A Review of Defining Visual Rhetorics

eds. Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers
London: Erlbaum, 2004
ISBN 0-8058-4403-1   $36.00    pp. 342

Review by Misty Dawn Carmichael
Department of Rhetoric and Composition
Georgia State University

Table of Contents

A collection of fourteen articles discussing various methods of defining or redefining what does and doesn't constitute visual communications, Defining Visual Rhetorics takes both the semiotic-savvy and novice image-processor grad students on a thought-provoking journey. Although the content is dense, any reader capable of abstract and higher-level thinking will enjoy the innovative views that each of the contributors furnish. Editors Helmers and Hill pull academics' works that focus on the diverse aspects of visual rhetoric, including student-friendly topics such as fine art, gender-based advertising, political convention films and movies.

As explained in the preface, Helmers and Hill first "asked each contributor to…explain how his or her work fits under the heading of, and helps define, the term visual rhetoric," then compiled the responses to exhibit the wide range of those responses. The editors' purpose in Defining Visual Rhetorics is not to offer a stock definition for modern rhetoric, visual rhetoric and the likes, but rather to compose an expose of how diverse the definitions of such terms are in the eyes of modern scholars. Such chapters are sure to foster class discussion, as each successive contributor has defined visual rhetoric as applied to their specific area of expertise.

Not to say that this book is a scattered collection of mismatched definitions, but quite the contrary. A strong vein runs throughout the collections in regards to visual rhetoric's foundation as persuasion. Vision, revision, representation, media, memory, presence and absence are the themes Helmers and Hill spotlight in these articles as well. The thorough introduction defines a myriad of necessary terms that any visually-curious rhetorician should be well acquainted with, including concise, condensed overviews on intertextuality, Charles Saunders Peirce's semiotics research, Ferdinand de Saussure and Roland Barthes' study of signs and a general idea of visual rhetoric's current indiscipline status.

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