Beyond Visual Metaphor: A New Typology of Visual Rhetoric in Advertising

The goal of rhetorical theory is always to organize the possibilities for persuasion within a domain and to relate each possible stratagem to specific desired outcomes. In this article we develop a visual rhetoric that differentiates the pictorial strategies available to advertisers and links them to consumer response. We propose a new typology that distinguishes nine types of visual rhetorical figures according to their degree of complexity and ambiguity. We then derive empirically testable predictions concerning how these different types of visual figures may influence such consumer responses as elaboration and belief change. The article concludes with a discussion of the importance of marrying textual analysis, as found in literary, semiotic and rhetorical disciplines, with the experimental methodology characteristic of social and cognitive psychology.