Abstract
Abstract Since the ancient rhetoricians, humans have awarded imagery, the visual, and the vivid an extraordinary effect on emotions and memory. Such assumptions have led to iconophobia, iconoclasm, and myths about the special power of images. The issue of the power of pictures, however, is more complicated. As all other kinds of rhetorical utterances, the visual can be both powerful and powerless depending on the circumstances. For many pictures, the rhetorical power lies not mainly in their political deliberation, but instead in their nature as demonstrative or epideictic rhetoric: a rhetoric that does not primarily advocate immediate change, but tries to increase adherence to existing view-points, attitudes and values. Even though visual rhetoric may perform a powerful address to those who are already convinced, it does not necessarily hold much power over adversaries and sceptics. This article argues that when teaching visuality and the power of imagery, educators ought to help young pupils – and the citizenry in general – not only to decode visual communication, but also to interpret and evaluate it. The first requires knowledge about rules of visual literacy, the second requires not only critical thinking, but also situational and cultural knowledge, as well as sound judgment.
Highlights
What is the power of pictures? More important perhaps, why is this question important for education and pedagogy? While a great amount of research into visual literacy, semiotics and multimodal communication has been carried out, communicated in textbooks and introduced both in teacher’s education and in the school system (e.g. Bateman, Hiippala, & Wildfeuer, 2017; Jewitt, 2014; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006), the question of visual and multimodal power seems to have been either neglected or misunderstood – at least in teaching
If we are concerned with the role of visuality in our time, we should pay attention to what the evidence says about visual power
When thinking of rhetoric – verbal or visual – we might tend to think that the communicator is the powerful part of the equation
Summary
What is the power of pictures? More important perhaps, why is this question important for education and pedagogy? While a great amount of research into visual literacy, semiotics and multimodal communication has been carried out, communicated in textbooks and introduced both in teacher’s education and in the school system (e.g. Bateman, Hiippala, & Wildfeuer, 2017; Jewitt, 2014; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006), the question of visual and multimodal power seems to have been either neglected or misunderstood – at least in teaching. While a great amount of research into visual literacy, semiotics and multimodal communication has been carried out, communicated in textbooks and introduced both in teacher’s education and in the school system Bateman, Hiippala, & Wildfeuer, 2017; Jewitt, 2014; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006), the question of visual and multimodal power seems to have been either neglected or misunderstood – at least in teaching. If we are concerned with the role of visuality in our time, we should pay attention to what the evidence says about visual power. This is not just a matter of examining the power of the visual, and a matter of understanding the concept of power altogether. The first requires knowledge about rules of visual literacy, the second requires critical thinking, and situational and cultural knowledge, as well as sound judgment
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