In his 1990s studies of visual humor, Noël Carroll left to “future researchers” the laborious task of developing a “comprehensive and rigorous classification of the phenomena” pertaining to “the sight gag.” Carroll contributed five possible items belonging to such a taxonomy, i. e., “the mutual interference gag”, “mimed metaphors”, “the object analog”, “the switch image” and “the solution gag”. Following the implicit reference to rhetoric built in the very names of some of these items, this article shows how (...) the well-established tropes of classical rhetoric, indeed three hundred of them, can be employed, with a modicum of analogical creativity, in order to address the visual component of comedic sketches, as exemplified by Monty Python’s famous Flying Circus. (shrink)

Past, present, and future are reversed in the reader's encounter with the illustrations selected by Gertrude Stein for her Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.1 After the table of contents there is a table of illustrations that encourages everyone to look at the pictures before they begin reading. During that initial examination, the illustrations forecast what is to be discovered in the text. Expectations are aroused by photographs showing Gertrude Stein in front of the atelier door, rooms hung with paintings, Gertrude (...) and Alice in front of Saint Mark's Cathedral, and both with a car in front of Joffre's birthplace. It is natural—although, as it turns out, not altogether correct—to assume that the accumulation of paintings will be explained, that the life lived within the rooms will be fully depicted, and that conventional narrative explanation will be provided to account for the presence of Gertrude and Alice together in such disparate settings as Venice and the French marshal's home. · 1. For useful comments on several pictures as well as evidence that "even the book's sixteen photographs were carefully placed in the first edition," see Richard Bridgman, Gertrude Stein in Pieces , p. 219. Paul K. Alkon, professor of English at the University of Minnesota, is author of Samuel Johnson and Moral Discipline. Among his recent articles are "Boswellian Time" and "The Historical Development of the Concept of Time." He is writing a book about time in Defoe's fiction. See also: "The Mind, The Body, and Gertrude Stein" by Catharine R. Stimpson in Vol. 3, No. 3; "Gertrude Stein, the Cone Sisters, and the Puzzle of Female Friendship" by Carolyn Burke in Vol. 8, No. 3. (shrink)

The aim of the present study is to evaluate Sonja Foss’s Rhetorical Schema for the Evaluation of Visual Imagery as well as reflect upon several points for further consideration; and finally suggest a renewed triadic approach as a method for analyzing art-relevant visual imagery. The triadic approach to be discussed assumes three correlative layers: the intellectual knowledge, function of the artistic content as the visual representational component, and aesthetics as modality. This study will include the analysis of (...) a print advertisement that used an artwork as its content of visual rhetoric, and this will inform further discussions on the proposed approach. The contribution of this renewed triadic approached to the field of visual rhetoric has the advantage of expanding and possibly improving rhetorical analysis methods of visual imagery. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 220 Seiten: 69-94.

This article analyses the visual rhetoric of Michel Gondry’s Deadweight (1997), a music video for Beck Hansen’s song of the same name, and also considers the song’s relation to Danny Boyle’s film A Life Less Ordinary (1997). Two key structures are identified in the video: antithesis and similarity – which Gondry employs to visually illustrate the title of both Beck’s song and Boyle’s film.

At the turn of the twentieth century, French society was shaken by a scandal that affected it at many levels to varying degrees and that is still considered as a symbol of injustice, miscarriage of justice and antisemitism. The Dreyfus Affair started in 1894 when an artillery officer of Jewish descent was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for communicating military secrets to the German embassy in Paris. Only years later was Alfred Dreyfus exonerated and rehabilitated, due mainly to the (...) role of the media and the famous article by the novelist Emile Zola, “J’accuse”. The press, in general, played a fundamental role in the narration of the event and in the complex chemistry that led a confidential case of espionage to become a broad public debate, exemplifying the constant struggle against prejudice and irrational impulses that implies democracy. From the impressive volume of publications, I selected two drawings issued when the truth about captain Dreyfus’s innocence began emerging. One is by Félix Vallotton, “That’s why she was not coming out!”, the other by Gustave-Henri Jossot, “She was too naked”, and they both give an interpretation of the truth and of the reasons why it—the truth—came out so late. The semiotic approach of the drawings and of Zola’s pamphlet in terms of visual message leads us to distinguish three aspects. The first is iconic and consists of establishing the links between a signifier, a signified and a referent in order to recognize the immediate message but also the connoted signification; the second is linguistic and consists of the captions; and the third is plastic, focusing on size, colors and shapes. These analyzes of the mode in which visual artefacts produce meaning and provoke an interpretative process are made in terms of rhetoric insofar as rhetoric is considered, not only in terms of figures of speech, but as a method of persuasion and argumentation. (shrink)

