rightness of a cause, we are often swayed more by our passions or emotions (Corbett 34), and it is emotion that inspires us to take action (99). A group of medical students at the University of Michigan has appealed visually to the emotions of their institution’s policymakers through “photovoice,” a technique used in “advocacy efforts from China to Flint to San Francisco for more than a decade” (Rueter E1). The medical students photograph patients in ways that emphasize the patients’ unmet needs and use the photos in presentations made to medical center administrators and community leaders. These students also used photovoice to argue their own need to work in outpatient clinics serving people without health insurance. As a result, medical school officials are now forging a partnership with such a clinic, in which interested students can do rotations, learning about loan-forgiveness programs and low-cost clinics.
Rhetorical Canon
In addition to providing useful tools for presenting our ideas to others, rhetorical theory also provides help for guiding us in the development of those ideas into coherent essays, articles, and presentations. Classical theory breaks the process into five steps, which together are referred to as the rhetorical canon. Each step can be illustrated through visuals to help us understand the procedure more clearly and incorporate it into our work.
Invention (inventio). We’ve all suffered from paralysis of the blank page. Before we can present a persuasive discussion, we need something to say, but what? We need to develop ideas that will help to make our case. In rhetorical theory, that process is called invention, but of course we don’t just make up imaginary facts, as the term may imply. What we invent, or develop, are topics (topoi) related to our purpose. Visual representation can be especially helpful with this step of rhetoric.
Because it is hard to come up with ideas, writing teachers have developed heuristic strategies, such as brainstorming, to stimulate our thinking, but we don’t all think in the same ways. Some people rely on manipulating language to generate ideas whereas others rely more on the right side of the brain, which is associated with our visual processes. For these individuals, visual heuristics and the overall process of visual thinking can help spark creative ideas. We can, for example, create mind maps, matrices, storyboards, and sketches as we develop our way of approaching a problem. Through these visual thinking activities, we may discover relations among the parts of a problem and
use them to create new directions in our thinking. When students in my classes are developing ideas, with the goal of preparing a recommendation report, I ask them to create visual representations of the problem as part of the development process. In fact, I ask them to create two or three representations so that they get beyond the more linear matrices and flow charts to sketches and visuals based on freer types of associations. One year, my students decided to investigate the problem of insects in their residence halls and to send recommendations to the housing staff. In preparation, they created idea maps and sketches to represent their thought processes. Representations such as these give students a wide range of ideas to draw on that can help them see connections among issues as they begin writing (Figure 2).
The lawyer mentioned earlier, who described using visuals in his court presentations, also uses visuals to aid his invention process in preparing arguments. While thinking about a case, he makes a literal or schematic drawing of the scene or situation to help him develop a general approach; for some cases, he also hires a photographer to help him get a clearer view of a setting. These visual representations help him to clarify and to organize his thinking on a case, to absorb the whole, and to see relations among the parts. He feels that the visuals translate relations over time into relations in space so they can be comprehended and evaluated more easily. Visuals, he believes, can cut through the murkiness sometimes created by words and help him see features of an issue more clearly (Steingold). (Figure 3 shows paper mill workers using graphic models in a similar way, to help them understand a production problem.)
Scientists have long used the Internet to exchange information. The advent of browsers added the power to exchange visuals as well as text, and the World Wide Web has relatively recently become a valuable resource for many of us seeking information. A great deal of information is available there on almost any topic, and it’s easily accessible to anyone with a computer connection. Online search tools have become tools of invention, and these tools are themselves becoming more visual. Not only can they display graphics, but search engines such as Vivisimo and Grokker show the results of a search as a visual representation rather than as a list. Results are sorted into categories and then mapped into a display, for instance, as a set of labeled geometric shapes. The software uses a combination of linguistic and statistical analyses to determine categories that fit the subject matter and then maps search results visually into colorful circles of information that allow a viewer to zoom in for detail. An article about these new search tools describes a search for “Paris Hilton” as an example. A textual search tool like Google would return a long list that includes items on a celebrity named Paris Hilton as well as on a Hilton Hotel in Paris. The visual search tools group the responses into categories, such as booking sites, maps, celebrities, etc., making it easier for us to select a circle with the information we need (Bergstein).
Arrangement (dispositio). The visual features of a page are more than simply print conventions; they are full of meaning. The headings and indentations of a page layout indicate a hierarchy of meaning, the order of importance for the points being made. For example, headings in the center are more important than those on the side, and items in a list are related. Through arrangement of information on a page, we make particular points stand out and take on importance in our presentation, whether it’s persuading reader/viewers to purchase a particular toothpaste, to accept the conclusions of an experiment, or to pass legislation. As Karen Schriver explains, “The visual organization of the rhetorical cluster (in this case, the headings, subheadings, and listed items) should make it easy to see the structure; that is, to see which lists are related, which are embedded, and so on” (400). We can think of the visual cues of arrangement as a map for a reader’s trip through our document, showing where to go next as well as which items should be taken together and which will come afterward.
Standard design principles of proximity, contrast, etc. are also rhetorically important for developing Web pages, new spaces for writing that the Greeks would never have dreamed of. In addition to typical highlighting and alignment cues, websites involve a third dimension of arrangement—hyperlinks. Not only can we indent a section of information that needs to be set apart, we can move it to a different location. In addition to preparing a list of items that go together, we can group them on their own page. Visual proximity or virtual separation reinforces the strength or weakness of connections among different pieces of information on a topic and allows us to feature what we find most important. What should we do with those unimportant but still necessary details? Put them two links deep in the website’s structure.
Style (elocutio). The visual rhetoric of style can be subtle and is often found within the text itself. The font we choose, for example, presents a personality to our readers. Times New Roman gives a businesslike quality to reports whereas Comic Sans catches our attention in a party invitation, and Nuptial Script says we’re invited to a wedding. In addition, the density or openness of the lettering and words in a text conveys an attitude and helps to set our expectations about the subject matter of the text. In the introduction to this chapter, for example, I referred to text placed in short, centered lines as often indicating poetry, which brings with it specific expectations. (For an extended discussion of the personality qualities of various fonts, see Eva Brumberger’s articles in Technical Communication.)
The letters themselves also constitute a design element (Figure 4). As Wysocki says about one of the CD-ROMs she analyzed, “The words have been designed to be as much a part of this screen as the
