Teaching with The World is a Text
Teachers of English and Rhetoric are often familiar with ways that pop culture artifacts can acquaint students with advanced rhetorical concepts. However, when it comes to encouraging formal analyses of the texts we run into every day (television, movies, advertisements, web sites, YouTube videos, public spaces, and interpersonal relationships), we often run into a barrage of questions such as "how do we analyze and cite billboards and advertisements?" or "how can we analyze ways in which television shows treat issues relating to gender or class?" Jonathan Silverman and Dean Rader's The World is a Text (Prentice Hall, 2008) seeks to address these questions head-on. Using elements of semiotics and rhetorical theory to set up their method of explaining textual analysis, Silverman and Rader's book seeks to help teachers and students engage with a wide range of texts and how they can be used to engage topics such as race, gender, class, and technology.
Since the most recent edition of Silverman and Rader's book is fairly new, Blogging Pedagogy sought out instructors who have been trying out the book. We caught up with Catherine Coleman, who is currently using the book for a course entitled "The Rhetoric of Texas." Check out her responses to our questions below.
Q: What are the best and/or most useful aspects of the book?
CC: I like the fact that The World is a Text breaks down rhetorical analysis into mediums and focuses on one medium, critical lens or topic per chapter. For example, I teach the first chapter, "Reading and Writing About the World Around You" early in the semester because I feel that it encourages students to jump into rhetoric. In this chapter and throughout The World is a Text, Johnathan Silverman and Dean Rader strive to make readers aware that the things they experience every day -- their campuses, fashions, video games, social networking sites and videos viewed and posted on YouTube -- are also rhetorical situations that they can gain a clearer understanding of and critical perspective on through observation and analysis.
Another very useful aspect of The World is a Text is that Silverman and Rader provide concise introductions to each medium or topic (including race and ethnicity, gender, advertising, journalism, mass media, and relationships, to name a few) and then include well-rounded selections of unexcerpted critical essays on each medium or topic written by scholars, journalists and even some college students. These essays help students in Rhetoric to recognize how academic cultural studies work.
Q: How does the book familiarize students with or help you teach rhetorical concepts?
CC: The World is a Text foregrounds the rhetorical principles. By the end of the Introduction (the first twenty-two pages), Silverman and Rader have provided students with a brief and helpful introduction to semiotics and semiotic situations, the history of rhetoric, the interconnection between writing, reading and thinking and a guide for building good arguments about popular culture texts. By the time that students reach page seventy, they have been exposed to a helpful guide on how to find an approach for writing essays, a detailed tour through the basic steps of the writing process, a guide to making solid arguments and the types of rhetorical appeals and fallacies that we will return to throughout the semester.
Because Silverman and Rader try to make this part of the text so concise and accessible, I have found that moving too quickly through it can leave students overwhelmed and confused. I tend to try to slow down the pace by providing supplemental materials and by making sure that I create activities that challenge students to really learn the concepts and not simply read them and never think about them again. The book never returns to these concepts explicitly, so I find myself revisiting them with my class and referring students to this part of the book when they need to refresh their understanding of important concepts like ethos, pathos and logos or when they encounter fallacies in their own arguments.
Q:What kinds of classes might the book work best for? Are there any courses that this book would be less useful for?
CC: This book would be fantastic for any class that takes up many different mediums, types of media and subjects. The primary virtue of The World is a Text is definitely breadth and not depth. It was perfect for a course like RHE 309: The Rhetoric of Texas, where the different units ask students to first explore folk culture and music, then representations of Texans in the mass media and finally Texan films and films about Texas. However, if an instructor is teaching a course geared around rhetorical study or analysis of a specific type of media (like advertising or film) or critical approach (like critical race or gender studies), they would probably find this book to be too broad.
Q: Is there anything that you find lacking in the book? If so, have you found any good ways to compensate for these drawbacks?
CC: While this book is excellent for introducing students to cultural research and analysis, it does not include any information on scholarly research or the use of databases. I supplement the text by spending part of a few class days introducing students to the library website and database searches. Also, as I state above, Silverman and Rader's treatment of rhetorical concepts is cursory and would likely require supplementation in most Rhetoric courses.
Q: Do you have any other comments about the book that might be worth sharing?
CC: The essays and images in this book are great. Silverman and Rader have done a great job of securing engaging and inspiring pieces of cultural analysis and visual rhetoric and my students have responded very positively to these parts of the text. Although a number of the concepts Silverman and Rader introduce in the text are new and therefore quite challenging for most Rhetoric students, (the authors introduce semiotics, critical race and gender studies, feminist, queer, and Marxist approaches to cultural texts) the book is also written in an incredibly accessible and inviting style.
