Synergy in art and language: positioning the language specialist in contemporary fine art study

Abstract

In this article, we look at data based on the work of EAP (English for Academic Purposes) practitioners at Goldsmiths College, University of London in the 1990s collected for the purposes of identifying the generic characteristics of two contexts in contemporary fine art study; the tutorial and the postgraduate dissertation. The rhetorical moves on the part of the tutor in the intercultural tutorials and a micro-analysis of the language used in the introductory sections of selected, positively evaluated MA student dissertations form the basis of our analysis and interpretation. We see the aim of both of those genres as facilitating development, both with regard to the individual student’s development of practice, and in respect of integrating theoretical perspectives into assessed writing. While the spoken mode of the tutorial primarily mediates reflection on, critique of, and thence development of practice, the written mode promotes an engagement with theory that is reflected back in the writing. We further suggest that development in both cases is dialectical, and that the language work and visual work in tandem have synergistic effects. In conclusion, we reiterate the synergy between the visual and the verbal and suggest that this synergy can be re-enacted in collaborative strategies between art tutors and language tutors in the wider development of students’ communicative practice.

EAP Teachers Working in, with and through the Creative Arts

“…Development of creative practice relies on sustained reflection mediated by speaking and writing (Turner & Hocking, 2004) and so communication features strongly in all four reflections. However, while CM and CC tend to focus more on writing, spoken communication is a recurrent theme in JS's and AR's reflections.…”

“…Through this process of Socratic questioning, the tutor may be 'elicit[ing] from the students themselves how they might best further and define the next step in the practice' (Turner & Hocking, 2004, p.149). However, what often happens is that due to the language barrier and/or differences in academic culture, international students often fail to respond to the tutors' elicitations, forcing them to explicate what they were implying in their questions (Turner & Hocking, 2004).…”

“…The previous section highlighted the importance of language and verbalisation in the creative arts and the almost unique role of spoken communication in the learning process (Orr & Shreeve, 2018) and in developing practice (Turner & Hocking, 2004).…”

Writing purposefully in art and design

“…I would suggest that current debates about writing practices in art and design need to move from partisan statements about creative and practice-based agendas, which uncritically conflate art and design subfields, to a more critical debate about epistemology, identity and power in relation to writing, issues clearly present in the literature on this topic (Hockey and Allen-Collinson, 2005; Sullivan, 2005; Turner and Hocking, 2004). Candlin (2000; see also Borg, 2007), for example, questions the need for writing for art and design fields in the context of research assessment and doctorates in the UK.…”

“…Together with co-writing and other pedagogic practices, more explicit structuring of writing is increasingly an option in these fields (Kamler, 2008). There is, for example, no doubt that it is possible to identify recurring genre features in the creative arts, such as the exegesis (Paltridge, 2004; Turner and Hocking, 2004). At the same time, such pedagogies, whether driven from academic writing support or directly from faculty, should not – where relevant – disguise or deter from challenging conventions.…”