This article identifies the structural and conceptual aspects of a visual construction often used in advertisements to establish a metaphoric or associative relation, that is, symmetric object alignment (SOA). It offers an account of the formal ingredients of SOA, which fall into two groups: object-constitutive factors (like size, shape, and color) and object-depictment factors (like perspective, orientation, and distance from viewing point). Both factors allow us to treat SOA as a visual rhetorical scheme. We also discuss how SOA (...) relates to conceptual structure, metaphoric or otherwise. Four types of relations are distinguished, based on the way in which perceptual and conceptual characteristics interact. Finally, we discuss the way in which these characteristics relate to the processing of such visual messages. One depictment factor will be focused on in particular: one-to-one versus one-to-many alignments. An attempt is made to connect these 2 patterns to the much-discussed topic in verbal metaphor theory, object comparison versus categorization. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"A City of Brick":Visual Rhetoric in Roman Rhetorical Theory and PracticeKathleen S. LampPerhaps none of the words Augustus, the first sole ruler of Rome who reigned from 27 BCE to 14 CE, actually said are quite as memorable as the ones Cassius Dio has attributed to him: "I found Rome built of clay and I leave it to you in marble" (1987, 56.30).1 Suetonius too discusses Augustus's (...) building program, offering an alleged quote along with an explanation of his motivation: "Since the city was not adorned as the dignity of the empire demanded, and was exposed to flood and fire, he so beautified it that he could justly boast that he had found it built of brick and left it in marble" (1998, Aug.28.3). Though Suetonius's explanation is practical, Dio argues Augustus's "city of brick" had a more metaphoric or symbolic meaning: "In saying this he was not referring literally to the state of the buildings, but rather to the strength of the empire" (1987, 56.30).Both historians, then, perceive a connection between the physical appearance of the city and Rome's place at the head of the (Roman) world. Maecenas, Augustus's right-hand man who was essentially the minister of culture, explicitly draws attention to this strategy in a speech fabricated by Dio. Maecenas advises Augustus, "Make this capital beautiful, spare no expense in doing so, and enhance its magnificence with festivals of every kind. It is right for us who rule over so many peoples to excel all others in every field of endeavor, and even display of this kind tends to implant [End Page 171] respect for us in our allies and to strike terror into our enemies" (1987, 52.30). Here Dio suggests, albeit in hindsight, that Augustus's building program was a conscious "display" of Rome's supremacy meant to elicit a reaction, particularly from those who dwelled outside the city.Though from this passage of Dio's it is possible to argue that the physical appearance of the city of Rome was meant to persuade, or at least elicit some response, the passage does not provide support for the claim that architecture, monuments, and city planning functioned rhetorically in ancient Rome. After all, Quintilian reminds us that "many other things have the power of persuasion" (1970, 2.15.6-9). Nonetheless, this passage does generate questions about the relationship between the Augustan building program, or more broadly the Augustan cultural campaigns, and rhetoric in the principate—specifically about the way in which the cultural campaigns functioned rhetorically to help Augustus gain and maintain power.Recently, I have argued that the Ara pacis Augustae, an Augustan monument commissioned in 13 BCE, functioned as a visual example of a rhetorical text, meant not only to celebrate Augustus's successful campaigns is Spain and Gaul but also to garner public support for Augustus's heir and the process of dynastic succession. Because specific rhetorical techniques often associated with the epideictic genre clearly function on the altar, the Ara pacis demonstrates that Augustus and/or his ministers were thinking rhetorically when constructing at least some Augustan monuments (Lamp 2009). Similarly, architectural historian Diana Favro has argued that certain aspects of Augustan architecture made use of rhetorical techniques related to the canon of memory (1996). These findings are perhaps not surprising given that George Kennedy, writing nearly forty years ago, acknowledged that Augustus, a figure he called "the greatest rhetorician of antiquity, " "developed new techniques of verbal and visual persuasion which took over some of the functions and adapted some of the methods of traditional oratory" (1972, 378, 382).Still, very little attention has been paid to Augustus as a rhetorical figure, which is not to say that scholars of rhetoric have paid no attention to Roman rhetoric. While the classicist Theodore Mommsen, writing in the latter half of the nineteenth century, went as far as to refer to the principate as the "end to the entire discipline of rhetoric" (1992, 125), the decline narrative in regards to Roman rhetoric is shifting. Traditionally, this decline narrative suggested that following the assassination of Cicero, traditional oratory retreated into... (shrink)

