There were many different definitions and viewpoints to describe visual rhetoric. When I think of the word, I think about using images to communicate meaning. The Eyman Reading Digital Rhetoric defines visual rhetoric as “an example of a discrete set of methods to use within the digital rhetoric context”. After reading this section of the article, it made me further evaluate the term itself. It can be seen as the rhetorical situation of decision making about image use. For example, the visual rhetoric used for the website that I created for this class has been challenging. It is important to include visuals to go along with the text to provide a better understanding.
Digital Rhetoric Vs. Visual Rhetoric
Throughout the reading, the two forms of rhetoric are compared when it comes to the basic nature of the concepts. The further discussion of visual rhetoric made me realize that it is solely not just about the representation of the images. This rhetoric can also be the aspect of anything created by human hands Barthes “The Rhetoric of the Images” examines the questions of meaning that resides in the images, and how we analyze them. Visual representation can be analyzed conatively and denotatively, which is important to think about. Like digital rhetoric, visual rhetoric functions as a practice and a field of study. Soja Foss makes a valid point when she notes that visual rhetoric is a product created using visual symbols for communication (Foss 2004).
Overall
Within this short reading from Eyman, there was a lot of important information to take in. Before reading, I associated this concept with simple representation to go along with words. Images used in representation are presented with deeper meanings. It is important in everything we do, for example the website being created for this class. The purpose of the images included is to further describe the meaning of my teaching website. This reading ended with an interesting idea, that visual rhetoric’s method addresses one side of digital analysis and production. However, both digital and visual are both intertwined, and related in a number of ways.
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