Writing in the Visual Age - Research Paper Example

? 27 June Writing in the visual age: Visual communication also known as visual rhetoric is generally considered to be quite a recent concept identifying how powerfully visual images could add meaning to the communication or deftly lend depth or significance to a certain argument in comparison to aural or verbal messages. While some emphasize the need to essentially teach rhetorical analysis of images to the students of a writing class, others advocate the importance of aural or textual messages by claiming that no matter how skillfully designed, pictures or images should not be considered to be more capable both emotionally and informatively in comparison to words. Those favoring the newly introduced development of visual rhetoric stress on the importance of photographs and deem them as elements significantly capable of providing more obvious evidence to the public. This paper is basically an attempt to explain why visual rhetoric should be taught as part of a writing class while also acknowledging the opposing ideas put forward by critics weighing the credibility of visual rhetoric in a writing class. This paper will also include some suggestions about how effective actions could be made to enhance the position and validity of visual rhetoric in context of composition studies. This is important because though some people might be able to institute change on some levels, it again leaves many educationists and teachers to deal with depressing frustration when visual communication fails to stick for long. In an attempt to justify the position of visual rhetoric or visual literacy in a writing classroom, I argue that huge benefits can be obtained from visual images considering the rich imagination displayed by many students as identified in the research study by George which contains examples of how much more can be accomplished by telling students about the role played by visual communication in a writing class. One such example explains how Deirdre Johns, a teacher practically demonstrating the effect of visual rhetoric, re-creates the Congo Free State Flag and tells her class how she learned about the logic behind the flag’s design during her research. In an attempt to visually demonstrate how Europe brought the light of literacy and humanity to the dark land of Congo, she filled the star in the flag with very meaningful images of slavery and explorers and the blue field around it with several though-provoking and informative images of old African art. Such useful incorporation of visual rhetoric not only must have delivered more inspirational, interesting, informative, and emotional lesson to the class but it also must have made the whole class remember the logic behind the flag’s design for a longer period. This is understandable as in contrast to a teacher who likes to simply stand behind the rostrum sticking to very conventional and orthodox teaching strategies is certainly much less likely to convey a deeper understanding of a subject to his/her students than a teacher who prefers to institute change and benefit from strategies like using visual rhetoric to demonstrate the meaning and logic behind a concept. Majority of the researchers at the Wharton School of Business concluded after comparing verbal presentations to visual presentations that “presenters who combined visual and verbal components were more persuasive” (MacroVU, Inc.). Students are much more likely to reason with a complex dilemma which might be puzzling them when teachers feel motivated to visually explain the confusing parts which is why visual rhetoric should be taught as part of a writing class. It is claimed by Williams in support of the visual mode of communication that this mode literally challenges the people to both see and perceive an image in many different new ways unlike verbal or textual messages (18). Visual communication is the name of a very reasonable and self-evident strategy which should not be underestimated. The research stresses that even journals cannot address an issue in the same way visual images can many times as they are sensory expressions which add much more meaning, depth, and interest to a subject. “Our students have a much richer imagination for what we might accomplish with the visual than our journals have yet to address” (George 12). Researchers identify that not only do the colorful images increase the willingness to read by 80% but they also “positively affect motivation and participation to the same degree” (Green). In addition to polishing and refining the students’ imagination skills as discussed above, visual rhetoric holds many other benefits too like enhancing the cognition skills. Moreover, colorful images mean more than simple words usage as color reportedly “accounts for 60% of acceptance or rejection of an object” (Walker). While the aim of composition teaching is two-fold like making the students able to analyze different elements of written arguments first and later writing such persuasive arguments themselves, including instruction in visual rhetoric in the curriculum also benefits the students in two ways. If on one hand, students become more “sophisticated, analytic, and thoughtful reader-interpreters of images”, then on other hand they learn myriad ways to “create and/or deploy visual arguments in their own work” (Turner). In this way, cognition skills are refined when visual pedagogy enable the students to thoughtfully interpret images in many different ways which is why visual rhetoric should be considered a part of a teaching class. It is also claimed by educational researchers that as much as 83% of human learning occurs visually (U.S. Department of