Visual images are widely used in medical and patient education to enhance spoken or written explanations. This paper considers the role of such illustrations in shaping conceptions of the body; specifically, it addresses depictions of variant sexual anatomy and their part in the discursive production of intersex bodies. Visual language—even didactic, ‘factual’ visual language—carries latent as well as manifest content, and influences self-perceptions and social attitudes. In the case of illustrations about atypical sex development, where the need (...) for non-stigmatising communication is crucial, it is especially important to consider the implicit messages conveyed by imagery and compositional strategies. (shrink)

Microscopy can depict small biological entities that are invisible to the naked eye – cells, neurons, chromosomes, molecules, etc. Microbiology thereby grants us visual access to dimensions of our bodily interior that are otherwise imperceptible to us. Often, in micrographs, this infinitesimal inner realm is made to resemble the way cosmic space is represented in astronomical pictures – an ‘aesthetic leap’ that ties the microcosm of the body to the macrocosm of the universe. This article explores how aesthetic conventions (...) in microbiological images create meaning that transcends their empirical content, and examines the historical precedents of these conventions in the history of anatomy and their contemporary cultural implications. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the visualization of Euro-American medicine and indigenous healing in John Steinbeck’s 1941 documentary-drama _The Forgotten Village_. The movie juxtaposes film and medical discourse as exemplifications of modern, visual culture by showing excerpts from hygiene films and foregrounding medical imagery (e.g., bacteria cultures). The film displaces indigenous medicine by privileging a Euro-American medical model, and the gaze of oppression is perpetuated through humanitarian medical intervention. In short, disease is not simply a material fact but embedded in discourses (...) about community identity, moral values, and politics. (shrink)

Perhaps none of the words Augustus, the first sole ruler of Rome who reigned from 27 BCE to 14 CE, actually said are quite as memorable as the ones Cassius Dio has attributed to him: "I found Rome built of clay and I leave it to you in marble" .1 Suetonius too discusses Augustus's building program, offering an alleged quote along with an explanation of his motivation: "Since the city was not adorned as the dignity of the empire demanded, and (...) was exposed to flood and fire, he so beautified it that he could justly boast that he had found it built of brick and left it in marble" . Though Suetonius's explanation is practical, Dio argues Augustus's "city of brick" had a more metaphoric or . (shrink)

This paper examines how photography shaped the American public’s perception of psychiatric hospitals during the immediate post-WWII period. I will analyze photographs that appeared in popular exposé articles of that period and that used photography as a visual aid for disclosing the poor conditions of state hospitals, intending to promote reform efforts focused on turning antiquated asylums into modern hospitals. Existing scholarship has mentioned how these photographs had a significant influence on shaping the public’s view of asylum conditions. Through (...) a close examination of these photographs, I will argue that they often contained unintentional messages which stigmatized disabled people. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2017 Heft: 216 Seiten: 41-62.

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

Notions of human rights as enshrined in international law have become the “idea of our time”; a “dominant moral narrative by which world politics” is organized; and a powerful “discourse of public persuasion.”1 With the rise of human rights discourse, we need to ask, how do protagonists make human rights claims? What sort of resources, techniques, and strategies do they use in order to publicize information about human rights abuses and stipulations set out in international law? With the democratization of (...) mapping practices, various individuals, organizations, and governments are increasingly using maps in order to put forth certain social and political claims. This article draws on the sociology of knowledge, science studies, critical cartography, cultural studies, and anthropological studies of law in order to analyze how various international, Palestinian, and Israeli organizations design maps of the West Bank Barrier in accord with assumptions embedded within international law as part of their political and new media activism. Qualitative sociological methods, such as in-depth interviewing, ethnography, and the collection of cartographic material pertaining to the West Bank Barrier, provide the empirical tools to do so. The maps examined here exemplify how universalistic notions of international law and human rights become a powerful rhetorical tool to make various and often incommensurable social and political claims across different maps. At the same time, international human rights law, rather than dictating local mapping practices, becomes inevitably “vernacularized” and combined with local understandings, cultural preferences, and political concerns. (shrink)

