Social Student Bodies in the IM World: Digital Vernaculars and Self-Reflexive Rhetoric

Recent rhetoric, composition, and literacy scholarship has refocused attention on the body’s role in reading and writing, arguing against abstracting literacy practices and texts from material situations, contexts, and the physical bodies who create them. This scholarship challenges descriptions and accounts of emerging media and digital writing situations as “disembodying.” This thesis argues that in the “IM world” in which incoming college students learn to write by participating in online communities, their digital writing can be considered “embodied” as real-world, socially-situated practice. By actively participating in online communities, many incoming college students learn distinct online language practices outside of school; they acquire digital vernacular literacy practices that can be useful when they encounter school literacies.

To illustrate the importance of digital vernaculars for students growing up in the IM world, this project analyzes digital classroom writing from thirty-one students at the University of Tennessee. Writing online in blog and chat forums, these students drew from past digital rhetorical knowledge to produce identity-building writing with wide- ranging motives while negotiating present academic writing situations. The project concludes by suggesting that incorporating digital writing in classroom situations can help first-year writing teachers teach students to become self-reflective rhetorical practitioners, rhetors who use all available means across different writing situations and domains.