The Image of the City

Yesterday I reread Kevin Lynch's The Image of the City. The book, published in 1960, is dated by a number of anachronistic terms, the masculine-gendered pronoun usage, and its obvious focus on white, middle class folks (and, of course, the anxious feeling that one is grooving on Sean Connery's version of James Bond when everyone else is buzzing about the Daniel Craig model). Add the obligation to plod through numbingly detailed analyses of three U.S. cities (Boston, Jersey City, NJ, and L.A.), peering through thick layers of history to imagine then-contemporary images urban life, and you've got much potential for frustration.

Even so, this is a remarkable book, one whose precepts, elementary as they may appear to today's readers, offers useful insights well beyond the realm of urban planning. Indeed, I found myself connecting The Image of the City to a number of ongoing personal and professional projects: improving the flow and "legibility" of my classroom Prezis, exploring "navigation" as an analogy for writing/teaching/learning, and considering a range of broader community-building opportunities. Here are some of my favorite quotations.

The Image as Communication Artifact/Process - Notes on social change and pedagogy 

Definition of the image: "the generalized mental picture of the exterior physical world that is held by an individual" (p. 4).

Among its several benefits (listed on page 4), a good image "can furnish the raw material for the symbols and collective memories of group communication" (p. 4).

Social change: "A frequent problem is the sensitive reshaping of an already existing environment: discovering and preserving its strong images, solving its perceptual difficulties, and, above all, drawing out the structure and identity latent in the confusion… It will probably be more difficult to gain an understanding of the problem and to develop the necessary design skill than it will be to obtain the necessary powers, once the objective is clear" (p. 115, 117).

Pedagogy: "The final objective of such a plan is not the physical shape itself but the quality of an image in the mind. Thus it will be equally useful to improve this image by training the observer, by teaching [him or her] to look at [the] city, to observe its manifold forms and how they mesh with on another… Such education might be used, not only to develop the city image, but to reorient after some disturbing change" (p. 117, emphasis in original).

"In the development of the image, education in seeing will be quite as important as the reshaping of what is seen" (p. 120).

The role of agency and perspective in image production and analysis [more links to pedagogy here]

"The observer ... should play an active role in perceiving the world and have a creative part in developing [the] image. [He or she] should have the power to change that image to fit changing needs. An environment which is ordered in precise and final detail may inhibit new patterns of activity… What we seek is not a final but an open-ended order, capable of continuous further development" (p. 6).

On the frustration of fruitless journeys [unnamed subject reflecting on Los Angeles]: "It's as if you were going somewhere for a long time, and when you got there you discovered there was nothing there, after all" (p. 41).

"The image of a given physical reality may occasionally shift its type with different circumstances of viewing. Thus an expressway may be a path for the driver, [an] edge for the pedestrian" (p. 48, emphasis added).

"The image itself [is] not a precise, miniaturized model of reality, reduced in scale and consistently abstracted. As purposive simplification, it [is] made by reducing, eliminating, or even adding elements to reality, by fusion and distortion, by relating and structuring its parts. It [is] sufficient, perhaps better, for its purpose if rearranged, distorted, 'illogical.' It [resembles] that famous cartoon of the New Yorker's view of the United States" (p. 87).

"If the environment is visibly organized and sharply identified, then the citizen can inform it with [his/her] own meanings and connections. Then it will become a true place, remarkable and unmistakable" (p. 92, emphasis in original).

"The city is not built for one person, but for great numbers of people, of widely varying backgrounds, temperaments, occupations, and class… The designer must therefore create a city which is as richly provided with paths, edges, landmarks, nodes, and districts as possible, a city which makes use of not just one or two form qualities, but of all of them. If so, different observers will all find perceptual material which is congenial to their own particular way of looking at the world" (pp. 110-111).

"It is important to maintain some great common forms: strong nodes, key paths, or widespread regional homogeneities. But within this larger framework, there should be a certain plasticity, a richness of possible structures and clues, so that the individual observer can construct [his/her] own image: communicable, safe, and sufficient, but also supple and integrated with [his/her] own needs" (p. 111).

Potentially important link to Walter Benjamin/Susan Buck-Morss/Carlos Gallego [and Michael Calvin McGee?]: "We need an environment which is not simply well organized, but poetic and symbolic as well… By appearing as a remarkable and well-knit place, the city could provide a ground for the clustering and organization of these [personal] meanings and associations. Such a sense of place in itself enhances every human activity that occurs there, and encourages the deposit of a memory trace" (p. 119, emphasis in original, bolding added).

