Determining the Rhetorical Nature of Visuals in Advertising

In the last years there has been a considerable amount of research into visual rhetoric in advertising, with a special focus on visual metaphor. Taxonomies of visual rhetoric (e.g. Phillips & McQuarrie, 2004) deal with the structural, the conceptual and the pragmatic aspects of visual rhetoric. The majority rely on structural and conceptual categories in deciding on the rhetorical nature of ads. However, visual rhetoric also operates at the level of perception (Maes & Shilperoord, 2008). The aim of this paper is to show that the rhetorical nature of visuals in advertising is based on a combination of formal and conceptual or perceptual features.