Our aim is to point out some differences between verbal and visual arguments, promoting the rhetorical perspective of argumentation beyond the relevance of logic and pragmatics. In our view, if it is to be rational and successful, film as (visual) argumentation must be addressed to spectators who hold informed beliefs about the theme watched on the screen and the medium’s constraints and conventions. In our reflections to follow, we apply rhetorical analysis to film as a symbolic, human, and (...) communicative act that may sometimes be understood as a visually laid out argument. As a mixture of visual, auditory, and verbal stimuli, film demands active and complex interpretation and (re)construction. Our suggestion is to focus on five different but interrelated elements. The reconstruction and evaluation of the visual argument will be based on those elements, and the whole process will be one of visual argumentation. (shrink)

This article proposes a semio-rhetorical epistemology for visual documents, one capable of accounting for both their internal configuration, which we shall call the compositional dimension, and their persuasive force within public space, or their rhetorical dimension. The field of reference will be that of identity-related images on social networks, because compared to other kinds of images, such as artistic or professional ones, they adopt new compositional solutions and new dynamics of circulation. To test this theoretical framework, we will conduct (...) an analysis which has never been carried out in semiotics and which, as far as we know, remains very rare even in the overall field of visual studies, that is, the analysis of the profile of an Instagram influencer’s visual production, that of Canadian artist Rupi Kaur. Taking into account the flow of images shared over time, we will focus primarily on the compositional dimension that articulates the specificity of the language of images. The most appropriate model for investigating social network photos seems to be that of the portrait, thanks to which we will identify a first series of regularities and deviations. Secondly, we will turn towards the rhetorical dimension – the persuasive strategies found within, through, and towards images – focusing on the analysis of a single photo: on the one hand, it is a shot which presents greater compositional richness than others; on the other hand, it has greatly impacted the notoriety of the influencer, due to the censorship incurred on Instagram, its abundant coverage by traditional media, and the heated debate it triggered on social media. We will thus propose a reinterpretation of Paul Ricœur’s theory of identity in order to balance the rhetorical and the compositional dimensions through a unitary theoretical hypothesis. Visual identity on social networks is always the result of a negotiation between two opposite tendencies: on the one hand, the experiential pressure expressed through images related to the body and everyday practices; on the other, the algorithmic pressure due to the delegation of the management of identity to software. The case of Rupi Kaur is a rare example of a critical mediation between these two pressures and helps us build a methodology for the examination of images belonging to other social domains. (shrink)

Social advertising often employs persuasive imagery in support of a morally laden cause. These visual arguments can take the form of veridical representations of the given situation or the form of purposeful visual blends. Both visual routes to persuasion have serious ethical issues to confront. In what concerns the purportedly veridical images, controversies about picture retouching and framing have cast many doubts on their success in offering unmediated access to a given reality. Editorial interests have proven far (...) too influential on the destiny of what and how is presented to the audience from the amount of visual material available on a topic. Even when the audience is certain that photos are not doctored, the use of veridical images may be seen as unethical. Their disproportionate affective impact may lead the audience to hold biased opinions, since other concerns may be impossible to capture in a vivid picture. Visual blends may be the answer to this problem, employing the fictional or the figurative to help the viewer grasp the moral anatomy of a given situation. Their generous use of figurative meaning may be seen as their strength and their weakness at the same time. It makes them less likely to face accusations of distorting reality, because they do not claim to be windows on reality per se. At the same time, it makes them vulnerable to interpretations that miss their true point – one might appreciate the artistry of a visual metaphor or a visual pun and fail to consider the statement it makes about a given situation. Contemporary philosophical approaches to the place of visuals in moral persuasion inform my analysis of the use of visual arguments in charity-oriented advertising. (shrink)

Some forms of argumentation are best performed through words. However, there are also some forms of argumentation that may be best presented visually. Thus, this paper examines the virtues of visual argumentation. What makes visual argumentation distinct from verbal argumentation? What aspects of visual argumentation may be considered especially beneficial?

