Michigan Technological University Digital Commons @ Michigan Tech Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports - Open Reports 2014 A PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIMETIC LEARNING AND MULTIMODAL COGNITION: INTEGRATING EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE INTO PROGRAMS IN RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION Kevin R. Cassell Michigan Technological University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etds Part of the Communication Commons, Rhetoric Commons, and the Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons Copyright 2014 Kevin R. Cassell Recommended Citation Cassell, Kevin R., "A PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIMETIC LEARNING AND MULTIMODAL COGNITION: INTEGRATING EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE INTO PROGRAMS IN RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION", Dissertation, Michigan Technological University, 2014. https://doi.org/10.37099/mtu.dc.etds/810 Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.mtu.edu/etds Part of the Communication Commons, Rhetoric Commons, and the Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons A PHENOMENOLOGY OF MIMETIC LEARNING AND MULTIMODAL COGNITION: INTEGRATING EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE INTO PROGRAMS IN RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION By Kevin R. Cassell A DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In Rhetoric and Technical Communication MICHIGAN TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY 2014 This dissertation has been approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Rhetoric and Technical Communication. Department of Humanities Dissertation Advisor: Dr. Marilyn Cooper Committee Member: Dr. M. Ann Brady Committee Member: Dr. Scott Marratto Committee Member: Dr. James De Clerck Department Chair: Dr. Ron Strickland Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................ 4 Abstract .............................................................................................. 5 Introduction: ........................................................................................ 6 Chapter 1: Mimesis in the Phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty ........................... 27 Chapter 2: The Complex History of Mimesis – An Overview ............................. 57 Chapter 3: Cultivating Experiential Knowledge in Rhetoric ............................. 90 Chapter 4: Bodies as Media in Multimodal Ecologies .................................... 122 Chapter 5: Integrating Experiential Knowledge into College Curricula .............. 158 Works Cited ..................................................................................... 201 3 Acknowledgements I would like to express my appreciation to members of the faculty and staff of the Humanities Department at Michigan Technological University for the great support they extended to me during the years I spent as a doctoral student in the Rhetoric and Technical Communication graduate program. Without the support of the department chair, Ronald Strickland, and the department coordinator, Jacqueline Ellenich, this dissertation would probably not have been completed in as timely a manner as it was. I was also helpfully assisted by members of the professional staff along the way. They include Marjorie Lindley, Kim Puuri, Sue Niemi, Gina Dunstan, Sylvia Matthews, and Karen Kangas, Nancy Byers Sprague and Deb Charlesworth. Several graduate student colleagues also played a major (if often indirect) role in my theoretical thinking, pedagogical and scholarly work, and personal progress in our shared program. They include Tom Adolphs, Stephen Markve, Felicia Chong, Kate Aho, Rebecca Miner, Rebecca Frost, Keshab Archaya, Dave Clanaugh, Randy Harrison, Shaughn Kern, Neely Farren-Eller, Steve Bailey, and Casey and Jim Rudkin. Humanities faculty members who did not serve on my committee but who played a role in my professional development include Karla Kitalong, Patty Sotirin, Elizabeth Flynn, and Bob Johnson. The members of my committee deserve special recognition for their investment of time and patience in my project. Although he was the “outside” member of my committee, James De Clerck was very much engaged with my work and kept me grounded always in practical application. M. Ann Brady, who served on both my comprehensive exam and dissertation committees, was wonderfully supportive from the very beginning and a source of great professional sustenance. Scott Marratto was a careful and close reader of my writing and his attention not only to how I sought to develop my ideas but express them in writing significantly shaped my revision of the first three chapters. Jennifer D. Slack, who served as chair of my comprehensive exam committee, introduced me to a number of texts and thinkers that informed my theoretical orientation in this project. And finally Marilyn Cooper, my dissertation director, was an awesome adviser, knowing when to push and nudge and when to hold back. She provided me with a great deal of intellectual insight and a good amount of space in which to develop this project. She was wonderful and inspiring to work with. 4 Abstract My dissertation emphasizes a cognitive account of multimodality that explicitly integrates experiential knowledge work into the rhetorical pedagogy that informs so many composition and technical communication programs. In these disciplines, multimodality is widely conceived in terms of what Gunther Kress calls “social- semiotic” modes of communication shaped primarily by culture. In the cognitive and neurolinguistic theories of Vittorio Gallese and George Lakoff, however, multimodality is described as a key characteristic of our bodies’ sensory-motor systems which link perception to action and action to meaning, grounding all communicative acts in knowledge shaped through body-engaged experience. I argue that this “situated” account of cognition – which closely approximates Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception, a major framework for my study – has pedagogical precedence in the mimetic pedagogy that informed ancient Sophistic rhetorical training, and I reveal that training’s multimodal dimensions through a phenomenological exegesis of the concept mimesis. Plato’s denigration of the mimetic tradition and his elevation of conceptual contemplation through reason, out of which developed the classic Cartesian separation of mind from body, resulted in a general degradation of experiential knowledge in Western education. But with the recent introduction into college classrooms of digital technologies and multimedia communication tools, renewed emphasis is being placed on the “hands-on” nature of inventive and productive praxis, necessitating a revision of methods of instruction and assessment that have traditionally privileged the acquisition of conceptual over experiential knowledge. The model of multimodality I construct from Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, ancient Sophistic rhetorical pedagogy, and current neuroscientific accounts of situated cognition insists on recognizing the significant role knowledges we acquire experientially play in our reading and writing, speaking and listening, discerning and designing practices. 5 Introduction In this dissertation I emphasize a cognitive account of multimodality in an effort to integrate experiential knowledge work into the rhetorical pedagogy that currently informs so many college-level composition and technical communication programs in the United States. I argue that mainstream versions of this pedagogy privilege conceptual knowledge and learning. A paradigm that posits multimodality as a function of cognition brings greater attention to their experiential dimensions. As we know, “experiential learning” is a kind of buzzword in colleges and universities, expressing the assumption that students learn best when there is a significant “hands- on” component to their education. I share that assumption but have also wondered: What is the nature of knowledge-work in such a paradigm? This dissertation offers an account of that type of “work” that I then apply pedagogically to the curricular areas of Rhetoric-Composition (“Rhet Comp”) and Technical Communication (“Tech Com”).1 Multimodality is a site in both fields where an account of experiential knowledge can be profitably developed and applied pedagogically. We need, however, to think a bit differently about multimodality. In Rhet- Comp, it is often envisioned in terms of what I call the “Big Three” modes of communication: Written, Spoken, and Visual Communication. In addition, these modes are usually articulated and taught within social and cultural contexts. The pioneering multimodal theorist Gunther Kress, for instance, tells us that all modes of communication are “social semiotic” in that they are shaped ultimately by the context that is culture. In some emerging branches of cognitive neuroscience, however, multimodality is described quite differently. The neuroscientist Vittorio Gallese and the neurolinguist George Lakoff use “multimodality” to describe what they believe to be the primary characteristic of our sensory-motor system, which links perception to action and action to meaning. They argue that this neurological-perceptual system shapes language and hence all of our communication practices. Culture plays a role, yes, but it is not the only one. Such a model insists that our primary way of learning is always-already experiential. We experience the world by interacting with it,