Page 337 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
P. 337
challenges of rhetoric in the era of “bytes and likes” 337
ment and persuasion this functional view preserved its legitimacy to re-
gard pictures and moving images as rhetorical products.
In the second view, visual rhetoric is a process and it facilitates the
perspective of those “non-traditional” theorists2 of rhetoric who state
that there is a shift from rhetoric as product (and composition) to rhet-
oric as a process, and call it the rhetoric of everyday life. By this they pri-
marily mean the “rhetorical character and dynamics of language in mun-
dane contexts” (Nystrand-Duffy, 2003: viii); the realization, of which
leads to the identification of the rhetorical character of literacy develop-
ment, which shapes the location and meaning of everyday life. Albeit in
terms of language, this view differentiates rhetoric as a process clearly
from rhetoric as a product. However, we integrate images into this para-
digm by stating that, as a process, visual rhetoric means the rhetoric-
al character and dynamics of images in the contexts of everyday life. As
a process, visual rhetoric is a vision of culture, a constitutive interaction
between culture and subjectivity, and a continuous enactment of their
multiple relationships. Here, visualizing is considered to be the ground-
ing for reality, a container of memory, a dimension of everyday existence
by which we refract continuously and rhetorically our understanding of
the world and ourselves within it. In this sense, visualizing does not rep-
resent, but creates experience by relating, through images, the person to
the concrete situation. It is more a constitutive part of subjectivity, iden-
tity, and culture than an effect of the eye. It is contextual, spatial, and
material (Ott-Dickinson, 2009: 396–398). Flickr and YouTube photos,
shared on Facebook, are characteristic examples, of this visualizing, and
of the visual rhetoric as the process of everyday life. As a process, visual
rhetoric provides a perspective of media communication, which reflects
both image-reading and reshaping, and which develops complex visual
competencies within the constituted social world.
The approach of visual rhetoric as a procedure suggests that images
are underlying forms of our thinking and that the pictures are created as
a visual mode comprising visual logic and intelligence. As a procedure,
visual rhetoric is about the logic of seeing and about visual thinking as
a procedure of rhetorical practices. In this view, procedure is conceived
as the logic of constitution and deconstruction. Visual logic is based on
studies of perception and cognition to which Rudolf Arnheim’s sem-
2 Non-traditional rhetoricians focus on those rhetorical practices which are not mainstream in the
sense of social power and its rhetorical character. They are researchers investigating those capacities
of rhetoric which have long been forgotten or re-declared as belonging to other faculties of discourse
studies; please see, for example, Carolyn R. Miller’s or John Ackerman’s writings on genre or space.
ment and persuasion this functional view preserved its legitimacy to re-
gard pictures and moving images as rhetorical products.
In the second view, visual rhetoric is a process and it facilitates the
perspective of those “non-traditional” theorists2 of rhetoric who state
that there is a shift from rhetoric as product (and composition) to rhet-
oric as a process, and call it the rhetoric of everyday life. By this they pri-
marily mean the “rhetorical character and dynamics of language in mun-
dane contexts” (Nystrand-Duffy, 2003: viii); the realization, of which
leads to the identification of the rhetorical character of literacy develop-
ment, which shapes the location and meaning of everyday life. Albeit in
terms of language, this view differentiates rhetoric as a process clearly
from rhetoric as a product. However, we integrate images into this para-
digm by stating that, as a process, visual rhetoric means the rhetoric-
al character and dynamics of images in the contexts of everyday life. As
a process, visual rhetoric is a vision of culture, a constitutive interaction
between culture and subjectivity, and a continuous enactment of their
multiple relationships. Here, visualizing is considered to be the ground-
ing for reality, a container of memory, a dimension of everyday existence
by which we refract continuously and rhetorically our understanding of
the world and ourselves within it. In this sense, visualizing does not rep-
resent, but creates experience by relating, through images, the person to
the concrete situation. It is more a constitutive part of subjectivity, iden-
tity, and culture than an effect of the eye. It is contextual, spatial, and
material (Ott-Dickinson, 2009: 396–398). Flickr and YouTube photos,
shared on Facebook, are characteristic examples, of this visualizing, and
of the visual rhetoric as the process of everyday life. As a process, visual
rhetoric provides a perspective of media communication, which reflects
both image-reading and reshaping, and which develops complex visual
competencies within the constituted social world.
The approach of visual rhetoric as a procedure suggests that images
are underlying forms of our thinking and that the pictures are created as
a visual mode comprising visual logic and intelligence. As a procedure,
visual rhetoric is about the logic of seeing and about visual thinking as
a procedure of rhetorical practices. In this view, procedure is conceived
as the logic of constitution and deconstruction. Visual logic is based on
studies of perception and cognition to which Rudolf Arnheim’s sem-
2 Non-traditional rhetoricians focus on those rhetorical practices which are not mainstream in the
sense of social power and its rhetorical character. They are researchers investigating those capacities
of rhetoric which have long been forgotten or re-declared as belonging to other faculties of discourse
studies; please see, for example, Carolyn R. Miller’s or John Ackerman’s writings on genre or space.
