How to use rhetoric to get what you want by Camille A. Langsten
Rhetoric is the art of seeing the available means of persuasion and is today applied to any communication.
- Forensic (judicial) rhetoric establishes facts or judgements about the past, like a detective finding facts to describe an event.
- Epideictic (demonstrative) rhetoric makes a proclamation about the situation.
- Symbouleutikon (deliberative) which focuses on the future and is the rhetoric of politicians arguing about the future and the positive or negative effects that will result from change. For example, Dr. Luther King presenting an argument that "I dream of a day when children will be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character."
- Ethos is how you convince an audience of your credibility
- Logos is the use of logic or reason, employing analogies (this is that, or this like that), examples, citations of research and statistics. Can also be the structure and content itself. Use factual knowledge to support an argument. False information which is believed to be true can be used to manipulate, such as vaccines causing autism. (Also, not this concept of a belief returns from our discussion of culture. You can build a culture around a belief, even if it is not factual).
- Pathos appeals to emotion. Often the most effective mode in modern media and can be irrational and unpredictable, rallying for peace or war. Beauty products might relieve insecurity or cars make us feel powerful and rely on pathos to succeed.
Understanding rhetoric provides us the tools to develop persuasive communication while allowing us to recognise and understand how rhetoric is being used on us.
What Aristotle and Joshua Bell can teach us about persuasion by Conor Neill
Example of Joshua Bell playing in a sold out theatre versus playing violin to nobody in a subway station.
- Ethos is reputation, or what you're known for.
- Credibility asks do you look and act professional, or, at least suitable for the role. Eg. a lawyer might be expected to wear a suit and tie, a doctor or scientist to wear a lab coat, a tradesman to have overalls and a tool belt, an artist or creative to be covered in paint or look eccentric.
- Trustworthiness requires the listener to believe you care about them as much as yourself, that your motives are clear and understood.
- Authority is confidence and decisiveness with a clear, strong voice.
- Logos states the idea should make sense form the audience's point of view, different from the speaker's point of view, so should be made relevant to the audience if it will succeed. Good arguments should make logical sense to the audience.
- Pathos is emotional connection, often created through narrative structure. The right emotional environment must be created for the audience and be ready to receive the informaiton.
In Joshua Bell's situation, ethos is reduced as the concert hall confers trust in the audience that the talent on stage should be respected whereas we don't have the same understanding of trust within a subway. A concert hall also provides the emotional space, pathos, preparing the audience to develop a connection with Joshua Bell's work, while the hustle and bustle, daily lives and transitionary space of a subway isn't conducive to emotional connection with a static musician. We might hear the music, but we're not prepared to listen to it.
Also, not similarities here between hearing and looking and listening and seeing, as discussed in relation to visual literacy.
Looking or hearing (biological) is directing one's gaze in a specific direction.
Seeing or listening (cognitive/interpretive) is perceiving with one's eyes; be or become aware of something from observation; discern or deduce after reflection. The way we see is affected by our culture and society.
Seeing or listening (cognitive/interpretive) is perceiving with one's eyes; be or become aware of something from observation; discern or deduce after reflection. The way we see is affected by our culture and society.
Activity // Define
- Ethos
- Character
- Credibility
- Persuasion
- Information
Visual Language: Perspectives for Both Makers and Users by Van Den Broek, Jos et al.
Van Den Broek, Jos, Willem Koetsenruijter, Jaap De Jong, and Laetitia Smit. ‘Visual Rhetoric: Images That Persuade’. In Visual Language: Perspectives for Both Makers and Users, 88–120. The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 2012.
Classic rhetoric according to Cicero has the speaker (rhetor) employing five devices to successfully persuade an audience:
- Inventio – You should choose content, arguments, examples and anecdotes appropriate or your objective and your public. And be sure that what you choose matches the circumstances and the time (kairos is perfect timing).
- Dispositio – You should be smart in how you structure the content of your speech and your arguments.
- Elocutio – You should express the content with great feeling for style, with humor, or with unusual examples of language use, such as comparisons, repetitions and plays on words.
- Memoria – You should make sure you are familiar with the story by practising well – maybe with PowerPoint, Prezi or autocue – and check whether it reads well and flows smoothly.
- Actio – Finally, you should present the text. You can increase the impact of your speech by maintaining eye contact with your audience, by effective use of your voice, being convincing and employing appropriate gestures.
