Introduction to visual rhetoric created by Nate Kreuter and the University of Texas at Austin’s...
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introduction to visual rhetoric created by Nate Kreuter and the University of Texas at Austin’s Computer Writing and Research Lab This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons license. For more information, visit: creativecommons.org You are free to (share) or (remix) this work, as long as you (attribute credit to the authors herein) and do so for (noncommercial) purposes, and also agree to (share alike) under a similar (license).
Introduction to visual rhetoric created by Nate Kreuter and the University of Texas at Austin’s Computer Writing and Research Lab This presentation is
and the University of Texas at Austin’sComputer Writing and Research Lab
This presentation is licensed under a Creative Commons license. For more information, visit: creativecommons.org
You are free to (share) or (remix) this work, as long as you
(attribute credit to the authors herein) and do so for (noncommercial)
purposes, and also agree to (share alike) under a similar (license).
Can pictures and graphics make arguments independent of text?
Nathan KReuter
When presenting this opening slide, I ask students whether or not images can make arguments without the aid of written language. In this image, the warning signs are accompanied by text, but in a language unknown to 99% of American students. Typically, when looking at this slide students respond that, yes, pictures can make arguments. So, we begin the presenation seeing that images do, or at least can, make arguments.
Nathan KReuter
Having established that images can make arguments, I move on to this slide, in which I begin to ask about context. I typically ask if these signs still make arguments when we remove them from their context, when we remove them from the chain link fence and hide the fuel tank in the background. Typically students continue to hold that these three images make arguments. At this point I ask them to "read" the three signs. Students usually correctly read the signs as meaning, from left to right, "warning," "danger of explosion," and "stop." The stop sign is especially interesting. We are used to the similar no smoking sign in which a cigarette is depicted in the red-bar circle. Here we have a man signaling "halt" in the red-bar circle. It's almost as if we have a double-negative depicted here, saying, "don't halt." Yet we don't read the sign that way. I think this nuance is worth pointing out to students given that they are often wrongly inclined to see images as very straight-forward and not as as complicated and fraught as written texts.
Or do we sometimes need the text?
Nathan KReuter
Here we have some of my favorite images, depicting a class of citizens I refer to as "lawnmower people." I repeat my original question here: "Can images make arguments without words?" When the class answers "yes," I ask if these particular images make arguments without words. I get mixed responses. At this point I usually cover the text in the "rotating driveshafts" image and ask "Without the words, would you know that this image is warning you about rotating driveshafts?" At this point the students answer, "no." So, we have established that not all images necessarily make arguments, or that many image-arguments do depend upon accompanying text.
image via flickr: ex magician
Image via flickr: Mr Wright
image via flickr: tsevis
image via flickr: Image Editor
image via flickr: Bukowsky18
image via flickr: OpalMirror
image via flickr: Greything
image via flickr: 365bunnies
image via flickr: cayusa
image via flickr: Mastery of maps
image via flickr: Jeff Kubinaimage via flickr: ~MVI~
image via flickr: Andre-Batista
image via flickr: colin j.image via flickr: keltickelton
image via flickr: miss rogue
image via flickr: mahalie
image via flickr: Mr G’s Travels
image via flickr: Albert F.
image via flickr: threecee
image via flickr: WhatDaveSees
image via flickr: Banafsh*
image via flickr: ? Redo
image via flickr: Paul-W
image via flickr: kwerfedlein
image via flickr: windypizza
image via flickr:*Solar ikon*
image via flickr: timothyhorrigan
image via flickr: mckaysavage
image via flickr: sharnik
old UVa logo
New UVa logo
OJ Simpson arrest photo magazine covers, 1994
Nathan KReuter
Here the students are asked to analyze the relationship between images and texts and how those relationships vary in these two images. I also point out how Time played on the worst of American race relations and darkened OJ's image to make him appear more menacing to their mostly white readership.
Images via flickr: Army.mil
Nathan KReuter
Here I ask students to describe the scene . . .
image via flickr: heraldpost
image via flickr: publik15
image via flickr: six_steps_?
Nathan KReuter
These images are intended to get the students thinking about context. I ask them if it is different for a Confederate flag to be flown in a reenactment than for someone to walk down the street with the flag on their boots. Our discussion of this sensitive example begins at that point . . .
Propaganda pamphlets dropped over Iraq prior to 2003 invasion
Nathan KReuter
These are propaganda pamphlets from the conflict in Iraq that I have students read. The pamphlets were intended to get Iraqi soldiers to surrender, but do require some interpretation, none of it very heartening for anyone.
image via flickr: Jeremy Brooks
image via flickr: Hamed Saber
Nathan KReuter
This slide introduces what I call logos images, because they convey data to us much more efficiently than text could transmit the same data and because they presume to offer strictly factual representations of some reality.
Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962
War in Iraq, 2003
Nathan KReuter
These also are logos images, captured by dispassionate machines above the earth. But I like to point out that while these images from the Cuban missile crisis and the war in Iraq were offered to the US public as evidence of wrongdoing, both images require us to place faith in the government's readings of them, an irony for images offered to us as evidence . . .
Nathan KReuter
More logos driven images. I point out here that when we go to the doctor we like to think that they know exactly what is wrong with us and exactly how to proceed. In reality these factually driven medical images still require interpretation, interptretation that will be argued over and can radically alter the treatment. So logos driven images to not necessarily equal cut and dried, obvious readings.
Nathan KReuter
These I also consider logos images. I have students locate the suspicious graph and we discuss how images are capable of making fallacious arguments.
