Visual rhetoric is the art of effective communication through visual elements such as images, typography, and texts. Visual rhetoric encompasses the skill of visual literacy and the ability to analyze images for their form and meaning. Drawing on techniques from semiotics and rhetorical analysis, visual rhetoric expands on visual literacy as it examines the structure of an image with the focus on its persuasive effects on an audience.
Although visual rhetoric also involves typography and other texts, it concentrates mainly on the use of images or visual texts. Using images is central to visual rhetoric because these visuals help either form the case an image alone wants to convey or argue the point a writer formulates, in the case of a multimodal text that combines image and written text, for example. Visual rhetoric has gained greater notoriety as recent scholarly work has explored alternative media forms, including graphics, screen design, and other hybrid visual representations that do not privilege print culture and conventions. Also, visual rhetoric involves how writers arrange segments of a visual text on the page. In addition, visual rhetoric involves the selection of fonts, contrasting colors, and graphs, among other elements, to shape a visual rhetoric text. One vital component of visual rhetoric is analyzing the visual text. The interactional and commonly hybrid nature of cyberspaces that usually mixes print text and visual images enable some detachment of them as isolated constructs, and scholarship has claimed that especially in virtual spaces where print text and visuals are usually combined, there is no place either for emphasizing one mode over another. One way of analyzing a visual text is to look for its significant meaning.
Simply put, the meaning should be deeper than the literal sense that a visual text holds. One way to analyze a visual text is to dissect it so the viewer can understand its tenor. Viewers can break the text into smaller parts and share perspectives to reach its meaning. In analyzing a text that includes an image of the bald eagle, as the main body of the visual text, questions of representation and connotation come into play. Analyzing a text that includes a photo, painting, or even a cartoon of the bold eagle, along with written words, would bring to mind the conceptions of strength and freedom, rather than the conception of merely a bird.
This includes an understanding of the creative and rhetorical choices made with coloring, shaping, and object placement. The power of imagery, iconic photographs, for instance, can potentially generate actions in a global scale. Rhetorical choices carry great significance that surpass reinforcement of the written text. Each choice, font, color, or layout, represents a different message that the author wants to portray for the audience. Visual rhetoric emphasizes images as sensory expressions of cultural and contextual meaning, as opposed to purely aesthetic consideration. Analyzing visuals and their power to convey messages is central to incorporating visual rhetoric within the digital era, as nuances of choices regarding audience, purpose, and genre can be analyzed within a single frame, and the rationale behind designers' rhetorical choices can be revealed and analyzed by how the elements of visuals play out altogether. Visual rhetoric has been approached and applied in a variety of academic fields, including art history, linguistics, semiotics, cultural studies, business and technical communication, speech communication, and classical rhetoric. Visual rhetoric seeks to develop rhetorical theory in a way that is more comprehensive and inclusive with regard to images and their interpretations.
History and origin The term rhetoric originated in ancient Greece, and its concept has been widely discussed for thousands of years. Sophists first coined the idea as an abstract term to help label the concept, while Aristotle more narrowly defined rhetoric as a message's potential to influence audiences. Linguists and other researchers often define rhetoric through the well-known five canons of rhetoric. Over time, this definition has evolved, expanded, and raised serious debate as new digital communication channels have developed.
In his book Elements of Criticism, rhetorician Lord Kames (also known as Henry Home) laid the groundwork for later rhetoricians by taking the controversial stance of including visual art in his theory of criticism. Kames argued many of the same points as other Enlightenment scholars—mainly that art was beneficial to the public—and worthy of note and praise—if it was encouraging a moral improvement of its audience.
In 1977, French theorist Roland Barthes brought to light a new way to evaluate other communication media, showing the relevance of traditional rhetorical theories to the still photographic medium. Barthes explained visual rhetoric generally as the implied and interpreted messages from the work, yet these bigger messages often extend beyond the initial superficial interpretation. Visual rhetoric uses a variety of tools to hook readers within its mediums (e.g. gifs). Although similar in nature, one striking difference between visual and classical rhetoric is the newfound outlook on Aristotle's original canons. Linda Scott created a newfound audience by constructing new cannons exclusive to visual rhetoric. Instead of closely monitoring the content, as with the initial five canons, Scott's focused on the visual medium's ability to invent and argument, arrangement of the item, and all coupled with a meaningful delivery of presentation. Since its inception, popular studies have appeared in academic publications discussing the role of visual rhetoric in many facets of human life, especially advertising.
