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.