This document discusses remix culture and its implications for student voice in digital multimodal compositions. It defines remix as combining existing materials to create something new. While remix allows creative appropriation, it also risks students copying content without transforming it. The document examines student projects in an English for science course involving digital videos. It finds that effective remix uses resources in hybrid, layered, and intercultural ways to construct new meanings consistent with students' messages. However, remix may compromise student voice if it lacks original sourcing, hybridity, or creative labor. Educators must guide how students leverage remix to promote, not limit, their voices.

1. Remix culture and ELT: Challenges to
student voice in digital multimodal
compositions
Christoph A. Hafner
Department of English, City University of Hong Kong
http://www1.english.cityu.edu.hk/acadlit
Seminar, Department of English, Chinese University of Hong Kong,
May 2, 2014

2. Digital, multimodal composition

3. New pedagogies
…literacy pedagogy now must account for the burgeoning
variety of text forms associated with information and
multimedia technologies. This includes understanding and
competent control of representational forms that are
becoming increasingly significant in the overall
communications environment, such as visual images and
their relationship to the written word…
(New London Group, 1996, p. 61)

4. Multimodal
composition
in ELT
Selfe, 2007:
‘Multimodal
composition’
Hull & Katz,
2006:
‘Crafting an
agentive self’
Marquez-
Zenkov &
Harmon,
2007: ‘Using
photography’
Vasudevan et
al., 2010:
‘Authoring
literate
identities’
Nelson, 2006:
‘Mode,
meaning and
synaesthesia’
Hafner &
Miller, 2011;
Hafner,
forthcoming:
‘Multimodal
ensembles’
Yang, 2012:
‘Multimodal
composing’

5. Cut, copy, paste, share
Image: dogwelder (unmodified)Image: NASA

6. Copyright/plagiarism
…the issue of copyright and plagiarism may need to be
reconsidered among the community of multimodal instructional
practices. While the goal of multimodal instructional practices is to
enhance students’ ability and awareness of how a message can be
delivered alternatively or multiply, it may not be necessary to ask
students to develop every piece of multimodal semiotic resources
by themselves.
(Yang 2012, p. 235)

7. Copyright/plagiarism
…In this case, locating free multimodal resources from the
Internet, such as Creative Commons
<http://creativecommons.org/>, becomes a common act.
(Yang 2012, p. 235 cntd)

8. Copyright/plagiarism
…Although reminders and instructions about copyright issues are
often provided in multimodal practice classes, would the remix
and restructuring of these multimodal resources still be seen as a
violation of copyright policy or plagiarism? How can we
differentiate “creation?” or “new product?” and plagiarism in the
context of multimodal practices?
(Yang 2012, p. 235, cntd)

9. Remix culture

10. Remix
Remix means to take
cultural artifacts and
combine and
manipulate them into
new kinds of creative
blends (Lankshear &
Knobel, p. 22).
A digital text that builds on the prior digital texts
of others by technically editing and modifying
them in order to produce a new creative work
(Jones & Hafner, 2012, p. 198).
To combine or edit existing materials to
produce something new (Everything is a
remix, Ferguson, 2010)
The concept of Remix often
referenced in popular culture
derives from the model of music
remixes which were produced
around the late 1960s and early
1970s in New York City, an activity
with roots in Jamaica’s music
(Navas, n.d.)

11. Remix and digital media
World Wide Web redefined an electronic document as a mix of
other documents.
(Manovich, 2007)
[These RW media] remix, or quote, a wide range of ‘texts’ to
produce something new. These quotes, however, happen at
different layers. Unlike text, where the quotes follow in a single
line—such as here, where the sentence explains, ‘and then a
quote gets added’—remixed media may quote sounds over
images, or video over text, or text over sounds. The quotes thus
get mixed together. The mix creates the new creative work—
the ‘remix’.
(Lessig, 2008, p. 69).

