Richards, Anne R. “Music, Transtextuality, and the World Wide Web."

Richards, Anne R. “Music, Transtextuality, and the World Wide Web." Technical Communication Quarterly 18.2 (2009): 188-207. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. Web. 05 Oct. 2009.

Richards argues that the verbal and visual medium of the WWW are transtextual in nature. She proposes a new argument – the aurality of all hypermedia. Richards acknowledges the difference between traditional approaches to the WWW and the issues of interactivity and usability in modern times. She predicts that the emergence of music will become mainstream in the development of websites – often sound was marginalized. However, with new interactive capabilities, the WWW is able to incorporate various mediums in complex ways. Richards states, “I attempt to expand current constructions of the Web from that of a dialogue between verbal and visual elements, into that of a conversation among verbal, visual, and aural elements” (188). Critical analysis of the ways audiences viewed words and images have benefited the web designer. Now, the designers will need to analyze critically how audiences will construct meaning from what they hear.

This article is significant because Richards acknowledges a new layer in visual design – words, images, and music. Like Hocks, Richards acknowledges the verbal and visual aspects of web design but adds the aural component as well. Similar to Forlizzi and Lebbon, she highlights the differences between traditional issues in hypertext and those of present times. In addition, Richards highlights Sui’s suggestion for the shift to the aural – one being the presence of “feminist methodologies” (190). In summary, this article urges the web designer to develop an appreciation for the aurality of web sites because there is an increasing expectation for sound in multimedia (207).

Richards’s research is thought provoking. She highlights issues related to aurality – tone, volume, pitch, rhythm, velocity, etc. The research is methodical and systematic – asking the necessary questions from various aspects. She combines charts, tables, and rhetorical questions. She hypothesizes what a technical communicator should find when analyzing multimodal texts, but she acknowledges that multimodal texts have the potential to generate multiple meanings with a wide range of effects (193). By assessing multiple genres of music, Richards adds ethos by addressing characteristics of music from African American spirituals to classical music to Bluegrass.