Summary of Eyman
In the section “Visual Rhetoric” of Chapter One, “Defining and Locating Digital Rhetoric,” of his book, Digital Rhetoric: Theory, Method, Practice, Douglas Eyman goes about positioning visual rhetoric within the context of digital rhetoric. Eyman seems to focus on two main definitions of visual rhetoric. The first frames visual rhetoric as a kind of tool used within digital rhetoric. The second defines it as a theoretical process of using a variety of rhetorical aspects. He writes that “visual rhetoric is an example of a discrete set of methods and theories that are available to use within the digital rhetoric context. At the same time, visual rhetoric parallels digital rhetoric in the sense that it too draws on a number of different fields and disciplines and uses rhetoric as the common theoretical foundation.”
Visual Element of Rhetoric
Eyman paraphrases from Roland Barthes’s “The Rhetoric of the Image,” to further establish his positioning of visual rhetoric in the field of digital rhetoric. “The rhetoric of the image, he suggests,” writes Eyman, “is subject to physical constraints but that its meaning can be read.” The idea of there being a readable “meaning” within the visual aspects of rhetoric reminds me of the definition of rhetoric itself.
In A Rhetoric of Motives, Kenneth Burke writes, “Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is ‘meaning,’ there is ‘persuasion. ’” We already know and understand that rhetoric uses a wide variety of persuasive elements in order to sway the audience. Visual rhetoric is simply one of these elements. However, an image itself is not persuasive. It is the meaning of the image, or what it implies to the audience, that is persuasive. For example, the use of memes has become a popular mode of communication. The picture that a meme depicts can be taken from anywhere, but its specific use can mean something completely different. Similarly, the societal meaning of any given emoji can vary from its intended use. Take, for example, the skull emoji, which is often used to convey the message ‘dying of laughter.’
My Thoughts
If we recall our simplest understanding of rhetoric, visual rhetoric will begin to make more sense in this field. Rhetoric is meant to be persuasive, and therefore appealing to the audience. This persuasion has the most to do with ‘meaning,’ but visual rhetoric implies an esthetic importance. If rhetoric makes a text persuasive, then visual rhetoric makes a text aesthetically pleasing to the audience.
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