Notes to Assist In Analyzing Visual Texts
Click here for a discussion of analyzing visual texts. It includes “The Five C’s: An Approach to Visual Texts.”
Here is another set of notes about texts, taken from Reading The World: Ideas That Matter. Michael Austin, ed. (p. 644-647).
“The word “text” does not apply only to written works. An oral narrative is a text, and so is a piece of music, a painting, a photograph, or a film. Works of all these types address audiences, advance ideas, make arguments, and require thoughtful strategies of reading and interpretation.”
“[I]n most visual texts, the most important parts of the argument are made using visual elements, many of which cannot be translated into words without losing most of their rhetorical force.”
Austin identifies several key aspects for analysis:
Emotional appeals: “emotions… a picture can convey”
Symbolism: “cultural… and cross-cultural associations”
Visual Irony: incongruous and/or contradictory textual elements
Motifs: “patterns of images”
Composition: “line, perspective, color, use of space, etc.”
“All of these elements combine to form an overall impression. If the artist has arranged the elements well, the viewer will gain an overall sense of the text that can itself become a powerful persuasive element. Visual images can create impressions of, among other things, reverence, power, wonder, despair, peace, awe, and patriotism.”
What other impressions can visual texts create?
