Visual Rhetoric

Definition: A visual ideograph is an image (or recurring visual pattern) that works like an ideograph in language, a widely recognizable form that carries ideological commitments and can be redeployed across contexts without needing full explanation. It lets audiences “read” a political value quickly because the image is already culturally loaded.

Key Ideas (Edwards and Winkler):

• Representative form: the image becomes a flexible “container” for abstraction, used to invoke broad ideas rather than depict a single event literally.

• Case anchor: In their study, Janis L. Edwards and Carol K. Winkler analyze editorial cartoons that echo the Iwo Jima flag-raising photo to trigger themes like patriotism, sacrifice, victory, or national unity even when the cartoon’s topic is unrelated.

• Link to ideographs: Builds on Michael Calvin McGee’s idea that ideographs are high-level, culturally specific political terms like “liberty” or “security,” but extends the logic to images.

Example: A cartoon that borrows the flag-raising composition to depict an election victory uses the visual ideograph to make the contest feel like a national struggle, not just politics.

Definition: Scapegoating is a rhetorical process that attributes complex social problems to a target group or figure, then portrays punishment, exclusion, or removal of that target as “purification” or restoration.

Core Terms (Kenneth Burke):

• Victimage: a logic of blame that constructs a “guilty” party as the cause of disorder.

• Scapegoat mechanism: public drama that moves from pollution (a crisis) to purification (punishment) to redemption (renewed social order).

How it shows up visually:

• Political imagery can “code” guilt through visual cues (vermin metaphors, contamination imagery, criminal silhouettes, shadowy cabals).

• The image often collapses multiple causes into one face, logo, uniform, or symbol.

Example: A campaign ad that depicts a social problem as literally emanating from a single villainous figure (dark lighting, looming scale, rot/decay motifs) invites audiences to accept removal of that figure as the solution, even if the problem is structural.

Definition: Symbolic politics explains how political communication often works less by policy detail and more by symbols, rituals, and spectacle that organize emotion and identity. Murray Edelman argues that public opinion is shaped through symbolic forms (myths, ceremonies, iconic images) that people experience as political reality.

Key Concepts:

• Political spectacle: staged events and media performances that manage attention, simplify conflict, and distribute meanings.

• Condensation symbols: a single symbol that packs multiple feelings and ideas into one “read,” like pride, fear, grievance, hope, humiliation, or destiny.

Example: A flag backdrop, a solemn memorial setting, or a heroic “service” montage can function as condensation symbols that signal legitimacy and moral authority, even when the spoken message is thin on specifics.

Definition: Propaganda is commonly defined (Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O'Donnell) as a deliberate, systematic attempt to shape perceptions, manipulate cognitions, and direct behavior to serve the propagandist’s intent.

Common technique framework (useful for WWI/WWII posters and beyond):

• Name-calling: attach negative labels to a target.

• Glittering generalities: vague virtue words like “freedom,” “strength,” “renewal.”

• Transfer: borrow the authority of a respected symbol (flag, religion, science) for a claim.

• Testimonial: endorsements, real or implied.

• Plain folks: “I’m just like you.”

• Card stacking: selective facts, omission, cherry-picking.

• Bandwagon: “everyone is joining, don’t be left out.”

Visual Examples:

• A poster that wraps a policy in the flag uses transfer.

• A recruitment poster that depicts enlistment as what “everyone” is doing uses bandwagon.

• A demonized caricature of an enemy uses name-calling plus dehumanization.