Defining Visual Rhetorics

by Charles A. Hill (Editor), Marguerite Helmers

Images play an important role in developing consciousness and the relationship of the self to its surroundings. In this distinctive collection, editors Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers examine the connection between visual images and persuasion, or how images act rhetorically upon viewers. Chapters included here highlight the differences and commonalities among a variety of projects identified as visual rhetoric, leading to a more precise definition of the term and its role in rhetorical studies.



Contributions to this volume consider a wide variety of sites of image production--from architecture to paintings, from film to needlepoint--in order to understand how images and texts work upon readers as symbolic forms of representation. Each chapter discusses, analyzes, and explains the visual aspect of a particular subject, and illustrates the ways in which messages and meaning are communicated visually. The contributions include work from rhetoric scholars in the English and communication disciplines, and represent a variety of methodologies--theoretical, textual analysis, psychological research, and cultural studies, among others. The editors seek to demonstrate that every new turn in the study of rhetorical practices reveals more possibilities for discussion, and that the recent turn to the visual has revealed an inexhaustible supply of new questions, problems, and objects for investigation. As a whole, the chapters presented here demonstrate the wide range of scholarship that is possible when a field begins to take seriously the analysis of images as important cultural and rhetorical forces.

Defining Visual Rhetorics is appropriate for graduate or advanced undergraduate courses in rhetoric, English, mass communication, cultural studies, technical communication, and visual studies. It will also serve as an insightful resource for researchers, scholars, and educators interested in rhetoric, cultural studies, and communication studies.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, Theory

356 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Peaches · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since I read this almost 20 years after it came out, it makes sense that I'd find it less compelling; however, I appreciated the background on why visual rhetorics are often less prioritized in the field of study and the introductory chapters of what it means to look at visual rhetorics.

[Sally Sugarman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a stimulating book that taught me a great deal. The articles were wide ranging from samplers to Victorian architectural advice books. The power of photographs was demonstrated in the article about the way in which the photo of young Robert Jr. saluting his father’s coffin was used at the death of Jackie Kennedy as well as at the death of Robert himself in a plane accident. The photo resonated with the American people because of its innocence in a time of national tragedy. The article on campaign video biographies seemed to me to show that a visual document could make an a persuasive argument. The way in which women represented nature in images of women lying prone on the beach while being caressed by men, contrasted with the rugged nature to be conquered by men with mountains and deserts to be dominated was another example of how ads use images to deceive. There was also an article about how unhealthy cigarettes were sold by showing the rugged Marlboro man. Over and over again the different authors showed how global corporate capitalism urged consumerism on us. The discussion of the Wild Oats grocery store set up images to try and make people comfortable with the exploitation of farmers throughout the world to feed their customers at high prices. Recreating a more neighborly time with a butcher slicing the meat and fruit and vegetables not in packages. There was also an interesting article on the evolution of charts and figures to simply show complex information such as the economics of immigration and migration. These visual aides were not objective as they might have seen. They also conveyed ideology as they used different shapes and colors to explain economic and social material. The article on the sampler was interesting, connecting it with the Bayeux Tapestry. Embroidery was at one point women’s way of expressing ideas visually. By the 18th and 19th centuries, text dominated the sampler instead of images. This book made me think of all the visual images that existed throughout time, the graffiti on Roman tombs, the statues in Greece and who wasn’t among those depicted, stained glass windows in churches and paintings and murals. In a non-literate world there were many images it seems to me. Those prehistoric drawings on the cave walls. There is the rhetoric of the word and the image as well as the rhetoric of their interaction. Some of the earlier articles laid out the theory while most chapters gave specific examples of how visual rhetoric worked in so many different venues such as the charts we see throughout textbooks and articles. Always look beyond the surface and ask what is the message that the image is conveying. The constant echo of that image of the flag being planted in Iwo Jima. Think of the different power of the image of a beheading and that of execution by lethal ejection. Now that is an article that would almost write itself. The article on Vertigo was an example of how the close-up was used as well as some of those other shots for which Hitchcock was famous. This is a book that leaves one with a great deal more to think about.

[Kateřina Musilová · Rating 4 out of 5]

Užitečná a zajímavá kniha. Nejlépe ji brát jako ucelený úvod do oblasti vizuální rétoriky nebo návod, jak toto téma uchopit. Soubor textů, které se snaží analyzovat jednotlivé aspekty vizuální kultury a ukázat, kde všude může být rétorika nalezena; důležitý je v knize také pohled porovnávající analýzu vizuálních médií na základě klasické rétoriky versus nového, čistě vizuálního pohledu.

Bohužel jen jedna z mála knih, které k tomuto tématu jsou. Jako by snad vizuální rétorika neexistovala.