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

I'm working on a paper about snobbiness and cultural capital for Pat's Public Rhetoric class, which lead me to notice an interesting visual rhetoric of space in a book store this weekend. It was a fairly large store, plenty of different categorized sections. What was interesting was the placement of the Literature section. The store's check out counter was a big raised oppressive affair, truly signifying: you the customer can not come back here.

In Randall Collins’ chapter “The Mutual Focus/Emotional-Entrainment Model,” he asserts that television is a combination of picture and sound, claiming that “the stronger sense of involvement, of being pulled into the action, is from the sound” (55). A burst of cheering will bring us back into the room to discover that the game is in its final minutes, runners are about to score, the team is making a drive, etc.