Visual Rhetoric Research Articles

Boost your email marketing campaign! Emojis as visual stimuli to influence customer engagement

PurposeIn an effort to evaluate if and how emojis might boost customer engagement in email marketing, the current research aims to analyzes emojis' effects and investigates how certain features, such as the type of emoji or the way of emojis' presentation (repetition and position), moderate their effectiveness.Design/methodology/approachThis research comprises four experimental studies. The first two analyze whether the presence and the type of emoji (facial vs non-facial) influence customer engagement. Then, two more studies analyze the influence of the presence and type of emoji, as well as repetitions (repetition vs no repetitions) and positions (left vs right). The data collection is through email marketing campaigns, with two types of brands. The analysis is a fractional factorial design in one- and two-way interactions to identify the influence of presentation features.FindingsEmojis influence customer engagement and can trigger interactive behaviors and increase customer engagement, even in a channel that generally is less prone to interaction. The emojis increase the probability of opening the email, the number of times email gets opened and clicks to access additional content.Research limitations/implicationsThe varied results suggest the need for more research to confirm the findings regarding presentation features. This research offers novel implications for interactive marketing and the theory of visual rhetoric because the research establishes how visual stimuli such as emojis can persuade and capture customer attention and increase customer engagement.Practical implicationsPractitioners can optimize email marketing by using emojis strategically to attract audience interest, provoke interactions, build relationships and generate word of mouth, leading to better consumer experiences, loyalty and brand profitability.Originality/valueMost studies use semantic analysis to analyze emojis; the current study instead tests whether emojis can increase customer engagement in a less-interactive channel and then also considers the moderating role of several emoji-relevant variables. In addition, the authors apply the theory of visual rhetoric to explicate the original findings, which are gathered from a unique data set involving real marketing campaigns.

Cutting the Biker’s Coif: Hair as the Visual Rhetoric of the Son of Anarchy

Cutting the Biker’s Coif: Hair as the Visual Rhetoric of the Son of Anarchy

White Skin and the Black Mask™

White Skin and the Black Mask™

Visualising the Generic Techno-Imaginary: Exploring the Visual Rhetoric of the South African Fourth Industrial Revolution Agenda as Articulated through Commercial Stock Images

This article interrogates the visual language surrounding the South African Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) agenda, by rhetorically analysing stock images used in a prominent 4IR publication. This study serves to contribute to the ongoing critical discussion surrounding the general legitimacy and local propriety of the global 4IR narrative, which has been enthusiastically adopted by the South African government to guide techno-development policy. The article draws on critiques of 4IR discursivities but offers a novel contribution by examining the rhetorical power of images in reinforcing this influential but potentially problematic high-level policy narrative. The stock images analysed feature prominently in “Summary Report and Recommendations” by the Presidential Commission on the 4IR. Both the general rhetorical appeal of commercial stock images and the particular visual appeal of a “techno-imaginary” genre of images are analysed. In addition to outlining the persuasive effects of these images, according to Aristotle's means of persuasion (logos, pathos, and ethos), the article also critically reflects on their potential shortcomings. The article is concluded by arguing that these generic stock images offer an inadequate visual vocabulary for imagining a locally appropriate and desirable South African future.

Cover Images of Inflight Magazines as Airlines’ Methods of Impression Management: Alitalia’s Ulisse Magazine and Finnair’s Blue Wings Magazine

This research examines the cover images of two inflight magazines—Ulisse (Alitalia) and Blue Wings (Finnair)—as a method for airlines to manage their impression. Drawing on concept of impression management, the study focuses on the visual strategies the cover images employ in order to shape the audience’s perception of the airlines. The data consists of 90 cover images published between January 2016 and February 2020. A visual rhetorical analysis was applied to examine the visual construction of the cover images and their functions. The findings show that the cover images of Ulisse and Blue Wings employed different strategies of visual rhetoric as part of their impression management. Whereas Alitalia seemed to strive for the image of a luxury airline, Finnair endeavored to create an image of an airline for ordinary people. Theoretically, this study contributes to the current knowledge of rhetorical approach to visual impression management in corporate communications. Methodologically, the study advances the research on corporate impression management by applying an analysis of visual rhetoric.