Ethotic arguments are defined as sequences of claims-and-reasons regarding speaker character, based on which the plausibility of speaker assertions can be questioned. This is an exploratory study concerning the role of visuals in ethotic arguing. In this paper, I bring together contributions from visual argumentation theory and from studies regarding various modes of construing an ethotic argument, in an attempt to offer an adequate account of the argumentative action of images in ethotic sequences of discourse. In the last section, (...) I propose a case study which illustrates the argumentative action that visuals may perform in the ethotic genre of advertising. (shrink)

The question, “What norms are appropriate for the evaluation of the probative merits of visual arguments?” underlies the investigation of this paper. The notions of argument and of multimodal visual argument employed in the study are explained. Then four multimodal visual arguments are analyzed and their probative merits assessed. It turns out to be possible to judge these qualities using the same criteria that apply to verbally expressed arguments. Since the sample is small and not claimed to (...) be representative, this finding can at best be regarded as suggestive for the probative assessment of multimodal visual arguments in general. (shrink)

This book was put together over the course of the past three years and is the outcome of the author’s publications in the multimodal advertising rhetoric research field and projects that were undertaken with the employment of the //rhetor.dixit//© model. It features four chapters that span different, yet interlocking aspects of ad texts’ multimodal rhetorical configuration and culminates in a practical guide for the analysis of the verbo-visual rhetorical structure of TV ad texts, based on the unique methodology (...) of the //rhetor.dixit//© model on offer by //disruptiVesemiOtics//. //rhetor.dixit//: Understanding ad texts’ rhetorical structure for differential figurative advantage neither seeks to cover exhaustively issues in any of the traditional fields of concern to the discipline of rhetoric (an impossible endeavor, indeed, within the contours of a single book), nor to address all issues on top of the current agenda in multimodal advertising rhetoric. Its mission is to present key facets of current research in multimodal advertising discourse, largely dispersed and spread out in multiple disciplines, including semiotics, in such a manner as to enable the reader to get to grips with the benefits that stem from employing a content analytic approach for the ongoing management of the modes of rhetorical configuration of advertising texts. The combination of an interpretivist approach with the methodical outlook yielded by content analysis affords to transform multimodal rhetorical analysis of advertising texts from a theoretical enterprise geared towards making sense of how meaning emerges through the figurative language of advertising to a systematic method for managing advertising textuality, in such a manner as to enable practitioners in marketing related disciplines (e.g., account planning, marketing research, brand management) to actively manage how brand meaning is generated through distinctive modes of rhetorical configuration. The managerial orientation of the //rhetor.dixit//© model is intended to enhance understanding as to how a brand’s intellectual capital is configured and, moreover, to point to directions whereby what I call a brand’s figurative first mover advantage and differential figurative advantages may be furnished to a brand’s discourse. The systematic understanding of a brand’s distinctive modes of rhetorical configuration is not just a ‘nice-to-have’ add-on in a metrics dashboard, but a prerequisite for managing brands as constellations of figurative elements and modes of connectivity among figurative elements, which are part and parcel of a brand’s textual essence. (shrink)

Interpreting Visual Culture brings together the writings of some of the leading experts in art history, philosophy, sociology and cultural studies to look at the role of perception and the "visual" in our understanding of the contemporary human condition. Ranging from an analysis of the role of vision in current critical discourse to a discussion of specific examples taken from the visual arts, ethics and sociology, this collection presents the latest material on the interpretation of the (...) class='Hi'>visual in modern culture. Topics covered include: the hermeneutics of seeing, the visual rhetoric of modernity, the drawings of Bonnard, recent feminist art, practices and perceptions in art and ethics. Divided into three main sections, each beginning with an introductory chapter outlining the main topics under discussion, comprehensive and engaging, Interpreting Visual Culture will be essential reading for students of sociology, cultural studies and art history. (shrink)

IntroductionIf we were to identify the beginning of the study of visual argumentation, we would have to choose 1996 as the starting point. This was the year that Leo Groarke published “Logic, art and argument” in Informal logic, and it was the year that he and David Birdsell co-edited a special double issue of Argumentation and Advocacy on visual argumentation . Among other papers, the issue included Anthony Blair’s “The possibility and actuality of visual arguments”. It was (...) also the year that Gail J. Chryslee, Sonja K. Foss and Arthur L. Ranney published their short text on “The construction of claims in visual argumentation” , stating that even though theorists may know a great deal about the process of argumentation, “virtually none of this knowledge is applicable to visual argumentation […] because of the properties that distinguish visual imagery from discursive symbols” .Texts on visual rhetoric have been written as far back as the early 1980s, .. (shrink)

