"Isn’t It Really Just About the Words?" February 23, 2012

Renowned rhetorician, author, editor, and educator Dr. Kathleen Blake Yancey joins Columbia College Chicago Dean Deborah Holdstein for a discussion on thinking about and visualizing visual rhetoric in everyday writing. What role do images play in the process of creating meaning? Is visual rhetoric, in all its ubiquitous forms, a less effective vehicle for communication than text? What is writing?

The definition of writing seems always to have been contested. Today, critics complain about students' use of text messaging expressions in academic writing, for example, but such shorthand expressions were often used by previous generations. Likewise, there's a sense that visual rhetoric--as it appears everywhere, from graffiti and TV to movies and the Web--is taking over from words as the dominant means of expression.

Taking these concerns in context, Dr. Yancey will identify five historical moments--the time of petroglyphs; the time of medieval manuscripts; the time of scientific discovery; the time of early postcards; and our current moment--that reveal the role of visual rhetoric as it works with words to help students, elected leaders, protesters, and everyday people make meaning.

A Q&A and reception will follow the lecture.