For my trackback compositions I'm leaning heavily towards discussing and tracking back symbols and meaning through the use of visuals. What I mean by that is, I want to trace back some ideas from different rhetors on what visuals can do or mean. Further, it is interesting to me how meaning from visuals get made in the mind of the person perceiving them. We use symbols and images every day when driving or on warning labels. Since there is an organization (International Standards Organization) that has standardized, to some extent, the images we use in these labels and they somewhat commute across different cultures, is there a common perception we are missing? For this assignment I want to include the use of sequential art as well to trace some more contemporary and less heady theory about visuals and the way they can clarify or disrupt meaning.
For this trackback I plan on using Richards, Baudrillard, McCloud, Arnheim and either Burke or Aristotle. I think I might use Aristotle to connect rhetoric to visual rhetoric and use it as a bridge to the application of visuals to persuasion. So far, Arnheim and Baudrillard have some of the most interesting and very forward arguments about visuals and their meanings/uses. Hopefully, this trackback will help set me forward on gathering ideas for my dissertation in the future.
Unclear why this didn't save before, but here are my thoughts again on your trackback composition. Nice thinking about tracing symbols, of course, and you'll definitely want to include discussion of semiotics and some of the recent things we've been studying. You may enjoy reading Gertrude Buck, too, who most people haven't come across today although she had a very large impact on early composition theory. And, perhaps as we discussed in class recently, what is the global impact of signs? Definitely Richards, Baudrillard, McCloud... Burke is important too... Nice to see that this may help you think about your dissertation. Ultimately, such a topic would mean you'd need to be very well-versed in linguistics.
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