The method of image analysis

Five types of elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. (p. 46).

• A note about edges: "An edge may be more than simply a dominant barrier if some visual or motion penetration is allowed through it - if it is, as it were, structured to some depth with the regions on either side. It then becomes a seam rather than a barrier, a line of exchange along which two areas are sown together" (p. 100).

• A note about nodes: "Nodes are points, the strategic spots in a city in which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which he is traveling" (p 47). Example: "The subway stations, strung along their invisible path systems, are strategic junction nodes" (p. 74).

• A note about landmarks: "A landmark is not necessarily a large object; it may be a doorknob as well as a dome" (p. 101).

• A note about the potential for regionalization: "A spatial region would be distinguished from a spatial node (a square) because it could not be scanned quickly. . It could only be experienced, as a patterned play of spatial changes, by a rather protracted journey through it. Perhaps the processional courts of Peking, or the canal spaces of Amsterdam, have this quality. Presumably they evoke an image of great power" (p. 105).

Two types of image construction: hierarchical and continuous organization

Hierarchical: "This organization [has] the quality of a static map. Connection [is] made by moving up to the necessary bridging generality, and back down the desired particular" (p. 89)

Continuous organization: "The image [is] put together in a more dynamic way, parts being interconnected by a sequence over time… and pictured as if seen by a motion picture camera" (p. 89).

Beyond hierarchical and continuous organization: "Intuitively, one could imagine that there might be a way of creating a whole pattern, a pattern that would only gradually be sensed and developed by sequential experiences, reversed and interrupted as they might be. Although felt as a whole, it would not need to be a highly unified pattern with a single center or an isolating boundary. The principal quality might be sequential continuity in which each part flows from the next -- a sense of interconnectedness at any level or in any direction. There would be particular zones that for any one individual might be more intensely felt or organized, but the region would be continuous, mentally traversible in any order. This possibility is a highly speculative one: no satisfactory concrete examples come to mind" (p. 115).

Good places [whether in cities, in teaching, or in other environments]

The value of the panoramic view: "There [is] an emotional delight arising from a broad view… Would it be possible, in our cities, to make this panoramic experience a more common one, for the thousands who pass every day? A broad view will sometimes expose chaos, or express characterless loneliness, but a well-managed panorama seems to be a staple of urban enjoyment" (p. 44)

A good street often "acts ambiguously either as linear node, edge, or path for various people at various times" (p. 65).

"Where the journey contains such a distinct series of distinct events, a reach and passing of one sub-goal after another, the trip itself takes on meaning and becomes an experience in its own right" (p. 97).

Effective nodes: "If a break in transportation or a decision point on a path can be made to coincide with the node, the node will receive even more attention" (p. 102)

Summary clues for urban design: singularity, form simplicity, continuity, dominance, clarity of joint, directional differentiation, visual scope, motion awareness, time series, names and meanings" (pp. 105-108).

A note about time series: "Here what would be imaged would be the developing pattern of elements, rather than the elements themselves - just as we remember melodies, not notes" (p. 107).

"If an environment has a strong visible framework and highly characteristic parts, then exploration of new sectors is both easier and more inviting" (p. 110).

Wood Writing Guide: Indiana Jones and the Lost Research Question

When you think about it, academic research is sort of like treasure hunting. You enter a mysterious realm, search for valuable objects, and sometimes face unexpected challenges. I guess that's why I sometimes find myself humming the theme to Raiders of the Lost Ark when I start my own research adventures. Heck, when I return from the forest of knowledge with something valuable, I almost feel like Indiana Jones!

Research. Why'd it have to be research?

In my COMM 101 class, students are embarking on their own journeys into the unknown by developing research proposals - and many are experiencing the inevitable stress that comes from such an open ended assignment. For them, research isn't necessarily an adventure. In fact, it might be more like being trapped in the "Temple of Doom."

Oh, the path starts off easily enough. Students are simply asked to use a theory of human communication to analyze an example of human communication. In our class, we use Em Griffin's First Look at Communication Theory as a guide. Of course while walking the path with my students I've also brought a torch to illuminate some denser sections. Even so, inexperienced explorers often conclude that the journey is way too dangerous.

You've got to put your heart into your work.
(Image borrowed from Film School Rejects)

Here's the plot (without the rousing theme music): Students must produce a research project, which means they articulate a research question or hypothesis, review four peer-reviewed journal articles related to their topic, summarize a theory they've chosen to use, and describe the results of their preliminary analysis. They write up a 5-6 page paper and also deliver a brief oral presentation. If Indiana Jones can battle evil Nazis in not one but two separate movies, student treasure hunters can survive this adventure, right?