"[...] images of things that are not actually present made so visible in thoughts, that it appears as if we can see them with our eyes and have them close by us. Anyone who empathizes will in this way also achieves the most emotionally."A renewed interest in persuasion arose in the 1950s and 60s following World War II, with Hitler and Mussolini as subjects, in a bid to understand how they employed persuasion. This coincides with an increase in media, photography, radio and television—the rise of mass communication and mass media.
Who is the rhetor (speaker)?
In traditionally rhetoric, the rhetor was more clear—it was usually the person speaking. In visual communication the speaker is less clear. Using the example of news journalism, the speaker may range from the journalist or photographer, to the editor or photography editor, editor-in-chief, or the publisher. In advertising agencies, is the speaker the subject of a photograph, the designer, copy writer, photographer, illustrator, senior designer, creative director or the client and the values they represent?
"The relation between the viewer and the rhetor remains more abstract and impersonal than in a speech situation with a speaker who makes gestures and seeks eye contact."Ethos, pathos and logos in images
"A speaker makes use of ethos (to increase credibility) if he refers directly or indirectly to his own qualities; pathos relates to appealing to the emotions of the public, and logos to the arguments he uses to try to persuade his audience."
- Ethos is "the credibility of the rhetor, the person or institution who wants to persuade the viewer of a message by means of an image" which may be employed using signs within the advertisement, such as lab coats on scientists, or using brand ambassadors to align themselves with a particular value. Sports brands use elite athletes to demonstrate the performance and value of their products, for example, or when charities use celebrities as their ambassadors. Those may also be established through more subtle design elements, such as a professional looking website as opposed to one which looks outdated or tacky.
For example, see the Space Jam and Marvel websites below, and note the various design techniques and how they differ between the two.

- Pathos is an appeal to emotions such as sympathy, happiness, anxiety or joy, and which doesn't necessarily rely on substance or factual evidence. For example, an image of a juicy looking tomato may make the mouth water but is not evidence of its taste or juiciness (and may have been falsified in production) and an image of a leader holding a small child doesn't necessarily mean they care for that child at all. And, when these attempts at appealing to our emotions are unsuccessful they are easier to identify, such as footage of PM Scott Morrison's recent handshake attempt during the recent Australian fires of 2019/2020 as opposed to Russian President Putin high-fiving the Saudi Prince at G20.
- Logos is about establishing rational arguments. This is more easily achieved using photographic evidence and illustrations incorporating statistics which are seen to present factual information. A photo "can show that something exists (probability) and that it is attractive (desirability). Before and after photographs are a good example of this, where unflattering lighting and angles may be used to highlight the undesirable qualities of an person while flattering light and angles may be used to highlight the now desirable qualities of the same person after a particular treatment such as hair or weight. Deducing the argument and effectiveness of images is not simple as "the scope for interpretation is greater than with language, but very often text from the environment provides sufficient points of contact for an argumentative interpretation."
For example, the illustration below is a 3D rendered design of the new restaurant Chao Chow on Gouger Street. The photographs below are photographs I have produced of the same venue. While the photographs look gorgeous, it took hours to set up the restaurant to ensure that it matched the vision of the original designs. In reality, the restaurant feels incredibly busy and cluttered when there are people sitting in the space. And compare it to this the image below from AdelaideNow of restaurant owner in the busy space.
Kairos: the right moment relates to the way "the speaker modifies his message to suit perfectly the present circumstances and the present time" and "the sense that this ist he moment; not in a couple of months or year, but now." Especially important to photography, "kairos is selecting that one perfect photo from all the instants he has shot." This can also be referred to in photography as the decisive moment as stated by Henri Cartier-Bresson, famous French street photographer. Kairos in advertising might be able taking advantage of a particular feeling, sentiment or movement in popular culture or recent event. The idea of "reading the room" or "missing the mark" in the case of campaigns which should have been withheld. For example, after the recent volcano eruption on White Island, New Zealand where 19 people died, my Facebook feed promoted an advertisement to climb volcanoes in Vanuatu. As a country mourning the death of citizens in a volcano eruption, this is incredibly inappropriate. This reflects negatively on Flight Centre Australia and on Facebook.
