In “Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric”, Doug Eyman includes a strong argument on how digital literacy can be seen as an essential quality of digital rhetoric. And not an extraneous set of competencies. His argument takes the notion of literacy beyond the concept of technical competence. And back towards the concept of a sociohistorically concrete practice. That is situated within contexts, culture and environments that are mediated by media. This view is especially convincing in a time when meaning is hardly created using alphabetic text only.
The main tension in literacy studies is the one that Eyman brings about when he criticizes the limited understanding of literacy as the ability to write using letters. Particularly with the help of Kress. Although the distinction of resource and use proposed by Kress might be theoretically helpful, Eyman is correct in his claim that the absence of the connection between the production and distribution of literacy makes it socially groundless. Writing has always been visual, contextual, and culturally situated. Digital environments only serve to bring this fact into the limelight. When he asserts that literacy is multimodal, including images, sound, animation and code, Eyman makes digital literacy multimodal. Instead of an extension of print tradition.
Why Digital Literacy works better than other terms
The best thing about Eyman argument is that he has avoided using competing terms like computer literacy. technological literacy and the electracy presented by Ulmer. Although the terms such as electracy are useful to comprehend digital apparatuses and institutional transformations. Eyman successfully demonstrates the reasons why they are more of practices than demands. The reason why he chooses the term digital literacy as a success is the fact that it is specific and flexible at the same time. Focusing on the practices of communication that are performed in the digital space. Without being brought down to the use of tools.
The extensive use of such scholars as Selfe, Hawisher and the National Council of Teachers of English by Eyman helps to stress the point that literacy is dynamic, multifaceted and strongly connected with the social flows. In this meaning, digital literacy is no longer an option to rhetorical practice nowadays. It is the precondition of the digital rhetoric. The implications of this framing to the field of education are significant. In the sense that the teaching of rhetoric needs to go beyond the analysis of print. And embrace the use of multimodal composition and critical interaction in full.
Leave a Reply