This article seeks to show how several rhetorical tools were used and, in fact, played a central role in the argumentation advanced by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould in their 1972 seminal article on the theory of Punctuated Equilibria. It is analyzed how Eldredge and Gould proceeded through three steps that, sequentially integrated, made their argument compelling. It is shown how they made use of analogies, metaphors and other rhetorical tools. It is sustained that they began by priming the (...) reader to distrust the current interpretation of the fossil record offered by most paleontologists and then, in a second step, they used specific visual representations in order to suggest that the competitor theory was committed to the idea of an even and slow evolution at a constant rate, an image utilized by them as straw man. Finally, it is analyzed how, in their third step, Eldredge and Gould made use of several rhetorical arguments to present their theory as new for paleontology while, at the same time, placing it well inside the frame of the modern synthesis, and how they also managed to present their theory as more promising and capable of making predictions for future researches than the competitor theory. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Rhetoric and Capitalism:Rhetorical Agency as Communicative LaborRonald Walter GreeneIt is a commonplace to describe rhetorical agency as political action. From such a starting point, rhetorical agency describes a communicative process of inquiry and advocacy on issues of public importance. As political action, rhetorical agency often takes on the characteristics of a normative theory of citizenship; a good citizen persuades and is persuaded by the gentle force of the (...) better argument. More radical visions of argument might include strikes, sit-ins, and boycotts in the rhetorical arsenal of good citizenship, and some might even flirt with violence as rhetorical action. This model of rhetorical agency requires a translation of the conceptual apparatus of rhetoric and its alignment with the problematics of democratic theory and actually existing democratic regimes. Classical models that hoped to harness rhetorical agency to the making of the "orator-statesman" (sic) must reimagine political participation in terms of publics and counterpublics, social movements, electoral campaigns, communication media and technologies, as well as supra- and sub-national institutional settings. As the classical norms of citizenship rub against (post) modern realities, a permanent anxiety over the meaning and potential of rhetorical agency seems destined to be lodged in the critical imagination of rhetorical studies. If politics today is, in Jodi Dean's words, "a domain of financially mediated and professionalized practices centered on advertising, public relations, and the means of mass communication," then actually existing rhetorical agency manifests itself in efforts to "raise the money, buy the television time, register the domain names, build the website, and craft the accessible, user-friendly, spectacular message" (2003, 96).If we recognize Dean's description of the political as an accurate description of the rhetorical situation today, rhetorical studies is left with three strategies: It can refashion a deliberative vision of rhetorical agency into a normative ideal for critiquing the structural conditions (capital, media [End Page 188] concentration) of political participation. Second, it can enlarge the field of normatively acceptable ways and means of political participation, for example, by embracing the more spectacular politics associated with visual and body rhetorics. Finally, rhetorical studies can work on the "demand" side and design new strategies and tactics for activating the rhetorical participation of citizens, for example, by encouraging the creation of communicative norms necessary for reinvigorating voluntary and civic organizations. However, while each of these approaches provides a research agenda, none of them gets at the root cause of the anxiety over agency: the attachment of rhetorical agency to a vision of political change. The anxiety over agency pushes rhetorical critics and theorists into becoming moral entrepreneurs scolding, correcting, and encouraging the body politic to improve the quality and quantity of political participation.The purpose of this paper is to offer an escape route from theorizing rhetorical agency as a model of political communication.1 In opposition to a political-communicative vision of rhetorical agency, this paper suggests a different materialist ontology, one that imagines rhetorical agency as a form of living labor. I will argue that rhetorical agency belongs to the domain of communicative labor, a form of labor increasingly necessary to the workings of contemporary capitalist production. In other words, I want to replace a political-communicative model of rhetorical agency with a materialist-communicative model. To highlight the similarities and differences between the two models, I will focus on how the interface between politics, communication, and economics plays out in the Marxist tradition of rhetorical studies. I will organize this tradition into two sections: the first, represented by James Aune, advocates a hermeneutic approach to rhetorical agency, and the second, represented by Dana Cloud, argues for imagining rhetorical agency as a class-based social movement. By focusing on the work of my comrades, the paper risks being received as a "left sectarian" polemic.2 As I will demonstrate in each section, the problem with these two approaches has less to do with Marxism and more to do with how they turn to hermeneutics and social movements to imagine rhetorical agency in the idiom of communication theory. In the third section of the paper I will resituate rhetorical agency into a materialist ontology of labor and capitalist production. In so... (shrink)

