Whereas the department faculty and graduate students have structured expectations regarding print assignments (i.e. a 20- to 25-page academic manuscript suitable for publication in a scholarly journal as a culminating project), no similar culture has yet emerged within our department regarding new media assignments. Based on this perception, I examined the selected interview for keywords and evaluated (to the best of my ability, given the limited length) the consultant’s personal semantic network (PSN) as discussed by Claudia Strauss (2005).

Strauss explains that cultural keywords are often repeated and express an important meaning. She contends, “A keyword isn’t just any old word. Articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and so on will rarely express important meanings; a cultural keyword is likely to be a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb. Furthermore, it should be a word that has some expressive importance” (205).

Such keywords are helpful in examining a consultant’s PSN. Using Strauss’ assumption of contiguity, when topic B follows topic A in an extended comment they are linked in that speaker’s PSN (208). In addition to tracing associative links, she suggests that it also is helpful to examine the speaker’s “voice” to ensure a connection. Strauss takes her concept of voice from Bahktin “who uses it to mean the characteristic verbal expression or a personality and point of view” and offers keywords, phrases, metaphorical imagery, sentence structure and emotional tone as indicators of that voice (209).

Strauss suggests evaluating responses using three criteria to further evaluate how important a schema is within the PSN:

1. strong versus weak associations (strongly associated ideas are mentioned repeatedly and usually without prompting from the interviewer)
2. self-relevant versus non-self-relevant associations (self-relevant associations are tied to the person’s self image)
3. associations with emotional and motivational hot spots (ideas connected to hot spots are expressed with strong emotions, trigger powerful memories, and often are associated with nonroutine goals speakers have pursued) (209)

Developing genre & reluctant culture • Personal Semantic Networks • Interview findings • Works cited • Home