| Complex forces including globalization, marketization, and the proliferation of multimedia technologies are profoundly changing the nature of communication practices in the 21st century (Cope and Kalantzis, Fairclough, Selfe). The increasingly multimodal nature of these new practices is at least partially acknowledged within the pages of numerous English composition handbooks, rhetorics, and readers, which have begun to ask students to consider how they might use the visual mode to communicate in rhetorically effective ways.; But, there is much that is essential to meaningfully communicating within the visual mode that these textbooks do not yet acknowledge or address; in particular, there is much that needs to be considered regarding how individuals use multimodal communication to make their way in the world---and, in the process, to express and construct certain kinds of selves within that world.; Central to the dissertation's argument is an articulation of identity that acknowledges the deeply social and mutually constructive nature of communication practices, but that also highlights the importance of creative engagement and generic hybridity in new multimodal productions. |
