Visual Rhetoric Flashcards
Visual Rhetoric definition
They way we use images, which are full of symbolic meaning, to communicate, create meaning, make arguments, and persuade
Images as Rhetoric
- Images suppress their own construction: when we see a photograph we don’t see the process of making it (setting up, photoshop).
- The photo becomes reality itself (appears as if there was no obvious manipulation to surroundings).
- Speakers mold images like they mold words.
Images and Public Culture: Hairman and Lucaites
- Visual rhetoric sustains our public culture; we turn to images (iconic photographs) for a sense of who we are as people.
- Idealizes who we are.
Images and Public Culture: Culture
- Defined as a distinctly coherent set of social practices
- Always operates through communication`
Images and Public Culture: Public Culture
defines the relationship between the citizen and the state
Images and Public Culture: iconic photographs
- Function as a culture.
- Are shown all over the place to serve as emblem to public what they should believe in.
- Ex: nation, community, heroes
Images as Arguments: Image Events
- Image Events: staged acts of protest that are designed for media dissemination
1) Often used by those without access to traditional forms of power. - Allows us to have counter narratives to mainstream discourse.
2) Functions as arguments through fragmentation) - Image itself is never a complete argument.
- Image can be used as claim, warrant, or data of the argument.
- Image becomes an inventional resources (piece of argument-making)
Images as Arguments: Image Events: Claim-warrant-data
- claim- justification for why
- data: your evidence
Functions of Image Events
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- Broaden
- Deliver
- Animate
Functions of Image Events: Broaden
Can broaden the scope of the conversation in public so more marginalized voices can participate
Functions of Image Events: Deliver
can create the ability for those images to circulate- do a lot of work
Functions of Image Events: Animate
can encourage new ways of thinking
Icon
An easily identifiable figure that is a representatives symbol of something
- Ex: eagle= symbol, Uncle Sam= US govt
Visual Ideograph
- Ideographs are not just verbal, also visual
- More than just icons
- Index verbal ideographs (use of verbal argument to make a visual argument)
- Interact with verbal arguments in the public
- Enact verbal ideographs