English 680V: Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age (Purdue)

Topic

Visual Literacy

Author of This Guide

Jessica Clark

Reading/Citation Information

George, Diana. "From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing." College Composition and Communication 54.1 (September 2002): 11-39.

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Article Abstract

"From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing." Diana George

Diana George claims that how we think about visual literacy and teaching writing limits the kinds and the scope of our composition assignments. This limitation arises because we continue to only ask our students to be critics instead of producers of the visual. George also addresses the confusion about the definitions of visual communication, visual rhetoric and the visual. This confusion leads to a tension between written and visual communication, but resolving this confusion and tension is not one of George’s goals for this particular article. Her intentions are to examine the results of what happens when the visual is consciously used in the classroom as something for students not only to analyze but also to produce.

To make her argument, George offers an historical account of how visual literacy has been perceived and taught in English classrooms since the 1940s. This history shows that the reason many have been and still are reluctant to ask students to produce visual instead of written communication is that they connect writing to high culture and the visual to low culture.

Analysis

I became interested in using the visual in my composition classroom because of Diana George and John Trimbur’s text Reading Culture. This text contains many useful readings and assignments that ask students to analyze different forms of visual communication. Before I began using this text, however, I had little experience with writing assignments that included the visual in any way. Subsequently, I was uncomfortable with these assignments, at first, but I eventually began to catch on. I had been analyzing literature for years. Surely, I could transfer some of that knowledge of analysis to the visual.

Now as an instructor of professional writing, I realize that I am also uncomfortable producing visuals and teaching others to produce visuals for their projects. When I began reading George’s article in CCCs, I was impressed but leery of the idea of asking students to produce visual arguments since I was only familiar with the analysis of the visual-a charge she levels at many composition instructors; however, she makes an effective argument, especially for novices like me, by using examples of assignments that call for visual arguments and examples of what students produce in response to these assignments. These specific examples give me a better understanding of how I might create an assignment for a visual argument. I think George also describes many sources that could be useful for someone interested in becoming more visually literate and teaching visual literacy in composition classrooms.

Although George does make a convincing argument for allowing students to produce as well as analyze visuals in response to composition assignments, I fear that many within the English Department and other disciplines across the university might not understand the how these kinds of assignments are relevant to composition. George encountered a similar reaction from fellow faculty members who thought that the only purpose of her visual argument assignments was to offer students "interesting projects" (28-9). Those who view introductory composition as course designed to teach writing in a manner that will serve other disciplines might be especially resistant. We need to be able to justify how the incorporation of visual communication into composition classrooms is becoming as important to our students' education as teaching them how to produce effective written texts. We may also have to address the issue of how many in our society continue to associate and privilege high culture with written text while equating visual communication with low culture which, in turn, decreases the important of teaching the visual.

Questions for Discussion

1. Do you require any assignments that ask students to analyze and/or produce visual forms of communication? Why or why not?
2. For those who do use visual communication as part of composition assignments, can you recommend any particular texts or strategies that have worked well for you?
3. How do we evaluate assignments that require visual instead of written products?
4. do you thnk that the high culture=written communication versus low culture=visual communication dichotomy still exists in the university? If so, then why and what can we do to resolve this split? Or, should we try to resolve it?
5. Can you suggest arguments we might make to the rest of the university and the general public to justify asking our students to create visual instead of written texts?

Expansion Question

1. Suppose that the issue is not really about how to most effectively incorporate visual communication into the composition classroom. Suppose that it's something less obvious, more complex. What IS the real issue?

Additional References and Resources

Print

• Brunner, Cornelia and William Tally. "Teaching Visual Literacy." Electronic Learning 14 (1994): 16-17.
• Handa, Carolyn. "Digital Literacy and Rhetoric: A Selected Bibliography." Computers and Composition 18 (2001): 195-202.
• Horton, William. "Visual Literacy: Going Beyond Words in Technical Communications." Technical Communication 39(1992): 447-51.
• .... "Visual Thinking and Creativity." Technical Communication 39 (1992): 685-9.
• Messaris, Paul. Visual Literacy: Image, Mind & Reality. San Francisco:Westview Press, 1994.
• Rose Gillian. Visual Methodologies. London: Sage Publications, 2001.
• Smith, C. Zoe and Andrew Mendelson. "Visual Communication Education: Cause for Concern or Bright Future." Journalism and Mass Communication Educator 51 (1996): 66-73.
• Wilde, Judith and Richard Wilde. Visual Literacy. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 2000.