In last week’s post, I discussed human-computer interactions. Today, we look at visual rhetoric in an example with political cartoons.
According to Eyman, visual rhetoric does not have a singular definition. Essentially, it involves images which are interpreted just by looking, rather than reading words. Both forms of rhetoric go hand in hand because digital includes multiple modalities including auditory, tactile and visual. So, digital rhetoric integrates visual rhetoric. This is especially in the case of images we find online or on website interfaces. However, what makes visual rhetoric stand apart is its sole focus on the modality of visual. Such is seen in political cartoons.
Political Cartoons
A perfect example of visual rhetoric are political cartoons. Anyone in high school history is likely to dissect these interpretable images. Do a quick Google search, you will see a slew of images with meanings that aren’t spelled out for you. The blog’s featured image caught my eye because the Covid-19 pandemic was recent enough to where the meaning of this image is likely relatable to most. In this image, nowhere does it say “Covid-19” or anything about how difficult that event was for us. But if you take in everything about the image: the hand sanitizer, the toilet paper pile, and the calendar especially, you can put the pieces together that not only is this image about the Covid-19 pandemic, but we can see evidently in Dorothy’s face and her quote that the author is conveying the hardships that we all experienced from that event.
Analyzing images this way without reading a written meaning is using visual rhetoric. We can see examples that aren’t so complex such as the political cartoons. A simple stop sign at the end of the street is visual rhetoric, because despite that it reads the word “stop”, from afar, you can see the bright red sign and the color red universally means STOP.
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