Readings about Forms & Delivery
25 Understanding Visual Rhetoric
Jenae Cohn
Visuals can dramatically impact our understanding of a rhetorical situation. In a writing class, students do not always think that they will need to be attentive to visuals, but visual information can be a critical component to understanding and analyzing the rhetorical impacts of a multimodal text. This chapter gives examples of what visual rhetoric looks like in everyday situations, unpacking how seemingly mundane images like a food picture on social media or a menu at a restaurant, can have a persuasive impact on the viewer. The chapter then offers students some terms to use when describing visuals in a variety of situations (Writing Spaces).
Read Jenae Cohn’s “Understanding Visual Rhetoric.”
Keywords from this chapter in Writing Spaces
visual, , multimodal, , image
Author Bio
Jenae Cohn is the director of academic technology at California State University, Sacramento. She is the author of the forthcoming book Skim, Dive, Surface: Teaching Digital Reading, which will be published by West Virginia University in June 2021 (Inside Higher Ed).
both the study and use of strategic communication, or talk and text in social interaction; the way that rhetors/authors/writers/composers use language in order to communicate with an audience; the art of using language effectively so as to communicate with, persuade, or influence others
the employment of more than one mode: text, sound, voice, image