And, sometimes you can get the timing right but completely botch the argument and tone, eroding credibility of the argument. For example, this iconic image was captured at the Baton Rouge Protest as a reaction to the shooting of young black man Alton Sterling. And the advertisement by Pepsi was released in response to the image shortly after, though the tone missed the marked.
Devices and schemes supporting visual argument
Schemes or regularities deriving from verbal language such as rhyme and alliteration.
- rhyme "involves repetition of syllables at the end of words" such as "a nice rhyme works sublime".
- alliteration is the repetition of a character or sound at the beginning of a word such as "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers".
- contrast of form such as "it says what it does. It does what it says."
- contrast of meaning such as "Cool stuff—hot prices".
Examples of schemes application in visual argument
- rhyme relationship between objects in an image may reflect other objects within the image.
- verbo-pictorial scheme where text is replaced by an image, such as round lips becoming and replacing the "o" shape within a word. Or someone holding up an "L" shape for "Loser".
- repetitio features repeating elements within the image or text to ensure the message is remembered. There's an old rule in radio that you need to repeat the name at least three times to ensure it's remembered. In images, it might be the brand logo repeated on the product, then as a logotype in the bottom right of the image, and perhaps even in body text.
- contrast is the juxtaposition of two elements which creates new meaning, or helps to reinforce an idea by comparison. For example, the Apple vs PC campaigns.
Tropes or irregularities are content-related irregularities to cause the reader to "stumble over text" by present a puzzle which the viewer must solve. This can help develop connection between the audience and message because they've had to engage with it to understand.
Framing means to provide with a frame, like a reference point, context or space within which to consider the text, or, to selectively crop, remove or exclude elements of the subject which are not desirable for persuasion.
- metaphor clarifies an object or idea as something with similar characteristics, such as "the man is a lion". Not be confused with "the man was like a lion" which is a comparison. For example, a light bulb as a new idea or an ostrich with its head in the sand as being closed minded. What if, however, it was a man with his head in the sand?
- synecdoche incorporates pars pro toto where one of the parts stands for the whole or totum pro parte where the whole stands for constituent part. For example, the symbol of a man on the toilet stands for all men or a photograph of a mountain of shoes demonstrating all the atrocities of Auschqitz in Germany during World War II (though in this example you would also need to recognise the context of the shoes, the location, and the atrocities committed in order to understand the image).
- comparison either combines or compares two things in order to transfer the qualities of one to another.
- personification where animals or things are presented with the characteristics of people. This may be as subtle as an object seen to be sweating, breathing or sighing, or as complex as giving an object a face with eyes and a mouth. Some objects, such as cars, are commonly designed to incorporate a "face" to make them more appealing—two headlights as eyes and the grill as a mouth. This motorcycle, a Yamaha R6, appears as an owl or a bug.
- hyperbole is an extreme exaggeration, sometimes as a metaphor or cliché. Cartoonists employ this technique with caricatures, elaborating on the speakers visual features or mannerisms. In films, set dressers employ clichés to quickly express the character of a person (messy teenagers room with band posters stuck to the wall). In images, this may be making one element much larger than others. The opposite of hyperbole is litotes which refers to understating a point.
- oxymoron where two images simultaneously contradict each other but the contradictions still exist, such as a fire hydrant in the snow. Linguistic examples might be "organised chaos" or "pretty ugly".
- pastiche incorporates a well known image, work, author, photograph, drawing, painting which has been parodied to create new meaning while referring to the old. For example, people crossing the road at the same location on Abbey Road as The Beatles.
Need a guide?
Framing means to provide with a frame, like a reference point, context or space within which to consider the text, or, to selectively crop, remove or exclude elements of the subject which are not desirable for persuasion.
- selection means portraying some elements and omitting others. When analysing a text ask "what is portrayed, why this, why not something else, and what has been excluded?"
- salience makes what has been portrayed more noticeable, striking, and important and may include the way the camera moves or behaves, colour use, perspective selection, and other elements. Consider the way Michael Bay (over)uses circle shots to lend weight to certain moments.
- spin (sometimes 'propaganda')is giving a twist to the perception of an object, person, or idea, to place it in a more desirable position, including "enhancing or diminishing the significance or something or someone." This is incredibly popular with politicians looking to turn a negative event into a positive event. Someone who is incredibly good at this, and typically working in public relations, may be referred to as a Spin Doctor.
Commercial Examples
(Aunty Donna, never heard of them, but apparently they're pretty funny.)