Stroupe's Call to action in " Visualizing English"

Stroupe's essay is a fascinating call to action for all those in English studies. His plea begins with a message to revisit " the text/media dichotomy" and a request for the " discipline to decide not only whether to embrace the teaching of visual and information design in addition to verbal production", "but more fundamentally, whether to confront its customary cultural attitudes toward visual discourses and their insinuation into verbal texts ." It seems that at the core of the divide is what Stroupe calls "the values associated between the two."

Stroup makes a strong case for web based communication not as a separate or less critical form of English studies but one in where the long praised attributes in the study of languages remain. Text conceived for an electronic environment can, and does have overlapping missions according to Stroupe. He begins his argument by asserting that the new "work paradigm" of web design and writing does not replace verbal literacy but actually becomes more like a " diverse amalgamation of literacies.