Visualizing Images in Writing : Pedagogical and Professional Implications of Image Analysis

Abstract

A recent and growing discussion among rhetoric and composition scholars has emerged surrounding the ways in which images influence the evolving nature of contemporary text. For the most part, scholars in the field agree that images now play a questionable role in multimodal textual production. What is less agreed upon, however, is what we mean when we say "image" or "visual," Is it static or moving? Representational? Does it include typefaces/words, since they, too, are "seen" and have a "visual" component? What is even less agreed upon or even understood is what the process of working with images and texts requires of students. And while many composition teachers are beginning to use images as part of their teaching practice, very few offer legitimate theoretical or practical explanations as to why they are doing it. The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive research is to offer a pedagogical frame to use image analysis in the first-year writing classroom. To do this, it uses a Grounded Theory approach to investigate students' perceptions of ways in which visuals helped them think in more sophisticated ways throughout a first-year writing course at a large, public university. By modifying the common syllabus of a first-year writing course, a four week visual analysis unit was added to the beginning of the course in order to introduce students to the basic principles of semiotic, social semiotic, and visual cultural theory in order to better understand the production of visual rhetoric. Students wrote weekly reflective essays about what they thought they learned from visual analysis. This project used those reflective essays as subject data and coded each reflection for specific articulations of how image analysis helped the student think about topics in new ways. The findings suggest three taxonomies: visuals helped students develop situated knowledge, use of metaphor, and inventional practices.