User:Marsolf/sandbox

The field of composition studies has recently returned its attention to visual rhetoric. In an increasingly visual society, proponents of visual rhetoric in composition classes suggest that increased literacy requires writing and visual communication skills. Visual communication skills relate to an understanding of the mediated nature of all communication, especially to an awareness of the act of representation. Visual rhetoric can be utilized in a composition classroom to assist with writing and rhetoric development.Visual rhetoric has gained more notoriety as more recent scholarly work started exploring alternative media forms that include graphics, screen design, and other hybrid visual representations that does not privilege print culture and conventions. In an age of image abundance, attention has converged to the importance of visual rhetoric for writers and their composing process. The interactional and commonly hybrid nature of cyber spaces that usually mixes print text and visual images unable some detachment of them as isolated constructs, and scholarship has claimed that especially in virtual spaces where print text and visuals are usually combined, there is no place either for emphasizing one mode over another.

In relation to visual rhetoric, the composition field positions itself, more broadly, into challenging reductive definitions of composing and rhetoric that gravitate toward verbal communication only. Furthermore, acknowledging that touching upon rhetorical processes/decisions that affect a visual design, it calls attention to composition scholars of the function that arrangement of images and words visual play out in writing practices, emphasizing the complex relationship between verbal and visual meanings. How meaning-making process functions fluctuates among a variety of entry points that are non-verbal (imagery) and proponents of visual rhetoric want to deconstruct binaries that see visual and verbal texts (their analysis, production, and ideology) as separated, and strengthening the relation between writing/composing and rhetorical analysis. For example, sequential narrative assignments were well received by students as an easier alternative to rigid structures of traditional academic essays. The way people communicate and share information today are all interwoven: many modes beyond verbal modes (speaking or writing) are brought to the fore.

Scholarship has highlighted that the way students compose and interpret texts are directly related to the ideologies and assumptions they hold and how the way their experiences are culturally and historically situated. Working towards raising students’ awareness of the impact their diverse backgrounds have on their rhetorical choices, teachers will be contributing to forming more conscious and perceptive consumers and composers. Visual rhetoric, especially in digital environments, is also aligned with the notion of a commitment to diversity as students become designers, invoking a rhetoric that attends to abilities encopassing other definitions of literacy beyond verbal reading and writing. In the process of meaning-making and thus composing, students shuffle among other literacies, such as visual, spatial, aural, gestural that can be connected to their rhetorical choices when analyzing visuals and/or when designing them. These imagery representations students receive or deliver would emerge from their views and knowledges within their diverse contexts and various identities. creating an arena for discussions on political, historical social and cultural impact behind those choices to take place.

Analyzing visuals and their power to convey messages is central to incorporating visual rhetoric within the digital era as nuances of choices regarding audience, purpose and genre can be analyzed within a single frame and the rationale behind designers’ rhetorical choices can be revealed and analyzed by how the elements of visuals play out altogether. The power of imagery, iconic photographs, for instance, can potentially generate actions in a global scale. Rhetorical choices carry great significance that surpass reinforcement of the written text. Each choice, be font, color, layout, represents a different message that author wants to portray for the audience. Pedagogical applications of visual rhetoric have then a twofold aim: it can teach students to ‘read’ and critique the rhetorical moves and purposes within and behind certain visual representations, such as an analysis of  multimodal text. It can also enable writers and designers to process their own rhetorical choices as they design their own visuals, bringing to their process aspects of their multiple social-cultural backgrounds as their lived experiences become starting points for knowledge construction.

Feedback from Dr. Vetter
Hello

Great start here. I think what might help me a little in terms of feedback is to better understand where in the current article you are planning to put this information. Can you make section headings to signal that? Is your plan to put all of this content under Related Studies - Composition? That's what it seems like since you begin with that paragraph. However, I think that edit would really create an imbalance between how much information is provided as it relates to composition. Here's my recommendation

Do some work on the article Visual rhetoric and composition. This is the article that section is drawing from. You can split up some of your content that fits better in visual rhetoric and add it to that page and then use the content you have that relates more closely to composition/teaching in the visual rhetoric article. This way, you can maintain a balance in the visual rhetoric article in terms of how much attention is paid to composition vs other relevant fields (communication for instance).

Some additional points:


 * 1) Make sure that your footnotes are always placed immediately after the end punctuation (period).

Good work overall, and I'm happy to meet with you to split up some of this content into more organized sections/articles.

-Dr. Vetter