A Visual Lexicon: A Language Learning Must Have!

Why do language instructors artificially separate text and speech from the visual lexicon? 

A lexicon is a catalog of a language’s wordstock and the rules or grammar that dictates the combination of the stock of words into meaningful sentences.

Our visual language is the system by which communication uses visual elements to be effective: pragmatics, semiotics, gestures, images, diagrams, maps, and other forms of nonverbal communication. Speech or text does not act alone effectively, not without the help of emoticons, anyway.

The structural units of visual language includes line, shape, color, form, motion, texture, pattern, direction, orientation, scale, angle, space, and proportion. The same structural elements that create our written language – add sound and you have our spoken language. These are also known as the formal elements in art analysis.

Notebooks of all those listed. Found at this link.

Therefore, a visual lexicon is the collection or ‘visualstock’ and the elements or visual-grammar that dictates the combination of intersecting visual elements and text/words to create meaningful communication.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s 15^th century sketchbooks are famous examples of visual lexicons. Other famous visual lexicon notebookers that changed the modern era include Thomas Edison, Charles Darwin, Alexander Graham Bell, and Albert Einstein.

Creative genius is found at the intersections of the visual and verbal. Our entire Internet culture exists at the same intersection: it is the living love-child of these innovators’ notebooks (read Steve Job’s biography – official and unofficial).

Interbreed and Interrelated: Intertextuality.  

Image found here. 

The idea of intertextuality suggests that all images relate to other cultural texts such as books, poems, other images, movies, commercials, and music, etc. (See Wilson, 2003, citation below). 

Turn intertexuality inside out: an utterance never exists without relating emoticons, images, books, poems, other utterances, movies, commercials, and music, etc.

Million dollar question: 

So, why are so many EFL/ESL instructors telling our students’ to check their visual lexicons at the door to learn language (and then wondering why their students fall asleep at their desks)?

Encourage the development of your students’ visual lexicons.

Some scholars suggest that L2 learners need a vocabulary of at least 5,000 words for a good working knowledge of the English language (as well as an understanding of syntax, morphology, and pragmatics, etc.). Most L1 English speakers are thought to have a vocabulary of 20K or so words.

Encouraging students to build and maintain visual lexicons increases their meaningful encounters with words or even the meaning of sentences or phrases. For example, an assignment can be on creating visual lexicons based on a series of idioms or ideas.

One of our visual lexicons for Orientalism. Found at this link.

In an intermediate level class, my Korean university students created visual lexicons based on the concept of Orientalism. They also applied critical thinking skills to further break down the image and its meaning. 

My students can now discuss their opinions on the concept of Orientalism by analyzing an image. The proficiency level of these students ranged from intermediate-low to advanced-mid.

 A visual lexicon was created to bridge the huge proficiency gaps between the students in the class. All of the students saw an increase in their ability to use academic vocabulary, and some students saw a dramatic improvement in the sophistication of their sentence structures (verbal and written).

Facilitate your Da Vincis and Einsteins to produce their online notebooks…   

Technology is crucial to the development and long-term maintenance of visual lexicons. 

Mural.ly collaborative project. 

Pinterest.com is a great tool to collect, store, and organize images whereas Mural.ly is a user-friendly location to produce visual essays. Mural.ly is an excellent resource for large collaborative mind maps or to help students outline presentations and essays.

This semester, my novice level students produced family introductions on MindMapper.com, a mind mapping app that is cellphone friendly. All the students posted their family MindMapper.com on our class Facebook.com timeline with pictures of their family (or pictures who they wished their family to be).

MindMapper "My Family" assignment. 

Posted on our Facebook timeline to share with classmates. 

There are a litany of the other social bookmarking, mindmapping, and intertext apps that will help you and your students' to build visual lexicons. 

Resources

Wilson, B. (2003). Of diagrams and rhizomes: Visual culture, contemporary art, and the impossibility of mapping the content of art education. Studies in Art Education, 44(3), 214-229.