12. Remix culture
Generally speaking, remix
culture can be defined as the
global activity consisting of
the creative and efficient
exchange of information
made possible by digital
technologies that is
supported by the practice of
cut/copy and paste… (Navas,
remixtheory.net)
A culture or society that
values re-mixing, allowing
and encouraging the
production of creative works
that build on existing creative
works of others (Jones &
Hafner, p. 199)

13. Brokeback to the Future
Endless love

14. A remix story
• ‘Charlie bit me’ uploaded by HDCYT, May 22, 2007
• ‘Charlie bit me remake’ uploaded by dzairable, Dec
27, 2007
• ‘Charlie bit me remix’ uploaded by sign543, August
14, 2008
• “charlie bit me remix” = 1180 results on YouTube,
“charlie bit me remake” = 437 results
• TV Interviews with the family
• iPhone App released by Viral Spiral

16. Texts are ‘filled with others’ words, varying
degrees of otherness or varying degrees of our
own-ness’ (Bakhtin, 1986: 89)

17. A text is just a ‘tissue of quotations’ (Barthes,
1977, p. 146)

18. Remix is an essential act of RW creativity.
(Lessig, 2008, p. 56)

19. How is such creativity evidenced in the
multimodal compositions of L2 university
students?
Does remix 1) compromise the student voice as
students slavishly copy, or 2) promote the
student voice as they creatively appropriate?

20. Digital, multimodal composition in
English for science
The multimodal composition project

21. Background and context
• University course in English for science students
– Applied Biology
– Applied Chemistry
– Applied Physics
– Architectural Studies
– Computing Mathematics
– Environmental Science and Management
– Surveying

22. English for science project
A. Digital video project
B. Written scientific
report
English for
science
project
A1. Reading/data
collection
A2. Scripting/
storyboarding
A3. Performing/
recording
A4. Editing
A5. Sharing
B2. Writing
B1. Reading/
outlining
B3. Editing/
proofreading

23. Sample topics
Dim the lights
(2013)
Taste me if you can
(2009)
Vitamin C
(2012)

24. Dim the lights

25. Remix policy

26. Voice

27. Heteroglossia/voice
• The Bakhtinian notion that all texts contain
multiple, interacting and conflicting discursive
voices, in dialogue.

28. Student voice
• “Voice as a metaphor has to do with feeling-
hearing-sensing a person behind the written
words, even if that person is just a persona
created for a particular text or a certain
reading”
(Bowden, 1999, pp. 97-98, cited in Hirvela and
Belcher, 2001)

29. Remix and generic references

30. Taste me if you can (opening)

31. Generic references
• Remixed content is largely generic in nature:
– TV display screen
– Screen layout
– CUSC label
– Programme intro with pic-in-pic and credits
– Instrumental soundtrack
• The students follow multimodal generic conventions to
evoke the genre of an investigative documentary for TV
• The voice constructed is consistent with the target genre
(scientific documentary)

32. Remix and hybridity

33. Dim the lights (methods)

34. Taste me if you can (closing)

35. Hybridity
• Remixed content can be generic or specific
– Closing credits with pic-in-pic
– Use of the Mission impossible soundtrack
– Use of students’ bodies as semiotic resources coupled with text on
screen (‘Mission Possible?!’)
• The remix brings together complementary voices: mixing genres (film
and documentary) in unexpected ways to create a humorous effect
• The students appropriate multiple voices through multiple modes to
create layers of meaning beyond the expected range within the
documentary

36. Remix and culture

37. Vitamin C (Opening 1)

38. Vitamin C (Opening 2)

39. Cultural references
• Remixed content can
– Be culturally specific
– Draw on the students’ bodies as semiotic resource
• The voice constructed is one that belongs to a
particular cultural group (HK Chinese), but is
this voice appreciated by the audience?

40. Remix and creativity

41. Dim the lights (Opening 1)

42. Dim the lights (Opening 2)

43. Editing and re-voicing
• The remixed content can be manipulated and
re-combined to varying degrees
– Small amounts versus large amounts
– Combinations of modes versus direct reproduction
– Layered combinations in multiple modes
• The student voice constructed will be more or
less creative or derivative as a result

44. Towards an interpretive framework

45. Remix strategies and multimodal
heteroglossia
APPROPRIATION OF MULTIMODAL SEMIOTIC RESOURCES
Mixing sources
‘Sourcing/mashing’
Mixing generic resources
‘Hybridity’
Mixing cultural
resources
‘Intercultural
semiosis’
Narration, text,
visuals, soundtrackFilm, documentary
Local, global
Mixing modes
‘Layering’
Student, other

46. Creativity?

47. Remix and the student voice
• Remix can be strategically used to promote new
and surprising kinds of meaning, consistent with
the overall message of the students
• Remix can also be mis-used as a shortcut that
compromises the message of the students:
– A lack of original sourcing
– A lack of layering
– A lack of hybridity
– A lack of intercultural semiosis
– A lack of labour and craft

48. Remix in digital multimodal
composition
Accepting,
legitimating
Guiding
Limiting
Using,
leveraging

49. Thank you
http://www1.english.cityu.edu.hk/acadlit