6 May 2004
Annual Scottish Word and Image Group conference in Dundee
Photo opportunity: 6:30pm, Friday 7 May, Tower Building Foyer, Tower Building, University of Dundee,
Perth Road, Dundee
Delegates at the 11th Annual Scottish Word and Image Group (SWIG) Conference will have the opportunity to
find out more about a story-telling system devised to help young people with Cerebral Palsy and other
disabilities that compromise the development of language and speech to communicate.
The two day event opens on Friday May 7 at University of Dundee where experts from across the UK, the
Netherlands and Puerto Rico will highlight among other things, how image and language can be used together to
benefit certain groups of individuals.
Annalu Waller of the University of Dundee's Applied Computing Department designed the story-telling system to
help young non-speaking people. Most people begin to tell stories at a very young age, usually spilling the
punch line without any build-up, but with age children learn how to embellish a story, incorporating a
beginning, middle and end. Many non-speaking people cannot develop these skills.
Annalu's story-telling system allows these individuals to construct their own stories, relating serious and
funny experiences and even telling jokes by delivering them sentence by sentence via a speech synthesizer.
Enabling non-speaking people to tell stories in this way can help in building relationships and developing
their own personalities. Professor Alan Newell of the University’s Applied Computing Department will present
Annalu's paper as part of the Reading and Psychology panel.
The future of film studies will also be discussed within the Film in Teaching panel. With film popularity as
strong as ever, courses dedicated to film and media are reporting an increasing number of applicants.
University of Dundee's film modules are attracting more interest than ever before. With this background,
Graeme Finnie of the University's English Department will discuss the future of film studies and where, if at
all, film studies should fall within universities’ structure. He will examine whether the subject should be
included as an intrinsic part of arts courses, such as English and History or if an independent film studies
department is a better way forward.
Members of the public are invited to the opening Public Lecture, given by Dr. Valerie Robillard of the
University of Groningen, 'Nice...But Can You Eat It?: A Pragmatic Approach to word and image studies', taking
place at 4.00pm, Friday 7 May in the University's Tower Lecture Theatre. Valerie will examine the unique
possibilities available in the teaching of word and image studies and will highlight the usefulness that it
can have on the wider community.
Exhibitions are on display as part of the SWIG conference. 'Reading Pictures' presenting a variety of text
based art is on display in the University's Tower Foyer and '=' an exhibition investigating the relationship
between text and image and art and language is on display until May 14 in the Lamb Gallery, first floor,
Tower Building.
Dr Keith Williams of the University of Dundee's English department said, "The interplay between words and
images is all around us in our everyday lives, culture and media. Consequently, word and image studies is
one of the richest and most diverse areas of interdisciplinary research."
Notes to editors
The Scottish Word and Image Group (SWIG) was formed in 1994 and holds annual conferences which examine the
relationship between verbal/written language and visual or symbolic means of communication. For more
information please see www.dundee.ac.uk/english/swig/
For further information please contact Keith Williams on 01382 344906
By Angela Durcan, Press Officer 01382 344768, out of hours: 07968298585, a.durcan@dundee.ac.uk | 
