that the memes make Romney’s statement seem more offensive than they originally
perceived. Are the memes a fair representation of his comment or his character? What
happens when we use cultural figures and create social order to “discuss” women’s
rights? What gets left out of this conversation?
Pepper spray cop
After students complete the second activity, the instructor informs students of how the
incident played out, with Officer Pike receiving countless emails and phone calls, many
of them death threats (http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/ucd/pike-uc-reach38059-workers-comp-agreement/) and that UC Davis spent $175,000 to clean up their
online presence after the incident (http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-ucdavis-pepper-spray-20160414-story.html). The instructor asks students if they are surprised at the contempt Pike received after seeing the memes in which Pike is portrayed
as worse than, for example, Godzilla, Hitler, and Pontius Pilate. The instructor questions
if the memes helped to clarify or expand the students’ own thinking on the events. Does
Officer Pike’s punishment (i.e. social castigation) fit the crime? Did the meme take on a life
of its own? When are the memes more about injustice and the abuse of power and less
about Officer Pike’s specific actions? The instructor spends time reflecting about how political issues are expressed in contemporary culture and the benefits and drawbacks of using
memes—and the relations they (re)create—to inform political discussion and decision
making.
General debriefing
In addition to teaching visual reason and how arguments travel through and by the
relations articulated in these images, this debriefing is an excellent opportunity to reinforce
concepts the instructor may have covered in class.
.
.
.
.
Images act as enthymemes, in which the audience fills in reasoning, claims, and evidence to make sense of an implied argument (Blair, 2004).
The movement and dissemination of images are important, as circulation changes the
messages’ meaning and impact (Finnegan, 2003; Johnson, 2007).
Memetic arguments stem from “visual commonplaces” and “digital topoi,” or the represented collective memories and cultural knowledge the public is presumed to understand (Hariman & Lucaites, 2007, p. 2; Sci & Dewberry, 2014, p. 232).
In political communication contexts, the claim that logic and rationality assist, but do not
determine political decision making sets the stage for perspectives that start with similar
proclamations, such as Lakoff’s (2004) emphasis on metaphors and framing.
COMMUNICATION TEACHER
141
The meme exercise allows the instructor to “bring it all together” and cement the paradigmatic shift students need to experience in order to process the implications of our
visual culture.
Appraisal
Memes are banal and humorous, and their significance sneaks up on students. After this
exercise, students have told me that they will “never look at memes in the same way.” I
have completed a variation of this exercise four times in visual communication courses,
and always at the end of the semester. At that point, the memes provide a fresh lens
through which to review concepts we explored all semester. During the exercise, students
gasp, chuckle, and click their tongues, demonstrating their embodied engagement in the
material. Anytime we can laugh and learn simultaneously in class, this instructor is pleased.
Note
1. I use the term visual reason to encompass the sense-making processes explained in this essay.
None of the authors cited explicitly use this term.
Notes on contributor
Emily Stones received her Ph.D. from Indiana University and is a faculty member at Regis University in Denver, Colorado. Her primary research interests include non-profit fundraising rhetoric,
disability visual activism, and political image-making, topics which greatly inform some of her
favorite courses to teach on disability culture and political communication.
References and suggested readings
Birdsell, D. S., & Groarke, L. (2007). Outlines of a theory of visual argument. Argumentation and
Advocacy, 43, 103–113.
Blair, J. A. (2004). The rhetoric of visual arguments. In C. A. Hill & M. Helmers (Eds.), Defining
visual rhetorics (pp. 41–61). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Debord, G. (1994). The society of the spectacle (D. Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). New York, NY: Zone
Books. (Original work published 1967)
Finn, J. M. (2012). Visual communication and culture: Images in action. Don Mills, Ont.: Oxford
University.
Finnegan, C. A. (2003). Picturing poverty: Print culture and FSA photographs. Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institution.
Garland-Thomson, R. (2001). Seeing the disabled: Visual rhetorics of disability in popular photography. In P. K. Longmore & L. Umansky (Eds.), The new disability history: American perspectives (pp. 335–374). New York, NY: New York University.
Hariman, R., & Lucaites, J. L. (2007). No caption needed: Iconic photographs, public culture, and
liberal democracy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
Hartley, J. (1992). The politics of pictures: The creation of the public in the age of popular media.
London: Routledge.
Hill, C. A., & Helmers, M. H. (2004). Defining visual rhetorics. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Johnson, D. (2007). Mapping the meme: A geographical approach to materialist rhetorical criticism. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 4(1), 27–50.
Lakoff, G. (2004). Don’t think of an elephant: know your values and frame the debate: The essential
guide for progressives. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green.
