Fleckenstein.+Words+Made+Flesh+Fusing+Imagery+and++Language+in+a+Polymorphic+Literacy

=Fleckenstein, Kristie S. "Words Made Flesh: Fusing Imagery and Language in a Polymorphic Literacy "= //College English// Vol. 66 No. 6 (2004): 612-630. Print.

== **Abstract** == There is a complex tapestry between images and language. Words do not look like what they describing, but using words allows the reader to picture in their mind what is happening. It also helps communicate ideas by relating them to something that the reader is more likely to know about, like when using an analogy. By using polymorphic literacy we connect language to image and thus increase the power of the words that we use. == Argument == Fleckenstein argues for the importance of polymorphic language in literacy. She argues that the insights delivered from polymorphic language help the audience understand what it is that they are reading or being taught. She argues for the use of polymorphic literacy in the classroom. It is hard to connect with students in a classroom, so polymorphic literacy can help them better understand the concepts that they are being taught. Polymorphic literacy helps take students out of the classroom or book and brings them to a place outside themselves where they can understand what is being told to them in a way that they can understand. == Key Passages == Words have received the lion’s share of attention, serving as the central focus as well as the organizing principle in our theories of meaning.

Graphic imagery is central to our construction of place as an external reality.

A polymorphic orientation to place helps us grapple with our students’ possible sense of exclusion from the life of the classroom.

Visual-kinesthetic disequilibrium that serves as a prelude for the creation of different mental images to guide their rhetorical interactions in the world. == **Selected Works Cited** == Berthoff, Ann E. The Sense of Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton, 1990.

Carey, Robert F., and Jerome Harste. “Comprehension as Context: Toward a Reconsideration of a Transactional Theory of Reading.” Understanding Readers’ Understanding: Theory and Practice. Ed. Robert J. Tierney, Patricia L. Anders, and Judy Nichols Mitchell. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1987. 189–204.

Jay, Martin. Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French Thought. Berkeley: U of California P, 1993.

Reynolds, Nedra. “Composition’s Imagined Geographies: and Cyberspace.” 50 (1998): 12–35.