ENGL 505B

In reading Wysocki's article, I couldn't help wonder if there wasn't a contradiction in her challenge to create new designs and utilize spaces on the page in a novel way while attempting to have a rhetorical effect on one's audience when communicating within an established context and for a specific purpose. As Wysocki states, "If we are to help people in our classes learn how to compose texts that function as they hope, they need consider how they use the spaces and not just one time that can be shaped on pages. They also need to question how they have come to understand the spaces of pages so that they can, if need be, use different spaces, potentially powerful spaces that—as Howe, for example, has described—have been rendered unavailable by naturalized, unquestioned practice" (57).

Might one's purpose not be accomplished if this new design or use of space on the page interferes with one's message because the form of the message does not meet the audience's expectations? Or, perhaps, as with any new technology, must we accept that there will be a learning curve when interpreting a new design, even if the messages are not always particularly novel? One example of a new design may be the online journal Kairos. I wonder what have been both the challenges and benefits of providing a space completely online for academic scholarship. In what ways does it meet the expectations of readers, and in what ways does the journal challenge readers? What are the benefits of this mode of communication? the drawbacks?