Brian Kennedy: Need for Visual Literacy

Children draw upon their use of text everyday Flint, Kitson, Lowe, & Shaw, 2014 specify “In order to read proficiently readers need to develop their repertoire of practices for interacting with text.” As suggested in Luke and Freebody’s Code breaking, children use of text emphasise on; decoding and encoding the codes, symbols and conventions of written, spoken, visual

Oxford University Press. Sadoski, M. and Paivio, A., 2013. Imagery and text: A dual coding theory of reading and writing.

Over the past few decades, enhancements in the visual fields have greatly improved, giving weight on the importance of visual material in text. Something that is more visually stimulating can usually make a text more convincing or credible. The term “seeing is believing” proves this fact. As humans, we tend to believe something if we can actually see it, which is why Jay David Bolter has referred to this phenomenon of the changed role of text and graphics as the “visual culture” in his book Writing Space. “Mere words no longer seemed adequate; they had to share their space with images.” (Bolter, 69).

Poverty and children living in third world countries are presented the reader with the help of language techniques such as sensory and imagery. Sensory is used to educate the reader on these issues as it helps the reader visualize the image and almost physically use all or some of the five senses. Some examples of sensory language are when Raphael describes

Distinctively visual texts aim to manipulate the we perceive images critically affecting our interpretation of events and people we meet in our lives. Distinctively visual techniques are utilised in the ‘Run Lola Run’ directed by Tom Tykwer and the picture book ‘Red Tree’ written by Sean Tan. The way the distinctively visual is shown throughout these texts is through the use of motifs, different angle shots, colours, lighting and reading paths. These techniques aim to show the important themes in both texts such as time, hope and love.

Distinctively visual texts aim to manipulate the way we explore and interpret the images we see, thus affecting the way we make interpretations of the experiences we encounter and allows us to embody newfound various perspectives of the world.

In Scott McCloud 's graphic essay, "Show and Tell," he explains how words and images work together in the form of comics to convey a message. An example where he demonstrates this is during the first 16 slides. Without the use of images, the reader would not know what 's going on because the boy is not specific in his dialogue. Without the use of words, the reader would have no context about what 's going on in the pictures. A great analogy that McCloud uses on page 745 is that words and images are like dancers. He explains how both partners work together and support each other 's strengths so that they can be presented well as a

I have learnt that as adults, we already have the skills for reading but using illustrations, sounds and words is a multimodality tool. I tend not to use these different strategies and I think at first, this made my writing in Storybird difficult. I had plenty of ideas but had trouble finding images. I learnt children have far more of a free flowing attitude than adults do, and it took me a while to focus on writing around the images rather than finding an image to match my writing. Children already know much about multimodal texts from their home experiences. As teaching assistant’s it is our responsibility to build on these experiences and the children’s knowledge, recognising the relationships between different modes and use this in our teaching. The future of reading and writing is interwoven with the future of digital technology (UKLA 2005).

“People only see what they are prepared to see” is a famous quote by Ralph Waldo. This quote emphasises the fact that the purpose of a text can often be unnoticed and misinterpreted by the viewer. Many people only have a limited world experience, and it’s the Distinctly Visual feature of a text which allows the viewer to gain a better understanding. Distinctly Visual texts use a combination of techniques to create and shape an audience’s point of view or interpretation, and visualising a text requires the responder to interpret all of the images presented.

Among the problematics that guide my understanding of the possibility of visual rhetorics are three. Each might be considered to exists within/bring together the nexus of history, images, and power. This nexus helps to form a framework for an economy of verbal and visual images that, in turn, might become the fabric of a visual rhetorics. The first is what I want to call the "enigma of unrepresentability." The second is that images become especially important for us when they can be read as "self-reflexive." Finally, the third, is the "ideological privileging" of the visual that renders its apparatus, quite literally, hard to "see." Let me briefly elaborate on each.

In the essay written by Cynthia Hahn, the principal concern is to demonstrate how images produced to illustrate texts can also enlighten meaning.

Both essays focus on children's ability to blend visual drawings and writing and how they interact with one another. In some classrooms young children are being urged to see drawing and writing separately rather than as a unified system of meaning making. Thomas Newkirk makes us think about how pictures relate to language in written texts, and Alexie Sherman explains how he had the help from comic books (graphic novels) and watching his dad's passion for reading help (sponsor) him want to learn how to read. They both believe that visual images communicate meaning. Its not just about the design and creativity but also about how culture and meaning are reflected, communicated and altered by images. This is visual literacy, it involves all the

Visuality, defined in a most straight forward way, is the quality or state of being visual or a mental image or picture relates to the process of glimpsing with the eyes. Even though the term encompasses a broad array of explanation and it conveys different things to different people, it relates with the prism with which people construe the world. It applies to both tangible and intangible and depending on one’s ability to exploit the visual senses. Visuality plays an integral role as a cultural tool in the society. In the contemporary context, it refers to the manner in which people see and how they are seen. However, on numerous occasions, mentioning of the word elucidates the idea of construing contents via media

Even before a young child can read or write they learn the alphabet as the beginning of interpreting the process of reading and writing. Equally a small child can generally recognise popular signs and symbols, such as the “M” for McDonalds or the Coke symbol before they can read. Just as society associates signs and symbols with various meanings, artists convey their thinking, beliefs and feelings to the audience through their works. This can be described as visual language or how images are used to communicate messages. This communication is vital to

Visual communication with graphs and charts usually reinforces written communication, and can in many case replace written communication altogether. As the adage goes “a picture is worth a thousand words,” such visual communication is more powerful than verbal and nonverbal communication on many occasions. Technological developments have made expressing visual communications much easier than