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This essay utilizes the iconic photograph of Ieshia Evans at the 2016 Black Lives Matter protest in Baton Rouge, LA to complicate dominant understandings of iconicity in relation to racial icons. We argue that Evans's photograph became iconic because it tapped into a visual grammar of respectability marked by an aesthetic of demureness. We urge critical and visual scholars to look to what we call the iconic periphery, a discursive realm of potentially oppositional or counter-hegemonic images that circulate in abundance at the margins of iconic photographs, to find a radical aesthetic with the potential for social and racial justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a close analysis of Bernard Picart's 1727 frontispiece for Jean-Frederic Bernard's Cérémonies et coutumes religieuses de tous les peuples du monde (1723-1737), employing the concept of theatricality to interpret its visual and communicative significance within the early eighteenth-century religious and cultural landscape. The frontispiece serves as a gateway to the subsequent volumes, shaping readers' expectations and interpretations through its depiction of diverse religious references to Christianity, Islam, Judaism, 'les peuples idolatres', as well as various allusions to the religious controversies that marked the period, such as the Jansenist controversy. By engaging viewers into his design by relying on theatrical features, Picart prompts emotional responses and intellectual discourse, revealing insights into his artistic intentions and strategies as well as in the broader cultural and intellectual context. Further research into Picart's theatrical techniques across the entire series promises to enhance our understanding of his visual rhetoric and its role in exploring religious pluralism and artistic expression in this seminal work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhetorical studies of public memory explore the ways in which memory is made material and how those means condition our own embodiment of memory. One space for this type of rhetorical memory work featured in this essay is the encounter with the corpse during funeral services. While research on funeral rhetoric has been foundational to our understanding of memory and epideixis, we focus on the embodied rhetorics that support and sustain the values we have toward the deceased in the processes of encountering them. We share interviews with deathcare workers and a rhetorical ethnography of the deathcare industry to elaborate on the figurative work and backstage processes that make memorializing the dead possible. We contend that “memory pictures” can be understood as material instantiations of memory that shape the processes of encountering and remembering the dead. This article details phases of encountering the recently deceased body and how the deceased body is made into a corpse to remember and mourn. The phases and technical processes of working with corpses are bluntly described with details about preparing, embalming, and displaying dead bodies. The straightforward and sometimes graphic description of these phases and processes may be disturbing or upsetting for readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainability reporting has been established as a dominant but problematic communication practice in global sustainability management. In this paper, we challenge the commonplace view of reporting as the simple and textual transmission of information, by interpreting corporate sustainability reports as visual artefacts that encourage particular views of environmental issues. We discuss visualization as a key practice in communication and rhetoric, asking what visual managerialism looks like in corporate reports, focusing on a corpus drawn from the Swedish United Nations Global Compact. We engage in a three-stage rhetorical critique to identify three kinds of visualizations: numerical, diagrammatic, and pictorial, establishing how they emphasize communicative characteristics such as logic, simplicity, and clarity. We consolidate these characteristics with the term 'Powerpoint Imagination,' arguing that they construct environmental problems in terms of a technocratic solutionism, i.e., efficiency, standardization and control. We discuss some issues with the Powerpoint Imagination by contrasting it with other images from sustainability reports, concluding with implications for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Actionable metrics within data dashboards can encourage actions to mitigate spread of COVID-19 by tying the actions to holistic data visualizations, showing a connection between an individual’s behavior and the potential impact on the overall outbreak. The analysis shows that actionable metrics are only persuasive when they take advantage of the inherent tension of holistic-localist perspectives while leveraging modes of power and visual conventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2011, protests against rape culture ignited across the globe. Inspired by SlutWalk Toronto (SWT), organizers planned protests that adapted the rhetorical features of SlutWalk to their local contexts. This article examines the visual rhetoric of Marcha das Vadias (MDV), a series of satellite protests in Brazil. I argue that protestors enacted