Well, actually, the journey is harder than it looks. You see, there are many ways to start a research proposal. You want a "topic," of course, but that topic can develop along at least two paths. You might start with an artifact of communication that interests you, and ask a question about it. Or you might start with a question about communication and find an artifact that helps you answer it. Hmm. Which way to turn? Me, I recommend starting with an artifact and going from there.

Artifacts come in all shapes and sizes
(Image borrowed from Fanboy)

An artifact refers to an example of communication. Among other things, an artifact can be a speech, a television show, a movie, a poster, an advertisement, or even observations of human performance or behavior. Indiana Jones would remind us that a Crystal Skull would also be a fascinating artifact (even if it's a lousy movie) but crystal skulls are hard to find. I suggest that you stick with something you can more easily track down. Either way, your artifact must inspire you to ask a question about how it works as communication [Yes, you could develop a hypothesis instead, but let's stick to a qualitative approach for now].

So, let's say you're interested in a television show like The Office. You find communication within the show, and there's plenty of communication about the show. Just remember, your artifact isn't "the show." It's got to be a thing related to that show, an object you've got close at hand. Artifacts of The Office can be downloaded episodes, transcripts of dialogue, or perhaps taped conversations with people who speak interestingly about the show. Indiana Jones can't just wander around looking at treasures; he's got to bring one back to the lab. So should you.

How hard can this be?
(Image borrowed from FanPop)

Once you've grabbed your artifact, you're ready to transform it into a research question. A research question is a relatively open-ended query that allows you to explain something about your artifact. That "something" should be specific; it can't be overly broad. Thus you wouldn't ask something like, "How is The Office an example of communication?" Instead you'd ask something like, "How does The Office depict the workplace as a family?"

But wait! How did that question arise?

This is the hardest part of your adventure, because the choice to focus on something like "workplace as a family" does not present itself naturally. You've got to hack through some dense foliage to reveal a specific research question. That's where a guide can come in handy. Our textbook contains many different guidelines to doing communication analysis that inspire the creation of a particular question. Each chapter's description of theory and method (one usually includes the other or, at least, leads to the other) is like a pathway whereupon you will forge a specific research question that helps you find treasure.

Here are some examples: Chapters on relational communication call for the intrepid explorer to investigate shared uses of symbols (again, something like, "How does The Office depict the workplace as a family?") Chapters on relationship maintenance, though, call for different questions (something like, "How do romantic partners in The Office balance the tension between revelation and concealment?"). Chapters on public communication, as you'd guess, call for still different questions. So after reading the chapter on Aristotle, a researcher might ask, "How does Michael Scott employ ethos to motivate his workers?" See? One guide, many paths.

Research is harder than it looks!
(Image borrowed from Daily Mail)

Again, this journey is hard because while you have a guide (and a torch-bearer) you must still enter the jungle of ideas without a clear sense of what you'll find. That's the craft of research. The journey demands a willingness to take a first step, knowing that you might feel lost for a while, knowing that you will encounter obstacles in your way, knowing even that you may have to turn around and start along a new path. It can be scary, it can be frustrating, but it can also be a lot of fun.

Searching for the Lost Research Question requires courage to define your own story, not just to repeat the stories of others. Indeed, do you remember that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indiana Jones admitted, "I'm just making it up as I go along"? Again, that's the craft of research. Strangely enough, though, while we're talking about presumably artificial things like movies and school work, "I'm just making it up as I go along" is a good definition for real life. It's a treasure hunt, a risky journey, and an unforgettable adventure.

And the best part? You get to write the script!

Up in the Air on Omnitopian Method

I knew I'd eventually reach this point, and now it has happened: a colleague has invited me to contribute to a panel about the movie Up in the Air. And yep, I'll be using an omnitopian framework in my analysis. I said I was done with omnitopia for a while, but I just can't resist.

This opportunity raises a number of challenges, most importantly related to the creative use of omnitopian terminology. In City Ubiquitous I outline an omnitopian framework according to five components: dislocation, conflation, fragmentation, mobility, and mutability, illustrating each with the aid of two films, Jaques Tati's Play Time and Steven Spielberg's The Terminal. In Chapter Three of City Ubiquitous, I was less concerned with how the components relate to each other, focusing more on simpler matters: what they mean and how they work.

