The conception of new media that Wysocki offers is interesting because it shows the result of many reflections upon digital texts, web spaces etc. that we cannot ignore after all. I tried creating the visual argument. The main part of this assignment is the interaction among the participants. I wonder how difficult it is to comprehend someone’s visual argument.
I guess building the system of argumentation and being persuasive on this new visual level is the most difficult side of it. We actually use visual aids a lot, but it appears to me that, for example, I tend to use them as the auxiliary aids. I mean if I use PowerPoint I may combine it with printed linear argument of “old” kind (the actual text that I say) and use the screen only for illustrations and marking the turning points of the presentation.
It seems like a real visual argument is supposed to speak for itself, without necessary parallel explanation of an author (that is usually of a linear kind?).
New media are overwhelming. “Combinations of the alphabet, photographs, video, sound, color, and animations” (19), like in Internet, provide so much information, that I often just perceive it, without analysis or looking for some sense or principle. It is so easy to lose the path. This is another difficulty I see about visual arguments. One has to work a lot to create real arguments and not mere associations of many images and pieces of texts.
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2 comments:
I never looked at visual arguements as one that could pose such difficulty as you've stated. I assumed that since we live in such a media packed society, that using visuals might be easier for freshman when contemplating arguements. Though it does take much more work to construct an acutal arguement/thesis literally and not visually, I think teaching students the importance of analysis, specifically regarding visuals may actually result in an improvement in their actual writing of an arguement
I think both of you make valid points. I agree, on one hand, that thinking of visual arguments that we see around us every day might help to demystify the idea of rhetoric for our students. At the same time, I've seen that it is a challenge sometimes for students to take that same idea of rhetoric and separate it from the purely visual, to express their thoughts, to tell what they see, explain how it is affecting them. Sometimes I think we overemphasize "show, don't tell" which can be a problem for us when we teach rhetoric. Students must learn how to "tell" in effective ways, by balancing the telling with showing, but not by abandoning telling altogether.
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