VISUAL RHETORIC - sdsuwriting / FrontPage

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FLEMING

• Increasingly people want to talk about “visual argument,” “visual rhetoric,” etc.

• Fleming isn’t sure images alone can be arguments.

Visual Argument

• Visual texts sometimes difficult to interpret?

– Do not advance a thesis or proposition in the way verbal messages do?

– Thesis often ambiguous?

– Components of visual image often shown at the same time, rather than successively in the way words are.

• Can we make some distinctions here: Now it is useful to expand what we mean by a text, to consider material objects, media texts, visual texts; E.g. malls, casinos, supermarkets, web spaces, etc – designed to persuade.

So are monuments

– they are designed to construct national narratives. But does it make sense to conflate argument and persuasion, and argument and communication – argument and coercion, seduction, trickery, etc- i.e.

instrumental

and

reasonable persuasion.

WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENCES?

Fear of a visual planet? (by scholars)

• Biases about the centrality of the visual (Postman, the “peekaboo world” infantalizes and confuses; television and the “dumbing down” of America;

Idiocracy)

• Argument by association – sidesteps reasoning but has a big impact in our frantic, fragmented, image filled world?

• This is part of the famous argument advanced by Tufte in “The cognitive style of powerpoint”

• There has been a big increase in the study of visual texts across a range of disciplines • Some have argued that it is hugely overdue, that a “verbal bias” has long endured, and visual literacy is desperately needed. There has been a “rationalist” bias (think formal logic versus informal; images supposedly lack argument, syntax, etc.) Is this the result of elitism, protestant legacy (iconoclasm), the ineptitude of scholars, fear of losing control, institutional/economic reasons, or something else?

• A range of disciplines discuss visual texts:

• Rhetoric (which includes document design, visual persuasion, technical communication, visual tropes) • Communication studies • Cultural Studies • Semiotics • Anthropology • Film and media studies

Some terms for the analysis of visual texts

• • •

Formal Analysis

Examples: contrast, continuity, alignment, repetition, proximity, balance, cohesion, (chunking and arrangement) proportion, focus, spacing (space as marker - white space, gray space, negative space; figure-ground contrast), emphasis (lines, arrows, highlighting, etc.) line, hue, saturation, etc. Key Criteria: simplicity, clarity, effective contrast, good use of white space, balance, alignment, consistency, clear hierarchy.

Example: Old tech writing site

General Rhetorical Vocabulary

Audience, purpose, context, rhetorical strategies, ideal audience/implied reader, arrangement, style, delivery, rhetorical situation, framing and perspective, “terministic screens,” etc.

Rhetoric, Argument & Persuasion:

“Traditional” terms for the analysis of argument. Claim, warrant, evidence, rebuttal, ethos, pathos, logos, enthymeme, implications and assumptions, topoi, appeal to analogy, authority, principle, causality, etc.

• • • • •

Rhetoric & Figural language

Visual puns, metaphors, metonymy, personification, hyperbole, irony, etc.

KENNEY: alliteration, etc.

Rhetorical schemes

order, regularity and redundancy - rhyme, rhythm, parallelism, antithesis,

Rhetorical tropes

lack closure, contain deficiency of order, defamiliarize, and require audience to elaborate, engage, add interpretation – hyperbole, metonym, metaphor, pun, irony, etc occur when a text contains excessive

Literary & Cultural Studies

Point of view, intertextuality, emplotment, character, characterization, narrative, focus, silence/absence, identity, ideology, cultural myth, subject position, identification, disidentification, etc.

• Each field brings a particular “terministic screen” (Burke: “every way of seeing is also a way of not seeing”) • There is significant overlap between many of these fields in terms of categories, concepts, methodologies, etc. • I encourage bricolage (not “my discipline right or wrong”) • A key theoretical question is the extent to which categories from the analysis of verbal texts can be used to analyze visual texts (and vice versa) • Some rhetoricians (Williams, Wysocki, Hill) argue that the terms used to analyze visual can help in the interpretation of verbal texts – in fact we need to rethink literacy instruction altogether.

• Some also argue that just as the mass media explosion after WWII helped sensitize scholars to previous “shifts” (cf work on orality and literacy) so the current multimedia, digital shift sensitizes us to the ways in which images functioned in the past (can we talk of medieval “multimedia” texts?)

