THE CEA FORUM - Beyond the Alphabetic - Using William Blake’s “The Tyger” as a Way to Teach Modal Affordances

Oct 15, 2026

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The article argues that writing instruction should move beyond alphabetic text as the sole mode of communication. It presents modal affordances as a basis for teaching students to make intentional rhetorical decisions across multiple modes and media. Drawing on scholarship about multimodal composing, it introduces a classroom assignment using William Blake’s “The Tyger” to help learners analyze what each mode enables and constrains during composing and reading.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages30

Reading Time1 h 16 min

AccessFree to download

Beyond the Alphabetic

Focus on multimodal affordances

Definitions of mode and medium

Classroom assignment with “The Tyger”

THE CEA FORUM Summer/ Fall 2015 Beyond the Alphabetic: Using William Blake’s “The Tyger” as a Way to Teach Modal Affordances Megan Keaton Florida State University Several authors claim that we, as a field, typically concentrate on alphabetic text as the main mode of communication (Palmeri; Alexander and Rhodes; Jewitt; Selfe; Shipka) . Jonathan Alexander and Jacqueline Rhodes assert that even “when we as compositionists have adopted new and multi-media, we have often done so with print-and text-driven rhetorics in mind”(6) . For instance, Erik Ellis, in “Back to the Future?: The Pedagogical Promise of the (Multimodal) Essay,” argues for the pedagogical practice of having students create multimodal video essays. While he is encouraging multimodality, he pushes students to analyze and compose videos in terms of the print essay. Notice that even his title suggests that multimodality can be removed from his classroom, as “multimodal” is in parentheses. Even though alphabetic text itself is multimodal (Jewitt; Ball, Bowen, and Fenn), we do our students a disservice if we do not prepare them to compose with and understand the rhetorical consequences of using a variety of modes. Cynthia Selfe argues that this disservice is twofold: As faculty, when we limit our understanding of composing and our teaching of THE CEA FORUM Summer/ Fall 2015 composition to a single modality, when we focus on print alone as a communicative venue for our assignments and for students’responses to those assignments, we ensure that instruction is less accessible to a wide range of learners, and we constrain students’ ability to succeed by offering them an unnecessarily narrow choice of semiotic and rhetorical resources. (644) Selfe indicates that we are not only limiting how our students learn (in terms of learning styles); we are also limiting what our students learn. Jennifer Saunders and Peggy Albers explicate the complexity of being literate in the twenty-first century: “In today’s world, a literate person must be able to read and create a range of paper-based and online texts (newspapers, pamphlets, websites, books, Kindle, and so on), participate in and create virtual settings…that use interactive and dynamic Web 2.0 tools, and critically analyze multimodal texts that integrate visual, musical, dramatic, digital, and new literacies”(2) . Given this complexity, our classrooms should be a space where students can explore, work with, and compose in a variety of modes. Obviously, we cannot teach students to write in every genre of every medium of every mode; instead, we can help students develop strategies for approaching new composing situations by teaching them to analyze modal affordances – what each mode allows the reader and/or composer to do – and make rhetorical decisions based on those affordances. The concept of students making intentional decisions based on their understanding of modal affordances is echoed in scholarship that defines multimodal composing. For instance, in the introduction to their edited collection, Multimodal Literacies and Emerging Genres, Tracey Bowen and Carl Whithaus define multimodal composing as “the conscious manipulation of the interaction among THE CEA FORUM Summer/ Fall 2015 various sensory experiences – the visual, textual, verbal, tactile, and aural – used in the processes of producing and reading texts”(7 emphasis added) . Likewise, in On Multimodality: New Media in Composition Studies, Alexander and Rhodes (borrowing from Claire Lutewitte) define multimodal composition as “communication using multiple modes that work purposely to create meaning”(3 emphasis added) . A note about definitions: Scholars often differ in where they draw the boundary between mode and medium. For instance, some scholars label images as modes (e.g. Jewitt) while others label images as media (e.g. Ball, Bowen, and Fenn) . I will be using the definitions provided by Jeff Bezemer and Gunther Kress: “A mode is a s

FAQs

Why does the article critique focusing only on alphabetic text?

It argues that limiting composing to a single modality restricts access for a wide range of learners and narrows students’ rhetorical options, reducing what they can learn.

What are modal affordances in this article?

Modal affordances describe what each mode allows readers and/or composers to do, along with potential constraints that can limit understanding.

How does the article propose teaching modal affordances?

By helping students analyze and make rhetorical decisions based on modal affordances, using example remediations of William Blake’s “The Tyger” in an introductory assignment.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by SANS