Visual Analysis: A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

Imagery: “Broadly defined, imagery is any sensory detail or evocation in a work; more narrowly, the use of figurative language to evoke a feeling, to call to mind an idea, or to describe an object. Imagery may be described as auditory, tactile, visual, or olfactory depending on which sense it primarily appeals to—hearing, touch, vision, or smell. An image is a particular instance of imagery.”

3. In what ways do paragraphs 4-6 serve to illustrate the main idea of paragraph 3? (Glossary: Illustration)

Imagery can be defined as the use of words to create a vivid mental

We often rely on imagery, a literary device that uses vivid descriptions and appeals to the senses, in our storytelling to point out the important facts in our stories. It helps our audience picture the scene and understand the severity of the situation. In my opinion, a well-written scene can be incredibly meaningful and thought-provoking with the help of imagery, sometimes even more so than a photograph. In literature, this is no different. Authors will describe characters and events in great detail when they feel it is important to the story. They will use imagery to point out character traits, themes, symbols, and motifs. A good author paints you a picture so you can imagine the places, colors, expressions, textures, with all the fine details.

              When doing this experiment, I used my senses of touch and hearing to predict what the

Imagery is used by many writers and this is when the writer uses visually descriptive or figurative language.

Over the past few decades, enhancements in the visual fields have greatly improved, giving weight on the importance of visual material in text. Something that is more visually stimulating can usually make a text more convincing or credible. The term “seeing is believing” proves this fact. As humans, we tend to believe something if we can actually see it, which is why Jay David Bolter has referred to this phenomenon of the changed role of text and graphics as the “visual culture” in his book Writing Space. “Mere words no longer seemed adequate; they had to share their space with images.” (Bolter, 69).

Saint John of Damascus describes an image as the representation and portrayal of the external form of a person.He highlights that the image can not depict the object of the image’s inner abilities or essence.

The visual capacity to formulate distinctive images through words reveals the true nature of the individual through their experiences that of which will then be used to define their society.

This week, many topics have been discussed in class with the importance of understanding context and analyzing visual texts. On Monday, in a class discussion we read a letter from Jourdon Anderson and looking at five different cereal boxes. The letter was from an old servant, provoke the Colonel. The former “employee” Jourdon to come back and work. Instead of accepting the opportunity, Jourdan decline the offer. He didn’t want to come back to work, because he is worried for his children’s safety. Even though, he doesn’t have a good life. He rather be where he is at right now and not moving to where his former employee at. The way he talks about his life, his jobs, his family, and how he appreciated the offer is different many other letters. The reader can imagine Jourdan’s feeling, emotion when he wrote the letter, and by the words he used. The reader can imagine how his former employee will feel when he read the letter. Remember when the time I was beaten until you bowed down on my feet and pray to live? I find that this letter is very interesting.

a. What is the message conveyed by each of these images? Answer in three to four sentences.

As for my Visual Analysis Task, I have chosen to write about this image on the left. This piece was recently created by Shepard Fairey a street artist. This was made in response to the election of Donald Trump- known as the President of the United States. ‘We the People’ features portraits of Native Americans, African Americas, Muslims, and Latinas portrays in Fairey’s trademark style with slogans such as “Women are Perfect” and “Defend Dignity”.

The short story of “The Swimmer,” by Cheever begins with imagery to provide the backdrop and the setting for the protagonist, Ned Merrill. The descriptions provided by Cheever give us the idea of a suburb where many people engage in playful behavior, individuals are generally wealthy, and in many instances engage in some overindulgence with alcohol.

Fairclough (1995) clarifies that discourse is not only written and spoken language, but it also visual part that has meaning (p.54).

Barthes proceeds to portray three kinds of messages images convey: Firstly, The Linguistic Message, which is the text that requires nothing but reading and comprehending. Secondly, the denoted image, which is the denoted literal message, what is right in front of us. And lastly, The Rhetoric of The image, which is the symbolic and connoted message that requires inference and reading between the