Week 6: The Ancient Art of Rhetoric and Persuasion

Before coming to class, bring a print advertisement that you believe persuades the reader rhetorically. Explain your case using the concepts learnt this week

     Everything that we see everyday, be it advertisement in the television, posters and leaflets are meant to have an effect towards us. Blair (2004) states that the power of things visual are capable to persuade us by shaping our attitudes, beliefs as well as our actions. These are all done by persuasive effects used by the image to our eyes. How are we able to find ourselves feeling sympathetic, angry, excited, etc when we watch any advertisements in the television? Blair (2004) states that Aristotelian enthymemes is an argument in which the arguer purposely leaves unstated a premise that is essential to its reasoning. This allows the audience to fill in that unexpressed premise. This is what makes an enthymeme a rhetorical form of argument. 

      For example:

                            

      As you can see, there is a picture of a smiling and innocent baby printed with different brands coming from different companies. There is no anchorage/text written here. But if you have a critical mind, you can tell that this advertisement shows that these brands are what you have consume since we were born. With the use of enthymeme, we are able to come up with a conclusion: We are what we watch, we are what we eat, we are what we wear, we are the products that we buy. It starts at birth and it is endless. We are surrounded by so many advertisement it makes us consume these brand. The reasoning shows how pure and innocent we were until we are surrounded by these brands. This image makes me realize how our lives are constantly surrounded by them. Even before we were born, our mothers have chosen which crib to use, where to buy our baby clothes, which stroller to fit us in, etc. 

      In conclusion, visual rhetoric plays an important role in advertisement. Its main idea is to captivate viewers because not only do they want to sell their products, but visual rhetoric is one way to persuade and change one's beliefs and attitudes for example in political advertisements. The powerful use of rhetoric is the enthymeme that is indirectly stated but is left unexplained so that we as viewers are able to confirm what we see ourselves.

References:

Blair, J. A. (2004). The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments. In Hill, C. A., and Helmers, M. H. (eds.). 

Defining visual rhetorics (pp. 41-61). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Week 5: Gestalt Effect and Schema Theories: The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Name three laws of Gestalt Theory and provide examples to illustrate your point

Being a person, we are such lazy beings. My lecturer has mentioned in our lecture that our human brain is lazy, thus we tend to see things as a whole. The sum of its part is rather pointless but with the connection made between these sum, they make up a whole. And so the phrase, "The whole is different from the sum of its parts" began. Werthiermer started the Gestalt Effect apparently after his train ride when he began to see the apparent motion. We do not see the sum of the parts as it is individually, rather, we tend to see relationship and pattern of the objects. We can apply this theory in the media and advertising. 

Here is an example:

If the above image is displayed individually in an advertisement, as in, the black human figure on the far left, the diagonally striped figure and plain white figure on the far right is separated from one another, and not displayed wholly hand in hand, then an advertisement saying "NO RACISM" or "UNITE AGAINST RACISM" may not be achieved. Viewers and audience may not be able to tell what the message is trying to convey. This is why our human eye and mind tend to see thing as a whole because from there, we are able to tell the meaning of an object. 

I will now provide an example on the Law of Similarity. By using the above image, we are able to tell that there is a similarity between these 3 figures. They have the same shape and sizes. According to the Gestalt Theory, our brain is used to relating objects together and one of the ways to do this is by recognizing the use of similar shapes, order or sizes in becoming a relationship. 

The next law would be the Law of Proximity. According to Lester (1995), the law of proximity shows that the brain easily "associates objects close to each other than it does two objects that are far apart". For example:

We would come to a conclusion that the above image shows a group of friends and a girl that is not a part of their circle of friends/group. Not only does that expression of the girl display a message (if it was advertising being bullied, etc) but the closeness of the object (group of people) with the girl (another object) shows that perhaps she is not a friend of their's or that she is just a plain stranger standing near to them. 

The third law that I will illustrate is the Law of Common Fate. Gestalt psychologists assumed that the brain does not prefer sudden or unusual changes in the movement of a line. Objects viewed as being a part of a continous line will be mentally unattached from other objects that are not a part of the line. 

Two forms with the same orientation will appear to belong with one another. If it is other wise, then it does not seem to belong to one another. It is seen to be a separated object. 

In conclusion, this theory is required in order for an advertisement to be successfully affective. There must be a wholeness, interdependence and a careful context to make it into one. Without interdependence, the product will not become successful without all of its parts. With the whole and its context, the product could become a story in an advertisement, thus making it affective in the minds of the viewers. If an advertisement all of the laws of Gestalt Theory then it would most likely be an excellent advertisement.

References:

Lester, P. M. (1995). The sensual and perceptual theories of visual communication. Visual communication: Images with messages. California: Wadsworth Publishing