D. George's From analysis to design--Annotated Bib Entry #1

George, D. (2002). From analysis to design: Visual communication in the teaching of writing. College composition and communication, 54(1), 11-39. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1512100

In this article, D. George examines how the terms scholars use when debating visual literacy and the teaching of writing limit the types of assignments we might create in composition courses. George argues that understanding "how very complicated and sophisticated is visual communication to students who have grown up in what by all accounts is an aggressively visual culture” (p. 15) is crucial to addressing multiliteracy skills for 21st-century learners.

In order to understand this complex relationship between visual and verbal communication, George traces the role of the visual in the writing classroom. Beginning with the Dick and Jane stories of the 1950s which highlighted the importance of “reading” not only linguistic text but also visuals, George explains how visuals became a subject of analysis about which students could write. Situating visuals as objects to further the writing process, according to George, was furthered by the popularity of television in the 1960s. Trying to establish a relevant connection between culture and writing, students’ TV shows inspired image-as-prompt writing. Over time, changes in print and new media have foregrounded a more complex relationship between the verbal and visual than is implied by situating visuals as subjects for written analysis. Rarely, however, have writing instructors responded to this new understand by encouraging students to “become producers rather than receivers or victims of mass media, especially visual media” (p. 18).  

George claims that this response is necessary given the changing nature of composition, hypothesizing that the current media revolution of graphic design, electronic texts, and web technologies will prove more challenging than that of the 1950s and 0960s. To further this response, George builds on the New London Group’s call for a pedagogy of multiliteracies (p. 13) and A. Wysocki’s expanded notion of composition to argue for a new definition of composition that encourages “not simply the inclusion of mass media as objects of study but the use of media to encourage the development of multimodal designs” (p.18). George argues that thinking about composition as a design and design as an act of production shifts the focus “from the product to the act of production” (p. 18). Under this new definition, instructors would/should approach discussions of literacy instruction and composition in terms of design rather than writing.

A new vocabulary of discourse that centers on design could not only help clarify the complex relationship between verbal and visual but could also enhance the teaching of composition, especially for new media. As George explains, the technology developments and perception shifts that we have seen over the last sixty years is indicative of perception shifts to come and the assignments we could begin to ask of our students. George cites her own visual argument assignment and the students’ designs as evidence that visual arguments are not only possible but that students can compose them successfully when instructors accept “ a new configuration of verbal/visual relationships” (32).

George’s article can inform many of the questions that have emerged in this class in relation to visual rhetoric and writing pedagogy. As my own research is focused on the importance of faculty development for incorporating visual elements as part of the composition classroom, George’s history and perspective is especially helpful for establishing importance. If the relationship between verbal and visual text is as complex and sophisticated as she implies, there seems to be an even stronger need for faculty resources and support to understand that relationship.