In Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries, William A. Covino and David A. Jolliffe write, “Rhetoric is not dialectic, although Aristotle calls rhetoric the antistrophos (counterpart) to dialectic, and the examples from Plato and Berthoff above suggest that rhetorical explanation can take on a dialectical—question-answer or comment-response—form” (8). While Covino and Jolliffe’s essay does not directly address the concept of visual rhetoric and the various modes or forms which argument might take, I think their link between rhetoric and dialectic is an appropriate locus point around which to construct the central theme of this project: visual argument and the teaching of it to college students. The interspersing of visuals/photographs with written texts creates an argument that is directly dialectical not only in the content of the argument itself, but also in the form the argument takes. In a very simplistic sense, one might say that the exchange between visuals and text or other modes of discourse serves as an extension—or metaphor—of the dialectical exchange of ideas within the framework of the argument itself. It is for this reason—the instilling in students’ minds of argument as dialectical—that I believe the pedagogy of visual rhetoric is crucial for the college composition teacher to consider.

The danger that emerges in the teaching of visual rhetoric without teaching the basic principles of ethos, logos, and pathos, is that students may begin to let the emotional pull of images supersede the logos of the argument, so that a visual argument might become a collage of sentimental images and symbols so connected with the bathos of emotion that it does not carry any actual logical weight at all. This brings me to another purpose of this blog: to explore ways of teaching visual rhetoric so that it complements—rather than replaces—the traditional methods of logical arguments that have survived through the ages.

Work Cited

Covino, William A., and David A. Jolliffe. Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1995.