Larger issues of their deployment - of method - were saved for the book's Section Two introduction that proposed localization as a way of going beyond description toward the goal of omnitopian analysis. To my way of thinking, localization is a sort of counter-reading - that is, "offering an interpretation that both explains and confounds omnitopian practices through engaged observation" (p. 84). Though less a method than a perspective, I found this approach to be useful in connecting otherwise disparate ideas that had guided my writing from the beginning of this project.

In my description of localization, I therefore borrowed Walter Benjamin's concept of the flâneur gaze, a term that bubbled up from his Arcades Project, to animate my perspective on omnitopia. Localization enacts a method of observation that is both keenly aware and mildly intoxicated with the modern scene, a performance of semi-consciousness that seeks to convey a sense of place not otherwise found in formal architectural or rhetorical analysis (with thanks and apologies to Michael Bowman for his recommendation that I re-read Benjamin's writings on intoxication). Put more directly, while I generally am a critic of omnitopia (at least from the position proposed in my articulation of the term), I see little insight to be gained by merely criticizing it. To unmake omnitopia, one must live it first.

For me, this method has proven to be useful, and the articles that ensued fleshed out a skeleton of ideas into a book that said what I wanted to say. Even so, I think a more rigorous and precise method needs to be explored, and I plan to use the invitation to write about Up in the Air as an opportunity to propose a more purely rhetorical form of omnitopian analysis. Ideally, this method can be employed by folks not otherwise inclined to try my idiosyncratic performances of localization. Right away I'm fairly certain I'll need to read Walter Kirn's original book, from which Up in the Air is loosely adapted, if only to think about omnitopia more textually. From there, I hope that something useful emerges: a method that can be expanded beyond the application of cookie-cutter terms toward the goal of analysis that delivers insights on technique and implication.

Despite my occasional announcement of plans to advance past omnitopian musings, to tackle new writings, this project seems worthwhile, and I'm genuinely excited about seeing it through (hoping that the panel proposal for this fall's National Communication Association conference in San Francisco is accepted). It's a chance to wrap up some unfinished work and, best of all, hang out with cool people and chat about a fascinating film. Still, I admit to flashing back to Michael Corleone's line from another movie, the third Godfather, that speaks to my situation today: "Just when I thought I was out - they pull me back in!"

Difficulty seeing the Corleone video above? Point your browser here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPw-3e_pzqU.

Waffle House: 1 of 10

The following is from a ten-part serialized essay on Waffle House, initially written in December 2008. A sort of mashup between scholarly musings and personal reflection, this piece may satisfy no one in particular. But I'm happy to share it nonetheless (presuming you don't edit or repackage this piece without my permission). Also, a reminder: these words do not reflect the opinions of Waffle House, San José State University, or any other entity.

Shelter from the Storm:
An Auto-Ethnography of Fear and Hash Browns

I'm sitting in a Phoenix Waffle House, waiting for the world to end.

I've driven 727 miles one way over a day, alone, to sit here. It turns out that this Waffle House sits in a cluster that is nearest to my home on California's west coast. I figure about eight links to this chain reside in the Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale metroplex. A sprawl of limited access freeways and speed cameras, of rock gardens and ornamental cacti, the Phoenix region presents a dense enclave of order when viewed from above, all that stretching, colonizing geometry, all that wheezing air conditioning surrounded by fearsome desert. Waffle House is known for its order too, for its incantation of commands and precise ballet of motions, but it still feels strange being this far from its Southern roots.

I'm a Southerner too, sort of, also far from my roots. I was born in Florida, raised in the suburbs of Pinellas County, which is a gigantic parking lot when compared to the Everglades further south or the one-stoplight towns north of I-4. In fact, I didn't discover my Southernness, my tendency toward a drawling y'all and my deeply instilled sense of "place," until I left my home state after high school. In a similar way, I never really thought much about Waffle House as a southern institution until I found myself far from home, a faculty member at a California university where many folks have never heard of the chain.

I'm asked, "Is Waffle House like International House of Pancakes?" Yeah, just about as much as Pepsi is interchangeable with Coke. A Southern institution (and IHOP, if you're curious, is a Los Angeles area fabrication) contains a subtle but distinct set of rules about decorum and design, and it most definitely offers sweet tea, a delicacy I'd never recognized as such until I left home. Even in an era of globalization and homogenization, a world whose primary metaphor may be the international shipping container, the South means something distinct to the American imagination. The South remains an enclave, safely and necessarily apart from all that surrounds it.

