#1.

To be entirely honest, I hadn’t spent very much time thinking about what I call non-alphabetic texts until I explored Lauer’s article, "What's in a Name? The Anatomy of Defining New/Multi/Modal/Digital/Media Texts". Several of her interviewees expressed a dichotomy in speech that I agree with—we express ourselves in an entirely different way around people who do not do what we do or do not do it in the extent that we do. I think this quality of being audience oriented is what affects me most when determining what I call non-alphabetic texts. 

In the past, as I admitted earlier, I didn’t realize that I should be thinking about defining these texts, and simply used the terminology given to me. For instance, within Lisa Ede’s The Academic Writer (also known as the common, required, English 101 textbook), there are multiple For Exploration projects at the end of every chapter. One of these is a non-alphabetic text made from a series of questions regarding student assumptions and experiences as writers. The way I’ve previously expressed the different venues my students could take with this project echoes some of what Cynthia Selfe expressed within her interview—she explained that she doesn’t use shorthand or buzzwords to explain these texts, what she says is “I’m having students do videos, I’m having students do audio essays, I’m having students do written compositions” (quoted in “What’s in a Name? The Anatomy of Defining New/Multi/Modal/Digital/Media Texts”).  In this way, while I’ve mentioned that they can make a mix-cd, a painting, a scrapbook, a collage, a comic, a video, an interpretive dance, a rap, a drawing, anything creative, I’ve never used the term multimodal. However, I have always requested that they provide a written explication of their creative choices, which supports Wysocki’s use of new media, which “encourages us to stay alert to how and why we make these combinations of materials, not simply that we do it (19). 

I violently agree with her argument that new media has the ability to “imagine and build other possibilities for our selves as men and women who do not think and feel with such disconnection,” by upturning inherited traditions of “serious” versus “remedial” and renaming them. I feel that rearticulating these choices and incorporating new media will encourage students from all backgrounds, inclinations, and abilities to feel more comfortable and successful regarding the writing process.