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:
Rhetorical schemes occur when a text contains excessive
order, regularity and redundancy - rhyme, rhythm, parallelism, antithesis,
alliteration, etc.
Rhetorical tropes lack closure, contain deficiency of order, defamiliarize,
and require audience to elaborate, engage, add interpretation – hyperbole,
metonym, metaphor, pun, irony, etc
•
•
•
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=OKsbTL-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
• 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?)
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
• The famous “daisy ad” by Johnson, which works by association,
innuendo and implication: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKsbTL-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?
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)
RECLINING NUDES
1509 - 1997
(top left) Giorgione, (top right)
Titian, (above) Goya, (left) film
still, Titanic.
• 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: 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
limb – 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, claiming that “Autos
manufactured today are virtually emission
free.”*
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 – the
Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers – to
spread disinformation, automakers should
put their talented engineers to work in
support of federal and state initiatives that
clean out air and protect our kids.
To find out more, visit www.ucsusa.org