Arlene Archer

Co-ordinator, Academic Development Centre for Higher Education , University of Cape Town, South Africa

Publishing by Degrees: Audience, Voice and Social Context in On-line Textual Production

Abstract

Composition theorists have written much about the 'reduced social cues' phenomena of the different forms of electronic communication. Some have argued that rather than reducing social cues, electronic communication encourages communicators to fall back on stock social roles. Not only do both these positions attribute agency to technology in a rather deterministic way, but this study argues that social interaction in computer mediated communication (CMC) is a far more complex phenomena than this dichotomy allows. On-line discussions and textual productions need to be seen as embedded in particular social and ideological contexts; and the significance of cultural, gender and linguistic diversity needs to be acknowledged. This study investigates these issues in a computer enhanced writing course at the University of Cape Town. It is a first year academic literacy course for engineering students on an extended curriculum programme. The course aimed to set up a dialogue between the culture and discourses of the students, academia and the workplace. Within a simulated work situation, an Intranet was created which allowed for varying degrees of privacy, competition and collaboration. This study looks at the influence of audience on student voice; both 'internal' peer audiences and 'external' geographically remote 'experts'. Issues of identity as constituted by discourse practices are examined in the discernible shifts in voice from peer editor to professional 'consultant'; and in 'transcoding' from on-line discussions to the written report. The use of humour and the emergence of a critical voice are interesting ways of engaging with the various genres of interaction and textual production enabled by the course. In an environment where students exhibit greater proficiency in oral communication, the oral/written interface and multimodal rhetoric (including the ways in which voice is conveyed through the visual aspects of on-line texts) are seen as important to explore in the diverse, multilingual and multicultural context of South Africa.

Bionote

Arlene Archer is the co-ordinator of the Writing Centre at the Centre for Higher Education Development, University of Cape Town,South Africa. She is particularly interested in issues around academic development in the tertiary environment; how diverse students from a range of language, class, cultural and gender identities access disciplinary knowledge; writing across the curriculum; and the changing nature of literacy (including multiliteracies and visual literacy).

Presentation Type
30 min. Paper

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Country
South Africa