How Visuals are Rhetorical & My Increasingly Confusing Questions about Color

Seeing visuals as rhetorical means that we must consider the argument or proposition they make in regard to their context and their audience. Blair writes that “the visual is above all rhetorical. To be effective, the visual properties of a visual argument must resonate with the audience on the occasion and in the circumstances” (52). He says the same at the end of his essay (59). If I’m correct in relating it back to Bitzer, for the visual to make a rhetorical argument it must be apropos to the rhetorical situation: it uses the right tools of argument at the right time to make the “right” argument/suggestion/influence (by right argument, I mean the one to which a majority of people will adhere to or accept because of its appropriateness to the situation out of which it arises).  Blair goes on to say that visual rhetoric argues by way of the enthymeme, which deals in probabilities. Thus, the audience is engaged to form the founding premise of the argument. This gets us back into notions of visuals such as photography being ambiguous and vague, such as we’ve heard from Berger. However, the ambiguity of the visual through its use of enthymeme is what invites (compels? attracts?) the viewer to participate in the meaning-making process in regards to that visual. Moreover, Blair and Hill claim that it is through an visual’s vividness and immediacy that they act rhetorically on the viewer so forcefully; this is similar to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca notion of presencing. Finally, both Hill and Blair speak of the power of the visually rhetorical to invoke strong emotional—or what Blair calls involuntary—responses in the viewer that must be counter-balanced if the rhetorical effect is to be resisted. 

These are some things I’ve listed that I’ve learned about visual rhetoric from the readings. But, though I’ve described qualities of visual rhetoric, I’ve not given examples. Tange gives an example of visual rhetoric in action in her study of the rhetorical value of visuals promoting Victorian domesticity (which I found to be really interesting). I also found Blair’s comments about color as rhetorical to be interesting: “On the one hand, the colors have their effects unconsciously; on the other hand, once we know about their effects, can’t we resist or compensate for them?” (43). (As a reminder, he’s clarifying that persuasion is that which we have the license to consciously assent to.) Since the beginning of the semester and the dizzying amount of approaches to visual rhetoric and claims made for it, I’ve, too, often wondered if something as simple as color could be seen as rhetorical. Similar to Tange’s argument that visual artifacts promoting domesticity in Victorian culture (domesticity, or the house, standing in as the symbolic embodiment of a set of cultural values that shaped behaviors and situated bodies within a hierarchical social stratum) influence people to accept and uphold certain “realities,” might something as simple as a color not affect the same, to a smaller degree? Maybe that wasn’t clear: might color also affect our identity? It’s already proven that, to some extent, at least, they affect our behaviors. But, if we, after becoming cognizant of what each symbolizes or effects emotionally/behaviorally in us, come to associate ourselves with a color, is that not rhetorical? If dark colors are thought to be associated with, say, depression or sadness or secrecy, and I begin to associate myself more closely with them (e.g., through my clothing), can that not be visual rhetoric used to portray insights into my identity?