Visual rhetoric
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Visual rhetoric is the fairly recent development of a theoretical framework describing how visual images communicate, as opposed to aural or verbal messages. The study of visual rhetoric is different from that of visual or graphic design, in that it emphasizes images as rational expressions of cultural meaning, as opposed to mere aesthetic consideration (Kress and van Leeuwen 18).
Visual rhetoric examines also the relationship between images and writing. Some examples of artifacts analyzed by visual rhetoricians are charts, paintings, sculpture, diagrams, web pages, advertisements, movies, architecture, newspapers, photographs, etc.
As shown in the works of the Groupe µ, visual rhetoric is closely related to the older study of semiotics. Semiotic theory seeks to describe the rhetorical significance of sign-making. Visual rhetoric is a broader study, covering all the visual ways humans try to communicate, outside academic policing (Kress 11).
Visual tropes and tropic thinking are a part of visual rhetoric (the art of visual persuasion and visual communication using visual images). The study includes, but is not limited to, the various ways in which it can be applied throughout visual art history.
The term "visual rhetoric" has emerged mainly as a way of marking out disciplinary territory for scholars interested in non-textual artifacts such as those mentioned above; conceptually, the term "visual rhetoric" is itself somewhat problematic. It is usually used to denote non-textual artifacts, yet any mark on a surface -- including text -- can be seen as "visual." Consider the texts available at Project Gutenberg. These "plain vanilla" texts, lacking any visual connection to their original, published forms, nevertheless suggest important questions about visual rhetoric. Their bare-bones manner of presentation implies, for example, that the "words themselves" are more important than the visual forms in which the words were originally presented. Given that such texts can easily be read by a speech synthesizer, they also suggest important questions about the relationship between writing and speech, or orality and literacy.
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[edit] The Canonical Approach
The canonical approach to studying visual rhetoric relates visual concepts to the canons of Western classical rhetoric (Inventio, Dispositio, Elocutio, Memoria and Pronuntiatio). In the textbook, “Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators”, its authors list six canons which guide the rhetorical impact of a document, they are: arrangement, emphasis, clarity, conciseness, tone and ethos. According to Kostelnick and Roberts these canons can be defined as:
- Arrangement – “the organization of visual elements so that readers can see their structure”
- Emphasis – making certain parts more prominent than others by changing its size, shape and color.
- Clarity – helps the reader to “decode the message, to understand it quickly and completely”
- Conciseness – “generating designs that are appropriately succinct to a particular situation”
- Tone – tone reveals the designer’s attitude towards the subject matter
- Ethos – earning the trust of the person receiving the message.
These six visual cognates provide an extension of classical rhetoric that can be used as a starting point for analyzing images rhetorically. (Willerton)
[edit] References
- Barthes, Roland, "The Rhetoric of the Image," Image, Music, Text. Ed. and trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. 32-51
- Ewen, Stuart, All Consuming Images. New York: Basic Books, 1988. ISBN 978-0465001019
- Ewen, Stuart, PR! A Social History of Spin. New York: Basic Books, 1996. ISBN 978-0465061792
- Groupe µ, Traité du signe visuel. Pour une rhétorique de l'image, Paris, Le Seuil, 1992. ISBN 2-02-012985-X
- Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. New York: Routledge, 1996. ISBN 0-415-10600-1
- Handa, Carolyn, ed. Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. ISBN 0-312-40975-3
- Hill, Charles, and Marguerite Helmers, ed. Defining Visual Rhetorics. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2004. ISBN 0-8058-4403-1
- Kostelnick, Charles, and David D. Roberts, Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1998. ISBN 978-0205200221
- Rose, Gillian. Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. ISBN 978-0761966654
- Taylor, Alan We, the media: Pedagogic Intrusions into US Film and Television News Broadcasting Rhetorics, Peter Lang, 2005, pp. 418, ISBN 3-631-51852-8
- Willerton, Russell, “Visual Metonymy and Synecdoche: Rhetoric for Stage-Setting Images”. J. Technical Writing and Communication, Vol. 35(1) 3-31,2005.
