Available Formats
Speaking in Pictures: A Vision of Language
By (Author) Dr Neil Cohn
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Bloomsbury Academic
5th February 2026
United Kingdom
Tertiary Education
Fiction
Communication studies
Psycholinguistics and cognitive linguistics
Paperback
352
Width 189mm, Height 246mm
Pictures are a fundamental aspect of how we express ourselves, and cave paintings are among our oldest records of intelligence. Yet, despite their importance, why dont most people feel they can draw, and why are pictures often considered less important than language
For over 20 years, Neil Cohn has pioneered research around these questions within the fields of linguistics and cognitive neuroscience, and this book is the result, heralding a new paradigm of language, drawing, and communication, all accessibly presented as a non-fiction graphic novel. This work challenges the conventional understandings of how pictures communicate, how people learn to draw, and the nature of language itself.
With humor and a clear, friendly, and accessible tone, Speaking in Pictures introduces ground-breaking research by doing what it discusses: intertwining pictures and words into a single message as a non-fiction graphic novel, taking the reader on an inspiring journey through the study of communication and the mind.
Neil Cohn is Associate Professor of Communication and Cognition at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He is the author of The Visual Language of Comics (2013), Who Understands Comics (2020), and editor of The Visual Narrative Reader (2016).