7. Using Visual Materials

“Both images and words on script, print or digital pages engage the eyes. When images and words appear together in one discursive space, they operate synergetically. In this sense, written verbal rhetoric is visual rhetoric.”Maureen Daly Goggin, “Visual Rhetoric in Pens of Steel and Inks of Silk: Challenging the Great Visual/Verbal Divide.”

ALTHOUGH MOST THESES and dissertations communicate primarily through language—words, sentences, and paragraphs—visual materials can be an important asset in developing and supporting your ideas, particularly if your subject is concerned with graphic or numerical data. Visual representations such as tables, charts, diagrams, graphs, or photographs can serve as focal points, as enabling ...

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