76-428 Visual/Verbal Communication Units: 9.0 Department: English Cross-listed: 76-828 Related URLs: http://hss.cmu.edu/HTML/departments/engl People create a wide range of communicative artifacts that integrates visual and verbal elementsnewsletters, product brochures, web pages, novels, memos, journal articles, resumes, software references, yellow stickies, shopping lists, etc. Yet, such visual-verbal discourse has only recently attracted the serious attention of research communities. Some of the relevant research questions include: Why do visual variations exist across different contexts? (e.g., Popular science looks different from Discover.) Why and how do visual styles change over time? (e.g., Magazines from the 1950s dont look like present day magazines.) Do visual elements have persuasive power? If so, what roles do they play in shaping an argument? How do people learn to communicate using visual-verbal artifacts? In this seminar, we will address these and other questions through readings and discussions on various threads of studies around the analysis of communicative artifacts that integrate visual and verbal expressions. We will begin with an overview of the history and practice of communication design and typography through the writings of both scholars and practitioners. We will then review key research publications concerning visual-verbal communication from relevant disciplines, including professional & technical communication, rhetoric, argumentation, and literacy. Particular attention will be paid to descriptive methods (e.g., perceptual organization, social-semiotic analysis, and rhetorical structure theory) and the types of questions these methods can help us answer.

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