So here I am, a transplanted Californian sitting in Phoenix after a 15 hour drive -- it should have been 12, but a Siberian blast of snow and ice, even in the Mojave desert, was both extraordinary and thought-provoking: better slow than dead on the road. I've driven a long way to think about Waffle House as a safe space against a surrounding world that seems frightening. Fresh memories of terrorists laying siege in Mumbai, dawning threats of war in the Middle East, and global fears of an economic collapse so vast and intricate, so perfectly total and mindbendingly grand, that serious-minded people are called forth to remind us again and again that, no, we're not drifting toward a Depression (repeatedly enough to panic us into imagining that, yes, we are drifting toward a Depression): these thoughts troubled me enough to seek a redoubt from all that random violence and ominous danger. The world is ending, the time we once knew, and this spot so far from home seems like the appropriate place to wait for what comes next.

I'm here in a Phoenix Waffle House, writing about fear. That is to say that I've chosen to write about how places like Waffle House (how rare and necessary they are these days) serve up enclaves from the outside and the unknown, particularly as they perpetuate the possibility for us to order places and relationships as we would order our meals, a performance of ritual and community that resembles that we would call real, even while it is usefully, therapeutically, unreal. Assuming a perspective that is somehow broader yet simultaneously much more narrow, I have also chosen to write about the way in which some academic writing may benefit from a method of auto-ethnography, a kind of drive-by scholarship that reveals the role of fear that animates so much of academic life, whether on the road to Waffle House or the road to tenure.

While I claim no particular "ownership" of this play on words, I would offer my own interpretation, emphasizing that auto-ethnography ought not be confused with autoethnography, the method of qualitative analysis that calls for a profound and time-consuming encounter between the author and a site or community (generally with the author her/his self providing a primary lens of inquiry). Auto-ethnography demands the fast moving gaze of the long distance driver, a means to catch quick meaning from blurring signs, reading the road as flow rather than stasis. Auto-ethnography requires a peculiar vigilance borne of imminence, a sense of threat that yields the clarity of perpetual now. It is a position that is never fixed, one that milks the risk of staying anywhere too long. Indeed, auto-ethnography is most aptly employed when unpacking the complimentary reality of fear and safety, a desire to be here and not-here at the same time.

In this essay, I will try to tell a useful story about Waffle House from an auto-ethnographic perspective, even as I tell some stories about how I came to write this piece. I will generally tell the truth, though I will lie a little bit, too. After all, whether studying the creation of hash browns or the mashing together of scholarly prose, too much honesty can be a dangerous thing.

Part 2 of 10 appears tomorrow.

(Photograph by Andrew Wood)

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What? How? and How Well?

Having just read an Atlantic essay entitled In the Basement of the Ivory Tower, I'm a little anxious about reentering the classroom in my formal role as an associate professor of communication studies.

It's not that I've been out of the classroom for too long. Just this spring I taught two Peer Mentor training seminars composed of bright, dedicated, and inspirational students learning to assume leadership roles on campus. Students entering those classes were selected competitively, and even course completion offered no guarantee that they'd become peer mentors. These folks wanted to be present and yearned to succeed.

Summer classes in my home field can be a little different, though. No doubt, many motivated students take these classes. But a sizable number of students show up for reasons that sadden me: The class fits their schedule. They're knocking out core requirements. They want to "get it over with" in six weeks (something like tearing off a bandage).

These folks deserve a useful, accessible, and (dare I say it?) reasonably interesting introduction to the field of communication studies. And yet many have not been adequately prepared for the challenges of an upper-level course. The writing requirements, the technical terms, the abstract theories, and the demand for precision will test students in new and even frightening ways.

That's why I'm spending time rethinking fundamentals about this course. What are its objectives? What are its obligations? What must students be able to do when they complete COMM 101? Providing clear answers to those questions is, I think, the first step for both my students and me. To that end, I'm toying with the following parameters: Students (and professors) should be able to articulate "what," "how," and "how well."

"What" refers to the following question: What are the contexts of communication studies? Contexts include sites of communication such as organizational settings, interpersonal settings, familial settings, and the like. Contexts also include media such as speaking, writing, and online communication. I should add that the most fundamental "what" -- what is communication? -- may be usefully defined as "shared sense-making." Communication, therefore, is the creation of some shared sense through some medium in some context.

"How" refers to the following question: How do we practice effective communication? "How" is tricky because it occurs on at least two levels: the level of the practitioner and the level of the theorist. To practice is to do with purpose and repetition; to theorize is to speculate on the outcomes of that practice. At some level, it's hard to imagine a person who is not both: a person practicing the art of communication in the moment and a person theorizing about what manner of communication will be effective, either now or at some other moment.