Digital humanities and technical communication pedagogy

Technical communication instructors, especially those with expertise in visual rhetoric, information design, or multimedia writing are well-suited to teach an introductory Digital Humanities (DH) course. Offering a DH course provides an opportunity to reach extrafield audiences and work with students from a variety of humanities disciplines who may not have the option of taking such a course in their home department. The article advocates for a DH course that offers a methods-driven pedagogy that engages students with active learning by requiring them to research, dissect, and report on existing DH projects, as well as work with existing datasets and methods from prior student research projects or existing DH tools. The sample student project reviewed here uses the data visualization software ImagePlot, and discussion includes how the student used the tool to examine changes in brightness, hue, and color saturation, as well as calculate the total number of distinct shapes from 397 comic book covers. Ultimately, the students are tasked with developing a research question and moving to an articulated methods-driven approach for exploring the question. The student project along with the tools and sample datasets available with them are treated as a module that may be included in an introductory DH course syllabus or training session.

Photo disclosure in human rights issues by fortune companies: an impression management perspective

PurposeThis study aims to investigate the representation of human rights issues within photographs in the 2015 corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports of Fortune 70 companies.Design/methodology/approachContent analysis is used to examine human rights photos in CSR reports by Fortune 70 global corporations for the year 2015. Based on impression management theory and Roland Barthes’ work on visual rhetoric, a total of 744 photos are analysed.FindingsThe findings of this study reflect the main feature of the omnipresence of the linguistic in photographic human rights disclosure. Denotation and connotation in the photographs are inextricably intermingled; the linguistic message has the “anchoring” function that guides the interpretations of the symbolic message of the photos. The authors conclude what the proliferation of photos and associated text achieves, or attempts to achieve, is not only to provide information, but also carry visual rhetoric and impression management.Practical implicationsInternational accounting standard organisations, such as GRI, might provide guidance on the utilisation of photos in CSR reports to improve the realism of the reports. The principle of balance applicable to reported information should be extended to photos as much as possible. This may help ensure that the CSR reports reflect the reality of human rights issues within the organisations, rather than the construction of idealised images.Social implicationsThe findings have potential for global reporting institutions.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the impression management literature by analysing how companies present human rights issues and by demonstrating the way the photos are used to construct images of happiness, safety, diversity and mutual support.

“I Take the Pictures as I See Them”: Doris Derby as Womanist, Activist and Photographer in the Civil Rights Movement

Doris Derby's photographic archive offers a powerful perspective on the civil rights movement that has yet to be critically or academically engaged with. Derby, an activist, photographer, and educator who has appeared in such texts as Hands on the Freedom Plow (2010) and in such collections as Julian Cox's Road to Freedom (2008), is a gateway figure to a richer, more nuanced visual history of the movement. This article utilizes original interviews, archival material, and a survey of secondary literature to call for increased consideration for Doris Derby's work. Derby's womanist perspective challenges the dominant visual rhetoric of the movement and advocates for increased consideration of the everyday activism of African American women. Men, women and children – but especially African American women – are presented in Derby's lens as dynamic agents of change. Derby's work challenges the dominant canon of the movement, which frequently relies on charismatic male leadership and black victimization. Instead, considering Derby's photography broadens our understanding of what everyday resistance in the civil rights movement was like for thousands of African Americans.

Judging a book by its cover: the micro activism of fat poetry covers

ABSTRACT Though there has been some critical writing on fat poetics, this is the first article that examines the visual rhetoric of book covers by fat-identifying poets. Positing that covers are a distinct way to intervene against anti-fatness, the article uses Charlotte Cooper’s theory of micro-fat activism and combines esthetic analysis of the covers’ art and design with theoretical, social analysis of the covers’ meanings. This article analyzes Samantha Zighelboim’s cover of The Fat Sonnets through a diet culture, disciplinary lens rooted in eating disorder research, while Sigmund Freud’s theory of The Uncanny helps elucidate the cover’s visual terror. Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and Sabrina Strings’ research on the racist, Protestant origins of fatphobia are used to analyze Diamond Forde’s cover of Mother Body through an intersectional perspective. Forde’s cover celebrates the fat, Black, female body; reclaims Cooper’s “headless fatty”; and re-writes the Edenic myth. Combined, these covers critique diet culture and present a fat-positive solution to anti-fatness.