Labor). The foundation of visual teaching is certainly largely based on enabling the students to form a visual argument with the help of persuasive visual images. Making students in a composition class acknowledge the benefit of comparing images to text and understand the credibility of visual rhetoric in addition to written texts certainly remains a wise strategy which should be followed by the teachers. It is important to perceive visual rhetoric as part of a writing class as it is a very important strategy of persuasion with the help of which the audience could be persuaded more and at a faster rate in comparison to written or aural messages. People are always much more likely to feel captivated by the brilliant images than written text and remember them as skillfully prepared images form highly persuasive stuff and a sure key to win public’s attention in a swift manner. What definitely could be considered worth mentioning is the fact that reliance should not be reserved to images alone rather the skill lies in effectively collaborating images with written text. This is the main requirement of analyzing visual rhetoric that the students should be made able to both acknowledge myriad ways the images work by themselves in order to enhance meaning and couple those images with written document and this art of analysis should be made an important component of teaching a writing class. It is also important to acknowledge the take of the critics to this subject of embracing visual communication in the classrooms. Though the benefits obtained from visual communication are self-evident, acknowledging what we have lost in the process of embracing visual communication according to rhetorical critics is also worth the effort. Some critics who suggest that visual communication should not be made a part of a writing class claim that though visual rhetoric is an explicit form of persuasion, still it falls short of making clear like what exactly makes images more special in comparison to words or other means of communication like aural messages. In contrast, research suggests that “for many, understanding of the world is being accomplished, not through words, but by reading images” (Lester). It is argued by opponents of visual rhetoric that it should not be made an important element of curriculum in a composition class because such a practice might make the students depend less on the persuasive power offered by written arguments. They might depend exclusively on analyzing visual images first and use all their efforts in interpreting and creating visual arguments themselves afterwards. The conventional practice of writing persuasive arguments might get entirely lost in the process of teaching visual communication as part of a writing class. The critics also suggest that even the basic ideas put forward by those favoring visual communication on a bigger scale as compared to written or aural communication are highly debatable and equivocal like pictures are more persuasive than words and provide more credible and informative evidence than words. Messaris (211) identifies in his research study that the answer to the question if the combination of written and visual communication has any negative consequences or not really depends on what one expects the outcomes of such a combination to be. The practice of teaching visual rhetoric as part of a writing class or combining visual images and written text can have negative consequences if one expects the study of visual rhetoric to “result in broader theoretical conclusions about the power of images” (Messaris 211). This means that the critics of visual rhetoric do not agree to judging visual images and written text on an equal basis as they think that images are not powerful enough to form more persuasive arguments and cannot develop broader theoretical conclusions either. On the other hand, if one expects the outcome to simply clarify that rhetorical analysis, which is the goal of both visual and composition pedagogy, can be applied to images just as productively and meaningfully as it is applied to words, then including instruction in visual rhetoric in the curriculum of a composition class might not have any negative consequences and nothing could be lost as a result. It is true that images are capable of adding much more informative meaning to the arguments when incorporated artfully in the text than words alone are. This makes the arguments much more interesting, meaningful, and memorable eventually. “One layer of meaning makes the argument; the other layer of meaning makes the argument memorable” (Messaris 214). The argument of this paper that images can be much more emotional than words in some cases sets the foundation of the differences between these two modes of communication. While it is discussed above in the paper that images are capable of arousing emotions when words simply convey information, opponents argue that it all depends on the way words are actually used by those constructing a persuasive argument. If the motive of a person is to convey more meaning and information through images, less attraction might be gained by words and if an argument is written by using a very engaging and powerful writing style, more benefits could be gained from words than another argument which depends heavily on images. The critics of visual rhetoric argue that two modes of communication should not be compared and more importance should not be granted to images as the history of verbal oratory is fraught with speeches that are as emotionally arousing as any visual image (Messaris 216). This argument suggests that any mode of communication is equally capable of stirring emotions and winning attention as