Visual Analysis Assignment

Keywords:

Rhetorical Analysis of Visual Communication
600–800 words

Purposes

  • Develop ability to rhetorically analyze visual communication by describing how shared context and persuasive appeals [ethos, logos and pathos] determine "meaning."
  • Adopt concepts for the Visual Communication section of the Student Guide for English 150 and 250.
  • Notice how persuasive principles interact with cultural and technological change.
  • Contribute your analysis to the "Romancing the Consumer" team.

What does the artist or designer assume the reader thinks/believes and understands about the subject, and what does the artist or designer hope the reader will think/believe and understand after interacting with the visual elements of the communication?

Audience

Your unit I Team, investigating the role of romance conventions in current consumer culture by comparison with ads from a previous time period.

Content

Each team member will choose one example from those selected for your "Romancing the Consumer" presentation—a print or video still. Use this as your specimen or example (integrate a copy into your analysis--not tacked on the end) to support your discussion of how the advertisement uses romance conventions to persuade viewers to buy a product or service. (Not just "see there's a couple in the foreground kissing" or "see there's a sunset on the beach" but how those images are developed to support claims for the specific product or service. How does persuasion work?)

Develop your analysis by comparing your main example to a similar ad from an earlier time period. (Not just, "see, they're kind of the same and kind of different," but how do the differences and similarities support claims you make for the persuasive strategy of your main example.)

Show us specific images, visual features and culturally coded elements which

  • support the credibility or character of the product or producer [ethos]
  • deliver evidence, claims, supporting imagery and detail for the ad’s persuasive purpose [logos]
  • depend on the viewer’s emotional response, appealing to the viewer’s interests and predispositions, anxieties and desires [pathos]
  • assume shared background, experience, and response to romance conventions' culturally coded imagery [context]

—submitted by Jim Noland

up