Lower division classes such as Fundamentals of Public Speaking focus on practice: how to manage anxiety, how to organize main ideas, how to avoid fidgeting with your hands, and the like. These classes are based in theories that have evolved since the beginnings of human civilization. Yet theories float hazily in the background of most Public Speaking classes. For students at least, doing this speech is the primary concern.

At the upper division, it's more appropriate to explore "how" at a theoretical level. How, for example, does Kenneth Burke's notion of dramatism help us select strategies in various speaking contexts or anticipate the strategies used by others? These questions demand more than an understanding of practice; these questions demand an understanding of method, a way of practicing that exists apart from the practice itself. At this level, "how" refers both to the doing of communication and the doing of communication theory, what we call research.

"How well," finally, calls for us to judge communication in terms of utility, aesthetics, and ethics. Is it practical? Is it artistic? Is it good? "How well" questions invite us to consider communication as more than the mere application of words to problems or theories to words. These questions challenge us to measure our choices according to some standard of quality. Answering these questions, students of communication are invited to explore, articulate, and employ standards that connect doing well to doing right.

I'm cautiously optimistic that "what," "how," and "how well" will help my students get something from Introduction to Communication Studies. It's not so much that these questions are the ideal articulation for the class. There are many other approaches that might work more effectively. But I believe they are clear enough to provide even reticent students some orientation to the purpose of this class. And with purpose comes motivation.

I've seen it work before. I'm sure that students who took COMM 149: Rhetoric and Public Life (here are my blog posts on that course) have probably forgotten our discussions about General Motors at the 1939 World's Fair or Thomas More's attitudes on religion in his Utopia. But I'll bet that most remember the three questions that organized that class: "Who's in? Who's out? Who decides?" Those questions helped students make sense of an admittedly strange experience, one built around a convergence of departmental objectives and personal passions. The questions guided the students, and they guided me.

Maybe these questions (new to me, but hardly new) will accomplish the same goal in COMM 101.

The Cookbook Metaphor

This summer I plan to teach one or two sections of COMM 101, my university's Introduction to Communication Studies course. The class (sixteen weeks of material condensed into a six-week block) often surprises students with its demands of correctness in writing mechanics and its breadth of conceptual coverage. A number of students, heretofore unaccustomed to thinking theoretically, struggle through this class. Many are genuinely surprised that our field is composed of more than people sitting around and talking.

With that challenge in mind, I plan to introduce the course in a more accessible manner than has been my practice in previous years. Back then, I described the field of communication as a giant map. I figured that students would relate to the notion of reading a map to investigate the terrain of our "field" of communication studies. After all, a map helps us answer important questions: Where are the mountains? Where are the boundaries? Where is the center? Where are the deserts? It seemed like a good introduction to communication studies as a site of inquiry. But after using the map metaphor for years, I've concluded that it doesn't work for me.

Beyond the fact that maps frequently distort the territories they depict, benefiting some people over others, my main concern as a teacher-guide is that maps often convey environments that are foreign and potentially frightening to student-newcomers. And if a newcomer doesn't recognize the place-names on a map, she or he may have no incentive go anywhere.

I've seen this principle in practice. Often when discussing future roadtrips with my daughter Vienna, I'd hand her our trusty Rand McNally and simply say, "where do you want to go?" Until recent years, Vienna was nonplussed at my seemingly open-ended gift of opportunity. No place was any more important than any other place on a strange, new map, so why leave home? Today, Vienna has many places she wants to go, and she already knows a number of maps useful to getting to those places. Many students, however, do not possess this knowledge yet.

So I'll try a different metaphor this time: the cookbook. I'll explain that the field of communication is a cookbook that contains many recipes that allow you to combine common (and uncommon) ingredients into unique creations. Some of these creations are individual speeches or effective interpersonal interactions. Other creations are artful analyses of speeches or interactions produces by others. In both cases, the recipe is designed to help you make something tasty, which our field often defines as being "useful" or "thought-provoking" or "persuasive."

Many ingredients necessary for these creations are unknown to the beginning chef, but most people know something about salt and pepper, beef and chicken. We'll start with those. The trick with recipes, I'll explain, is that they should be followed closely, particularly if you've never previously mixed these ingredients in a certain way. Otherwise, even the nicest cut of beef can be turned into a burnt crisp or a boiled monstrosity. Following a recipe demands attention to detail and process. That's what we call "method."

