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

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.