Response3: Understanding Visual Rhetoric

Mary E. Hock begins her essay by asserting the relevance of visual rhetoric, which she defines as "visual strategies used for meaning and persuasion," and then claiming that visual communication needs to be looked at as a hybrid, with no distinctions made between the visual grammar and the verbal grammar. She advises teachers to point out rhetorical features we see in interactive digital media, and goes on to provide terms with which to refer.

Two pieces are compared - Wysocki's and Boese's. Wysocki's essay breaks traditional linear structure and allows the reader to interact with the text and be reflective. The text is transparent, meaning it is clear and familiar to readers. It plays with the relationship between text and pictures (hybridity) in interesting ways. Whereas Boese's piece is not as transparent. Readers interact with the text differently, as they are offered a series of navigation choices that allow them "to construct very different readings of the text." Yet, both pieces establish audience stances by developing an ethos and encouraging interactivity.

Hock offers this analysis of each piece as a way to "provide a starting point for talking about the rhetorical and visual features of Web-based digital documents," which I believe is critical for students who are trying to understand visual rhetoric. She really breaks down each aspect clearly and provides a language for students and teachers to use to discuss digital rhetoric. In addition to understanding digital rhetoric, she advocates for educators to teach text production, saying, "To establish a balanced rhetorical approach, then, we must offer students experiences both in the analytic process of critique, which scrutinizes conventional expectations and power relations, and in the transformative process of design, which can change power relations by creating a new vision of knowledge. She details the use of a Shakespeare project to illustrate her point of bringing visual and verbal arguments together, and then offers wonderful suggestions for teachers. Overall, her points are compelling and make sense. There isn't a divide between the visual impact and the verbal impact writing has, and by providing terms and analyzing others' work, she shows how digital rhetoric is complex and rich on both fronts.