Argument by association?

• Elizabeth Dole TV Ad - Promises http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuS342 L22QI • CNN's Campbell Brown discusses Elizabeth Dole’s ‘Godless’ ad. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMzX_E Afwyc&feature=related

ARGUMENT BY ASSOCIATION

• The famous “daisy ad” by Johnson, which works by association, innuendo and implication: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKs bTL-pRg • http://www.pbs.org/30secondcandidate/timeline/years/1964b.html

• Or a more modern equivalent, by Rick Santorum: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzthL0ATSQg • With the predominance of the visual, do we move to the era of “persuasion by association,” or “one of these things is a bit like the other one”?

• PERHAPS works by enthymeme, inference, implication, or abduction?

• • CAN IMAGES REALLY WORK WITHOUT WORDS – what kinds of communicative acts are possible, and impossible?

Example: The Google Images Storyteller

http://blog.outer-court.com/story/

Context

• Are images more dependent on context than verbal texts? Are they inherently more “polysemic”? Do words let us create a fuller, more stabilized context for their interpretation? • • Example: the Chevy Tahoe ad http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Chevy_Tahoe_2007_Ad http://www.it-is-law.com/tahoe/tahoe.swf

(Taho-liban) Chevy Ad remixed with environmental criticism

• • Example – insert captions in the following, then try inserting an image in the following verbal text, and see how each alters the other.

http://www.cinematical.com/2007/09/07/shoot-em-up-insert-caption/ "Look... I'm hungry and you're hungry, it is an unfortunate situation. But there is no reason we can't share these baby bottles."

Write two scripts to encourage interpretations that are as different as possible

Image 2

• What are the signs here?

1. 2.

ready.gov claims these images communicate: “If you become aware of an unusual or suspicious release of an unknown substance nearby, it doesn’t hurt to protect yourself.” • “A biological attack is the release of germs or other biological substances. Many agents must be inhaled, enter through a cut in the skin or be eaten to make you sick. Some biological agents can cause contagious diseases, others do not.”

If you are sprayed with an unknown substance, stand and think about it instead of seeing a doctor.

Use your flashlight to lift the walls right off of you!

Hurricanes, animal corpses and the biohazard symbol have a lot in common. Think about it.

If a door is closed, karate chop it open.

From: thingsyoushouldknowbeforeaterroristattack1.pdf found at http://officespam.chattablogs.com/archives/036476.html

Vocabularies for vision

Rhetorical Interpretation and Analysis

Traditional categories: • Audience • Context • Purpose • Genre • Rhetorical strategies • Arrangement, style, delivery • Claim, warrant, evidence, rebuttal • ethos, pathos, logos • Assumptions, implications, counterexamples • Etc.

Audience

• • • • • • • What audience is appealed to? Is there an “ideal” audience? An “implied” audience?

How do images construct their audience?

What role/position do they invite us to adopt? How do they create particular “gazes,” spaces for identification, particular points of view? Are we invited to be spectator, voyeur, participant?

In “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” Laura Mulvey argues for the concept of a “male gaze.” The audience is required to see the action and characters of a text through the perspective of a heterosexual man; the camera lingers on the curves of the female body, and events which occur to women are presented largely in the context of a man's reaction to these events. Mulvey argues that the male gaze denies women agency, relegating them to the status of objects. The female viewer experiences the text secondarily, by identification with the male.

Mulvey’s work has been highly influential in feminist theory, media studies and cultural studies, although it has also been criticized, qualified and reworked significantly, particularly from scholars doing audience analysis, reception studies and anthropological work.

We can ask: what gender, race, class etc. does an image invite the audience to identify with?

Context

• The context of production and reception • The cultural, political, personal, historical, and economic context • Our own cultural and social embeddedness, positioned points of view, identities, assumptions, presuppositions.

• The web of texts that are referenced, that relate to or can be connected to a visual text (intertextuality) • VISUAL CULTURE (Kenney)

• What do you notice about these movie posters from the 1950s?