Although images are pervasive in public policy debates in bioethics, few who work in the field attend carefully to the way that images function rhetorically. If the use of images is discussed at all, it is usually to dismiss appeals to images as a form of manipulation. Yet it is possible to speak meaningfully of visual arguments. Examining the appeal to images of the embryo and fetus in debates about abortion and stem cell research, I suggest that bioethicists would (...) be well served by attending much more carefully to how images function in public policy debates. (shrink)

In rhetoric and argumentation research studies of empirical audiences are rare. Most studies are speaker- or text focussed. However, new media and new forms of communication make it harder to distinguish between speaker and audience. The active involvement of users and audiences is more important than ever before. Therefore, this paper argues that rhetorical research should reconsider the understanding, conceptualization and examination of the rhetorical audience. From mostly understanding audiences as theoretical constructions that are examined textually and speculatively, we (...) should give more attention to empirical explorations of actual audiences and users. (shrink)

This paper extends the fields of visual and object semiosis, style, and rhetoric by introducing the concept of critical object images. It identifies five of their rhetorical functions in literature and demonstrates the semiotic and rhetorical specificity and force of literary object images. Inter-disciplinary concepts and theories used in the study are introduced before the concept is tested and developed through analyses of object images with critical roles in the Victorian scenes of Virginia Woolf’s novels. The inductive analyses (...) trace the semiosis and stylistic affordances of the selected critical object images, with reference to three categories of kitsch inauthenticity, and their formal and cultural contexts, noting the rhetorical function they serve. Multimodal stylistics and the semiotics of visual images and of objects are used in these analyses, and the unique contribution of critical object images as rhetorical elements in literature is uncovered and explained. The analysis of Woolf’s representation of selected objects shows how the critical object images function rhetorically, through their stylistic connotations, to present unambiguous meanings that are not openly stated in the texts’ verbal discourse. (shrink)

The proposed volumes are aimed at a multidisciplinary audience and seek to fill the gap between law, semiotics and visuality providing a comprehensive theoretical and analytical overview of legal visual semiotics. They seek to promote an interdisciplinary debate from law, semiotics and visuality bringing together the cumulative research traditions of these related areas as a prelude to identifying fertile avenues for research going forward. Advance Praise for Law, Culture and Visual Studies This diverse and exhilarating collection of essays (...) explores the many facets both historical and contemporary of visual culture in the law. It opens a window onto the substantive, jurisdictional, disciplinary and methodological diversity of current research. It is a cornucopia of materials that will enliven legal studies for those new to the field as well as for established scholars. It is a 'must read' that will leave you wondering about the validity of the long held obsession that reduces the law and legal studies to little more than a preoccupation with the word. Leslie J Moran Professor of Law, Birkbeck College, University of London Law, Culture and Visual Studies is a treasure trove of insights on the entwined roles of legality and visuality. From multiple interdisciplinary perspectives by scholars from around the world, these pieces reflect the fullness and complexities of our visual encounters with law and culture. From pictures to places to postage stamps, from forensics to film to folklore, this anthology is an exciting journey through the fertile field of law and visual culture as well as a testament that the field has come of age. Naomi Mezey, Professor of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C., USA This highly interdisciplinary reference work brings together diverse fields including cultural studies, communication theory, rhetoric, law and film studies, legal and social history, visual and legal theory, in order to document the various historical, cultural, representational and theoretical links that bind together law and the visual. This book offers a breath-taking range of resources from both well-established and newer scholars who together cover the field of law's representation in, interrogation of, and dialogue with forms of visual rhetoric, practice, and discourse. Taken together this scholarship presents state of the art research into an important and developing dimension of contemporary legal and cultural inquiry. Above all, Law Culture and Visual Studies lays the groundwork for rethinking the nature of law in our densely visual culture: How are legal meanings produced, encoded, distributed, and decoded? What critical and hermeneutic skills, new or old, familiar or unfamiliar, will be needed? Topical, diverse, and enlivening, Law Culture and Visual Studies is a vital research tool and an urgent invitation to further critical thinking in the areas so well laid out in this collection. Desmond Manderson, Future Fellow, ANU College of Law / Research School of Humanities and the Arts, Australian National University, Australia. (shrink)

