Composing and Reading Images

Kevin (Kyoo Sang) Jo

Professor Ellen Quandahl

RWS 602 Weekly Paper 6

March 5, 2014

 For March 5, I ask you to do the project that Harris lays out on page 76.  That is, when you’ve completed the readings, choose the one that most appeals to you and do the work of defining its project and its approach

Defining the project

Historically, scholarship in rhetoric and technical communication viewed images as subordinate illustration distinct from verbal texts. Such a perspective confined images to the instrumental, neutral, or view of technologies. In interpreting images, this functional view focused on perception, sensation, seeing, universality, and physical immediacy. On the contrary, Salinas argues that technical rhetoricians should see images as configurations that have cultural significance. Images are no longer subordinate to verbal texts, but integral to all forms of writing in our cultural realm. Therefore, he emphasizes that technical rhetorician need to know how to read images as configurations possessing cultural signification and how to design them. To reinforce his argument, he demonstrates visual material related to Nike’s 1997-1998 website.

 As you define the approach, you may find helpful the questions on page 79-80 (under “Acknowledging Influences”), though I don’t ask you to answer them in any lockstep way.  You may also find it useful to note what Harris calls the “openly reflexive bits of metatext.”  (But there’s no need for long quotations.)

Acknowledging influences

Salinas criticizes Andrew Feenberg’s view on images because it regards them as objective, true analogues of reality. He also says that such a functional view of images seem to be the prevailing view. In response to the functional view, he introduces a strategic design theory given by Lupton and Miller. Salinas thinks that Lupton and Miller’s view contributed to research agenda which articulates the constructed view of images because they identified that the functional view of images came from the modernist design theory. Their strategic design theory advocates oriented around interpretation similar to configuration. It stresses the critical reading of images and situated cultural consequences that images impart. Also, their focus on interpretation over perception leads to a design of images as a strategic enterprise or visual rhetoric. Agreeing with their view, Salinas argues that technical communication scholar should teach students to be savvy configurers of images. 

To understand configuring images, Salinas introduces another scholar, Sosnoski. According to Sosnoski’s definition, configuration is an analogical and graphical intuition and is also a mode of argumentation articulated as a form of graphic understanding that relies principally on visualized resemblances. In other words, configuring images is a critical act of reading based on analogical thinking and a finding of cultural consequences of images. Through Sosonoski’s opinion, Salinas becomes to see images as designed cultural artifacts that have cultural consequences. Taking one step further, he argues that when the images created, they should involve a critical reading and a skilled know-how of design. And being critically savvy is the art of the technical rhetorician. 

To explain the characteristics of being critically savvy, Salinas cited Janice Lauer and Janet Atwill’s techne. Lauer and Atwill refigured rhetoric as art by articulating it as a techne. Aristotle’s techne is concerned with strategically contriving and considering how something may come into being. In this view, rhetoric articulated as a techne means a strategic art of producing useful artifacts derived from a contextualized social savvy. What Salinas wants to say is that being savvy involves the ability to consider an artifact’s possible cultural consequences as part of the production process. 

Johnson drew emphasizing the importance of users and user knowledge from Lauer and Atwill’s refigured definition of art. He said that making artifacts involves a crafty or savvy ability that is user-centered and ethically responsible. So, he called artists who conduct such artifact-making work technical rhetoricians. In addition to Johnson’s opinion, Salinas argues that technical rhetoricians also need to see themselves as designers as well as producers and users of images because producers and users often engage in configuring images. Moreover, Patricia Sullivan and James Porter extend the understanding of techne by emphasizing the role of phronesis in techne. In other words, exercising prudence is crucial because technical rhetoricians often use existing images designed by others, so they need to be careful about their work.

Just as the aforementioned, Salinas develops his argument based on previous research. He pays attention to configuring images in visual rhetoric not functional view on it. To configure images, being critically savvy is the required art for the technical rhetorician. Also, it includes not only considering images’ cultural consequences but also prudent attitude about work. 

Defining the approach of the writer

When the writer reads the artifact-image both face value and configuration of it. It means considering denotation and connotation of the image at the same time. Images may appear to function as denoted recordings of reality, and the denoted appearance can both naturalize some connotations and suppress other connotations. So, the writer tries to call into question the face value reading of any existing image. The question is what its artificial content is, how it is figured, what representations it connotes, and what ethos it projects.

Therefore, for us to be able to work in the mode of the writer, we have to be able to see images as media having cultural significance. When we creates images, we should think that our work is not just an illustrating images but rhetorically visual composition.

 Do include some discussion of “what you would need to be able to do in order to work in the mode or spirit of this particular writer.”  

I think that Harris’ comments on the difference between “applying” ideas and “taking an approach” are a goldmine (page 74).  Linger over them as you read.  

One way to figure out the difference between “applying” ideas and “taking an approach” is to watch the artifact by the audience’s perspective. If the artifact seems to be a distinctive independent piece on the whole from the point of view of the audience, it can be said to have taken an approach.