disidentification as a response to the constitutive rhetoric of SlutWalk, bringing into focus how ideologies of race, class, and religion interact with norms of sex and gender to reinforce rape logic. The translation of "slut" to "vadias" centered the linguistic and cultural contexts of contemporary Brazil while maintaining solidarity with the broader SlutWalk movement. Protestors deploy seven rhetorical personae that resituate the constitutive narrative of the movement. Altogether, their performances of personae enact a rhetoric of survivance, which utilizes collectivity, structural critique, non-linear temporality, and storytelling to resist systems of oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will evaluate the quantitative content analysis of visual rhetoric which has been put forward by George Rossolatos in the context of audio-visuality and marketing research. Rossolatos bases his taxonomy of visual rhetorical figures on Groupe µ's adaptation of classical rhetoric in Rhétorique génerale (1970). With the aim of creating a systematic model for marketing analysis, he and his collaborators have coded and classified an extensive number of audiovisual commercials from the top international strata of economically valuable brands. For comparison, I have during a period of four years given undergraduates the task of collecting and categorizing a minimum of ten audio-visual commercials, each of which should exemplify one of the figures referred to by Rossolatos. The outcomes of the task indicate that a random explorative study with a minimum of operationalization and training of coders is enough for obtaining results akin to those reported by Rossolatos. This may be regarded as a positive outcome from a pedagogical point of view, but it may also raise the suspicion that Rossolatos's criteria are merely intuitive. If the incidence of visual rhetorical figures is to be studied as an independent content variable of audio-visual enunciations, the values/figures should be described with greater caution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inquiry‐based learning, that is, developing student capacity to frame and answer significant questions, is at the forefront of twenty‐first century education. Expecting students to ask and solve genuine research questions creates a challenging teaching proposition that editorial cartooning can help solve. While the educational use of editorial cartooning is not a novel concept, asking our students to locate cartoons based on a topic of their choosing and to analyze the satirical debate across these cartoons serves as an accessible inquiry‐driven research project for first‐year college classes that introduces them to academic databases. This essay details the three‐step process used in the college classroom: first, to "mind the gap," that is, to apply specific rhetorical tools, like parody and juxtaposition, as a means of identifying and analyzing satire; second, to "mine the gap," that is, to contextualize the cartoons by researching articles about contemporary culture and politics; and third, to "make the gap known" — to share their information with others through an oral presentation and a written essay. This editorial cartoon project, by educating students in research‐encountering behavior, provides a genuine model of inquiry and analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In digital culture, visualizations are a prevalent and ubiquitous form of communication. A veteran journalistic tool, and an increasingly popular one in digital politics, visualizations offer informative value, attract readership, and increase engagement. Visualizations' multimodality enables them to convey rhetoric through informative, narrative and visual strategies, making them particularly well-suited for future-oriented discourse. Despite the rise of visualization-focused scholarly work over the past decade, several analytical lacunas remain, due to visualizations' multimodal nature and their rich array of actors, contexts and usages in the digital world. Specifically, no scholarly approach examines forward-looking visualizations comprehensively, addressing the ways in which their rhetorical layers coalesce to broker knowledge in multimodal predictive discourse. To fill this gap, our paper proposes a holistic framework for their analysis, addressing knowledge-brokering functions, predictive components, and rhetorical strategies. Thus, we ask, 'How are predictive visualizations rhetorically constructed to mediate the future?' and answer through conceptualization complemented by qualitative analysis of predictive pandemic visualizations from journalistic and social media. We begin by creating a theoretically informed framework, based on existing perspectives from data-journalism studies, projection studies, and visualization scholarship, which we then refine through analytical workshops and empirical application. Our final analytical framework encapsulates each visualization's rhetorical strategies, its knowledge-brokering functions, predictive structure, and their interrelations, highlighting the division of rhetorical and predictive labor across each visualization's components. We conclude with an analytical epilogue in which we demonstrate the usefulness of this framework in holistically analyzing predictive multimodal rhetoric by revisiting