This study focuses on the intersection of visual rhetoric with rhetoric of science by examining the rhetorical context in which natural science illustrators operate as they represent paleontology. Field methods were employed to study the rhetorical context in which paleontology becomes represented through art; this article reports the findings from the field study and contextualizes the study in rhetorical theories of invention and a discussion of social versus scientific facts. The research highlights some differences between what experts know and what public audiences perceive, offering insight into why those differences exist.

Technical communicators are expected to work extensively with visual texts in workplaces. Fortunately, most academic curricula include courses in which the skills necessary for such tasks are introduced and sometimes developed in depth. We identify a tension between a focus on technological skill vs. a focus on principles and theory, arguing that we subvert the potential benefits of an education if we succumb to the allure of software. We recommend several classroom practices that help educate students toward greater visual literacy, based not only on recommendations from the research but also from our experience as teachers of visual communication.

Andrew Feenberg's critical theory of technology is an underutilized, relatively unknown resource in technical communication which could be exploited not only for its potential clarification of large social issues that involve our discipline, but also specifically toward the development of a critical theory of illustrations. Applications of critical theory help strengthen our discipline by forcing us to delineate extant approaches and consider whether democratic goals are being achieved through those approaches. If a critical theory of illustrations can be built from Feenberg's critical theory of technology, it should be useful for classroom instructors and researchers as well as theorists.