visual and equally visually weighted” (223). When text becomes art, it is sometimes laid out in a pattern on a page, which we refer to as iconistic text layout. In a newspaper article predicting who would be nominated for Oscars from 2003 films, the text formed Oscar’s shape on the page with pictures of likely nominees lined up along side it (Turan).
Which graphic elements we choose to include also reflects our style. One person may select strong colors in block patterns; another chooses wispy, curved pastels. A rock poster showing a singer with spiked hair and multiple rings in eyebrows and nose sets a different tone from an advertisement for a classical piano concert that has a shadowy schematic of a piano in the background. These choices set a tone as well as conveying information about what sort of concert each will be.
Memory (memoria). Greek rhetoricians used visualization as a technique to aid speakers in remembering their speeches. As Cicero described in De Oratore, this technique was a mnemonic of association based on architecture. Speakers were taught to envision a place, such as a house or perhaps the lecture hall where the planned speech would be delivered, and mentally to associate each section of a speech with a room or item in that place, to create, in a sense, a mental map of images. Parts of a speech might be envisioned as laid out along the steps leading up to the speaker’s platform or associated with a row of windows lining the lecture hall. An overview of points to be made could, in the speaker’s mind, be resting on the podium, and the major points of the argument mentally displayed among a row of statues standing along one side of the hall. Such visual techniques helped speakers remember the points of their speeches and their order, and also helped them keep their place as they proceeded through a speech.
Today’s speakers use PowerPoint. The images have moved out of our minds and onto a projection screen thanks to advances in technology. The images not only help us remember the points we wish to make, they also help our audiences remember them. Access to external memory supports is one of Donald Norman’s principles of designing for usability (34–80). In describing memory’s role in usability he says, “Don’t underestimate the power or importance of simple mental aids [. . .]. They reduce memory load by providing external memory devices (providing knowledge in the world instead of requiring it to be in the head)” (192–93).
Delivery (pronuntiatio). The fifth rhetorical canon, delivery, has changed and continues to change dramatically through advances in technology. Once, when we wanted to persuade someone of our ideas, our only instrument for delivering the message was our voices. With the development of writing and its technologies, we moved through scratching with sticks or rocks, painting with brushes, writing with pen and ink, typing on paper, and now, though usually still at a keyboard, creating virtual electronic communications with computers. Each technological advance has brought new opportunities for delivering our messages to listeners/readers/viewers until today we have an array of options, many of which involve visual elements and, therefore, visual rhetoric.
Much of our writing to inform and to persuade occurs today through the media and on the World Wide Web. We get much of our news from television, which is by name a visual medium that often gives us information through multiple means simultaneously. An interview, for example, might have a crawl line of text running below it for us to read while we are also able to watch the speakers in the interview, gaining information from their facial reactions as well as the questions and answers, and to hear other events occurring in the background. Mitchell Stephens has said that moving images will become how we write in the twenty-first century (201). We saw evidence of that in the summer of 2004. Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9 /11, which is clearly a message and not a fictional story, set attendance records. Apparently many people wanted to see the film in order to evaluate his message for themselves. Today’s communicators would be wise to learn the techniques of these media for conveying their ideas and for putting the rhetorical principles described here to use.
Visual Representation as a Rhetorical Tool
Visuals can be very persuasive, carrying information as well as appealing to our emotions. J. Carl Ganter, Jr., a journalist and photographer, told me of a photo exhibit that played a part in developing history. This exhibit was shown in the early 1990s when events were occurring in Yugoslavia that would result in breaking that country apart, but few people in the United States were yet interested in what was happening so far away. Pictures of events in Yugoslavia were not being printed in the news magazines they had been intended for. Ganter’s picture editor in New York at the time “had heard about all these images coming back from Yugoslavia, and these pictures weren’t being published. They were pictures by very famous photojournalists who were risking their lives to cover important stories of atrocities that were going on” (Interview). The editor had a connection with an administrator at the United Nations and gained permission to show the photos in the main entrance of the UN building. He had the pictures enlarged and framed, and a writer added captions and an introduction. The show was placed at the UN entrance, where it could be viewed by everyone entering or leaving. “Suddenly Yugoslavia was on the map because the pictures, some of them were so strong that people were brought to tears.” Ganter also makes the point that, as powerful as images may be, for him pictures don’t tell the whole story. “A picture tells a thousand words, but there’s always more [. . .]. There’s always a context to put it in [. . .]. I want to know the story behind the picture” (Ganter). For the pictures of Yugoslavia, the introduction and captions served that purpose.
People in all fields are beginning to realize the importance of visual elements and the rhetorical effects they carry. As Felice Frankel has written in an article on “Visualizing Data,”
I am convinced that to develop the much-needed new approaches to representing data, scientists must begin to embrace ideas from those who have not necessarily made a career in science but who have a serious interest in visual thinking and communication. In the process we will learn that making intelligent and communicative representations will clarify the complicated ideas that are the data.
The same is true of all our writing to inform or persuade. Visual thinking during our writing process expands our reservoir of ideas. Visual rhetoric in our documents helps us carry our messages to our readers and viewers more effectively.
Works Cited
Aristotle. The Rhetoric and The Poetics of Aristotle. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts. Ed. Friedrich Solmsen. New York: Modern Library, 1954.
Barry, Ann Marie Seward. Visual Intelligence. Albany, NY: State U of New York P, 1997.
Berger, Arthur Asa. Seeing Is Believing: An Introduction to Visual Communication. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1989.
Bergstein, Brian. “Consumer/Technology: Seek and Ye Shall Find.” Tucson Citizen, 16 Jan. 2004. 30 Jan. 2005 <http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/index.php?page=business&story_id=011604b1_search>.
Brumberger, Eva R. “The Rhetoric of Typography: The Persona of Typeface and Text.”Technical Communication 50.2 (2003): 206–23. See also: Technical Communication Online (2003) <tc.eserver.org/publisher/Technical_Communication_Online>.
—. The Rhetoric of Typography: The Awareness and Impact of Typeface Appropriateness. Technical Communication 50.2 (2003): 224–31.
Cicero. De Oratore, Books I and II, Trans. E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham. Vol. 348 of Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1996. Reprinted in The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. 2nd ed. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 289–339.
Corbett, Edward P. J. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1971.
Frankel, Felice. “Visualizing Data.” American Scientist Online, 19 Feb. 2004. 30 Jan. 2005 <http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/31222>.
Ganter,
