Visual Communication

Part of the Handbooks of Communication series, this book responds to the fact that a generation ago, a core body of academic literature on communication did not exist anywhere except the US, and was not extensive even there. Now the discipline's paper mill is up and running at a rapid rate. Books in this series work to collect and summarize the available literature in the field, but also to create an integrated picture of what is currently important for students and professionals in the academic field of communication. This volume focuses on the literature of the subdiscipline of visual communication. Rather than an encyclopedia or anthology of famous papers, it is a collection of papers by various contributors, meant to be representative of current issues in the field. As visual communication is professionally connected with academic fine art theory, this volume is highly influenced by semiotics. While contributors tend to avoid the convoluted diction of critical theory, thinkers like Foucault and Said are referenced. Other disciplines and forms of theory discussed include Relevance Theory, sociolinguistics, race and gender studies, psychological theory, theatre, digital humanities, multimodal analysis, biosemiotics, and visual anthropology. Annotation c2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

David Machin, Cardiff University, Wales, Great Britain.