142
E. STONES
Mitchell, W. J. T. (1994). Picture theory: Essays on verbal and visual representation. Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago.
Olson, L. C., Finnegan, C. A., & Hope, D. S. (2008). Visual rhetoric: A reader in communication and
American culture. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Parry-Giles, S. J., & Parry-Giles, T. (2002). Constructing Clinton: Hyperreality and presidential
image-making in postmodern politics. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Sci, S. A., & Dewberry, D. R. (2014). Something funny? The Laughing Joe Biden meme as digital
topoi within political argumentation. In C. Palczewski (Ed.), Disturbing argument: Selected
works from the 18thNCA/AFA Alta Conference on argumentation (pp. 232–237). New York,
NY: Routledge.
Appendix A
Composing for Digital Publication: Rhetoric, Design, Code
Author(s): Douglas Eyman and Cheryl E. Ball
Source: Composition Studies , Vol. 42, No. 1 (Spring 2014), pp. 114-117
Published by: University of Cincinnati on behalf of Composition Studies
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/compstud.42.1.0114
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Composing for Digital Publication: Rhetoric,
Design, Code
Douglas Eyman, George Mason University
Cheryl E. Ball, West Virginia University
W
e begin our discussion of the state of digital publication with the
claim that, at this historical moment, nearly all composition is digital
composition. But, as a field, composition studies has not yet made that shift
completely explicit in our discussions of composing processes and writing
pedagogies. A deeper engagement with this very rapid shift in modes, genres,
and media of textual production is not only warranted but critical for building literacies and research in writing and writing studies. Part of the reason
for this lack of digital literacy development may be that the rationale for adding multiple literacies in design and code—areas traditionally not considered
part of our fields of expertise—needs to be more clearly stated in order to be
considered as part of the foundations—the infrastructures—of composing
(DeVoss, Cushman, & Grabill). Based on our nearly two decades of work
with Kairos, we posit that the infrastructural considerations for digital composing in the form of webtext publishing include
•
•
•
the scholarly (whether a disciplinary field allows/values webtexts),
the social (how a field or journal behaves when implementing those
values within the publishing process), and
the technical (whether and how systems support the perpetuity of
scholarly and social infrastructures). (Eyman & Ball)
But these considerations are difficult to concretely include in classroom practice, so we offer three critical practices for composition that accommodate the
many media, modes, and delivery mechanics in use today: rhetoric, design,
and code.
Rhetoric
In many ways, the rhetorical dimensions of digital texts are no different from
those of print or oral texts—all of which require attention to the rhetorical
situation (the purpose and argument forwarded by the writer/performer/designer, the needs and expectations of the audience, and the overall sociocultural context of the communication, regardless of medium). For born-digital
webtexts that engage multiple modes and media as a function of their genre,
additional rhetorical concerns arise with regard to decisions about delivery,
access(ability), and sustainability. Authors of webtexts need to ask themselves:
is this work best presented in a more linguistically rich (written) or visually
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rich (images, layout, video, etc.) format? To what degree does interaction help
to express the argument? Is an audio component necessary for this particular
form? Etc. It is critical for webtext designers to consider the ramifications of
these decisions on the relative use, usability, and usefulness of their text: “use”
focuses on how the audience/user will make use of the webtext or digital
object; “usability” speaks to the degree to which the users’ needs have been
taken into account in the design of a text; and “usefulness” (in the academic
context) is tied to the disciplinary networks in which a text is designed to
circulate (that is, to what extent is it useful to readers?). A text that is usable
but not useful will be unsuccessful, just as texts that are useful but not usable
are also unsuccessful. Authors must consider all three aspects when designing
digital texts.
Design
Discussing design as a rhetorical move still feels fairly new in our field, despite
scholars’ previous discussions of design-as-rhetoric (Buchanan; Sheppard;
Wysocki) and webtextual journals such as Kairos and Computers & Composition Online publishing designed scholarship for almost 20 years. How can our
field—in our scholarship, our classes, our conferences—move toward design
as integral to our arguments and as part of our invention processes? Design
is a rhetorical function that plays an important role in each of the canons of
rhetoric, most obviously related to style (particularly in terms of visual rhetoric), but also of organization. Instead of saying what design is, most design
theorists describe what design does. Donald Norman describes how design
should function, arguing that it should make conceptual models visible, including showing required or alternative actions and their possible results, and
should do so easily and naturally for the user (187). These design approaches
are easily applicable to physical and digital objects: Webtext authors embrace
design so that the conceptual model they use is relevant to the text’s purpose
and media. (See also Kuhn, Johnson, and Lopez’s description of conceptual
core.) The challenge is to see texts (even word-processed texts) as objects that
require design.
