Thursday, January 22, 2009

Week 3 Readings

Question: Which of Kinneavy's modes best describes each reading and why?

Kinneavey's paper An Introduction to the Modes outlined four modes of discourse that offer four separate view on reality. These are: Description, which is writing that paints a static picture, Classification, which is writing that focuses on how items fit into groups, Evaluation, which is critical writing of a dynamic action from a finished, static viewpoint, and Narration, which is writing that focuses on dynamic change over time. Kinneavy stresses that no single piece of writing will completely and neatly fit into one of these categories, but the four modes of discourse offer a convenient organization of writing, and of viewpoints on reality. The four modes can also classify scholars into analysts, theorists, critics, or historians.

Garrett's The Elements of User Experience Chapter 2 is a even mix between Description and Classification. This chapter is a description of user experience in websites and classifies a website's appearance and functions into five categories. These five "planes" are the Surface, which makes up the visible appearance of a website, the Skeleton, which is the arrangement of items on a page, the Structure, which is the organization of a website's pages and functions, the Scope, which decides what pages and functions a website will include, and the Strategy, which is the reasoning and the impetus for each of the website's pages and functions. As you can see, this chapter uses Classification in it's Description of website design.

Miller's paper What's Practical about Technical Writing is primarily Evaluative, but it is only able to evaluate through its use of Description and Classification. She discusses differences in the definition of the term "practical." She uses Description to look at the traditional view of Technical Writing. She then seeks to Classify different viewpoints, people, and writing methods based upon these definitions and then Evaluates the differences.

Plato's Phaedrus is a Narration of two character's dialogue, although there are many sub-narrations and other Descriptions and Evaluations involved. The main story tells of the interaction between Socrates and Phaedrus and Socrates' opinions (Evaluation) on Lysias' speech about love. Many Descriptions are also needed from the viewpoints of both Socrates and Phaedurs. In this Narration, Socrates gives two separate speeches from somewhat opposing views about the nature of love, and in doing so discusses the power of rhetoric, dialectic, and writing. Socrate's offers a rather critical view of writing in his discussion with Phaedrus.

In Chapters 3 and 4 from Hackos and Redish's book User and Task Analysis, the authors primarily use Description to show us how to perform analysis on user's tasks and their environment. Kinneavy describes Analysis as the action that corresponds to the Descriptive mode. A writer can analyze, then describe. This seems to be what Hackos and Redish have done, and what they are asking their readers to do as well in usability research. Although when Describing a dynamic effort like these research methods, it is not completely static, as Kinneavy's definition of Description would tell you. These chapters also use Evaluation in their directions of what to do and what not to do, and Classification to describe the different methods of task and environmental analysis. They even use Narration throughout to give memorable examples of research issues.

1 comment:

  1. I enjoyed your post. You gave a simple, straightforward classification for each of the readings. The comments on the Phaedrus are, in particular, well put, but I must ask whether we are bending the readings to conform to the box (Kinneavey’s Modes) or are we bending the box to conform to the readings. While Kinneavey does acknowledge that the modes are imperfect but that it is a convenient method of ordering various works, I suggest that the application of Kinneavey is much more difficult that the authors of the four modes make it out to be. In my profession of city planning, we use Tim Beatley’s term/concept “reflective equilibrium” (although we do not claim exclusive ownership), to evaluate a method or approach when applied in the built environment. (For example, pedestrian downtowns appear to work great in the plans, but normally fail miserably in application) In this case, while Kinneavey’s ideas work conceptually, I would argue that they do not work as well when applied to various works. In application, either Kinneavey’s modes require the bending of their four modes to fit a work or they require a work to be bent through the readers’ perception into one/more of the modes. But then again some document really fit well into some modes.

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