Visual rhetoric is the fairly recent development of a theoretical framework describing how visual images communicate, as opposed to aural, verbal, or other messages. The study of visual rhetoric is different from that of visual or graphic design, in that it emphasizes images as sensory expressions of cultural meaning, as opposed to purely aesthetic consideration.[1] Visual Rhetoric has been approached from a variety of academic fields of study such as art history, linguistics, semiotics, cultural studies, business and technical communication, speech communication, and classical rhetoric. As a result, it can be difficult to discern the exact relationship between different parts of the field of visual rhetoric.[2] Some examples of artifacts analyzed by visual rhetoricians are charts, paintings, sculpture, diagrams, web pages, advertisements, movies, architecture, newspapers, or photographs.
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The exact history of the field of visual rhetoric is difficult to trace, as it could be argued that "visual rhetoric" has been studied and practiced as long as images have. The term emerged largely as a mechanism to set aside a certain area of study and to focus attention on the specific rhetorical traits of visual mediums.[2]
As shown in the works of the Groupe µ,[3] visual rhetoric is closely related to the study of semiotics. Semiotic theory seeks to describe the rhetorical significance of sign-making. Visual rhetoric is a broader study, covering all the visual ways humans try to communicate, outside academic policing.[1]
Roland Barthes, in his essay "The Rhetoric of the Image"[4] also examines the semiotic nature of images, and the ways that images function to communicate specific messages.
Visual tropes and tropic thinking are a part of visual rhetoric (the art of visual persuasion and visual communication using visual images). The study includes, but is not limited to, the various ways in which it can be applied throughout visual art history.
The field of composition studies has recently (re)turned its attention to visual rhetoric. In an increasingly visual society, proponents of visual rhetoric in composition classes suggest that an increased literacy requires skill not only with writing but also with visual communication. This skill relates to an understanding of the mediated nature of all communication, and to an awareness of the act of representation.[5][6]
The "canonical approach" to studying visual rhetoric relates visual concepts to the canons of Western classical rhetoric (Inventio, Dispositio, Elocutio, Memoria and Pronuntiatio). In the textbook Designing Visual Language: Strategies for Professional Communicators,[7] its authors list six canons which guide the rhetorical impact of a document: arrangement, emphasis, clarity, conciseness, tone and ethos. According to Kostelnick and Roberts these canons can be defined as:
These six visual cognates provide an extension of classical rhetoric that can be used as a starting point for analyzing images rhetorically.[8]
Visual Rhetoric is usually used to denote non-textual artifacts, yet any mark on a surface -- including text -- can be seen as "visual." Consider the texts available at Project Gutenberg. These "plain vanilla" texts, lacking any visual connection to their original, published forms, nevertheless suggest important questions about visual rhetoric. Their bare-bones manner of presentation implies, for example, that the "words themselves" are more important than the visual forms in which the words were originally presented. Given that such texts can easily be read by a speech synthesizer, they also suggest important questions about the relationship between writing and speech, or orality and literacy.