Editing Visual rhetoric (section)

== Rhetorical application ==
Visual rhetoric studies how humans use images to communicate. Elements of images, such as size color, line, and shape, are used to convey messages.<ref name=":02">{{Cite book|title=Multimodality--a Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication|last=Kress|first=Gunther|publisher=Routledge|year=2010|isbn=9780415320610|location=New York}}{{page needed|date=May 2021}}</ref> In images, meanings are created by the layout and spatial positions of these elements.<ref name=":02" /> The entities that constitute an image are socially, politically, and culturally constructed. The same image may represent different rhetorical meanings depending on the audience. The choice and arrangement of the elements in an image should be used to achieve the desired rhetorical effects and convey messages accurately to specific audiences, societies, and cultures.<ref name=":02" />

The use of images is a conscious, communicative decision as the colors, form, medium, and size are each chosen on purpose.<ref name=Foss2004/> However, a person may come in contact with a sign, but if they have no relation to the sign, its message is arbitrary. Therefore, in order for artifacts or products to be conceptualized as visual rhetoric, they must be symbolic, involve human intervention, and be presented to an audience for the purpose of communicating.<ref name=Foss2004/>

In "The Rhetoric of the Image", Roland Barthes examines the semiotic nature of images, and the ways that images function to communicate specific messages. Barthes points out that messages transmitted by visual images include coded iconic and non-coded iconic linguistic messages.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Rhetorical Theory--An Introduction|last=Borchers|first=Timothy|publisher=Waveland Press|year=2011|isbn=978-1577667315|location=Long Grove ILL|pages=271–272}}</ref> Visual rhetorical images can be categorized into two dimensions: meaning operation and visual structure.<ref name="Phillips & McQuarrie 2004"/> Meaning operation refers to the relations and connections between elements in visual images. Visual structure refers to the way that the elements are visually displayed.<ref name="Phillips & McQuarrie 2004">{{cite journal |last1=Phillips |first1=Barbara J. |last2=McQuarrie |first2=Edward F. |title=Beyond Visual Metaphor: A New Typology of Visual Rhetoric in Advertising |journal=Marketing Theory |date=June 2004 |volume=4 |issue=1–2 |pages=113–136 |doi=10.1177/1470593104044089 |s2cid=73621526 }}</ref>

=== Analysis terminology ===
Rhetorical critics have borrowed analysis terminology from C.S. [[Charles Sanders Peirce#Signs|Peirce]] to accomplish direct analysis of visual messages. Icon (or iconic signs), index (or indexical signs), and symbol (or symbolic signs) are three basic categories of recognizable characteristics of visual messages.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jWkJjiNq7ZMC|title=Visual Communication: Images with Messages|last=Lester|first=Paul Martin|date=2013-02-14|publisher=Cengage Learning|isbn=9781133308645|language=en}}</ref> Icons, or iconic signs, are recognized based on resemblance to known elements or items (e.g., one's ID photo on a company badge). Indexes, or indexical signs, are recognized based on understanding of a visual trace, imprint, or element that signals prior activity, or process, the agent of which is no longer visible (e.g., tire tracks in the sand). Symbols, or symbolic signs, are recognized only on the basis of a shared, learned code of visual signs (e.g., a Mercedes Benz logo, or any printed word in any written language). These three types of visual signs individually, or in combination, make up the visual design elements of nearly all visual messages.