"Words or Visuals: Which Speaks Louder?"
About the AuthorJennifer Heater is an undergraduate at Missouri Western State University in St. Joseph, MO. She is working towards her Bachelors in English with a Technical Writing concentration and is minoring in Communications. She anticipates graduating in Spring 2014 and then continuing her education seeking her Masters in Technical Communication. Although Jennifer is fairly new to the Technical Communication field, she is excited about her research and hopes to continue it throughout her Masters. Contents |
ConclusionIn this article I have outlined some basic tools of selecting images and have expressed the need to educate technical communicators on visual rhetoric and taking caution when using multimodal documents. Visual semiotics can be a valuable starting tool for any communicator wanting to effectively use multimodal text. Images have a huge impact on the viewer’s perception and the writer’s ethics and teaching this at the classroom level would be a good start to having a field expectation in creating effective multimodal text. As technical communicators, the goal is to write effective audience-driven articles. Many challenges are faced when adding images to text. As we saw in Figure 1, one concern is taking humanity out of a document and misleading the reader on the true impact of the accident. Communicators need to make sure not to shadow any important factors that may be overlooked due to the visual rhetoric. Figure 2 shows the full impact that accidents can have, both to show the cause of the accident and every effect of the accident. A communicator has to use caution to pick images that support both the goal of the reader and themselves. The theories I have discussed give us possible effects on the perception of the reader and the ethics of the writer. Studying the ways to analyze images before choosing them will ensure that images portray the goals of the article. Figure 2 is an excellent image to demonstrate the way power can be perceived by the reader by using angles. An image that does not make the reader feel as an equal can affect the way the reader may perceive a document. Underestimating the reader’s perception can serve as a disservice to the reader and writer. I believe technical communicators could benefit from receiving basic visual rhetoric practice in the classroom to make them more experienced when making decisions on images inserted within text. Many scholars agree that this is a conflict that needs to be addressed and for which a solution must be found. An unknowledgeable technical communicator could unknowingly change the message of an article with the images chosen. For the benefit of the reader and the ethical security of the writer, visual rhetoric awareness is a plausible solution to ensure unity in the field of technical communication. |