Dr. Ethna Dempsey Lay, Department of Writing Studies and Composition
Hofstra University
The uses of [digital] visual arguments: Can images do what words do?
Or, The Four-Letter Word Project
Writing instruction changes exponentially as the technologies for writing change. Sensitive to this need to
address a rapidly flexing pedagogy, I have designed a digital, visual argument assignment for my first-year
writing students. The project involves making an argument as a visual montage followed by a verbal, written
reflection considering whether images can do what words do, and the converse query, can words do what
images do. Students read works about the possibility of a visual argument by J. Anthony Blair and about the
nature of digital literacy and changes to the reading path by Gunther Kress before crafting the assignment.
The two parts of the assignment follow below.
After basic writers approach this assignment, I have noted an exceptional change in the tenor and the
confidence with which they write about their making of a digital, visual argument. It strikes me that the
visual nature of this kind of work invites these students into writing in a particularly generous way, resulting
in written work that is often more graceful and more nuanced than their previous work.
The idea for this project originates with a Photoshop assignment for a “Writing in New Media” class by
Madeleine Sorapure as presented in “Five Principles of New Media: Or, Playing Lev Manovich” in Kairos
8:2 Fall 2003. Sorapure’s intent is to have students represent automation, one of Manovich’s principles of
new media. My variation on the assignment (which does not require students to work with Photoshop)
instead considers questions of the efficacy of digital, visual arguments. The technology used can be as basic
as a PowerPoint, One True Media (www.onetruemedia.com), or iMovie. In fact, students are invited to work
with any software to produce the photo montage.
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PART I
The four-letter word project:
Using 24- 32 images, create a visual argument (not an observation or statement) that reinforces your
understanding, perspective, or unpacking of the non-obscene four-letter word you have chosen. If possible,
avoid using any text other than the word you’ve chosen. The text of the word itself should function as the
image in the sense that the font, color, arrangement, and any special effects you use should all help to convey
what you see as the meaning of the word. You may elect to supply a soundtrack for the montage, but if it is
verbal, you will have to defend your decision to do so in your written reflection.
Remember the goal of this project is to respond to J. Anthony Blair’s challenge about whether or not
[exclusively] visual arguments are possible and viable. Blair reflects: “Just how visual images and visual
forms in general can and do communicate propositions, just how the important ancillary concept of context is
to be understood and how in practice context is to be interpreted and combined with the visual, and just how
text and visuals (and sound) interact to produce meaning are all questions which strike me as important,
difficult and unanswered…” (40). Keep Blair’s questions in mind as you prepare your own visual argument.
The montage should be about one minute in duration. You may intersperse moving images with the stills.
Some pre-writing considerations:
1. What is my aim? What will I argue about the term I selected?
2. What does J. Anthony Blair claim distinguishes the visual argument form the verbal argument? Do I use
any of Blair’s strategies in the making of my visual argument?
3. According to Gunther Kress, what are the key differences between word and image, and between page and
screen? What difference does it make–to Kress and/or to you–that communication is currently shifting
toward image and screen?
4. If I showed this montage to someone NOT in my class, would that viewer understand what I was arguing?
How important is the context of the class to understanding this work?
5. Do I rely on any overt or clichéd visual expressions? How do these contribute to my project?
6. Would my argument have succeeded more completely if delivered in another media – text only,
combination of text and image, moving image only, clay, dance, or other kind of expression?
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PART II
A reflection on the four-letter word project
Note: You may write one or more paragraphs for each part listed. You may also decide to craft a video
response in lieu of a written response. You may wish to post part or all of the assignment on your blog in
order to garner feedback from your readership. You will need to reference both J. Anthony Blair and
Gunther Kress in this reflection, which means it will need a Works Cited section in MLA format. You will
also need to reference at least one visual production. Your video production is worth 50 points; this
reflection is worth 50 points.
Question: How can I tell if this visual production is an argument? Can
images do what writing does?
Part 1: Locate/define/show the visual production you will be examining. You may use your own visual
production or another student’s visual production. Be descriptive as appropriate. Use figurations or
metaphorical equivalences if you like. Describe a small, discrete moment, or describe the whole arc of the
visual production.
Part 2: Does this expression have truth value? Remember that J. Anthony Blair explains that an expression
has truth value if it can be affirmed or rejected. Name those moments from the visual production that prove
your point. Tie your discussion to Blair’s discussion.
Part 3: Arguments are not necessarily linguistic or verbal arguments, but they must have reasons that can be
overtly expressed, and those reasons and claims have to be linguistically explicable. What are the reasons or
claims of this visual production? How are these manifested in the production? How successful are they
expressed? Could they have been more effective if they were expressed in another way?
Part 4: Visual communication occurs without the mediation of words or language in the literal sense. The
visual communication stands on its own two feet. Certain causal properties are supervenient on certain visual
properties, which thus affect their viewers in predictable ways. In what ways is this visual production
predictable? How do such images (or other properties) support the expressiveness of the production?
Part 5: Gunther Kress distinguishes between the governing logic of writing (time) vs. that of image (space).
How is a visual production, like a montage, ordered? How does its organization influence the viewer’s
apprehension or understanding of its message?