SocioCultural Context of Writing
THE VISUALITY OF WRITTEN TEXTS: MULTILINGUAL WRITERS MAKING DESIGN CHOICES
Amy A. Zenger
American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon
Visuality, how we learn to see socially, is relevant for the design and reading of texts—“units that are complete in terms of their social environment” (Kress 2004: 64). Academic texts convey significance not only through language but also through features such as the shape of paragraphs; punctuation; line and section breaks; headings; systems for quoting and documenting sources; and title treatments. As Blommaert (2004) observes, however, “visuality is not lost in practice, but it is lost in the ideological conception of the writing and reading process” (655). Visuality is often addressed in academic writing classrooms not as a critical question, but as a purely pragmatic one, in the instructions for formatting in an assignment. This study draws on theories that represent writing as a practice always embedded in social environments (Barton; Street), and pedagogies of writing with students who are, in Canagarajah’s (2006) words, “shuttling between languages.” Using interviews and text analysis, my proposed research seeks to document the visual choices multilingual student writers make as they move between different academic and linguistic environments (Arabic, French, English, and Armenian). In my presentation, I will provide examples of visual elements that vary across contexts, accompanied by the writers’ discussions of how they design academic writing to address the expectations of different audiences. I aim to promote a discussion about teaching practices that integrate visuality into the conceptual dimensions of composition courses.
References
Barton, D., Hamilton, M., & Ivanic, R. (1999) Situated Literacies. London: Routledge.
Blommaert, J. (2004) Writing as a Problem: African Grassroots Writing, Economies of Literacy, and Globalization. Language in Society , 33 (5): 643671.
Canagarajah, A. S. (2006) Toward a Writing Pedagogy of Shuttling between Languages: Learning from Multilingual Writers College English . 68 (6): 589 – 604.
Kress, G. (2004) Literacy in the New Media Age . London: Routledge.
Street, B. (1991) The New Literacy Studies. Cross Cultural Approaches to Literacy . Ed. B. Street: 121.