Learning About Purposes by Analyzing Visual

CompositionsAnne Frances Wysocki

& Dennis Lynch

October 20, 2010

About us…

Anne is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, where she teaches courses in digital and visual rhetorics and also directs the Rhetoric and Composition graduate program.

Dennis is an Associate Professor in the English Department at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, where he directs the Writing Program.

Overview

We will look at fairly straightforward advertisements to discern purpose and to tease out some of the issues involved in the ways we talk about purpose — and then we carry our ways of looking and analysis to a text with more written emphasis.

We do this because, in our experiences, students often don’t go beyond identifying the most simple purposes in what they read — and hence do not seek more complex purposes in what they write.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSEWe believe that our audience — people who own farms larger than 160 acres — believes or worries that trucks are not tough enough to do farm work well, and so we need to persuade them that trucks are well-enough built to do all that the farmers need.

STRATEGIES AUDIENCE PURPOSEidentifying helps

us identify

which helps

us identify

(that is, the ideas, beliefs, and concerns of the audience — relevant to the matter at hand —as understood by a text’s composers)

IN ANALYSIS, one(reading)

STATEMENT OF PURPOSEWe believe that our audience is concerned with being technologically ahead, with being on top of the technological curve — but also with having little time to do all the things the audience needs or wants to do. We are also concerned that they think American cars are not as technologically advanced as cars from other countries.

So with our ad we want to create an almost exclusive identity between this car and newest technology over anything else — and present this car as a labor-saving device, a solution to the audience’s time problems.

STRATEGIES PURPOSE

identifying helps us

identify

which help us identify

IN ANALYSIS, two(reading)

AUDIENCE

CONTEXT

STATEMENT OF PURPOSEWe believe that our audience is concerned with safety above all — they are perhaps (new) parents — but who also want to be seen as hip. The audience is also probably concerned with problems in the news in recent years about Toyota accelerator pedals sticking and causing sometimes deadly accidents.

So we do not want to put those accidents back into people’s minds but to address their concerns directly by focusing on our proven safety measures while keeping the cars seeming hip enough for young parents.

STATEMENT OF PURPOSEWe believe that our audience, composed of people who do not smoke, may be leaning toward approving legislation to ban smoking in public places.

We believe that if we appeal to their values of freedom and choice, and if we make a definitional distinction they might not have considered before, we can help them redefine themselves as (open-minded) nonsmokers rather than as (rabid) anti-smokers.

IN COMPOSING(writing)

STRATEGIES

PURPOSE

AUDIENCE CONTEXT

STRATEGIES PURPOSE

ANALYZINGAUDIENCE

CONTEXT

COMPOSING

STRATEGIES

PURPOSE

AUDIENCE CONTEXT

THE END

credits

‣ International Harvester ad from 1918 Gentleman’s Quarterly magazine: used under Creative Commons attribution license from dok1’s photos on Flickr

‣ Ford Edge ad from Fall 2010 GOOD magazine

‣ Toyota ad from October 28, 2010 RollingStone magazine

‣ “A Word to Nonsmokers” from Tobacco Institute, 1979