Blog #2 Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing

 George, Diana. "From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing." College Composition and Communication. 54.1 (2002):11-39. 18 Sept. 2011. Web. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/1512100 .>

George’s purpose in this article is to examine the possibilities of resituating and producing visual forms of communication in the composition classroom. She argues that the debate over the use of the visual in the classroom in and of itself has limited the types of assignments that we may “imagine” for composition. She proposes that understanding the complexities of visual communication is going to be key to moving beyond the current expectations, assumptions and usages of the visual in the writing classroom. First, she gives an historical overview of the attention (or lack thereof) to the visual in writing/composition studies. In her treatment of the history, she examines the idea that we hold verbal to be high culture and the visual to be low culture (hence the back seat it’s taken). Throughout the last 50 years of discussion and integration of visual literacy in the writing classroom (from television to mass media studies), the visual has taken a supporting role to the verbal. It has acted as a catalyst for reaching the ultimate goal of verbal literacy (whether written or spoken): pictures are writing prompts. Ultimately, George proposes that this concept needs to change. The verbal and the visual needs to be considered on equal footing. In the end, George brings in the call made by others for an expanding definition of composition in order to support her idea that design should be a consideration in the writing classroom. Finally, she examines her own use of design in the classroom by defining, examining, and giving student productions of visual arguments.

This article is important because it asks the field to re-examine the back seat that the visual has taken to the verbal in the composition classrooms over the last 50 years. It suggests that students should be designing the visual in order to understand the complexities of it (not just writing about it), and the definition of compositions should be expanded (something that has been suggested by others, but it supports her statement). The article is useful and still relevant because many textbooks treat the visual the same way. The textbooks I’ve been required to use for my courses all “attend” the visual-but only as a stepping stone to verbal perfection. The arguments made can be used to support new media integration into the classroom, but in a bigger sense redefine composition. Particularly the section that analyzes visual argument can be used to support an argument for allowing students to make arguments in other ways.

Blog #1 Verbal & Visual Literacy

Hobbs, Catherine L. "Learning from the Past: Verbal and Visual Literacy in Early Modern Rhetoric and Writing Pedagogy." Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World. Ed. Carolyn Handa. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. 55-70. Print.

In this article, Catherine Hobb’s argues that the visual is and always has been directly connected to the verbal. That said, it is necessary to continue to both teach and study visual literacy.  By tracing the evolution of the visual in rhetorical studies and teaching, she inexorably ties the study of rhetoric and literacy to the visual-we have an incomplete study of rhetoric if we only continue to study and teach the verbal. The connection is made between the visual and several areas of both theoretical study, teaching, and practical use: the creation of ethos through the visual, the visual as a basis for the judicial system, the rhetorical topics of “time and place” reflected in the visual, the art of memory, the creation or gain of knowledge through observation, language origination and the visual, the ambiguity of vision (therefore the need for interpretation). The article is separated into four distinct era’s of rhetoric/study (“Ancient Arts,” “Medieval and Renaissance Images,” “Ocularism in the Enlightenment” and “Description in Modernity”) and pulling from what the primary rhetoricians, philosophers and teachers (Aristotle, Plato, Bacon, Newton, Locke, Gassendi, Blair, etc.) of that era said and did in regard to the visual. The final section of the article examines the relationship between the visual and the verbal by explaining both the differences and how they translate to each other. Today, it’s something we can no longer let sit on the back burner as the two have come together in the form of “new media.” We cannot/should not separate the visual from the verbal, nor we privilege one over the other.

This article is useful in the sense that understanding the way a specific concept has been treated throughout history is useful. She takes an approach in her article that is similar to the one taken in this class-trace the idea through the major figures that studied in. Many times, we see authors use history to shy away from change: it’s always been done this way, etc. However, this author is able to use the history of the visual/verbal in order to call attention to the issue of visual literacy that is under debate today. I think she has a good point. We have, as a discipline, focused very heavily on the attendance to the verbal, and assuming that the visual is self-explanatory or concrete. This is particularly helpful to those who plan to study “new media” because new media involves the melding of the image, the verbal and the text.