• HORROR movie posters in the 1950s regularly focus on a scene of attack, with a woman in peril. The posters put the viewers in the position where they are asked to take action and to imagine themselves doing something to save the woman. The main scene in each poster spills over the edge of the poster, making it seem as if we, the audience, are there in the frame – we are incited to act. For example, in the creature from black lagoon poster, the rescuers are far away – “we” are closer. Conversely, women always are always victims and powerless. If they have any power, this is demonized.

When ads used a lot of logos

Today’s ads often use different appeals

WE CAN READ MATERIAL CULTURE RHETORICALLY

• “By reading…we mean something more than simply lifting information out of books and articles. To read a text or event is to do something to it, to make sense out of its signals and clues…Reading is thus not something we do to books alone. Or, to put it another way, books and other printed surfaces are not the only texts we read. Rather,

a ‘text’ is anything that can be interpreted, that we can make meaning out of or assign value to. In this sense, all culture is a text and all culture can be read

.” Joseph Harris and Jay Rosen.

Purpose

What is the text trying to do/achieve?

• Persuade?

• Inform?

• Challenge • Resist • Document • Record • Parody • Entertain • Provoke • Etc.

Rhetorical Strategy

This can include such elements as: • Framing • Distance from the subject (is the image a close-up, medium shot or long shot, and how is this used to suggest importance, relationships, etc?) • Point of view (“Eyes the prize”; how does the author position herself?) A low angle shot tends to make the subject look powerful, whereas a high angle shot can reduce the size/importance of the subject • Foregrounding/backgrounding • Selection • Use of visual tropes • Arrangement of elements • Juxtaposition of images – what relationships are inferred?

• Can you think of examples of rhetorical strategies in visual texts you’ve seen?

Selection

• Rhetoric reveals itself not just in framing, point of view, lighting, etc., but in image selection.

Visual argument in everyday television viewing

Visual Tropes

Metonymy

• • • • Metonymy

: works by associating meaning where a part stands for the whole "I’ve got a new set of wheels" (car , motorcycle, etc.) ”We need some new blood in the project” (we need new people with new ideas) Metonymy involves transfer of meaning from one thing to

another similar

thing

•

EXAMPLE – picture of Eiffel tower meant to convey the idea of Paris

Metaphor

• Metaphor: works by comparing things that are not literally alike • "put that file on the desktop", "he is a beast" • “He cracked up”, “I am a little rusty today”, “The BLT is a lousy tipper” • (Key reference: “”Metaphors We Live By”, by G.Lakoff, M. Johnson) • All figures of speech which use association, comparison, or resemblance can generally be called types of metaphor, or metaphorical.

Drink “provokes the desire but takes away the performance.” William Shakespeare

• • • • • •

Try to work out how the metaphors below reveal basic cultural assumptions

1. Spatial Metaphors The foot of the bed, the foot of the hill, the back of the house, the face of the mountain, the leg of the chair, the skin of the orange, etc.

2. Metaphors for Arguments Your claims are indefensible…I attacked the weak points in his argument…She couldn’t counter my criticisms…his criticisms were on target…she won the argument…his position is strong…his argument lacked support 3. Knowledge & Understanding I see what you are saying (cf. “savoir” in French). She showed great insight. My view of this issue is…what is your outlook on the problem? The concept was clear to her. 4. Life/Career He saw no way of getting ahead. He felt he was falling behind. Where do you want to be in 5 years? His career path was working out well. She felt her life was finally on the right track. He was approaching his forties. Things were going well (note how the auxiliary verb “go” is often used to indicate the future, as in “I’m going to be a lawyer.”) [Life is a journey (the person is a traveler, purposes are destinations, means are routes, difficulties are obstacles, counselors are guides, achievements are landmarks, choices are crossroads]

Metaphors Create “Frames” and Involve “Entailments”

Examples: “war on drugs”; society as machine/organism; society as Darwinian survival of fittest.

Social problems: some have argued that liberal and conservative positions on social problems tend to involve different assumptions. The more one explains problems such as crime, homelessness, unemployment etc. in terms of individual flaws, the less likely one is to support social service spending, and the more likely one is to support tough laws (three strikes) and the death penalty. The more likely one is to consider such problems in terms of social explanations, the more likely one is to support social service spending, and the more likely one is to be against the death penalty.

