Persuasion as Visual Rhetoric

Bret’s thoughts on the psychological aspects of visual rhetoric may provide an avenue to begin constructing a theory of the discipline. Hill provides us with the concepts of presence and vividness as the ways in which our minds respond to visuals (the rationalist, non-visual perspective mentioned in class being a notable exception). He posits that these cognitive reactions can stir our emotions to the point of heuristic processing, i.e., shortcut based thinking, making images persuasive. However, Blair counters Hill in his assertion that visual persuasion does not always amount to rhetoric. He argues that there must be some argumentative propositions (implicit and/or explicit) present so that the rhetor draws “…the viewer to participate in completing the construction of the argument and so in its own persuasion” (59). So, according to Blair, rhetors construct visual enthymemes. The visuals employed use their presence and vividness to persuade viewers of these argumentative propositions.

Incorporating persuasion and logical argument into visual rhetoric seems reasonable, but I’m not sure that I agree that every visually rhetorical artifact is in fact an argument. Playing off of Aristotle, Blair asserts “Rhetoric, as related to argument, is the use of the best means available to make the logic of the argument persuasive to the audience” (59). Blair’s emphasis on argument differs from Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric: “The faculty of observing, in any given case, the available means of persuasion." Aristotle’s definition leads me to think that argument is not necessary for rhetoric in general, and the visual in particular, but the emphasis should be placed on the phrase “in any given case.”

The phrase “in any given case,” requires a keen sense of the rhetorical situation and the audience a rhetor is addressing. If an audience is more likely to respond positively to a series of visuals with little argumentative propositions, it seems appropriate to leave logical argument out of an artifact. Argument is but one tool in the visual rhetoric toolbox; narrative and identification are two others (Thanks again, Bret). Knowing which of these tools to employ depends largely upon a rhetor’s particular situation, broader historical contexts (which have been constructed through discourses that employ visual and verbal texts), localized context, and their particular audience. As such, a rhetor can choose how many visuals to use, if any, what kind of visuals to employ, and for what purpose, based on the doxa of their audience.

I realize that currently I am lacking the aspect of circulation in this probably already shoddy theory. But I’m attempting to emphasize the importance of persuasion at a psychological level to visual rhetoric, while also acknowledging how individuals’ psyches are formed through constructed historical contexts to react to visuals in different ways. To perform “visual rhetoric,” we must make some assumptions about our audience(s) and employ appropriate visuals for the situation and context.