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Visual literacy

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Visual literacy (or, as it is colloquially known, visuacy[1]) is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. Visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be “read” and that meaning can be communicated through a process of reading.

The term “visual literacy” (VL) is credited to John Debes, who in 1969 offered a tentative definition of the concept: “Visual literacy refers to a group of vision-competencies a human being can develop by seeing and at the same time having and integrating other sensory experiences.”[2] However, because multiple disciplines such as visual literacy in education, art history and criticism, rhetoric, semiotics, philosophy, information design, and graphic design make use of the term visual literacy, arriving at a common definition of visual literacy has been contested since its first appearance in professional publications.

Since technological advances continue to develop at an unprecedented rate, educators are increasingly promoting the learning of visual literacies as indispensable to life in the information age. Similar to linguistic literacy (meaning making derived from written or oral human language) commonly taught in schools, most educators would agree that literacy in the 21st Century has a wider scope.”[3] Educators are recognizing the importance of helping students develop visual literacies in order to survive and communicate in a highly complex world.

Many scholars from the New London Group such as Courtney Cazden, James Gee, Gunther Kress, and Allan Luke advocate against the dichotomy of visual literacy versus linguistic literacy. Instead, they stress the necessity of accepting the co-presence[4] of linguistic literacies and visual literacies as interacting and interlacing modalities which complement one another in the meaning making process.

Visual literacy is not limited to modern mass media and new technologies. Understanding Comics, a graphic novel discussing the history of the media as well as serving as a "how to" manual for interpreting comics by Scott McCloud, is an exemplar employing the use of visual literacy. Also, animal drawings in ancient caves, such as the one in Lascaux, France, are early forms of visual literacy. Hence, even though the name visual literacy itself as a label dates to the 1960s, the concept of reading signs and symbols is prehistoric.

See also

Related terms include information design, information graphics, educational animation, New Epoch Notation Painting, chartjunk, art history, art criticism, visual rhetoric, Transliteracy, Asemic writing.

Significant authors in visual literacy include Edward Tufte and others.

Endnotes

  1. ^ Christopher Allen, in The Australian on 16 August, described this word as a "horrible neologism".
  2. ^ Avgerinou, M. & Ericson, J. (1997). A review of the concept of visual literacy. British Journal of Educational Technology, 28(4), 280-291.
  3. ^ Riddle, J. (2009). Engaging the Eye Generation: Visual Literacy Strategies for the K-5 Classroom. Stenhouse Publishers page 3.
  4. ^ Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge.
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