Making the invisible visible: Sociolinguistics meets medical communication in a travelling exhibition

Abstract

AbstractVisual art is increasingly used to mediate scientific findings, engage and educate the public and as a part of the research process itself. However, work connecting sociolinguistics and art in this way is only just emerging. This paper presents a project at the intersection of sociolinguistics, art and Graphic Medicine. It discusses how art can be used for public engagement and how the process of creating art feeds into the research process: Drawings can ground the analysis in the big picture and show how themes that need to be analytically separated relate to each other. Identifying motifs highlights what does and does not get talked about. Trans‐mediating narratives into comics raises questions about the definition and structure of narratives, about tellability, shared knowledge and epistemic access. Overall, I suggest that sociolinguistics stands to gain from collaborating with artists in terms of public engagement and as an inspiration in the research process.