Visual Rhetoric: Overview

These materials will help students and teachers better understand how to use visual elements in rhetoric.

In this part of OWL, because vision and design are related, we will explain the use of rhetoric theory and rhetoric. "Visual rhetoric" is used to represent the use of images as arguments, placement of elements on pages and rhetoric effects, use of typesetting (fonts), and so on.

Although we can not hope to discuss these and many other topics in detail in this resource, we can see some of the common visual rhetorical problems encountered by student writers: the text elements of the page ( Including font selection), and visual effects (including photos) Role of overall design in illustration, diagram, and rhetoric

Note: Most of the current "graphic rhetoric" is used to analyze existing images and other visual effects. This handout document is designed to be useful for creating visual materials

The term visual rhetoric is a generic term for visual literacy and generally falls into three categories. Visual thinking, visual learning, visual rhetoric / communication (visual thinking and visual learning must be clearly conveyed for visual communication). The following figure shows these concepts. An image from a correction of Sandra Moriarty (Sandra Moriarty) in her essay "visual communication concept map" (master's thesis) by the author "First Year Composition to Teach Visual Literacy and Literature Design": Allen Breeze

Other OWL resources related to Visual Rhetoric are useful for understanding these ideas as follows.

You can also download PDF works and citations quoted in "Visual Literacy and Document Design Proposal in the First Year Composition" of the above media box. This pdf contains a number of resources on visual literacy, visual rhetoric and document design, and the use of these concepts in essay and professional writing.

Visual rhetoric is a means of communicating with visual images and text. Visual rhetoric includes the ability to analyze visual literacy techniques and image formats and meanings. Using semiotics and rhetorical analytical techniques, visual rhetoric examines the structure of the image and the convincing power for the audience as a result. This includes understanding of creative and rhetorical choices made by coloring, shaping, and placement of objects. Visual rhetoric emphasizes the image as a sensual expression of cultural and contextual meaning rather than pure aesthetic considerations. Visual rhetoric has been widely used in various academic fields including art history, linguistics, semiotics, cultural research, exchange of business and technology, verbal communication, and classical rhetoric.

In the academic field, the study of visual rhetoric was aimed at bridging the gap of traditional rhetoric, but traditional rhetoric had a tendency to ignore the visual elements and thought they were not important . Visual rhetorical research is closely related to the semiotics which is a science to study symbols and their meanings. For all intents and purposes, we define a visual rhetoric by citing how we persuade us as humans through the visual clues we receive everyday. Rhetoric cites strategic languages ​​that influence individuals to act in some way or written in persuasive language. When referring to visual rhetoric, it seems obvious that they are talking about how the image is manipulated to change the person's perception. However, in addition to image processing, there are more visual rhetoric methods. In other words, visual rhetoric is defined as a way for people to interpret and analyze what they see.

Some people may argue that visual rhetoric must start with what we are seeing, all must be visual rhetoric. Someone asked, are trees and rocks an example of visual rhetoric? A simple answer may be so. The truth is that trees and rocks can certainly convey us some beauty and aesthetic preferences. Some people may ask if the chair or building can count. Well, of course. The terrible building for us persuaded us not to enter. We convinced with visual rhetoric. But many people argue that visual rhetoric only occurs when someone is trying to convey something like an advertisement or report. No matter how you understand, visual rhetoric is the basis of most communication. Before understanding it, we saw almost everything (except music and sound), so we were always influenced by visual rhetoric.