English 680V: Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age (Purdue)

I find it helpful to consider the domain of visual rhetoric as a way of answering this question. For instance, we might readily see a poster or a flyer as visual rhetoric. As well, we might see the addition of graphics and illustrations to a report or technical document as visual rhetoric. Following Bernhardt's discussion of visual rhetoric and its link with delivery, we can see dress, physical appearance and body language as visual rhetoric. Gladwell's discussion of height as a cue for unconscious responses suggests as much.

Of course, defining rhetoric itself is the most likely of first steps. Following a definition that Ryan (Weber, of course) deploys, namely that rhetoric is the use symbols to produce an effect, visual rhetoric comes to incorpate a whole lot. Visual rhetoric is, in this formulation, the use of specifically visual symbols to produce effects. The importance of appearances, and the conscious and unconscious effects they produce, adds weight to visual rhetoric. Exploring work being done in neuro- and cognitive science (and also in philosophy of the mind), we can see how much visual stimulation guides human action, and also how much perception is tied to action.

Side Note: An episode of King of the Hill explores the political implcations of a weak handshake; might we consider something like tactile rhetoric in this discussion?