The term emerged largely as an effort to set aside a certain area of study that would focus attention on specific rhetorical elements of visual media. Historically, the study of rhetoric has been geared toward linguistics. Visual symbols were deemed trivial and subservient and thus were largely ignored as part of a rhetorical argument. As a result, modern rhetorical theory developed with a significant exclusion of these visual symbols, ignoring the field of visual rhetoric as a separate area of study. Scholars of visual rhetoric analyze photographs, drawings, paintings, graphs and tables, interior design and architecture, sculpture, Internet images, and film. From a rhetorical perspective, the focus is on the contextual response rather than the aesthetic response. An aesthetic response is a viewer's direct perception of the sensory aspects of the visual, whereas with a rhetorical response, meaning is given to the visual. Every part of the artifact has significance in the message being conveyed; each line, each shading, each person has a purpose. As visual rhetoricians study images and symbols, their findings catalyze challenges to the linguistic meaning altogether, allowing a more holistic study of the rhetorical argument to emerge with the introduction of visual elements.
Related studies
Composition The field of composition studies has recently returned its attention to visual rhetoric. In an increasingly visual society, proponents of visual rhetoric in composition classes suggest that increased literacy requires writing and visual communication skills. In relation to visual rhetoric, the composition field positions itself, more broadly, into challenging reductive definitions of composing and rhetoric that gravitate toward verbal communication only. Touching upon rhetorical processes/decisions that affect a visual design is a venue for calling composition scholars’ attention to the function that arrangements of images and words play out in writing practices and thus communication, emphasizing the complex relationship between verbal and visual meanings. Visual communication skills relate to an understanding of the mediated nature of all communication, especially to an awareness of the act of representation. Visual rhetoric can be utilized in a composition classroom to assist with writing and rhetoric development.
Semiotics Semiotic theory is defined as a theory that seeks to describe the rhetorical significance of sign-making. The central idea of the theory is that a sign does not exist outside a contextual experience; it exists only in relation to other signs, objects, and entities. Therefore, the sign belongs to a larger system, and when taken out of the context of other signs, is rendered meaningless and uncommunicable. The parts of a semiotic are divided into two parts: the material part of the sign is known as the form of expression, the meaning of the form of expression is known as form of content. In semiotic theory, the expression only has meaningful content when existing in a larger contextual framework.
Areas of focus While studying visual objects, rhetorical scholars tend to focus on three areas: nature, function, or evaluation. Nature encompasses the literal components of the artifact. This is a primary focus of visual rhetoric because, in order to understand the function of an image, it is necessary to understand the substantive and stylistic nature of the artifact itself. Function holds a somewhat literal definition—it represents the purpose an image serves for an audience. The function, or purpose, of an image may be to evoke a certain emotion. The evaluation of an artifact determines if the image serves its function.
Rhetorical application Visual rhetoric studies how humans use images to communicate. Elements of images, such as size, color, line, and shape, are used to convey messages. In images, meanings are created by the layout and spatial positions of these elements. The entities that constitute an image are socially, politically, and culturally constructed. The same image may represent different rhetorical meanings depending on the audience. The choice and arrangement of the elements in an image should be used to achieve the desired rhetorical effects and convey messages accurately to specific audiences, societies, and cultures.
The use of images is a conscious, communicative decision, as the colors, forms, media, and sizes are each chosen intentionally. However, a person may come in contact with a sign, but if they have no relation to the sign, its message is arbitrary. Therefore, for artifacts or products to be conceptualized as visual rhetoric, they must be symbolic, involve human intervention, and be presented to an audience to communicate.
In "The Rhetoric of the Image", Roland Barthes examines the semiotic nature of images and how they function to communicate specific messages. Barthes points out that messages transmitted by visual images include coded iconic and non-coded iconic linguistic messages. Visual rhetorical images can be categorized into two dimensions: meaning operation and visual structure. Meaning operation refers to the relations and connections between elements in visual images. Visual structure refers to the way that the elements are visually displayed.
Analysis terminology