Following some method -- preheat, add this, mix that, garnish, whatever -- allows just about anyone to transform individually unappetizing ingredients into something delicious (if not always nutritious). Following a recipe demands discipline (the word that many folks would prefer we call our "field of communication"), at least when you're first trying it out. The problem is that learning discipline and working within its constraints takes time and effort.

That's one reason to explain the popularity of "fast food analysis," a term that demands some explication. Let's begin with something common to most of us: our understanding of fast food. A meal at McDonald's is lousy for the body, just as bad communication is lousy for the body politic, right? But many folks settle for it anyway. Without pushing this metaphor too much further, I'd suggest that many popular "recipes" for interpreting artifacts of communication -- let's use a debate between two presidential candidates as an example -- are akin to eating at McDonald's. Rather than taking the ingredients (description of speech environment, collection texts and transcripts, observation of nonverbal behaviors, and the like) and combining them in a systematic way to produce a meal, a useful analysis of why one candidate is more effective than another in this case, many folks settle for the McDonald's-version.

The result is typically unsatisfying, maybe a variant of "change" versus "experience" or some other empty-calorie collection of buzzwords, as justification for the choice of one candidate over another ("She just seemed more... presidential!"). It's warmed over fast food, quick but unhealthy, easy but utterly lacking in artistry or personal satisfaction. As Robert Pirsig explained in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (a book that offers a thought-provoking introduction to rhetoric for any student of communication studies), it's ultimately a question of quality or lack thereof. Learning to cook up a speech of your own or an appetizing analysis of a speech produced by another person calls for a cookbook that teaches quality both in production and evaluation.

For this perspective, we'll use our textbook like a cookbook. I prefer Em Griffin's Theories of Communication. The recipes are clearly explained, relatively brief, and generally dependable. Some sections will appeal to the meat-eaters (prediction, control, and "influence" models of persuasion, I suppose) while others will speak to the vegetarians in our class (critical theory, feminist analysis, and interpretative methods come quickly to mind). Some folks will even gravitate to recipes that grandma used to make (perhaps a dash of old-school Aristotle). No chef must be familiar with every recipe in the cookbook. But each should have some familiarity with all the major meal-types (you never know when company is coming over for dinner, preferring a particular dish or being allergic to entire food groups). With this approach I'll try to emphasize the practical side of communication studies. After all, we don't read recipes for their own sakes. We use them to produce scrumptious meals for ourselves and for others.

In an update to this post I might reflect on the utility and limitations of this metaphor. In the meantime, I'm feeling hungry right now…

Wood Writing Guide: Literature Reviews

Literature reviews represent the summary and advancement of scholarly conversation. I recognize that readers coming to this blog by chance may find it strange that I'd dedicate a post to this specialized component of academic writing, but I hope that anyone who attempts scholarly prose, from a brief course paper to a dissertation, may find some utility in this entry: an introduction to the purpose of literature reviews.

Right away let me clarify some biases that shape this introduction. My primary academic audience is a community of scholars producing communication research. I offer no guarantees that this advice is suitable for other audiences. Moreover, this way of writing a literature review emerges from my own peculiar sensibilities. Even within the field of communication studies, one may find a wide range of philosophies toward this topic. Those biases noted, let us start with the fundamentals.

When writing a piece of academic prose, a literature review helps you position your hypothesis or research question within a larger collection of scholarly efforts. Writing a literature review situates you in that scholarly conversation, either as someone who seeks to continue an existing thread or as someone who wishes to propose a new thread. In explaining this topic to my classes over the years, I've found that students frequently struggle with this component of academic writing, so let me provide a narrative to illustrate this practice.

Imagine that you and a shy friend are attending a party tonight. You are comfortable with social get-togethers, you chat confidently with friends and strangers, but your friend is nervous. He knows most of the folks planning to attend, but he's still doubtful about being accepted at the party. Your shy friend asks you to arrive at the party a half-hour earlier than he and check out the social scene. Using your mobile phone you'll tell him about the conversations taking place so that your friend can arrive with something to say. You think it's a pretty strange plan, but you're happy to help your friend enter the social scene, so you agree.

As promised, you show up earlier than your friend. Immediately you scope out the room. At first the party is a loud collection of overlapping sounds; it's all a bit overwhelming. But your social instincts help you analyze the scene. Wandering about, sipping a soda and listening to the chatter, you discover that the party contains three distinct groups of conversation, as well as some randomly placed folks sitting alone and grooving to the music. Your friend said something about wanting to join a small group, so you focus your attention on the three most identifiable sets of conversation. You stand close enough to listen without distracting the participants.

