College English Jul 2004

Words Made Flesh: Fusing Imagery and Language in a Polymorphic Literacy

Kristie S. Fleckenstein

Abstract

The author argues that constructions of literacy that suppress or omit nonverbal elements such as the visual and the tactile are limiting students’ potential. She traces the way the historical relationship between image and word has consistently privileged language, and offers instances from her experience with students and with her own children to argue for a more reciprocal dynamic and a polymorphic literacy that can increase the scope and power of our literacy and our literacy teaching.

Journal
College English
Published
2004-07-01
DOI
10.58680/ce20042857
Open Access
Closed
Topics
multimodality race and writing

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (0)

No references match articles in this index.

CrossRef global citation count: 1 View in citation network →

Related Articles

  1. Literacy in Composition Studies Feb 2026
    Literacy Sponsorship, GenAI, and the Entangled Economies of Experiential Learning ↗
    Girdharry, Kristi
    service learning literacy studies multimodality race and writing multilingual writers
  2. Rhetoric Society Quarterly Jan 2026
    Trafficking Rhetoric: Race, Migration, and the Making of Modern-Day Slavery ↗
    Leslie J. Harris
    multimodality race and writing
  3. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication Jan 2026
    Trans and Queer Visibility in an Era of Hyper Surveillance: A User Experience Study of University Systems for Sharing Gender Pronouns ↗
    McKinley Green
    multimodality technical communication race and writing
  4. Pedagogy Oct 2025
    Teaching Intersectionality in the Age of Intersectionality ↗
    Elisabeth Windle
    graduate education multimodality race and writing multilingual writers
  5. Pedagogy Oct 2025
    Remixing the College Essay ↗
    Felisa Baynes-Ross; Caitlin Cawley; Caroline Hagood; Mira Zaman
    first-year composition two-year college qualitative research multimodality race and writing multilingual writers