Flat versus(?) layered texts

Without even soliciting digitally-infused rhetoric from my students, I sometimes receive papers with cool pictures and decorative fonts and nice cover pages--a far cry from that described in the DigiRhet article and the Daniel Anderson presentation, but a baby-step in that direction. These papers are worse, on average, than the papers without such frills (and also more likely to be plagiarized). Okay, so yes, "frills." As I sometimes say to my wife (in other contexts), "I just said that to get a reaction." Now let me concede, or re-concede, that these extra presentational touches are nowhere near the kinds of digitally robust projects under discussion. In the latter projects, videos, links, music, etc., etc. (notice the extra etc.) are too substantial to be dismissed as frills, except by the most cranky of old-fashioned textophiles.

But the same basic question arises, and it's not a rhetorical question (nor admittedly a full-fledged "interrogation" such as the authors of DigiRhet repeatedly mount): do texts get minimized in digital rhetoric? And is this a problem? My inclination is to say "yes" and "no," respectively, preceded by "probably." Is it too hasty to assume that texts need be "minimized" just because other elements of presentation are given a place?

The DigiRhet authors say that digital rhetoric "shifts the productive techne of the rhetorical process...from primarily invention-driven to a broader rhetorical approach that privileges arrangement as a focal activity..." (241-242). Privileging arrangement and delivery, I suppose, doesn't have to come at the expense of text. Does receding in comparative importance mean receding in importance? Seems like it would, actually, at least a little bit. You could just take a spectacular text and add a bunch of elements to it, hypothetically. If it's the same text, then nothing was lost, only gained. But focus and attention matters. Scott DeWitt (quoted in the DigiRhet piece via Grabill and DeVoss 2001) contrasts "flat" texts with "rich and layered" ones (241). "Flat" is pejorative, right? This doesn't minimize?

Yet this all might be okay... The written word has had company forever and has a lot more now. At a certain point it may have been accorded too much "privilege," in a sense. It might need to share a little space. It's also possible that increased attention to its competitors might overflow onto it. Teachers might worry that students need to give a lot more attention to improving their writing. Perhaps if students are engaged to create a product with a variety of components, their increased attention to the placement of a picture, sound clip, selection of a quote or caption, etc. will translate into increased attention to their writing as well. So the poor old flat part of the text can win too.