the elusive concept of rhetorical complexity in predictive visualizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Res Rhetorica is the property of Polish Rhetoric Society and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Woman, Life, Freedom movement, beginning in September 2022, is a key chapter in the ongoing process of women's rights activism in Iran. Social media has constituted a significant arena for asking for global solidarity with women in Iran since the initial days of this movement. The overall aim of this paper is to understand how TikTok users, including Iranian young women, have used the digital platform and transformed it into a virtual public space for media solidarity and transnational feminist activism. More precisely, it aims to shed light on how content creators, via their agency, rhetorically utilise and politicise the TikTok platform. In particular, we examine how they engage with audiences via the embodied form and affective performances in their attempt to persuade their audiences to viewership and solidarity action. The data in this paper consist of 107 top-ranked videos appearing under the hashtag #mahsaamini viewed through netnography, while the analytical method is multimodal rhetorical analysis with a focus on the mediality of the body in interaction. In addition, we adopt an embodied feminist framework and a decolonial perspective. The resulting analysis demonstrates how emotions function as one of the key elements in online mobilisation and protest in social media, not only as a motivational force but also as a part of the persuasive argument visually presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advertising industry in Indonesia currently uses many brand ambassadors from South Korea. The use of brand ambassadors is considered to have a lot of influence and fans. Since the entry of Hallyu culture and its spread in Indonesia, people have begun to recognize several South Korean cultures such as drama, music, beauty products and food. Advertising as a message communication tool, seeks to persuade consumers to choose products. Ads that use visualizations from South Korea are effective in increasing sales of local products and the image of these products. The purpose of this study is to analyze the meaning of messages and visual images displayed by advertisements in campaigning #DontStopYourMove in collaboration with Korean idols ITZY on YouTube social media for the younger generation. This research uses a critical paradigm through descriptive qualitative research methods to identify data and analyze the visual text of advertisements with observation steps through scenes in advertisements. This research uses the rhetorical triangle approach and the AISAS Model communication flow. This research aims to interpret the meaning of the message in the advertisement and analyze the visual image and analyze the audience's activity of interest in the Ultra Milk advertisement to see the position of the advertisement and ITZY brand ambassador who promotes Ultra Milk milk products and campaigns #DontStopYourMove. The results of this study show (1) The meaning of Ultra Milk's advertising message is for young people who have a lot of activities to consume milk as a nutritional companion, becoming a generation that "Don't Stop Your Move to be Unstoppable Generation, (2) The visual image built by Ultra Milk in collaboration with ITZY is expected to make the audience like Korean idols who have unique characters, enthusiasm, different and actively moving, (3) The advertisement gets the attention of the audience through brand ambassadors, visuals and products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study delves into the use of visual rhetorical strategies in 中国奇谭 Zhongguo Qitan 'Yao-Chinese Folktales' (2023), particularly focusing on 鹅鹅鹅 E E E 'Goose Mountain' (henceforth 'Goose') directed by Hu Rui. We assert that 'Goose' transcodes and reinterprets the ancient Chinese zhiguai novella 阳羡书生 Yangxian Shusheng 'The Scholar from Yangxian' (henceforth 'Scholar') for a contemporary audience through the use of visual rhetoric, leading to a compelling contemporary rendition of this tale. As a silent animation, 'Goose' does so by adeptly incorporating visual depictions, especially animal-related imagery and ink painting aesthetics, drawn from the broader traditional zhiguai myths, or tales of the strange and traditional Chinese culture. The core argument hinges on visual rhetoric's transformative potential. In 'Goose', the connection between tradition and contemporaneity is established through metaphor and metonymy. Initially a literary figure of speech, metaphor and metonymy now encompasses 'visual rhetoric', widely applied in interpreting visual arts. Visual rhetoric often employs various elements such as colour, shape, size, objects, composition and texture to convey information. This study highlights the role played by the inseparable link between traditional zhiguai narratives, the minzu /national style, and the contemporary animation technology in 'Goose', a transformative role that revitalizes ancient traditions to resonate with today's viewership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 21 May 2019, Malawi went to the polls to elect leaders in what turned out to be highly contested presidential, parliamentary and local government