The Aural-Visual Rhetoric in Video Game Tutorials

ABSTRACT This article asserts that auditory cues can be categorized by rhetorical function into the categories of visual rhetoric, defined by Amare and Manning under Peirce’s Ten Classes of Sign, understanding visual rhetoric to include both images and text. This article expands this definition to aural-visual rhetoric, including auditory elements as visual rhetoric to analyze multimodal Technical and Professional Communication (TPC), demonstrating this method using the opening tutorial scene from Portal 2.

A New Methodology for the Analysis of Visuals in Legal Works

The goal of this Article is to introduce a comprehensive methodology for the analysis of visuals used for communication in legal works, by which I mean transactional and litigation documents, legal instruments, primary and secondary sources of law, and legal informational materials. To date, the scholarship on visuals in legal communications has been heavily descriptive, with some forays into the ethical and practical considerations of the use of “visualized” legal works. No one has yet devised a comprehensive analytical methodology that draws upon the disciplines of visual literacy, visual cultural studies, visual rhetoric, and mise en scène analysis to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of actual examples of highly visual legal documents and critique their efficacy and propriety in a variety of legal settings. This Article will fill that gap in the literature. The new methodology evaluates the following aspects of visual legal works: • Immediate Visual Context - Analysis of Meaning -Taxonomy of Purpose and Function • Immediate Verbal Context • Visual Cultural Context • Mise en Scène and the Rhetorical Topic of Arrangement • Visual Rhetoric and the Ethical and Professional Propriety of the Work. Lawyers, judges, and law students typically do not receive training in visual literacy regarding the reading and interpretation of visual images, and much less so in the design principles required to create the most effective visuals for legal communications and legal instruments, such as contracts. This condition persists in spite of the fact that visual images can communicate across language and cultural barriers, taking advantage of the enormous speed and power of visual communication. In equal measure, knowledge and understanding of these principles will enable lawyers to design and use effective visuals, and to challenge or respond to the visual legal communications proffered by their opponents in litigation or negotiation, or their counterparts in a transaction. My intent in this Article and the methodology it presents is to examine visual elements as visuals, not as a translation or alternative form of verbal communication. The approach of trying to translate visual works into verbal arguments or verbal elements of legal reasoning limits the scope and the effectiveness of the visual works, because communication through visuals employs a separate visual language, and not in a literal or verbal sense. The methodology proposed in this Article is a set of tools that can help verbally oriented law-trained writers to become better readers, evaluators, and creators of

Impact of Verbal and Visual Rhetoric in Advertising on Consumers’ Response

Rhetorical figures are linguistic tools that tend to have a great influence on consumers’ response and help in the persuasion process. The deviation caused by rhetorical figures evokes the audiences’ feelings and increases their elaboration and attitude towards the advertisement. Advertisers use verbal and visual rhetorical figures to communicate their messages. The present study analyzes a corpus of 10 advertisements to find out the rhetorical devices used in them. In addition, it tests the impact of verbal versus visual structures to find out which of them is more persuasive and more favorable for consumers. The study conducts a questionnaire to test the impact of using verbal and visual components in the advertisements and to find out which of them is more persuasive and more favorable for the consumers. Results have shown that processing verbal-visual advertisements showed more pleasure and favorable attitude toward the advertisements.

Visual Rhetoric on Rock During Mesolithic Period at Chintakunta, Kadapa, Andhra Pradesh, India

Following the present to make a better future, there are areas to understand about human settlement in aforementioned, which provides the information about food, shelter, dress, culture, lifestyle, and the relation between human and animal. Moreover, the providers are available in contemporary times which carry the history like- cave paintings, rock paintings, sculptures from ancient civilizations, pots, etc. Human habitations in India had been evaluated by humans from nowhere to somewhere dated back to 10000 BC - 8000 BC, where communication was needed initially, and food, cloth, and language painting also have improved simultaneously. Ancient people depicted nonverbal communication through fighting scenes, hunting, riding, copulation, cultural practice, and genre life through ages like the palaeolithic, mesolithic, and neolithic periods. Evidence of the prehistoric cave and rock art still exist in India, like Bagh cave, Bhimvedka there are Chintakunta, Belum caves, Kethavaram and Bhogeswara in Andhra Pradesh. Apart from habitations, Color application, line, form, shapes, narrations of the paintings, and drawing are the most critical areas invented in a new way by the research scholar, archaeologists, and still, the educators are on the way to searching for new invent This paper explores the Art, aesthetics, culture, and technicality of these diverse approaches to this hidden treasure that can be beneficial in studying ancient rock art.

