Visual Rhetoric and Argumentation

NAME: ______ENG 105 ACH

This worksheet is intended to show how images can be viewed as arguments with specific purposes. In this assignment, you should make connections between visual texts and written texts. Creators of visual texts, like authors of written texts, want their work to affect viewers/readers in very specific ways. Consider these following questions as you analyze a photograph from www.nationalgeographic.com/photography.

1. Describe the different elements in the photograph you chose (colors, people, objects, buildings, textures, clothing, etc…)

2. What is the central focus of this photograph? Is the object/person the central focus due to its positioning in the center of the photograph? Or, is it the largest object within the frame? Or, do other objects guide us into the direction of that central object/person? Or, is there no main object/person to focus on in this picture?

3. Are the textures in the photograph hard, soft, or both? What feeling/emotion does that texture conjure up for you? 4. Now, interpret (or rhetorically analyze) the photograph without using the words ethos, logos, or pathos. You may consider what relationships you see in the photograph. What do the colors represent? Why were all of these particular elements (refer to question #1) included in this photograph? What do some of these elements symbolize in this photograph?

5. What argument was this photographer making in this photograph? Did he/she want the viewer to feel something? To believe in something? To realize/become aware of something? In other words, what is the purpose of the photograph?

6. If you hired a photographer to take a picture of you in your “natural state” – a place that represents who you are or how you see yourself – what would the photo look like? What elements would be included? Where would you be positioned in the photograph? What would you be wearing? Would anyone else be in the photograph with you? Explain.

7. What image (newspaper photograph, family portrait, advertisement, movie scene, etc…) has left a big impact on you, and why? What is it about that image that was so exciting, devastating, beautiful, moving, thought-provoking, etc…?