This week in our graduate class we read several articles dealing with the use of sound in composing. I’m fascinated by the potential connections between orality and writing, especially when technology is involved. As I read this week, though, I found myself coming back to the same question over and over again: where are the disciplinary boundaries now?

And what really counts as writing?

If I teach students to write with sound (oral composing?), then is it writing anymore?

Of course, the principles of rhetoric apply in all of these contexts, and perhaps the boundaries aren’t really the most important (or interesting) thing to consider. But the fact remains that universities are modernist, hierarchical institutions where we spend a lot of our time acknowledging and protecting disciplinary territory…and I’m a product of that context. I can’t help but wonder whether this “counts” as writing.

As I read this week, I felt like I had stumbled across an interesting kind of mashup in the form of sonic literacy (Comstock and Hocks, 2006)…one of a disciplinary kind. I realized that I need to be able to draw on all sorts of disciplines to talk about writing in a digital age. And what I was struck by the most today was my lack of knowledge about communication studies and media production. Man, I’ve got a lot to learn.

And I still can’t figure out what writing is.

Here’s what I love the most about teaching in an interdisciplinary program (Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media at NCSU): I’m continually confronted with my own assumptions about writing, texts, disciplinarity, and language. When we read something for my graduate class, I don’t always ask the same questions that my students ask (most of whom are in Communication). But they’ll raise questions that really get me thinking:

• Why do I question the notion of (sole) authorship?
• Why do I reject the idea of “correctness” in language?
• Why do I define “writing” in the way that I do?
• What is the nature of the relationship(s) between Communication and English, or between Rhetoric and Writing, or between Tech Comm and New Media Studies?
• And why don’t we have interdisciplinary conversations more often?

In our graduate seminar this week, we read a decade-old book by Sullivan and Porter titled Opening Spaces: Writing Technologies and Critical Research Practices. I enjoyed revisiting this text, partly because I found myself questioning (and sometimes remembering) the reactions and responses I had to the text the first time I read it as a graduate student. I remember originally feeling relieved when I read this book–someone was validating my desire to contextualize the research I was doing in a way that reflected the theory I was reading. As I read, I found myself realizing how much research has (and has not) changed since then.

Several of the students in the class commented on how the text introduces ideas and approaches to research that are not all that new anymore. Absolutely true. Yet, I’m struck by how pervasive the divisions between empiricism/theory/practice still are, as well as between qualitative and quantitative research.

And revisiting this text caused me to question some of my own assumptions a bit. For the sake of brevity, I’ll just list a few:

• How much self-reflection is enough? I accept that reflection is an important part of research and practice, but is there a point at which the reflection and the contextualization can begin to get in the way?
• Is there a way to get past the paradox that acknowledging one’s context introduces limitations that affect the interpretive power of data collected?
• In class last week, I asked a question about the perceived agency we assign to technology. If I adopt a position that technology has no (or limited) agency, am I denying the potential impact(s) of the designer of the technology? Or does the agency reside with the designer?