Salvador Dalí’s oilpainting Hallucination partielle. Six apparitions de Lénine sur un piano (1931) has been considered to be one of the most difficult works to interpret. O. Zaslavskii has analyzed it, using the sound of the words in title and the items depicted on the masterpiece, “the phonetic subtext”. Obviously, Zaslavskii’s interpretation is based on Osip Mandelstam’s poem “Grand piano” (1931), that in the context of Russian language associates the piano ( ) with the French Revolution. Nevertheless, Zaslavskii’s final conclusion (...) of the connections between Dalí’s painting and the French Revolution turns to be accurate, because it is possible to find iconographic parallels between Dalí’s “Partial hallucination…” and Jacques-Louis David’s “The death of Marat” (1793). On at least four most significant oil paintings from the beginning of Dalí’s surreal period we can observe his “emblem of love and death” as the combination of fellatio and bleeding. Obviously, he understood in the same code also Marat’s murdering by the knife of a woman. This allows us to insist, that Dalí was inspired to paint“Partial hallucination…” by “The death of Marat”. The shadow of a grand piano on his painting “Diurnal illusion: the shadow of a grand piano approaching” (1931) directly bears the meaning of “terror” and “fear”. In such motif combination and graphic parallel, the complex cultural metaphoric relations of these two paintings can be viewed. This complex can be considered as rhetorical in the sense of Juri Lotman’s conception. But it is evidently a case of “pure visual metaphor”, not an illustration of verbal metaphors. (shrink)

Salvador Dalí’s oilpainting Hallucination partielle. Six apparitions de Lénine sur un piano (1931) has been considered to be one of the most difficult works to interpret. O. Zaslavskii has analyzed it, using the sound of the words in title and the items depicted on the masterpiece, “the phonetic subtext”. Obviously, Zaslavskii’s interpretation is based on Osip Mandelstam’s poem “Grand piano” (1931), that in the context of Russian language associates the piano ( ) with the French Revolution. Nevertheless, Zaslavskii’s final conclusion (...) of the connections between Dalí’s painting and the French Revolution turns to be accurate, because it is possible to find iconographic parallels between Dalí’s “Partial hallucination…” and Jacques-Louis David’s “The death of Marat” (1793). On at least four most significant oil paintings from the beginning of Dalí’s surreal period we can observe his “emblem of love and death” as the combination of fellatio and bleeding. Obviously, he understood in the same code also Marat’s murdering by the knife of a woman. This allows us to insist, that Dalí was inspired to paint“Partial hallucination…” by “The death of Marat”. The shadow of a grand piano on his painting “Diurnal illusion: the shadow of a grand piano approaching” (1931) directly bears the meaning of “terror” and “fear”. In such motif combination and graphic parallel, the complex cultural metaphoric relations of these two paintings can be viewed. This complex can be considered as rhetorical in the sense of Juri Lotman’s conception. But it is evidently a case of “pure visual metaphor”, not an illustration of verbal metaphors. (shrink)

The so-called March of Progress depicts human evolution as a linear progression from mohkey to man. Shelley (1996) analyzed this image as a visual argument proceeding through "rhetorical" and "demonstrative" modes of visual logic. In this paper, I confirm and extend this view of visual logic by examining variations of the original March image. These variations show that each mode of visual logic can be altered or isolated in support of new conclusions. Furthermore, the March can (...) be included in a visual "frame" to produce new arguments, much as a verbal argument can be made a component of a new and larger argument. (shrink)

While critics have relied upon bibliographical data and his translation of Thucydides to establish the early Thomas Hobbes as a humanist, this essay argues that substantive evidence to support this conclusion can be found in the comparatively neglected discourses of the Horae Subsecivae. Reading Hobbe's contribution to the Horae alongside his translation of Thucydides reveals a consistent concern with the political potential of both verbal and visual images and with the dangers rhetorical manipulation could pose to individual and sovereign (...) authority. Together these texts demonstrate an early Hobbes already deeply invested in the political debates and crises of his era. (shrink)

Through a specific example, this paper explores the problems of empiricism and ideology in the uses of material-cultural and visual evidence for the writing of ancient history. The focus is on an Athenian documentary stele with a fine relief from the late fifth century bc, the history of its publications, and their failure to account for the totality of the object's information—sculptural and epigraphic—let alone the range of rhetorical ambiguities that its texts and images implied in their fifth-century context. (...) While the paper reflects on the Samos Stele, it also considers the broader hermeneutic problems of approaching the different discourses ofword and imagewithin antiquity andworries about the distortions introduced into ancient history by modern formulations, descriptions, and translations of the past. (shrink)