Short Visual Rhetoric
Paper instructions:
Length: Choose which questions apply to your advertisement
Objective: Find an advertisement that has both verbal and visual elements. Analyze the ad’s visual
argument by answering in complete sentences some of the questions (only answer the questions that
apply to your advertisement) Questions are located in the text on pp.330-333.
About the Creators and Distributors
–Who created the visual text? Who distributed it?
–What can you find out about these people and other work that they have done?
–What does the creator’s attitude seem to be toward the image?
About the Medium
–Which media are used for this visual text? Images only? Words and images? Sound, video, graphs, or
charts?
–How are the media used to communicate words and images? How do various media work together?
–What effect does the medium have on the message of the visual text? How would the message be
altered if different media were used?
–What role is played by the words that accompany the visual text? How do they clarify, reinforce,
blur, or contradict the image’s visual message?
About Viewers and Readers
–What does the text assume about its viewers and about what they know and agree with?
–What overall impression does the visual text create in you?
–What positive or negative feelings about individuals, scenes, or ideas does the visual intend to evoke
in viewers?
About Content and Purpose
–What cultural values does the visual evoke? The good life? Love and harmony? Sex appeal? Youth?
Adventure? Economic power or dominance? Freedom? Does the visual reinforce these values or question
them? What does the visual do to strengthen the argument?
–What emotions does the visual evoke? ARe these the emotions that it intends to evoke?
About Design
–How is the text composed? What’s your eye drawn to first? Why?
–What’s in the foreground? In the background? What’s in or out of focus? What’s moving? What’s
placed high, and what’s placed low? What’s to the left, in the center, and to the right? What effect do
these placements have on the message?
–Is any information (such as a name, face, or a scene) highlighted or stressed to attract your
attention?
–How are light and color used? What effects are they intended to have on you? What about video?
Sound?
–What details are included or emphasized? What details are omitted or deemphasized? To what
effect? Is anything downplayed, ambiguous, confusing, distracting, or obviously omitted? To what end?
–What, if anything is surprising about the design of the visual text? What do you think is the purpose
of that surprise?
–Is anything in the visual repeated, intensified, or exaggerated? Is anything presented as
“supernormal” or idealistic? What effects are intended by these strategies, and what effects do they
have on you as a viewer? How do they clarify or reinforce (or blur or contradict) the message?
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