This dissertation develops notes towards a descriptive model of literate practice by reporting on a study of student work collected from a course on 21st Century writing and editing and analyzed using a combination of coding and deep textual analysis, both informed by a social semiotic theory of multimodality. The research questions ask how students compose across different modes and media, how students make specific rhetorical choices in various modes and media, and how student composing and their rhetorical choices might contribute to a descriptive model of student literacy as practiced in both print and digital environments. This inquiry into student composing for print and digital environments--provides the field with one of its first systematic studies of 21st Century composing in an upper-level undergraduate context. In addition, by linking several methods, this dissertation allows a chance to see both broad patterns across a range of students as well as a close-up view of particular cases. Bringing together coding and case studies with surveys and student texts, the dissertation builds towards a descriptive model of literate practice. The study resulted in four claims about students' use of writing, image, audio, and layout. First, students often used writing and image in their compositions, and they often used them together. Second, students rarely used audio; when they did, however, it played a substantial and sophisticated role in their texts. Third, students used layout to orchestrate relationships of orientation between modes, between textual levels, and between texts and viewer. Fourth, platform has encouraged the usage of certain modes and modal ensembles in student texts, while discouraging or disallowing others. Additionally, the study resulted in six claims about student literate practice in print and digital environments. Student literate practice was multimodal and multimedia: as a group and as individuals, students used an impressive suite of meaning-making modes in their texts, and they designed and delivered those texts in an array of different media. Student literate practice was complex, if uneven: although students demonstrated surprising facility and variety in composing with different modes and media, they were not always able to create texts with complex relationships between those elements. Additionally, students were only sometimes able to articulate their intentionality with regard to choices that affected their composing. Student literate practice was patterned, but not determined, by conditional constraints such assignments, genres, specific platforms, and software programs. Whether assigned or chosen by the student, these constraints had a non-deterministic influence on student composing. Student literate practice was contingent upon a specific set of circumstances for its fluent practice. This point may seem somewhat self-evident; however, the composing that students did in these courses weaves together not only their experiences within educational instructions, but also their experiences outside them. Student literate practice was material, involving specific attention to the rhetorical, aesthetic, and physical dimensions of composition. Though generalizable across the entire set of participants in the study, several students demonstrated this particular characteristic of student composing. Student literate practice was also layered and embedded: student composing was an iterative and remixable practice that created meaning as it purposed and repurposed, worked and reworked texts. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester, 2012. / June 13, 2012. / Includes bibliographical references. / Kathleen Blake Yancey, Professor Directing Dissertation; Wayne Wiegand, University Representative; Kristie S. Fleckenstein, Committee Member; Michael Neal, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_183483 |
| Contributors | Davis, Matthew (authoraut), Yancey, Kathleen Blake (professor directing dissertation), Wiegand, Wayne (university representative), Fleckenstein, Kristie S. (committee member), Neal, Michael (committee member), Department of English (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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