Analyzing Visual and Verbal RhetoricAllyn & Bacon Ch. 3 - 5 and 11

- Angle of Vision•Controlling what the audience perceives by careful consideration of WHAT and HOW information is conveyed.

“There is always more than one way to tell a

story”Greasy vs. Succulent/ Juicy

Details vs. No Details (i.e. Shows up on time and does his/her work vs. exceeds expectations and thinks outside the box)

Small vs. Fun Size

Cramped vs. Cozy

Perspectives/ Biases of Audience (and advertiser) Influenced by:

Life Experiences

Socio-economic class

Politics and culture (both personal, national, and generational)

Values (including Religion)

Gender

Race/Ethnicity/Nationality

Desires

Ability to empathize and rationalize outside our experience

Rhetorical Appeals

Advertisers study target demographics (i.e. upper middle class Caucasian Females in their 40s and above who like to play sports) in order to understand their perspectives, desires, needs, and fears etc. and appeal to them.

Let’s think about this using parity products and Fast Moving Consumer Goods.

Ads not only draw from our desires, culture, lifestyle politics, and beliefs; they help shape them.

Advertising’s Fifteen Basic Appeals

The Illustrious FifteenSex

Affiliation

Nurture

Guidance

Aggress

Achieve

Curiosity

Physiological Needs

Dominate

Prominence

Attention

Autonomy

Escape

Feel Safe

Aesthetic Sensations

Context is King: Ads engage in discourse with publications,

society, places, and events etc.

What do you want to emphasize? What do you

want to de-emphasize?

Textual Rhetoric (“The right words in the right places”)

Fonts and style

Color

Orientation / Layout

Word Choice (connotations)

Sentence and Paragraph structure

Abstract vs. Concrete Words

Voice/ Tone

Visual Rhetoric

Angle of VisionCamera Angles

Role of the photographer

Relationship btw. people, objects, and place

Filters and Focus

Artistic merit

Compositional Features

Setting (including all features such as furniture)

Social Meaning of objects

Character roles

Clothing

Relationships btw. images and words

Context of the image