Visual Rhetoric and Visual Literacy

Visual rhetoric can be presented to students as a language, a set of codes and cues that work together to create meaning and make arguments. In this sense, visual rhetoric is a lot like traditional rhetoric, providing its own "vocabulary" that will enable an author to make appeals to the viewer's reason, emotions, and values—or ethos, pathos and logos.

Rather than working with the subtleties of diction and phrasing (though words can certainly be part of a visual appeal) visual rhetoric calls upon a whole different set of systems. Color, composition, image content, and even typeface can be manipulated to provoke a response from a viewer, and tap into deep wells of personal and cultural meaning, experience, and emotion. In addition to the graphic and symbolic vocabularies that make visual rhetoric so powerful, images can also contain implied narratives. In reconstructing the narrative implied in, for example, a prescription drug ad, the viewer participates in the construction of meaning. Visual rhetoric thus relies upon the viewer's ability to respond both consciously and unconsciously to graphics and images, and the arguments they create.

Here are some links that further address the concepts behind visual rhetoric and suggest ways the concepts can be applied in the classroom:

• http://spot.colorado.edu/%7Emoriarts/vcsyllabus.html
  This site features a syllabus and bibliography for a graduate seminar on visual rhetoric from the University of Colorado, so you can get an idea of what is expected from a class that deals specifically with visual rhetoric. The expectations for this course are probably different than those for a class using Beyond Words, but the site has plenty of useful information, including a bibliography and some ideas for final class projects.
  
  
• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Mediums_and_Manifestations_of_Visual_Rhetoric
  This site lays out different "manifestations" (or genres) of rhetoric and employs a vocabulary to talk about them. The different mediums and manifestations include: film, advertising, Internet, architecture, design, and television. This site stresses the importance of the message and its connection to an audience; it shows ways in which an audience is "constructed" by the message. Advertisements, for example, often rely on our conventional notions of gender roles to appeal primarily to one gender over another.
  
  
• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Definitions_of_Visual_Rhetoric
  Provides history and definitions of key terms. Starts with Aristotle and Francis Bacon and goes all the way through contemporary theory. Claims that visual rhetoric has its origins in art criticism, especially in theories about vectors (lines, that is).
  
  
• http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Status_of_Visual_Rhetoric_and_Visual_Literacy_in_the_Academy
  Interesting article that compares the similarities and differences in discussions of visual—as opposed to written—texts. It also discusses where visual rhetoric fits in the academy, since it seems to cut and paste from English, art history, communication studies.
  
  
• http://www.americanrhetoric.com/rhetoricdefinitions.htm
  Key figures, such as Aristotle, Francis Bacon and Kenneth Burke discussed in concise, no-nonsense entries. A quote from Cicero, for example, defines rhetoric as "speech designed to persuade." You can see on this site a tension between definitions of rhetoric that stress its negative, or manipulative qualities, and definitions that stress its positive, or rational qualities.
  
  
• http://wrt-howard.syr.edu/Bibs/Visual.bib.html
  A very thorough bibliography about visual rhetoric. This bibliography has a number of sources that specifically deal with the problem of teaching visual rhetoric in the classroom. Some of the articles are available online.
  
  
• http://www.pomona.edu/Academics/courserelated/classprojects/Visual-lit/intro/intro.html
  Visual literacy is often lumped together with visual rhetoric, but it can be quite different. The foundation of visual literacy, as explained here on a website sponsored by Pomona College, is a grammar of design, analogous to a grammar of a spoken language. Basic visual elements (dot, line, shape, direction, texture, hue, etc.) correspond to written elements common to most composition teachers (diction, tone, style, point of view, etc). This site has a good visual explanation of these visual elements.
  
  
• http://www.ivla.org/
  More about visual literacy and its cross-disciplinary approaches to images. This is an international organization devoted to visual literacy, so you can see how the topic is addressed outside the U.S. as well.
  
  
• http://uwc.fac.utexas.edu/media/Handouts/Rhetorical%20Terminology.pdf
  A very concise introduction to rhetorical concepts and terminology provided by the Undergraduate Writing Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The concepts here can be applied to either visual or written texts.
  
  
• http://www.virtualsalt.com/rhetoric.htm
  A handbook of numerous rhetorical terms, many from Classical, or Aristotelian rhetoric.
  
  
• http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~awysocki/vizbiblio.pdf
  Anne Frances Wysokci's comprehensive annotated bibliography "for working with the visual and interactive aspects of texts, whether the texts be on screen or on paper." A remarkable resource for anyone interested in exploring the field in depth.
  
  

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