What I Have Learned This Semester

Throughout this semester, while reading both Sturken and Cartwright’s "Practices of Looking," and Kress and van Leeuwen’s "Reading Images: the Grammar of Visual Design," the ghosts of the grand linguistic theorists are omnipresent. I see shadows of Michel Foucault throughout, especially when considering the signified and the signifier.


When Sturken and Cartwright discuss semiotics and the relationship between the sign and the interpretant to construct meaning, or that the signifier and the signified construct the sign, is this relative to Foucault’s admonition to "abolish the sovereignty of the signifier?" In addition, both texts force the reader to consider how our socially constructed views, the lens from which we evaluated the visual images before us, contribute to their interpretation. Sturken and Cartwright discuss how meaning evolves with public distribution, how ownership of the interpretation of a work is transferred from the producer to the consumer, and how the work and its meaning can be transformed along the way, or even used in opposition to its original intent. This discussion parallels Jenny Edbauer’s work: “Unframing Models of Public Distribution: From Rhetorical Situation to Rhetorical Ecologies.” Another way these chapters compel me to consider Kenneth Burke’s terministic screens and motivated language is in the images the authors of both textbooks have chosen to illustrate their texts. In the selection of those images, what has been excluded, or deflected? I could relate much more to the images in Sturken and Cartwright’s text than I could to the images, or lack thereof, in Kress and van Leeuwen’s text.

But most of all, I have approached both of these explorations of visual communication with a healthy dose of skepticism. Does the visual communicator really have an awareness of the way she constructs her meaning? Or does she just work at it until it "looks right?" Then I remember that 25 years ago I began my post-secondary education as a fine arts major, took a detour, and ended up with a minor in Art. But my initial coursework included at least 18 hours in art history, courses in two-dimensional and three-dimensional design, drawing, drafting, and perspective. And then, after switching my major to journalism, I took more visually-oriented courses in photography, page layout and design, typography, and photographic composition. While I don’t recall these classes being taught relative to specific theories or theorists, the practice, the outcome of the teachings has not changed. Now, late in my current semester, I’m coming to a realization that, perhaps what I had considered to be intuitive, innate, the pointing out of the obvious, is really something I learned – albeit half a life ago.


So it is interesting to reconsider the practices that have seemed to come naturally to me under the theoretical and linguistic umbrella of Kress and van Leeuwen, after Halliday. After all, now that I am an English major, it makes sense to approach the visual within the lens of grammar and linguistics and semiotics. What I have learned over the semester is to think about how and why I create designs and layouts and types and images like I do — stopping to consider the meaning behind my construction, other than me thinking it looks attractive. Now I must consider the theories that tell me why it looks attractive, because "attractive things work better" (Norman).

Within this blog are a couple of other images that I've made for other classes, using what I learned in ENGL 853.