Chain of Gold: Greek Rhetoric in the Roman Empire by Susan Jarratt

Reviewed by: Chain of Gold: Greek Rhetoric in the Roman Empire by Susan Jarratt Anna Peterson Susan Jarratt, Chain of Gold: Greek Rhetoric in the Roman Empire. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2019. 200 pp. Coined by Philostratus in the early third century CE, the label “Second Sophistic” (c. 50-250 CE) is increasingly recognized as an imperfect periodic designation. Does it refer exclusively to the tradition of epideictic rhetoric as described by Philostratus? Or can it be expanded to include the full range of Greek literary production during the first three centuries CE? At its core the term reflects feelings of belatedness and nostalgia, such that the common narrative of the period has become one in which an elite Hellenic identity was defined above all by paideia (“education” or “culture”). While this rooting of an elite Greek identity in the classical past is well recognized as a response to Roman hegemony,1 recent scholarship has begun to expand on this conventional view, pointing to elements of continuity both with earlier Hellenistic literature and the literature of the fourth century CE.2 Jarratt’s monograph Chain of Gold consequently sets a tall task for itself in once again addressing the cultural politics of the Second Sophistic. It is an ambitious and thought-provoking work, even if in the end it does not completely succeed in what it sets out to do. At its core, it argues for a reappraisal of the “second sophistic habit of dwelling in the past” as something that was not “monologic and static” but “varied and dynamic” and that offered the writers and performers of the period “a politically protected way of ‘talking back’ to empire.” (17) For Jarratt, the obsession with the past that has come to define this period of Greek literature is not a simple matter of nostalgia but rather of critical memory, one that allowed the authors of this period to reimagine and keep alive a deliberative civic space. Jarratt’s aim in this book is not at its core an entirely new idea. That said, what makes her work so thought provoking is her desire to locate “a colonial counterdiscourse” in a broad range of works (38). Moreover, she is certainly correct that too often classicists have been overly hesitant about reading the literature of the period through the lens of postcolonial theory (3). In addition to an introductory chapter outlining the monograph’s methodology, Chain of Gold develops this argument across six case studies, covering respectively Dio Chyrsostom’s Euboean Discourse (Chapter 2), Aelius Aristides’ Roman Oration (Chapter 3), Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana [End Page 103] (Chapter 4) and Imagines (Chapter 5), Heliodorus’ Aithiopika (Chapter 6), and Libanius’ To Those Who Call Him Tiresome (Chapter 7). Generally speaking, this is a nice mixture of well-trod and often overlooked texts. Her strongest chapters are those which connect what she calls rhetorical vision to the post-colonial concerns outlined in the monograph’s first chapter. For example, her discussion in Chapter 3 of Aristides’ Roman Oration explores how “the ‘ sophist . . . draws on the resources of [Homeric] epic to enhance his powers of visualization,” providing his audience not only “a phantasm of [Rome’s] imperium but also a techne of viewing” (47). Likewise, Chapter 5 reads Philostratus’ Imagines—an intriguing collection of descriptions of works of art—as an exploration in rhetorical vision that pushes the limits of ekphrasis. Treating the text as a museum of sorts, Jarratt acts as curator, bringing out how the text handles reoccurring images of youth, women, and different ethnicities, among others. This is Jarratt’s most successful chapter, in part thanks to the inclusion of an appendix, which maps out the paintings in relation to one another. In a few instances, however, Jarratt does not make full use of the ancient evidence. The clearest example of this comes in her discussion of Dio Chrysostom’s Euboean Discourse (Or. 7). In this speech, Dio professes that he will narrate a personal experience, relating how, after being shipwrecked in Euboea, he was taken in by a huntsman, who recounted his own troubled participation in local politics. The huntsman’s tale then prompts Dio to expound on...

The “modulation mania”. Impersonal enunciation and visual rhetoric of the data image

The growth of contemporary positivistic trust in computational tools inspired semiotics to contribute to the debate on the strategies of communication of truth. In order to study these strategies in data images, the article features a framework modeled on the theory of impersonal enunciation. The computational utterer is believed to assure a super-personal enunciation understood as impartial and true. Furthermore, it will be observed how subjectivities are in any case modulated in the data images: this operation constitutes as much a visual rhetoric to achieve the effect of truthfulness as it is a discursive practice featuring the computational enunciation of the data image.

