Defining Visual Rhetorics.(Book Review)

Defining Visual Rhetorics, edited by Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmets. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004. 352 pp.

We are inundated with visuals daily. Advertisements, business cards, graphs, and political cartoons are only a few examples of visuals we encounter that are designed with the purpose of persuasion. How do visuals persuade us? How do they function rhetorically? What is visual rhetoric? The editors of Defining Visual Rhetorics realize that defining visual rhetoric is a complex process; therefore, instead of providing readers with a dictionary definition, Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers give us a collection of essays that explore the way visual rhetoric functions. Definitions of the term evolve as each contributor examines ways in which visual rhetoric can be applied to a variety of media. Hill and Helmets effectively explain the format of their edited collection in the book's preface: "As we thought about the definitional problems surrounding the study of visual rhetoric, it became immediately clear that the appropriate response was not to try to 'nail down' the term" (p. x). Instead, the editors invited contributors to "discuss the definitional assumptions behind their own work, and to exemplify these assumptions by sharing their own rhetorical analyses of visual phenomena" (p. x). Of course, the success of this format relies on each contributor's explicit discussion of assumptions. For the most part, I believe the editors' intentions are well met.

Defining Visual Rhetorics has 14 chapters, including one by each of the editors. Contributors sometimes refer directly to other chapters in the book, enabling readers to compare or contrast perspectives while reading. The chapter structure links the essays in a basic way and invites an intuitive understanding of how the essays build on each other to create a complex and comprehensive perspective of visual rhetoric. However, each essay in the collection is also capable of standing alone as an interesting reference text on the subject.

Another notable fact about the structure and design of the book is the necessary inclusion of black-and-white images throughout. Furthermore, the book begins with a cover image carefully selected by the editors to reflect the themes of the book. Hill and Helmers state in their introduction that when they searched for a cover image, they wanted something "multilayered and complex" without requiring "excessive verbal explanation"; the image also had to foster discourse while having a visual impact and should "not be tied too strongly to one event" (p. 3).

They selected a striking photograph by Richard LeFande, which shows a hand holding up another photograph of the pre-9/11 Manhattan skyline against a background of the same section of skyline post-9/11. The editors felt this image successfully spoke to the book's general themes "while drawing attention to the strongest visual event of this new century" (p. 3).

The various studies in Defining Visual Rhetorics are framed by Hill and Helmers's introduction and the 14th chapter, "Framing the Study of Visual Rhetoric: Toward a Transformation of Rhetorical Theory" by Sonja K. Foss, who draws on previous chapters and reflects on possible definitions of visual rhetoric. Hill's contribution, "The Psychology of Rhetorical Images" (chapter 1), and J. Anthony Blair's "The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments" (chapter 2) also serve well to lay an exploratory groundwork for the book. Foss concludes that most of the authors follow one of two types of definitions of visual rhetoric in their research: "a visual object or artifact and a perspective on the study of visual data" (p. 304). Thus, she says it is either an object someone creates or the "symbolic processes by which visual artifacts perform communication" (p. 304). Foss's essay helps link the previous chapters; however, in keeping with the editors' prefatory comments, readers must note that Foss, like the other contributors, works under her own assumptions, and the connections she finds may not be the only ones worth making. In other words, many other definitions can be identified in the essays throughout the book, and Foss just provides basic guidelines.

The search for a definition of visual rhetoric is not the only valuable part of this book. It is also a showcase for some very intriguing visual studies. One example is Diane S. Hope's "Gendered Environments: Gender and the Natural World in the Rhetoric of Advertising" (chapter 7), an exploration of the representations of gender and nature in advertisements. Hope contends that "when image based advertising complicates images of nature with gender narratives, a rhetoric of gendered environments works to obscure the connections between environmental degradation and consumption" (p. 156). She cites advertisements that include the feminine form intertwined with nature and the masculine form conquering nature throughout a hundred years of American advertising. Hope argues that by reflecting inherent social values of masculine and feminine ways of viewing nature, advertisements prevent viewers or readers from making connections between the products they are purchasing and the environmental degradation they cause. Her essay successfully takes the rhetoric of advertisement beyond the standard argument of audience manipulation.

