Holoda’s Weblog

     Not trying to be a particular theory nerd here, but in studying all the texts for the comp exam, everything seems to connect to Foucault, Derrida, Burke, etc., etc…. In the case of the Birdsell/Groarke article, Bakhtin keeps popping into my mind. The Birdsell/Groarke text argues for the notion that visual images can be more understandable than word print. I think this section of the piece connects well with Baktin’s “Marxism and the Philosophy of Language,” particularly in the claim that word print can be more limited, “vague and ambiguous,” than visual argumentation in the image. Bakhtin stresses that social context not only structures reality, but the individual’s consciousness. All signs (i.e. words) have a material embodiment (defined only through social interaction) that shapes the consciousness (there is no such thing as the “individual”; rather, one is shaped through language in a social context). Birdsell/Groarke show the hooked fish image to indicate an example of the visual argument as conveying a clear message to an audience: “the argument that you should be wary of cigarettes because they can hood you and endanger your health” (311). Bakhtin’s notion of “audience” also assumes that there is “no abstract addressee” because the “audience wouldn’t know him.” The speaker, (or in the Birdsell/Groarke article, the image) assumes the recipient is “up to date” with cultural conversation, morality, ethics, etc.