According to Liz Losh: "As forces of technological innovation and global migration impact universities nationwide, understanding the role of electronic and second-language literacy is critical."[cit]

Visual rhetoric considers how "a resurgence of interest in the ways that our means of representing experience, including mental experience, has some bearing on what can be known. In simple terms, word choice is both stylistic and epistemological; how we say or write something has a real effect on how we know."[cit]