elections. Compared to previous elections, the 2019 tripartite elections also featured highly on social media. Focusing on the presidential election, this article analyses how these elections were depicted in popular imagination particularly in internet memes. Our contention is that the internet memes, and by extension, other popular art forms of that period, constitute a humorous, but highly significant documentation, of the key events of that election. The memes reflect hopes, aspirations and disillusionment that characterized the 2019 polls. In terms of conceptual framework, we draw on the theory of visual rhetoric alongside scholarship on internet memes as both humour and political discourse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have researched the 'wildness' or 'tameness' of public screens for staging image events. This study argues that in non-democratic contexts, public screens are not totally wild or tame but are constrained by institutional limits, straddling the tame and the wild. In networked public screens, activists should keep a careful balance between tameness and wildness, staging 'interactive' image events to conduct bottom–up social mobilization to pressure the local state while avoiding being perceived as a threat. Through a case study of environmental activism in China, we identified two interactive strategies that were organized around image events. One was a visible interaction through which activists manipulated the mediated visibility of environmental problems by constructing image events. The other was an invisible interplay through which states and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in closed-door negotiations to solve the problems exposed, without relinquishing the potential for social mobilization by constructing image events. These two forms of interactions, visible and invisible, form a circuit and are interconvertible in specific situations. With the shrinking of institutional space, invisible interaction is becoming the dominant mode of interaction with the state. The formation of such an interactive circuit has largely constrained the power of environmental images in social mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New materialist methods often frame networked images as dynamic, bouncing across the network in contiguous and proximate iterations. Positing that a networked life of an image stalls, this article seeks to understand when and how stasis occurs to articulate what it indicates regarding political messaging of feminism and feminist action. Such an approach involves attuning to serial collectives: spaces that signal regulatory coherence despite variation, where the dynamic networked image coalesces. By tracing images of the late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I demonstrate how the features of her image in circulation stabilize political meaning even as they move through a dynamic networked ecology. This stasis reveals limits to the discursive power of feminist imagery, eliding potential for productive feminist action within an economy of feminist activism. Further, I argue that scholars investigating feminist imagery must account for the consequences of selling, buying, and performing—commodifying—feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the mainstream representations of the contested space of the U.S.-Mexico border often neglect to reflect the diversity of border stories and miss rhetorical dimension, the aim of this paper is to analyze Ana Teresa Fernández’s most recent act of border artivism – her performance, At the Edge of Distance (2022) and its documentation, from the visual rhetoric’s perspective. This analysis is to examine the argumentative power of images created by the artist as well as their function. The article explores versatile border stories Fernández’s paintings convey and analyzes how they function as a call for action – to challenge hostipitality Latinx experience in the U.S. and replace it with acts of transborder conviviality.

Digital technology connects people in digital space focusing the attention on images, which create and introduce you into artificial spaces. The development of digital technology offers the possibility of living immersive experiences in suitable activities to improve real skills in digital ‘room’. That means the possibility of exploring otherwise impossible space, opening to new applications of visual arts. Digital reality explores imaginary worlds through senses, first of all the sight. Hybrid reality becomes actual through visual images. Because of that the imaging requires first of all the management of visual space. Perspective makes believable the space visualization, and the drawing tradition becomes the main reference to the design of suitable space, as well in the rhetoric of impossible world. The architectural drawing enhances the perspective by light and shadow, more than color. Besides the unreal architecture, the graphic art shows interesting representations of abstract mathematical spaces, referred to the concepts of Not Euclidean Geometry. Some considerations open a further research comparing the drawing tradition with last trends in contemporary imagery, starting with Utopia’s imaginary architecture. Today images confirm the role of the perspective, thus the relationship between the eye and the room.