Another standout feature of Defining Visual Rhetorics is the variety of subjects. For example, Charles Kostelnick explores charts and graphs in his contribution, "Melting-Pot Ideology, Modernist Aesthetics, and the Emergence of Graphical Conventions: The Statistical Atlases of the United States, 1874-1925" (chapter 10). He notes the changes in atlases as the United States moved into the modern age and sought to create "an 'international' style" (p. 235) that reflected the country's need to accommodate a rapidly increasing immigrant population. The history of needlework is the subject of chapter 4, "Visual Rhetoric in Pens of Steel and Inks of Silk: Challenging the Great Visual/Verbal Divide." Maureen Daly Goggin uses her essay to show how "word and image combined to create a visual rhetoric in pens of steel and silken ink" (p. 106). Her argument centers on the notion that text can be and is a visual element. She goes on to suggest a new term for the book's topic, "rhetoric of the visual" (p. 106), which would allow for a new paradigm in rhetoric--one in which we can more easily combine discussions of words and images.

The boundaries of visual rhetoric are pushed even further in two essays that address the subject in terms of place. In the first of these essays, "Placing Visual Rhetoric: Finding Material Comfort in Wild Oats Market" (chapter 12), Greg Dickinson and Casey Malone Maugh describe the comfort created by the synthesis of localization and globalization in a natural foods store. In the other examination of place, "Envisioning Domesticity, Locating Identity: Constructing the Victorian Middle Class Through Images of Home" (chapter 13), Andrea Kaston Tange relates the layout of Victorian middle-class homes to the social context in which they were created.

The visual media of photography, film, and fine arts are addressed in essays by David Blakesley ("Defining Film Rhetoric: The Case of Hitchcock's Vertigo"; chapter 5), Cara A. Finnegan ("Doing Rhetorical History of the Visual: The Photograph and the Archive"; chapter 9), and Helmers ("Framing the Fine Arts Through Rhetoric"; chapter 3). In chapter 6, J. Cherie Strachan and Kathleen E. Kendall look at another film medium in their essay "Political Candidates' Convention Films: Finding the Perfect Image--An Overview of Political Image Making." Janis L. Edwards explores cultural memory and images in "Echoes of Camelot: How Images Construct Cultural Memory Through Rhetorical Framing" (chapter 8). In this essay, Edwards explores the iconic "salute" photograph of John E Kennedy Jr. at his father's funeral and how it came to be represented in editorial cartoons after his own death. Finally, in "The Rhetoric of Irritation: Inappropriateness as Visual/ Literate Practice" (chapter 11), Craig Stroupe discusses issues raised by New Media. Stroupe uses the cases of a Web page and a photo composite to demonstrate what he calls "the rhetoric of irritation"--"juxtaposing 'inappropriately' opposed categories into a constitutive whole" (p. 245).

Defining Visual Rhetorics is a rich text filled with a variety of studies and thought-provoking analyses that warrant further exploration. However, despite the book's title, I would not recommend it for those who are looking for a simple answer to the question "What is visual rhetoric?" The book attempts to answer this question by presenting essays from a range of scholars who define the term and apply it to their own research; their assumptions and definitions are neither short nor simple, but they are rewarding in their complexity. The target audience for the collection (noted on the back cover) is educators; researchers; scholars; and students of rhetoric, English, mass communication, cultural studies, and visual studies. However, it is also useful for those who seek a deeper understanding of the visuals they encounter daily or for those involved in creating images. With the book's broad range of approaches, Journal of Business Communication readers will find it useful as a theoretical or rhetorical base for creating and interpreting the visual in such forms as advertising, identity packaging, tables, charts, graphs, and New Media publications--or simply as an interesting group of rhetorical studies. Defining Visual Rhetorics is the kind of book that, after being read once, remains on the shelf for rereading and for reference; it is likely to become important in the scholarly conversations about, as Goggin might say, "the rhetoric of the visual."

--Amy Striker, Iowa State University

Print Get the Mag Weekly Updates