In Scott DeWitt’s article “Out There on the Web: Pedagogy and Identity in Face of Opposition,” DeWitt conducts a study where he interviews gay/lesbian/bisexual (g/l/b) students who are writing on the internet in order to learn about their experiences and how they constructed their identity in a digital context. DeWitt explains that “internalized resistance to being gay fostered by one’s community, occupation, and relationships make coming out forbidding” (231). This raises a whole host of questions in relation to identity as societal views of g/l/b people are not always positive, and negotiating identity in a virtual environment can be extremely frightening due to the potential for hostile responses from a web audience. As a composition instructor at a university, DeWitt notes that he tries to “provide a safe, inviting space in [his] writing classroom for [his] students to talk about sexual orientation as critical subject and as personal experience” (232). However, the web and DeWitt’s composition classroom are two different spaces especially in terms of comfort level because as DeWitt points out “the size of the audience and the potential for confrontation, bashing, and attacks on free speech increase dramatically” in the virtual environment (234). DeWitt explains that he asked the g/l/b participants in his study some questions and subsequently asked them to take him on a tour of their website (234).
I would recommend this article to scholars and my peers in the field because although DeWitt cannot draw a “universal truth” or any generalizable conclusions with thirteen participants, his study does shed light on the identity issues g/l/b students face when composing in a digital context. His study reveals the importance of audience and how g/l/b people choose to identity themselves when composing online for that large (and usually unknown) audience. Because my research project focuses on second language writers’ rhetorical decisions and construction of identity on Facebook, DeWitt’s study is extremely relevant to the work I am doing. This study also offers wider pedagogical implications in terms of the differences/similarities in identity formation in a physical or virtual space and questions the instructor’s role in guiding students in this technological age with respect to professional, personal, and academic development (see DeWitt 242). Because Facebook is an extremely popular social networking site, do L2 writers feel more or less comfortable when constructing a webpage and essentially constructing their identity online? What kinds of rhetorical decisions are L2 writers making on social networking sites like Facebook, and how are these decisions affecting both the writer’s creation of identity (or intent) and the audience’s perception?
No comments:
Post a Comment