The theme of eternal returns in art and culture focuses on certain historically returning principles that survive in cultural society, even under new conditions, in a modified form. As one of them, the survival of ancient rhetoric through the centuries to the present day is one of them. The presented text shows the trajectories of how classical rhetoric was reactivated in the early modern period in theoretical writing on art and functionally applied to contemporary visual (especially portrait) practice. It also points to the internal parallels between the effort of German and Netherlandish painters and theorists of art to emphasize the persuasive necessity of certain forms of dynamic movement in the picture to Aby Warburg's much the same ambition to identify such movement, energizing and spiritual patterns (pathos formulas) in his paintings. Last but not least, the contribution opens a new field of research into the experience of Warburgian pathos formulas in early modern portraiture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Boletín del Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino is the property of Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

On August 1, 2018, during the road safety movement in Bangladesh, a photograph taken by freelance photographer Rahul Talukder garnered attention on social media platforms. The photo features a protesting school student standing in the rain, without anything to shield him. He wears a school uniform, a backpack and a Vendetta mask, referring to "V for Vendetta," a graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd inspired by Guy Fawkes' 1605 Gunpowder Plot. To date, the photo often resurfaces in news stories and social media narratives of the movement from time to time. This manuscript assesses the iconicity of the image contending that the image has yet to pass the test of time, and remains only a hypericon. The paper also discusses how the image speaks to the movement and creates new meanings in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rhetoric is broadly referred to as the theory and practice of suasory communication enabling humans to participate actively in public. Although traditionally viewed as strongly tied with exclusively verbal persuasion, rhetoric has always extended beyond this limitation. Semiforgotten elements of the ancient faculty prove that rhetoric requires creative visual imagination from both parties (orator and audience) and that the practice emanates from and embeds in visuospatial, sensual experiences. These visual features are combined with the verbal in rhetorical practice resulting in a multidimensional—hybrid—discourse, the main function of which is persuasion. In this hybridity of codes and modes, the primary movement in the persuasive act is connection. This connection relates the person to the world, human imagination to articulation, thoughts to images, and words to pictures. By means of this connection persuasion becomes identification, a constitutive act enhancing the unity of different entities (either human or material). The present essay conceives of rhetoric, and especially visual rhetoric, as a suitable framework to interpret visual hybrids. Here, visual hybrids are understood to be entities that enact the internal rhetorical interplay between difference and unity represented by visual elements and motifs. The article first investigates the concept of ingenium and multimodality to introduce general rhetoric as a holistic framework of human experience and expression that is inherently visual and sensual. Then the paradigms of visual rhetoric are outlined to propose a possible classification of visual hybrids, illustrated by contemporary examples from art and advertising. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyses the visual techniques of the Star Wars films The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017) and The Rise of Skywalker (2019), starting from the system of extreme wide and close-up shots and the thematic and dramaturgical function of masks. The visual rhetoric that runs through the three films is modelled by the face photographing story, which links the visual constructs to the characters' identity. Seen from this perspective, this series of figures connect the characters (Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren), while its significance lies in the fact that it presents Darth Vader's legacy as a visual material, as a series of superimposed close-ups. The paper will show that, in this effect, a long visual process gains its final representation. Consequently, the trilogy can be understood as a film series whose visual system is based on a single extreme close-up. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a world dominated by technology and the constant flow of information, in an era where imagination and reality meet, the image is the dominant form of expression and interaction in society. Whether we use mobile phones, tablets, laptops or smart TVs, whether we are aware of it or not, these tools become windows to an immersive universe where emotions are manipulated, thoughts are influenced and opinions are shaped. In this ever-expanding visual landscape it is essential to ask ourselves: how do televisual images manage to attract, captivate and fascinate? What exactly gives them this seductive power? The vision of the chosen problem regarding the research topic on the seductive power of the image is objective, balanced, based on empirical and theoretical analysis, avoiding value judgments on this complex phenomenon, approached over time from multiple perspectives. To provide a detailed insight into how televisual images influence and seduce, the main aim of the assignment is to identify the specific mechanisms, strategies and techniques used, explore and understand how televisual images use various visual rhetorical techniques. Television uses various seduction strategies to maintain and gain the trust and loyalty of the audience. Based on this premise, we shall analyse how the techniques of visual and narrative seduction are used in television content."Visual rhetoric: on the seductive power of the image" is a complex research topic that involves the use of multiple tools