• Hyperbole is intentional exaggeration or overstatement, often for dramatic or humorous effect • Litotes is the opposite – dramatic understatement • Personification – Tony the tiger, Yogi bear, much kids advertising

personification

• Willie Wiredhand, the mascot of the American rural electric movement.

Analogy

Visual Argument

• Argument by association (analogy?)

• Biases about the centrality of the visual (Postman, the “peekaboo world” infantalizes and confuses; television and the “dumbing down” of America;

Idiocracy)

• Argument by association – sidesteps reasoning but has a big impact in our frantic, fragmented, image filled world?

• This is part of the famous argument advanced by Tufte in “The cognitive style of powerpoint”

ARGUMENT BY ASSOCIATION

• PERHAPS works by enthymeme, inference, implication, or abduction?

Images & Cultural/Rhetorical Analysis

• What information do images provide us about culture?

• How can we use images to engage in rhetorical and cultural analysis?

Rhetorical/Cultural Analysis

1. What patterns can you identify in pictures that depict a particular situation, thing or event? What does this tell us about cultural attitudes 2. What absences can you identify?

3. Try reversing one of the roles in a picture and ask what difference this makes?

4. Engage in historical or cross cultural comparison – this may point to cultural shifts or reveal taken for granted cultural assumptions.

1. Patterns

Cultural trends & shifting ideals for men

Ken: 1950 vs 1988

Changing beauty standards

•

In 1957, Miss America was 5'7" and weighed 150 pounds.

• • •

In 2002 Miss America was: 5'9'' 117 pounds

What patterns can you identify?

•

Goffman argues that the positioning of bodies displays appropriate social roles for the genders, that a person's behavior and appearance can be expressive and symbolic, communicating to observers their social identity, their inner states and feelings, their intentions and expectations, and the nature of their relationships with others. This approach to understanding human behavior is known as the symbolic interactionist perspective. Goffman observes that in every culture symbolic codes are developed which express idealized social identities and relationships. Images of women and men together in the media often draw on these indicative codes.

• Women are pictured more often than men in what Goffman calls the "recumbent position... one from which physical defense of oneself can least well be initiated and therefore one which renders one very dependent on the benign-ness of the surround...Floors also are associated with the less clean, less pure, less exalted parts of a room-for example, the place to keep dogs" (p. 41)

What patterns can you identify?

• Goffman argues that women are often posed bending their heads or bodies at an angle, or "cant." The effect of cant, he says, is that the "level of the head is lowered relative to that of others, including, indirectly, the viewer of the picture. The resulting configurations can be read as an acceptance of subordination, an expression of integration, submissiveness, and appeasement." (p. 46)

(top left) Giorgione, (top right) Titian, (above) Goya, (left) film still,

Titanic.

RECLINING NUDES 1509 - 1997

• Most nudes depicted in art are female. A fairly small number of nudes are male. What are some of the differences in the way male and female nudity is represented?

What do gesture & bodily arrangement communicate?

Reversing roles

• Why does it strike us as odd, bizarre or humorous when roles are reversed?

• What does this tell us about the cultural construction of gender – of the qualities are associated with images of masculinity and femininity and the accepted boundaries between them?

• According to Kilbourne, women are more often shown “dismembered” (just parts of their bodies shown), associated with products, shown as smaller than a man, engaged in various forms of ritualized subordination, prostrate or recumbent, bent or leaning back, infantilized (with finger coyly in their mouth, standing pigeon-toed, wearing little girl clothes, sucking on lollipops, etc.), looking dreamy and introverted, overcome with emotions, or symbolically silenced with hand over the mouth.

The Cultural indicators project (Gerbner & cultivation theory) • Gerbner dean of communications at the Annenberg School of Communications • Cultivation theory attempts to understand how "heavy exposure to cultural imagery will shape a viewer's concept of reality“ • Gerbner’s work points to large scale patterns in movies, advertisements, television and other forms of popular entertainment.

