title: Towards a Rhetoric of Tactile Pictures
title: Towards a Rhetoric of Tactile Pictures


author: Carol Wiest
Enculturation, Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 2001

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Towards a Rhetoric of Tactile Pictures

Seeing has, in our culture, become synonymous with understanding. We "look" at a problem. We "see" the point. We adopt a "viewpoint." We "focus" on an issue. We "see things in perspective." The world "as we see it" (rather than "as we know it," and certainly not "as we hear it" or "as we feel it") has become the measure of what is "real" and "true."

— (Kress and van Leeuwen 168)


cover of 'Hands-On Alphabet Book'For most of us, this statement by Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen makes sense.* We value and rely on the visual every day—photographs, television, graphical user interfaces, and so on. The theme of this issue of Enculturation also marks the importance of visual rhetoric in the academic community today. But pictures are not always visual. For those who are blind and read Braille, the equivalent of visual representation is tactile representation, specifically, tactile pictures. As a first step toward a rhetoric of tactile pictures, I have applied the framework developed by Kress and van Leeuwen to a tactile alphabet book. In many cases, their framework offers valuable insights, but the criteria used to evaluate the rhetorical functions in pictures must be adjusted to the semiotic codes used in tactile pictures.

A tactile picture is a raised drawing that is designed to be felt rather than viewed visually. Maps, chemical structures, graphs, and drawings can all be represented in tactile pictures. I have little experience using them, but I gained a deep appreciation for them when I discovered tactile representations of sections of the Bayeux tapestry at the Reading Museum in England. When I later studied visual rhetoric, I remembered those pictures and began to study them from a rhetorical perspective.

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* Note: The graphics in this essay are reproduced with permission from the Hands-On Alphabet Book produced by the Tactile Section of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, National Library Division. Braille equivalents for titles were generated by HotBraille.com.

Copyright © Enculturation 2001

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