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‘‘Sort of Set My Goal to Come to Class’’

Evoking Expressive Content in Policy Reports

Massey University, New Zealand

Elspeth Tilley

Massey University, New Zealand

This article documents a novel yet theory-informed process of preparing research reports designed for government officials who are concerned with creating adult-literacy policy. The authors use cartoons that include verbatim dialogue from the transcripts of interviews with research participants with low functional literacy. This dialogue, which depicts positive messages about the participants’ moral character, strengths, and resilience, is set against photographic backdrops of the participants’ lived environment to give a sense of real people in a real place. Inclusion of such images is an attempt to change policy-report readers’ thinking about adult literacy because creative visual communication offers ways to approach this challenge that text alone cannot.

Key Words: cartoons • adult literacy • literacy policy • policy reports • visual communication

This version was published on October 1, 2009

Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Vol. 23, No. 4, 463-486 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1050651909338814


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