long as they are effectively used. Opponents also argue that though the idea of visual communication being more effective at stirring emotions than language could be considered true but it has certain limitations to it. Visual communication might be more emotional than words “but only to the extent that it has a wider arsenal of emotional devices at its disposal” (Messaris 218). In contrast, research also suggests that “images possess certain means of eliciting emotion that are not available to verbal language” (Freedberg and Gallese 201) which adds validity to the argument of this paper that images are more capable of implicitly portraying emotions and feelings than words or other modes of communication are. This is exactly why visual rhetoric should be taught as part of a writing class where students should be encouraged to couple their textual arguments with meaningful images. Though the history of textual and aural modes of communication might be rich and used as a strong point by the critics of visual rhetoric, it remains true that visual communication has provided the English composition teachers with the means to develop meaningful communication that goes far beyond the words (Selfe, cited in George 31). Therefore, visual communication should be essentially used by the teachers and considered as an important part of the curriculum in order to make the writing students acknowledge and explore meaning in a broader context. Teaching visual rhetoric as part of a writing class or composition studies can really be extremely challenging and the question if it should be taught as part of the composition studies forms a highly debated subject. It is argued by Williams that the visual mode of communication should now be acknowledged by writing teachers as evident “part of what it means to be literate” (27). There is an undeniable need to use visual mode of communication in a writing class in a frequent way and teachers should know the actions to be taken in this regard. There exist many implications of using visual rhetoric in a writing class put forward by researchers. According to one such implication, it remains the duty and obligation of the writing teachers to inculcate visual literacy in their students with the help of visual communication in such a way that they eventually develop the ability to both analyze and construct the representational arguments around them (Williams 27). Another idea for usefully incorporating visual communication in a writing class could be formed by motivating the students. This can be effective as motivation could help the students acknowledge the intensity of the meaning which could be added by coupling skillfully designed images with writing. Also by introducing to the students images which both explore the background and identify the logic of that subject, the teachers of English composition could make the students try to connect the meaning flowing from those images with the concept evident in the textual document to check if they match or not. In this way they feel motivated to think more and explore certain things by themselves during the learning process which polishes the thinking skills. Summing up, this much becomes clear from the above discussion that visual images should essentially be deemed as a useful strategy which can help apply more meaning and credibility to the arguments with the help of which more people can be persuaded as interest is developed. Visual rhetoric is a very credible and self-evident persuasive strategy with the help of which teachers can enable the students to discern and analyze different elements in an image before constructing persuasive arguments themselves. No matter what the opponents might suggest, the benefits gained from this strategy only identify that visual images turn out to be perfect sensory expressions of different ideas or concepts and help in deeper understanding when combined effectively with the written text. However, though visual rhetoric is considered to be a highly plausible, patently obvious, and sure-bet kind of a strategy, it still fails to be implemented appropriately in a composition classroom and this happens because just being able to institute a change like using visual rhetoric to teach a writing class never really turns out to be enough as actually knowing how to handle the pressures and problems which might come along the process on a longer-lasting basis is more important. Works cited: Freedberg, David, and Gallese, Vittorio. “Motion, Emotion, and Empathy in Esthetic Experience.” TRENDS in Cognitive Science 11(2007): 197-203. Print. George, Diana. “From Analysis to Design: Visual Communication in the Teaching of Writing.” College Composition and Communication 54 (2002): 11-39. Print. Green, Ronald E. “The Persuasive Properties of Color.” Marketing Communications (October 1989). Print. Lester, Paul Martin. “Syntactic Theory of Visual Communication.” California State University at Fullerton, 1994–1996. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. MacroVU, Inc. “Effectiveness of Visual Language Presentations.” n.d. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. Messaris, Paul. “What’s Visual about ‘‘Visual Rhetoric’’?” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95 (2009): 210-223. Print. Turner, Tim. “Guide to Teaching Visual Rhetoric.” n.d. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. U.S. Department of Labor. “Presenting Effective Presentations with Visual Aids.” OSHA Office of Training and Education, May. 1996. Web. 27 Jun. 2012. Walker, Morton. The Power of Color. Avery Publishing Group, 1993. Print. Williams, Sean D. “Composition Meets Visual Communication.” LORE (2005): 17-28. Print. Read More