Visual Argument

A visual argument can be more persuasive if done right. Some people take pictures much more seriously than words. Take the 'cruelty to animals' paragraphs we looked at yesterday. Some people might just say- 'Oh, well, that's bad, but I really like chicken and don't care'. If you showed them pictures which showed them a chicken suffering, they might feel more sympathetic towards both the cause and the chicken. Graphic pictures have a tendency to shock people into believing something.

Of course, there are a lot of variables to take into account when creating a visual argument. The book goes into great and tortuous detail about fonts and positioning and things like that. Visual arguments use little process of thought (they don't state explicitly their reasons and grounds in great detail) but rather imply what they mean. It's a little more imprecise than written argument because people might extract different things from the same argument. An example is the tomato-killing people I talked about last time. A pro-tomato enthusiast might put up a picture with a tomato bleeding juice with a knife in it. Some people would go- "OMG, the poor tomato!". Some people would get hungry and eat a tomato. Some people would think it's just weird.

But generally speaking, people who make visual arguments are able to make arguments that make sense to people.