At Kairos, we embrace design as part of the invention process through our
(pedagogically informed) mentorship of authors in pre-submission collaborations and through our collaborative peer review process (Ball). We then edit
their designs (including the code, as needed) for sustainability, accessibility,
usability, and readability. All of these are rhetorical concerns: an author who
chooses to design her piece in Adobe Flash chooses a limited set of sustainable,
accessible, usable, and readable features that may change over time, or even
disappear (see Sorapure). These design choices function as part of a webtext’s
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scholarly and technical infrastructures as well as part of the social infrastructure
of Kairos’s collaborative authorial and editorial workflows.
Code
Code is the underlying structure that has to function properly in order for
a digital text to achieve its design goals and support the rhetorical functions
of usability and accessibility. Code is, in a way, analogous to grammar—in
order to function properly it needs to adhere to certain standards: it must be
well-formed and conform to a formal register that is (generally) enforced by
the systems that interpret and execute the code. Code is also the underlying
infrastructure that both drives interactivity and sets constraints on possible
user actions, and in this way code is intimately tied to design and rhetoric.
The features of code that bind the webtext and set the parameters for use map
onto what Ian Bogost (2011) has described as procedural rhetorics; that is,
the rhetorical functions enacted at the level of code that promote certain user
activity over other possibilities. As such, it is equally important for authors of
digital texts to understand and engage with the coding aspects of a webtext
with as much rigor as the rhetorical and design aspects.
In pedagogical terms, code need not be equated with programming; indeed, most work with code for digital composition that we edit in Kairos takes
the form of markup such as HTML. Coding as literate practice also includes
knowledge of appropriate file formats and technical infrastructure, such as
knowing which graphic formats are most effective for a given image, which
encoding schemes will be most usable for delivering audio and video via the
Web, and the importance of including transcripts and technical devices that
ensure accessibility to the greatest number of users. We also consider metadata
as related to coding because it is typically inserted into digital texts at the level
of code rather than integrated visually into the text itself. The active construction of metadata should be a compositional practice because it is emblematic
of the ways an author deploys rhetoric, design, and code as the means by which
a given webtext engages scholarly, social, and technical infrastructure (see also
Bono, Hisayasu, Sayers, and Wilson).
Webtext authors (and, by virtue of the digital nature of text production,
all authors) need to fully respond to all three of layers of digital composing—
rhetoric, design, and code—in order to craft effective, persuasive arguments.
Our charge to the readers of Composition Studies, then, is to consider the ways
in which our scholarly work, our research, and our pedagogical practices could
support all three elements. And once you do that, we expect you to send us
more great work to publish in Kairos.
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Works Cited
Ball, Cheryl. “Multimodal Revision Techniques in Webtexts.” Classroom Discourse
5.1 (2014): 91-105. Print.
Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge: MIT,
2011. Print.
Bono, J. James, Curtis Hisayasu, Jentery Sayers, and Matthew W. Wilson. “Standards
in the Making: Composing with Metadata in Mind.” The New Work of Composing. Ed. Debra Journet, Cheryl E. Ball, and Ryan Trauman. Logan: Computers
and Composition Digital P/Utah State UP, 2012. N. pag. Web. 15 Mar. 2014.
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Buchanan, Richard. “Declaration by Design: Rhetoric, Argument, and Demonstration in Design Practice.” Design Issues 2.1 (1985): 4-22. Print.
DeVoss, Dànielle Nicole, Ellen Cushman, and Jeff Grabill. “Infrastructure and Composing: The When of New-Media Writing.” College Composition and Communication 57.1 (2005): 14-44. Print.
Eyman, Douglas, and Cheryl Ball. “Digital Humanities Scholarship and Electronic
Publication.” Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities. Ed. Jim Ridolfo and William
Hart-Davidson. Chicago: U of Chicago P, forthcoming 2014. Print.
Kuhn, Virginia, DJ Johnson, and David Lopez. “Speaking with Students: Profiles in
Digital Pedagogy.” Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy 14.2
(2010): n. pag. Web. 15 Mar. 2014. .
Norman, Donald. The Design ff Everyday Things. New York: Basic, 2002. Print.
Sheppard, Jennifer. “The Rhetorical Work of Multimedia Production Practices: It’s
More Than Just Technical Skill.” Computers and Composition 26.2 (2009): 12231. Print.
Sorapure, Madeleine. “Text, Image, Code, Comment: Writing in Flash.” Computers
and Composition 23.4 (2006): 412-29. Print.
Wysocki, Anne Frances. “Impossibly Distinct: On Form/Content and Word/Image
in Two Pieces of Computer-Based Interactive Multimedia.” Computers and Composition 18.2 (2001): 137-62. Print.
Composing for Digital Publication 117
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