To get a more through understanding of Selfe’s text, one must know the terms she uses. One of these terms is rhetorical sovereignty. This a very academic term that can be hard to understand. She defines rhetorical sovereignty as, “the rights and responsibilities that students have to identify their own communicative needs and to represent their own identities, to select the right tools for the communicative contexts within which they operate, and to think critically and carefully about the meaning that they and others compose.” To simplify, one can think of it as the idea that a student (of any kind) should have to ability to chose the way of learning that fits their context—whether that be aurally, visually, or any other medium. This is an important concept for writers to understand because we must chose which medium to communicate through. Taking into consideration the preferences of our audience may help us communicate more effectively.

Another concept that readers of Selfe’s text should understand is aural composition modalities. Again, this a complicated academic term that is harder to understand on the surface. However, this one can easily be broken down: aural, meaning by nature of sound; composition, meaning to create a communication: and modalities, meaning various modes or mediums. So, put together, aural composition modalities are basically the various ways of communicating via sound. Selfe says that “speech, music, (and) sound” are modalities of aural composition, which makes sense given the definition. This is necessary for writers to understand because aural composition is becoming increasingly important in the modern world; videos, audioclips, podcasts, and the like are becoming essential educational and communicative tools. Having a firm grasp on the various ways one can communicate via sound will only further their ability to work in the modern age.

One final term readers should understand is digital. Though this word seems simple, it can be hard to define. A technical definition might look something like information coded via 1s and 0s, but this isn’t a practical definition. It’s easier to think of digital in terms of what it is in our world. So, things like Microsoft Word, Facebook, Google, videos, recordings, instant messaging, Email—these are all digital. More importantly though is that, according to Selfe, digital mediums “have provided routes for the increasing numbers of communications that now cross geopolitical, cultural, and linguistic borders, and because of this situation, the texts exchanged within such networks often assume hybrid forms that take advantage of multiple semiotic channels.” This quote describes why understanding digital media is important to writers; our modern age has made texts multimodal affairs that require multiple literacies, and to be an effective writer in 2020, one must understand the nature of these modalities.