Visual Rhetoric: Visual Rhetoric Described Through Verbal Means By Logan Stallings Project Description: In this project, I presented my research of visual rhetoric through the medium of a podcast. The following text is the script for that podcast. I enjoyed utilizing the more familiar and sociable time for this project but still kept it academic in terms of research and analysis. Sources are available upon request.
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Visual Rhetoric Described Through Verbal Means Alright, hi everybody, and thanks for tuning in to listen. So, today, I’m going to be talking about visual rhetoric through the channels of podcast. I’ll try my very best to be as descriptive as possible since of course, you can’t actually see any of the visual’s I’ll be talking about. However, I strongly encourage you to go out and just google any of the examples I mention that might spark your interest. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed. So, as I mentioned, I am going to be talking about visual rhetoric, what it is, how it’s developed, and how it works. I’m personally interested in visual rhetoric because I am a graphic designer as well as a writer, and I’m interested in how some visuals are more compelling than others. As an individual with a background in a visual field, I know a lot goes into crafting a compelling image, and in my research for this project, I hope to uncover what exactly visual rhetoric is, how it has developed and is developing, and how it functions in this current works and in this current context. First, we’ll start with what visual rhetoric is. Visual rhetoric is the study of how visual images communicate meaning in a rhetorical fashion. These rhetorical images are created through the use of “visual principles” that construct the image to “envision information” (Edward R. Tufte, 9). Visual rhetoric is made up of many moving parts. One large aspect of visual rhetoric is semiotics, and semiotics is a “study of the rules underlying the sign system and helps us to understand the use and implications of signs, and in particular, visual and verbal signs in communication” (Jiang-Ping Fan, 123). It focuses on “the study and analysis of signs used in communication” (Jiang-Ping Fan, 123). Visual rhetoric can be propaganda or a painting or a film. It can encompass a narrative and elicit a certain feeling. Visual rhetoric can also be described as a visual argument. We know that all squares are rectangles and not all rectangles are squares, so if you want to view rhetoric and argument that way, you're entitled to your own opinion. Regardless, according to J Anthony Blair, “visual arguments are not distinct in essence from verbal arguments.” Visual rhetoric has developed quickly over a span of nos so long of a time. It is a very recent form of rhetoric in the eyes of scholars and academics. According to some, “only recently have visual elements begun to receive the same degree and sophistication of research attention as the linguistic element,” but personally, as a member of the visual community, I don’t find that visual rhetoric is all that recent (Mcquarrie and Mick). I think, rather, that visual rhetoric has been around for a good long while, but perhaps it’s only been picked up recently due to the major transition recently when “rhetoric took a pictorial turn” and shifted to the digital screen (Foss). I think this because even if you look all the way back to the first paintings man did, even if you look back to cave drawings, you’re going to find conscious decisions of those ancient people. You're going to find their art that they made purposefully for a reason to compel an audience whether they understood perspective or not. Personal thoughts aside, however, visual rhetoric is viewed as a recent development. One of the first and most noteworthy forms of visual rhetoric was propaganda. Propaganda qualifies as visual rhetoric because it was made to be consumed visually and elicit a certain response. One of the reasons that visual rhetoric has become so large recently is because of the recent surge in computers and technology. There are generations now that have “grown up knowing that they could manipulate digital technologies and circulate images in the
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media to influence reality. This, of course, relates to digital rhetoric, which we covered in class. One of the most recent reentries of this form of visual rhetoric was the Obama Hope image that became so well circulated and came to represent Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. The image for Obama Hope came from a “google image search” that “street artist and graphic designer, Shepard Fairey” turned into a national emblem (Laurie E. Gries, 136). Fairey used a design style that used an “intense hues of red and black,” and was reminiscent of “the graphic style of Russian Constructivism” (Gries). This specific instance of visual rhetoric was also multimodal as it used both text and image. The designer used “a minimalist style of dynamic compositions with geometric lines, powerful typefaces, and blaring slogans” (Gries). Now, according to Foss, “the most important reason for studying visual rhetoric is to develop a rhetorical theory that is more comprehensive and inclusive.” Foss argues in the defense of visual rhetoric, that “visual symbols are” not “insignificant or inferior.” Similarly, Jon Callow form the University of Western Sydney argues that “the term text has assumed prominence as an overarching concept for all manner of works, such as novels, picture books, advertisements, electronic media, film, artworks, and even theatrical performances.” The way that visual rhetoric works can be understood through this example of Obama Hope. It can be easy to “manipulate symbols for different purposes,” and people can also “be reconditioned by imagery” (Gries). Going back to how I have been a member of the visual community, I think that that part; “reconditioned by imagery” is really where the money is. Often times, if not always, visual rhetoric is used to elicit an emotional response. This could be because art is romantic and calls upon emotion, or because a picture can create a narrative that the audience can easily fall into. Either way, visual rhetoric is meant to manipulate the audience, and this can be accomplished through design principles like composition or elements of art, or it through narrative and calling on the audience to create continuity. So, just to be clear here, the kind of continuity I’m talking about is the continuity we learn about in visual studies 1. In this context, continuity means the audience understands the subtext and can fill in the gaps with their own personal narratives. And, that actually goes hand in hand with visual literacy. Continuity and visual literacy, for me, are one and the same. “Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image, extending the meaning of literacy, which commonly signifies interpretation of a written or printed text.” Visual literacy requires the viewer to form that continuity and call upon their own personal narratives in order to even make sense of an image they are seeing. Visuals allow people to “experience things differently than they have through text” (Propen.) According to Callow, “we regularly experience and react to images,” so they are a form of rhetoric. Visual rhetoric can make onlookers really feel some type of way. Going back to Blair, one of the greatest “advantages of visual argument, namely its power in suggestiveness.” Another aspect of visual rhetoric I’d like to hit on is the way it works emotively. Blair brings us back to how continuity plays a key role in the effectiveness of visual rhetoric. One really good example of this is the Daisy Ad form Lyndon Johnson’s presidential campaign in 1964. This was during the height of the cold war, and the American citizens collectively feared an atomic bomb attack. The Daisy Ad showed a little girl in a field, counting petals off a daisy. The image freezes and a military voice counts down to an atomic blast, then words on the screen tell the audience to vote for Johnson. This, I think is a great form of visual rhetoric. It’s multimodal, using both audios, visual and textual elements. This ad really calls on the audience to fill in the blanks and form continuity of the text and the subtext. Basically, the audience comes
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out with the idea that if they don’t vote for Johnson, there will be some horrible catastrophic outcome. As with this example, we can see that and advantage of “visual arguments over print or spoken arguments lies in their evocative power. Part of this power is due to the enormously high number of images that can be conveyed in a short time,” and going along with that, “visual images can be used to convey a narrative in a short time” (Blair). Additionally, “there is a factor of realism that comes with visual rhetoric”, and a factor of believability as a result. Rhetoric transcends boundaries. It isn’t limited to any one medium, and through studying visual rhetoric, we can learn that rhetorical theory can be more inclusive and open, especially with the pictorial shift and the transition to New Media, which is the “means of mass communication using digital technologies such as the Internet.”