Rhetoric and Literacy.
"Non-discursive Symbolization, Image, and New Media" by Joddy Murray
Cheryl Ball Video
Visual Literacy and Pedagogy
Visual literacy is an idea expressed through other senses as a way to connect with an audience, according to the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA), 1969. This skill is hailed as being one of the most important to learn for students, however to also keep in mind over-analysis. An individual who practices visual literacy is able to, according to Murray, interpret visible actions, objects, and/or symbols that they "encounter in [their] environment," natural or manmade.
Image used merely as illustration or ancillary material to printed text misses the point altogether because image becomes merely a visual accompaniment intended to increase comprehension, not a viable mode of symbolization itself.
-Joddy Murray
Technical Communications and Digital Literacy
Digital literacy is a new medium of which it offers many accommodations due in part to the technological advancement of society. Tech and literacy have greatly shaped the evolution of one another, and continues to do so. Examples of non-discursive modes affected by this include aural and haptic.
Murray goes into detail about how the new generation of scholars is experiencing a shift in how information in academia is being presented, thanks to technology and the newfound need for digital literacy. Then, three major design and organization techniques are listed as a way to present information in a useful manner: headings and segmented text to help with skimming and picking up information quicker; the use of levels with hierarchies, which makes the most relevant information the most eye-catching and in the first position that will be noticed; and finally, listing the topics of the hierarchies in the introductory sentences of the document.
Technology and literacy, or textual production, are connected throughout known history... influencing, shaping, changing, or even eradicating one another in no predictable, or necessarily ideological, manner.
-Joddy Murray
Cultural Studies and the Image
The main focus in cultural study research is nontraditional texts, relying heavily on the aspects/ideologies that have been either forgotten or omitted in the past. These elements--paired with images--are meant to evoke emotion and encourage further analysis. Cultural studies is also the most "active" of all three categories of visual rhetoric.
Cultural studies is also used, according to Murray, as a way to connect the other categories of visual rhetoric. It's also what helps us improve our skills at analyzing, discriminating, and criticizing the effects we experience from images we encounter.
The research done in cultural studies focuses not only on the inherent rhetorical aspects within nontraditional texts, but also the distribution of these texts and their con-texts: the aspects of culture and ideology that are carried along with the text.
-Joddy Murray
Non-discursive Symbolization
When using images in writing, visual rhetoric and image analysis must be broken down. The prevalence of symbolization in images has made images both discursive and non-discursive. This makes it easier to accommodate for either a discursive or non-discursive meaning to be drawn from an image for analysis and rhetoric; which leads to language (explicit or subtle) and feelings being affected. Ultimately, this alters the relationship between image and text.
If image is to be understood and incorporated into our writing processes, then we must take a new direction in visual rhetoric...that moves beyond the consumption, production, and distribution taxonomy mentioned already.
-Joddy Murray
Example
Interpretation plays a major part in deciphering the discursive or non-discursive elements in an image. Aspects such as colors, subject, and symbols play a major part in determining how an individual may analyze the image. For example, the famous image above is in black and white to signify its age, and the subject is a woman with faceless children. Their body language indicates hardship and negative emotions. This is because the image was taken during the Great Depression in the 1930's. The emotions that this image evokes plays into Murray's meaning of "imagery," forcing you to feel the fear and sorrow that this mother is feeling, as well as the worry of her children. You can almost feel the dust on your own skin and in your hair as you gaze at this photo, and you don't even need the words to describe it to you.
Photo Source: The New York Public Library
Progress in Non-discursive Rhetoric
Works Cited
Murray, Joddy. “Non-discursive Symbolization, Image, and New Media.” Non-discursive Rhetoric. January 2009.
Ball, Cheryl. “Symbolizing Space - Non-discursive Composing of the Invisible (Joddy Murray).” YouTube, uploaded by Cheryl Ball, 16 August 2012, https://youtu.be/lWf-KNbVXqc.