Language Generation: Word in contemporary Russian Art

The focus of the article is the investigation of the verbal-visual representations in the relevant practices of contemporary Russian artists of Generation Y (Millennials), i.e. artists born from 1981 to 1996. The paper examines various types of connections between word and image in Russian art, forms of existence and cultural meanings of the verbal components in contemporary Russian art. The author comes to the conclusion that verbal-visual art is an established trend on the Russian art scene. Interesting processes of rethinking the traditional principles of conceptualism are evident in the artworks of contemporary artists. The sign-symbolist imagery is obvious in the visible graphics of figured poems by contemporary Russian artists: artistic representation coexists with logocentrism, the desire for self-identification is combined with the idea of being rooted in the foundations of traditional Russian culture. The principle of eclecticism, characteristic to the era of metamodernism, allows contemporary painters to create the endless semiosis of simulacra that do not give direct clues to the viewer for interpretation. Contemporary artists, being the conductors of the mass culture, strive to get away from the rules of academic school and define the boundaries of the past and the future, the random and the natural. The article pays special attention to the study of visual rhetoric. Using examples, the author shows that the language in contemporary Russian art has not a narrative meaning, but a multi-level semantic impulse closely related to the visual component.

РЕЦЕПЦИИ РУССКОГО АВАНГАРДА В ТВОРЧЕСТВЕ СОВРЕМЕННЫХ РОССИЙСКИХ ХУДОЖНИКОВ

In this paper, an attempt is made to compare the artistic principles of the artworks of contemporary Russian art and Russian avant-garde. It is not so much about direct artistic reception, but about the general ideas of constructing an isoverbal text. The paper defines an alternative version of the development of visual art in general. The author points out that the general principles of contemporary Russian art and the Russian avant-garde are the experiments with new materials and technologies, connection with social, scientific and technological progress, design, brevity, the desire for the protest and shocking. The article pays special attention to the study of visual rhetoric, the connection between verbal and visual elements. Using specific examples, the author shows that the language in contemporary Russian art, as well as in Russian avant-garde, has not a narrative meaning, but a complex semantic impulse closely related to the visual component.

DIGITAL BOVARISM: ADVERTISING, RHETORIC, AND IDENTITY

This paper aims to show how the consumers shape their identities via advertising rhetoric. The contemporary advertising industry is defining and cultivating customers identity, using tactics such as mental simulation and narrative transportation, based on data-driven social profiling. The consumers are lured in constructing the types of persona which marketers strive to establish, engaging in what I call digital bovarism: an idealized, glamorized and, ultimately, fictional representation of themselves, developed through alienating rhetorical visions. This rhetorical process can be understood using symbolic convergence theory and fantasy-theme analysis, as the individual’s efforts to be unique result in more similarity via mimetic practices of consumption.

Antyjapońskie resentymenty i nacjonalizm reakcyjny w Korei Południowej

Understanding the importance of Japan’s place in the South Korean nationalism helps to explain the causes of contemporary conflicts between Seoul and Tokyo. The power of the anti-Japanese resentments in South Korea can surprise outside observers who do not take into account the importance of nationalism. While everyday anti-Japanese resentments may go unnoticed, they are reproduced by “banal” nationalism. Due to this, they can be used for national mobilization at any time. This research examines South Korean nationalism based on anti- Japanese resentments, which can now be described as reactivist nationalism. This concept is proposed in our text to describe the change in the function of Korean nationalism based on anti-Japanese resentments while still putting Japan (or rather, a certain rhetorical vision of Japan as a colonizer) in the role of the Significant Other. Anti-Japanese resentments began to function as a means of mobilizing the nation in response not only to Japanese actions, seen as provocations, but also to express the people’s dissatisfaction with their own government (by linking authoritarian rule with the legacy of the colonial period). Understanding the role of anti-Japanese resentment is a key to assessing South Korea’s decisions, both domestically and internationally.

Visual Rhetoric and the Power of Imagery: A Brief Lesson in the Rhetorical Power of Images and the Need for phronesis and krisis in the Teaching of Visual Rhetoric

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.