and methods in order to explore how television images are constructed to capture attention and seduce the audience. The theoretical position we adopt in the development of the subject consists in the theory of uses and pleasures. This perspective emphasizes that the audience is not passive, but actively interacts with television content, satisfying individual needs and desires, representing a form of escape, entertainment and pleasure. The audience has the opportunity to select and interpret the images according to its own interests and preferences. Therefore, it is important to establish a clear understanding of key or specific terms, starting from defining the concept of seduction in the context of the televisual discourse to identifying the methods and strategies used in television production. The corpus of the present analysis is made up of televisual productions broadcast by television stations, and the data were obtained through monitoring and occasional recordings (image captures) with the aim of obtaining a diverse range of televisual images in order to highlight their seductive power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of International Journal of Public Relations & Advertising Studies / Uluslararası Halkla İlişkiler ve Reklam Çalışmaları Dergisi is the property of International Journal of Public Relations & Advertising Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The subject of interest in the paper is the comic book biography The Life of Pope John Paul II. In the 1980s, John Paul II was not only treated as the head of the Catholic Church, but held a place in popular culture. The article points out that the Marvel comic book was one of the works that positioned the Pope within an axiological community of superheroes who, in the most general perspective, showed what a life full of heroism should look like. Thus, the paper analyses the elements of the superhero rhetorical model and features typical of the comic medium that highlight the uniqueness of John Paul II’s biography. Furthermore, to fully reveal the persuasiveness of the creative solutions employed in this work, situating the Pope between a man and a superhero, the author refers to the analytical propositions of Roland Barthes and Michał Rusinek concerning the rhetoric of visual representations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Judges and jurists frequently read police-recorded video as arhetorical. It is not. Footage recorded from the perspective of an officer favors police. Drawing on both Burke's theory of identification and film studies, I consider how footage filmed from an officer's perspective functions as a nonverbal constitutive rhetoric. In an analysis of Harris v. Scott (2007), I demonstrate how police-recorded video encourages viewers to dissolve the space between themselves and the police, inviting audiences to characterize both police and themselves as passive, impartial, and objective viewers of an recorded event. When successful as constitutive rhetoric, footage from police-recorded video makes jurors and judges more suspectable to arguments that characterize police as passive observers in an event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this study is to explore how memes are used as tools to expose and shame corruption in Ghana. The Ghanaian media has used memes to criticize unhealthy governmental and social practices and advocated for alternative approaches to addressing these issues. Thus, we explore the qualities memes possess in contributing to the anti-corruption discourse in Ghana.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the use of the rainbow motif on the elements of material reality that surrounds us, such as clothes, accessories, furniture, decorations, but most of all in case of marketing communication of companies and brands. This analysis is based on the belief that things are important factors shaping social reality, which stems from Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory. Material products that transmit the rainbow motif sometimes acquire rhetorical value when the rainbow as a symbol becomes a means of persuasion. These situations, especially the use of the rainbow as a symbol of LGBTQ+ communities to shape the brand image, known as rainbow capitalism and rainbow washing, will be examined in this paper with the help of rhetorical concepts, especially from the point of view of visual rhetoric. This is because persuasion in this case does not take place through the verbal code, but the visual one. Rhetorical means such as the concept of identification and two elements from the triad of persuasive devices: ethos and pathos, will be used to explain these phenomena. The distinction between persuasion and manipulation will also prove useful in the analysis of the phenomenon discussed.

The universality of figurative arts underlines the expressive potential of images, while ideograms document the origin of writing in drawing, demonstrating its ability to configure itself as a language through the development of recognizable codes. The relationship between word and image results from the common ability to conform in language thanks to their complementary roles: the precision of words and the immediacy of images. Advertising was the first to apply the communicative effectiveness of images, deepening their study with reference to the articulations of words. Verbo-visual rhetoric underlines the common intent to make the message convincing through recognizable structures such as coded figures. The parallel between rhetoric, art and technique of verbal language, and the construction of images goes beyond advertising, but this represents the starting point in finding new applications for this powerful union. The effectiveness of images is the reason for the growing importance of visual communication in digital media, made accessible precisely by the development and adoption of intuitive graphic interfaces, which encourages the development of a new visual rhetoric. This study collects the first results of an experimentation conducted in the didactic field, aimed at verifying the possibility and modalities of the visual transposition of rhetorical figures, overcoming the need for textual elements.

