Teaching Visual Communication and Rhetorical Contexts…
Teaching Visual Communication and Rhetorical Contexts Through the Construction of Immersive Spaces
This passage is a section of an abstract I submitted to the Immersive Worlds conference at Brock University.
Cathedrals inspire awe and reverence. A long dark path through the woods evokes a sense of mystery and adventure. A well designed store compels us down the aisles to the most expensive items. We’ve all experienced these well-constructed spaces, spaces specifically designed to ensure that visitors feel a certain way and perform the intended tasks designated for the space. When thoughtfully and deliberately created, spaces can draw us in to participate in their narrative, their rhetorical act. However, in the real world, few of us will have the opportunity to design such a space. In an immersive world, such as Second Life, the materials are limitless, the audience captive and eager to explore, and the rhetoric of space is thick in the virtual air.
Rhetorics of space have been around since Aristotle, Jeremy Bentham, and Michele Foucault. More recent rhetorics of spaces and places are especially meaningful when applied to virtual spaces. A rhetorical space, as defined by Roxanne Mountford, is “the geography of a communicative event.” “Rhetorical spaces carry the residue of history upon them, but also, perhaps, something else: a physical representation of relationships and ideas” (42). Lorraine Code’s gendered rhetorical spaces build on Foucault’s heterotopia to discuss how the design of spaces reflect the structures of power in the space. Turkle and Fleckenstein both suggest that virtual spaces, because they are constructed of words and detached symbols, may lull users into a more lax code of behavior. The result of this detachment may be increased persuasive power of the spaces, an heightened willingness to participate in the suggestions of a rhetorical place. All in all, the current arguments about the rhetoric of virtual spaces should lead us to understand that these spaces, when constructed thoughtfully, may be more persuasive to a willing participant, than a real world space.
Given the potential and mutability of the virtual space, the power of teaching students about the construction of rhetorical spaces is increased over the same exercises in the non-virtual world. I’m currently working on a case study of a university rhetoric and writing class in which students learned about the construction of persuasive spaces by proposing, designing, constructing, and testing a virtual space built in Second Life. Students studied other immersive spaces in Second Life, performed rhetorical analyses to deconstruct the elements of the spaces that appealed to specific demographics and evoked reactions and behaviors. Based on these insights, the students then constructed their own rhetorical space as a collaborative project. The project will demonstrate the project from planning to evaluation and will offer an opportunity to explore the space constructed.
Code, Lorraine. Rhetorical Spaces; Essays on Gendered Locations. NY: Routledge, 1995.
Fleckenstein, Kristie S. “Faceless Students, Virtual Places: Emergence and Communal Accountability in Online Classrooms.” Computers and Composition 22.2 (2005): 149-176.
Foucault, Michel. “Des espaces autres (1967), Heterotopics.” http://foucault. info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.fr.html.
___. “Of Other Spaces.” Diacritics 16(1986): 22-27.
Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space. Trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Massey, Doreen. Space, Place, and Gender. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
Mountford, Roxanne. “On Gender and Rhetorical Space.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 31.1 (Winter 2001): 41-71.
Turkle, Sherry. Life on the Screen. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.
