Images for the Inner Eye: The Use of Visually Evocative Techniques in Radio

Abstract

Abstract Based on radio’s exclusive reliance on the particular material of sound and its flexibility as an interface, this article argues that the medium presents a great potential for cognitive participation, especially in terms of mental imagery. Several verbal and nonverbal techniques that utilize this potential are analyzed in a series of short documentaries co-produced by National Public Radio and the National Geographic Society. Through the use of linguistic means, such as vivid words, the present tense, metaphors and analogies, rhetorical devices, such as rhythmic patterns, repetitions, and alliterations, as well as the expressive qualities of voices and natural sounds, radio producers are able to evoke a rich, often synesthetic complex of mental images.