The rhetoric of War posters

War poster in fascist Italy (WWII)

War posters are interesting as they distill myths, symbols and narratives of national identity with particular persuasive intensity. They also represent “others,” playing off various cultural and racial stereotypes Poster produced in Italy during WWII vilifying American troops & exhorting Italians to resist American troops

Mom’s Rising – a fascinating netroots/activist group that draws on tropes from WWII recruitment posters to push for various progressive changes in policy http://www.momsrising.org/motherecard/

Rhetorical Strategy

This can include such elements as: • Framing • Distance from the subject (is the image a close-up, medium shot or long shot, and how is this used to suggest importance, relationships, etc?) • Point of view (“Eyes on the prize”; how does the author position herself?) A low angle shot tends to make the subject look powerful, whereas a high angle shot can reduce the size/importance of the subject • Foregrounding/backgrounding • Selection • Use of visual tropes • Arrangement of elements • Juxtaposition of images – what relationships are inferred?

• WHAT STRATEGIES CAN YOU IDENTIFY IN THESE IMAGES?

• • “Emina Uzicanin was just 5 years old. Her family was living on the outskirts of Sarajevo. On a sunny afternoon in May, Emina was playing in a field behind her Uncle’s house. There, she spotted two little rabbits. As soon as she started toward them, the rabbits took off. So she began running. Five feet. Ten feet. That’s when it happened. An ear-shattering explosion ripped through Emina’s body, severing her left leg and leaving the rest of her badly scarred. Every 22 minutes another innocent civilian is killed or maimed by a land mine. Right now there are over 60 million unexploded land mines waiting just beneath the earth in nearly 70 countries. We need your help to rid the planet of land mines and to help its victims like Emina.” Physicians against landmines

• • • •

Language:

Note the ad’s language. Consider what the pronoun “its” refers to in this text. Would you have expected the word “their” instead? Given the grammatical structure, what is Emina Uzicanin a victim of? What value terms or “loaded” adjectives are in this text?

Message

: Note the ad’s “argument.” Of all the ways that the horrible effects of land mines could be dramatized, why do you think the ad creators decided on this particular strategy? What impact is the ad striving for? Why do you think this particular individual was chosen to represent the land mines and not other kinds of victims?

Composition

limb : Note the ad’s “environment.” What is included in the photograph or not included, and why? What is the overall effect of including only an unattached branch and not more specific scenery? What if the victim were pictured on crutches or with an artificial – how would that alter the ad’s effect?

Medium

: In this format, what exactly does the message urge the reader to do? Why was the text designed in this fashion? What purposes does the type design serve? What information about land mines is being presented? What elements are juxtaposed? In what sort of magazines would you expect to find this advertisement —or not expect to find it?

CONTEXT OF PALM AD Physicians against

Land Mines (PALM) describes itself as a “non-governmental organization whose mission is to end the death, dismemberment, and disability caused by Land mines.” A program of the Center for International Rehabilitation in Chicago, PALM sponsors public information initiatives, advocates reforms in international law, and runs numerous programs for the disabled. It also educates the public through advertisements, such as the one reprinted here. Advocacy ads exist to raise Public consciousness – and often money – about social causes. This advertisement is one of many designed to educate people about land mines as an ongoing international issue. Although used primarily for military purposes, unused or leftover land mines can take large tolls on civilian populations, primarily among developing nations. It is estimated that over 80 percent of all land mine victims are civilians, and of these 30 to 40 percent are children under fifteen. In 1999, 137 countries signed a treaty prohibiting the use,stockpiling, and production of land mines, but the U.S., Russia, and China did not sign.

http://www.cirnetwork.org/advocacy/palm/emina.hml

• • • •

AUTOMAKERS ARE TRYING TO DECEIVE YOU ABOUT VEHICLE POLLUTION

free.”* , claiming that “Autos manufactured today are virtually emission Seems they’re ignoring the fact that vehicles actually produce more global warming emissions than they did 20 years ago. In fact, only 4 nations on earth produce more heat-trapping carbon dioxide that U.S. autos do alone. And even under tighter government standards, autos will still emit 500,000 tons of smog-forming pollutants and 350,000 tons of toxics linked to cancer*

Does that sound “virtually emission free to you?”

Rather than using their lobbyists clean out air and protect our kids.

– the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers put their talented engineers to work in – to spread disinformation, automakers should support of federal and state initiatives that

To find out more, visit www.ucsusa.org