ABSTRACT
Almost 30 years ago, I wrote an article that found quick acceptance at College Compo-
sition and Communication: “Seeing the Text” (Bernhardt, 1986). I argued that we ought
to start teaching a visual rhetoric, encouraging students to consider the visual design of
the text as well as its verbal exposition. I came to this conclusion during my dissertation
research at the University of Michigan. I was working within a systemic/functional lin-
guistics framework (after M. A. K. Halliday), sorting out the complications of describ-
ing scientific text structures on the basis of field (logical subject matter), tenor (interper-
sonal relationships as expressed through the text), and mode (genre or text form). My
method was to attempt to gather a cross section of scientific documents that represented
the range of publications surrounding a controlled topic: wetlands ecology. The subject
was sensitive then, as now. As we continue to lose wetlands to development, we lose a
most productive, ecotonic resource: the highly productive edge habitats. I decided I could
control for subject (field of discourse) and model the range of variation in text types.