The almost universal response to the US Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, has been righteous indignation. Democrats and Republicans alike have called it a defilement or a desecration of the nation's sacred house. This article adds to the literature on Capitol riot rhetoric by proposing a theory of desecration as a rhetoric in motu because desecration enacts movement across a sacred boundary. We outline key features of a rhetoric of desecration and analyze Win McNamee's Pulitzer Prize--winning Capitol riot photographs to illuminate why the riot aftermath has elevated legal action to the status of spiritual warfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parallel to the upswing in the modern environmental movement, 5companies and brands have emphasized green attributes and imagery to sell qualities of the natural world. However, consumers have become highly skeptical about green messaging and express distrust toward companies and brands claiming to be green. The web has thus emerged as an effective platform for a company or brand to promote their environmental responsibility. The present study explores this further by taking a qualitative case study approach that deconstructs how three popular skin care brands impress consumers that a brand is green and communicates caring for the environment. The findings show that each brand established a green identity with visuals, color, and text signifying eco-friendly and caring for the environment as part of its web-based communication. However, the analysis discovered noticeable differences in what brands say they do with what they do in which brands aim to lessen their environmental impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article examines how the image of a tree forms and acts in a South Korean TV series. Formally being part of a shooting location, a tree often appears in scenes that add to it connotation; it is such scenes that become the object of my analysis. A short insight into the history of Korean culture outlines the features of the cult of trees and demonstrates the peculiarities existing in the perception of the image of a tree in literary works. Notable here are the tradition of worshipping tree spirits and trees as such; the connection of trees with the souls of the deceased; the mix of motifs of different origin (including Buddhist ones) in the image of a tree; the diversity and flexibility of its interpretations. Further, I address contemporary television series of various genres, mostly fantasy. Most of the examples are united by one particular tree, which, since 2005, has “starred” in more than twenty TV series. An analysis of the scenes in which this and other trees appear shows that we can speak of the serial image of a special tree. At the same time, some characteristics of a sacred tree appear quite regularly: for instance, the connection of trees with the theme of death, the interaction of characters with a tree or a tree spirit, and a tree acting as a protector. Interestingly, these and other motifs prove to be very convenient for recon- textualization. In addition, scenes involving a special tree appeal to the audience’s experience. The intertextual connections formed around the television image of a tree makes it possible to use it as an element of non-verbal communication with viewers. В статье рассматривается формирование и способы использования образа дерева в южнокорейском телесериале. Формально являясь частью съемочной локации, дерево нередко появляется в сценах, наделяющих его дополнительным значением; подобные сцены и становятся объектом анализа. Небольшой экскурс в историю культуры Кореи позволяет обозначить характерные черты культа деревьев и особенности восприятия образа дерева в литературных произведениях. Отмечается традиция почитания как древесных духов, так и деревьев как таковых, связь деревьев с душами умерших, сочетание мотивов разного происхождения (в том числе буддийских) в образе дерева, разнообразие и гибкость его трактовок. Затем следует обращение к современным телесериалам различных жанров, среди которых преобладает фэнтези. Большую часть примеров объединяет собой одно конкретное дерево, которое, начиная с 2005 г. и по сей день, «снялось» более чем в двадцати сериалах. Анализ сцен, в которых фигурируют это и некоторые другие деревья, показывает, что можно говорить об отдельном «сериальном» образе «особенного» дерева. Вместе с тем некоторые характеристики «священного дерева» воспроизводятся достаточно регулярно. Это касается и обозначения связи дерева с темой смерти, и полноценного взаимодействия персонажей с деревом или духом дерева, и присвоения дереву статуса защитника; причем эти и другие мотивы оказываются весьма удобными для реконтекстуализации. Кроме того, сцены с участием «особенного» дерева апеллируют и к зрительскому опыту аудитории. Система интертекстуальных связей, сложившаяся вокруг телевизионного образа дерева, дает возможность использовать его как элемент невербальной коммуникации со зрителем.

