CONCLUSION

       The examples I’ve highlighted only scratch the surface of how advertisements can be used to merge cultural studies with visual rhetoric in ways that do not force students into binary thinking or predetermined hostility. While presenting print ad options, I have tried to suggest open techniques to allow instructors the freedom to accomplish their own goals. If you look back at my autopsy/coffin ad, it would probably fall under the category of a PSA. Students could just as easily create parody ads for fictional products that somehow comment or spoof on that style. Students could also be placed in groups to create entire ad campaigns, therein adding another level of complexity to their need to create cohesive productions. Additionally, though I have focused more heavily on print ads, televison commercials also present a wealth of opportunities. Television ads depend even more heavily on juxtaposition of images and how these arrangement choices create meaning while moving through time. The inclusion and movement of text can also be an effective rhetorical technique. A program as accessible and ubiquitous as Window Movie Maker easily allows students to create complex commercials that combine the visual, textual, and aural to produce meaning (without the need to go film there own footage, although this too is an option). With the popularity of Youtube, student-made commercials have an extremely high chance of being viewed outside the university and receiving feedback from actual audiences. Finally, the wealth of Creative Commons License sources should allay the fears of instructors uncomfortable with the legal/ethical issues of having students manipulate found pieces of culture. The CCL also provides an excellent opportunity to discuss how the notions of plagiarism and appropriation are changing in the digital age.

       The historical documents of the composition field tell the story of a discipline long interested in the pedagogical use of advertisements. Like any text or idea in the field, exact pedagogy and theory has constantly changed with the perceived needs of students and re-articulations of the rhetorical situation. The ideas within this essay, and those from the many theorists I have incorporated, have only begun to scratch the service of methods for aligning advertisement use (and other parts of popular culture) with visual rhetoric. The field is increasingly embracing a heavy shift toward production and affection. Although textual analysis will never fall out of favor in English departments, an emphasis on visual production will aid students in developing the skills required to understand and compose within a society of increasingly complex multimedia symbolism.

 

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