Blogs and Workshops

Response Blog: Analyzing Visual Rhetoric

In our world, today, images and public advertisements have become part of our everyday lives. We see them on billboards, social media, tv, cars, newspapers, magazines, and even on the food products that we all buy. The purpose of these images or advertisements is to capture the attention of consumers in an artistic and visually appealing way so that they may be drawn in and purchase the product. Since images are known to help individuals remember content better and more clearly, companies use a wide spread of techniques to share their products with the consumers. In chapter four of the book Becoming Rhetorical, by Jodie Nicotra, we learn different techniques and layers on how to dissect and asses images that we see in our daily lives.

One method that we need to look at is the questions we ask about the image or advertisement itself. We need to know who produced the picture, the purpose of the image, the message that is being conveyed, and where the image itself appears. Although these are not all the questions an individual should ask themselves, these are the four main core questions that should run through your head when analyzing an image.

The author later moves on and digs into the definition and components of a formal layer. A formal layer is the “structural of photographs: things like framing, emphasis, camera angle (point of view), focus, distance from the subject, lighting, and contrast, and color” (Nicotra, 74). On the contrary, there is also a social layer of an image as well. The social layer refers to “the cultural meanings of the image in the image: things like historical contexts, cultural references, visual tropes, narratives, jokes, and so forth” (Nicotra, 82). The social layer makes us consider the race, gender, age, and other features of the individual that we see in an image.

In this chapter, we also see how images can be miss leading, and appearances of those posing in magazines or even on billboards can be altered in dramatic ways. For example, in chapter four, we read about how magazines or modeling images can be modified to make the model appear better looking than they actually are. The author goes on to say that although the models look perfect and appealing in the magazine, in reality, they have had photoshop and other picture editing apps used on the image. This may not be the case for all magazines or modeling images but is a concept that is used for images. Being able to identify these techniques and ideas in pictures and advertisements is very important, especially in the world we live in today.

Workshop Blog:

This first workshop blog session allowed me to receive sentence structure help, along with productive feedback for my literacy narrative, which improved my essay overall. The first feedback suggestions from one of my classmates started with removing my two opening lines, which are within my introduction paragraph. Since this essay will go into my website blog, my classmate reminded me that the topic is not to sway our audience on anything particular but to express how we have learned and change through literacy. That being said, it then made more sense of why the first two sentences I wrote were not appropriate for introducing my narrative. The second type of feedback I received was how to reword one of my sentences, which was difficult to read and was a run-on. I was quickly able to go back into my essay and make the fix that was suggested. Lastly, I was advised to split the first sentence of my third paragraph into two separate sentences. I found almost all of this feedback incredibly helpful because it showed me that I tend to write run-on sentences and usually incorporate avoidable sentences in my essays. I also learned that I need to be more specific in my introduction paragraphs and introduce the key points of my essays. 

I also received a second set of feedback from another student in the class. Again this classmate told me that my essay overall all was pretty good, and he understood the point and liked where it was going. However, he did provide me with feedback that helped me create a better narrative for my blog. The first suggestion I read, explained to me that I needed to dig deeper into why the use of satire and images appeals to me personally. After reading that suggestion, I went back through that particular paragraph to edit and add more detail on how the use of satire and images when I write appeals to me personally. The feedback from my two classmates not only helped me expand my ideas and correct grammar errors but also helped me with the direction in which I wanted to take my writing. At first, I was writing my literacy narrative mainly about how my writing style was shaped from stores I read when I was young. Now my essay is a combination of how I discovered which genres I like, such as satire, and how using images in the text helps make my writing more vivid. All in all, this feedback session was productive and helped me correct the mistakes that I missed in my literacy narrative.