The groups represent distinct types of conversation. The first group is an amiable collection of young folks who stand in the kitchen, chatting about classic movies. Jim starts by celebrating Citizen Kane. Jenny follows up with remarks about The Godfather. Jared then begins to explain the under-appreciated virtues of Hail to the Chimp. The participants are loud and excited, and they seem to welcome your presence. You listen for a while and then walk into the living room to join the second group. These are somewhat older folks, at ease with each other even as they discuss their topic intensely. This second group is debating the merits of the new Lady Gaga album. Listening to their discussion, it is clear that the group is evenly split between two dominant speakers, John and Jane. John says the album is excellent; Jane says it's trash. Both debaters and their friends use lots of inside jokes and refer to previous conversations. You can tell this group has had similar arguments for years. You eavesdrop without difficulty since no one seems to recognize your presence, but eventually you walk away toward the porch. There, the third group is drinking and laughing boisterously. You listen for a while, but the group doesn't seem to be talking about anything interesting; they're just cracking jokes. After a while you find a quiet corner and open your mobile phone.

You call your friend and say something like this: "The party's really fun. You should have no problem fitting in. Just remember: right now there are three basic groups. The folks in the kitchen are talking about movies. As you'd guess, Jim is convinced that Citizen Kane is the best movie of all time, though Jenny said some interesting things about The Godfather. Watch out for Jared, though. I think he's had a few too many beers. Just plan to talk about classic movies and you'll fit in. Or if you'd rather talk about music, you'll find John and Jane debating new albums yet again. Tonight they're talking about that awful new Lady Gaga album. As you'd guess, John loves it and Jane hates it. They're having an intense discussion, so listen for a bit to catch the flow before you join in. Oh, and avoid the porch crowd. They're having fun, but they're not saying anything interesting. Just come to the party ready to talk about movies or music and you'll fit in just fine."

Leaving our narrative example we can draw some conclusions about the nature of a literature review and how this component of academic writing fits into the larger goal of scholarship. Like a party, a scholarly community is composed of many people talking at the same time. Literature reviews organize that complex discourse into a number of related conversations. Following the party example, one might write a literature review that summarizes two particularly interesting conversations about movies and music. Certainly a formal literature review will be organized around more related and specialized scholarly conversations. But this example of movies and music illustrates how any conversation is marked by its distinction from other conversations and by its sense of internal cohesion.

What kind of internal cohesion do we find in these examples? The movie conversation is organized chronologically within a category of classics, from Citizen Kane to Hail to the Chimp. If the chat comments were actually scholarly articles you might cite the authors who refer to these movies, offering a quote or paraphrase that summarizes what they say. You might then conclude that section of your literature review by evaluating whether Hail to the Chimp belongs in this conversation at all. The music conversation is organized as a debate between two dominant experts and their partisans. If their comments represent competing scholarly schools of thought you have several options. You might simply compare and contrast the opposing points of view, again by citing major ideas and their originating authors. You might also take a side, becoming a partisan for one position or another. Or you might comment on how both sides of the debate are missing an important idea (after offering some sense of what is being said). Given the nature of the second group, though, you'll need to be careful when engaging their ideas. The rules for participating in long-standing debates tend to be more rigidly defined than in newer conversations.

Of course you won't necessarily cite everything you read, just like you won't chat with everyone you meet at a party. Within any party or scholarly discourse you may find other groups that are loud but not interesting. You can decide whether their conversations are worth engaging or whether they should be ignored. Similarly, at any party or scholarly discourse you will find loners: individuals who have not joined a group either by choice or consensus. Some folks don't care to join groups. Other folks can't find groups to accept them. When writing a literature review, it's your choice whether you wish to engage their ideas or ignore them. The former option is most common, since groups are easiest to navigate when attending a party or attempting a literature review. But remember, the loners in both examples can sometimes have the most interesting things to say.

Certainly there's much more to say about an ideal literature review than can be found in this brief note. One must consider whether a review should be organized by topic thread or by individual citation. I choose the former, but many other writers prefer the latter. One must also consider style-specific rules of citation. I prefer APA but many scholars write in MLA, Chicago, or other styles. Finally, one must consider how much detail to offer with each citation. I prefer a quote or paraphrase for most references. But some scholars are happy to lump dozens of names together with little context other than chronology. Thus we have certainly not exhausted this topic. However, it's important to begin with the fundamentals. Literature reviews challenge you to enter a scholarly conversation, make sense of the important themes and participants, and convey that sense-making to others who may follow your own scholarly efforts. Start with that perspective and you might even enjoy this component of academic writing.