In technical and professional communication, the social justice turn calls on us to interrogate sites of positionality, privilege, and power to help foreground strategies that can empower marginalized groups. I propose that mainstream media coverage of the opioid epidemic represents such a site because addiction to these drugs, which initially primarily affected White people, has been positioned as a public health issue rather than a criminal justice problem. I explore the strategies that were used to create this positioning by investigating themes in the visual rhetoric as conveyed through data visualizations and in the text of the articles in which these graphics were published. My results align with two previous studies that confirmed this public health framing. I also observed an emphasis on mortality, which contributes to our understanding of rhetorical strategies that can be used to engender support rather than condemnation for those suffering from drug addiction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Telemedicine is an alternative healthcare delivery system whereby patients access digital technology to consult with a physician virtually. Patients first interact with telemedicine via a consumer-facing website. Telemedicine promises numerous benefits to patients, such as increased access to healthcare, yet poor usability of the telemedicine user interface (UI) may hinder patient acceptance and adoption of the service. The telemedicine UI moderates patients' ability to utilize telemedicine, and therefore it must be usable, but it must also be rhetorical to motivate patients to perform certain actions. Digital rhetoric refers to UI elements that influence user actions and knowledge and is tied to usability because of these same human–computer interaction (HCI) factors. This study examined the usability of three telemedicine provider UIs and by identifying usability problems, reveals digital rhetoric that is significant to telemedicine UIs. The article concludes by offering heuristics of digital rhetoric that lead to optimal usability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to analyze (from autopsy) mathematical motifs in the frontispieces to selected seventeenth-century Polish technical-military treatises (by Adam Freytag, Kazimierz Siemienowicz and Józef Naronowicz-Naroński). The frontispiece is considered here an iconographic source for the history of science and technology. The rationale for investigating this topic is the process of the progressive mathematization of technical knowledge in Europe in the 15th–18th centuries. It is the first study of this subject with regard to Polish technical-military writing. Only one other article is devoted to this issue (Delphine Schreuder, When M3 ars Meets Euclid. The Relationship between War and Mathematical Sciences in Frontispecies of Fortification Treatises, 2021), but it does not cover the works of Polish authors. There are also several general studies (mainly in art or architectural history) on frontispieces to fortification treaties (Armin Schlechter, Engraved Title Pages of Fortification Manuals, 2014, Jeroen Goudeau, Harnessed Heroes: Mars, the Title-page, and the Dutch Stadtholders, 2016). The analysis of the typographic compositions of the discussed frontispieces revealed three main motifs: 1. the connection between the art of war and mathematical knowledge, as far as the knowledge of fortification and artillery is concerned; 2. the degree to which those disciplines – both of which combine the practice of the battlefield with theory – were mathematicized; 3. the crucial importance of drafting and measuring instruments for these sciences. The article’s fi nal section addresses the issue of the rhetorical and persuasive function of the frontispieces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates the visual language surrounding the South African Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) agenda, by rhetorically analysing stock images used in a prominent 4IR publication. This study serves to contribute to the ongoing critical discussion surrounding the general legitimacy and local propriety of the global 4IR narrative, which has been enthusiastically adopted by the South African government to guide techno-development policy. The article draws on critiques of 4IR discursivities but offers a novel contribution by examining the rhetorical power of images in reinforcing this influential but potentially problematic high-level policy narrative. The stock images analysed feature prominently in "Summary Report and Recommendations" by the Presidential Commission on the 4IR. Both the general rhetorical appeal of commercial stock images and the particular visual appeal of a "techno-imaginary" genre of images are analysed. In addition to outlining the persuasive effects of these images, according to Aristotle's means of persuasion (logos, pathos, and ethos), the article also critically reflects on their potential shortcomings. The article is concluded by arguing that these generic stock images offer an inadequate visual vocabulary for imagining a locally appropriate and desirable South African future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to investigate the visual construction of meaning within the semiotic resource of stock photography. Since the popularity of this product seems to affect the production, perception, interpretation and social internalization of the units of discourse included in the images under discussion, it is this author's understanding that it can thus spread the ideological domination of prevailing, public sentiments towards specific concepts. This phenomenon is exemplified in the present article by an analysis of visual material depicting happiness, extracted from one of the biggest online banks of imagery, i.e. Shutterstock. The examination of the content of the photos seeks to identify the elements and their relations and combinations which stand for subjective well-being, to be then contrasted with corresponding research in the field of psychology. Attention is also paid to what is absent in the material. This approach leads to the conclusion that the significance of this resource lies in the distinct choices of particular items as depictive of a concept, especially as these choices conform to social expectations concerning its visual representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the cover images of two inflight magazines—Ulisse (Alitalia) and Blue Wings (Finnair)—as a method for airlines to manage their impression. Drawing on concept of impression management, the study focuses on the visual strategies the cover images employ in order to shape the audience's perception of the airlines. The data consists of 90 cover images published between January 2016 and February 2020. A visual rhetorical analysis was applied to examine the visual construction of the cover images and their functions. The findings show that the cover images of Ulisse and Blue Wings employed different strategies of visual rhetoric as part of their impression management. Whereas Alitalia seemed to strive for the image of a luxury airline, Finnair endeavored to create an image of an airline for ordinary people. Theoretically, this study contributes to the current knowledge of rhetorical approach to visual impression management in corporate communications. Methodologically, the study advances the research on corporate impression management by applying an analysis of visual rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]