“Rhetoric of the Image,” by Roland Barthes

Barthes, Roland. “Rhetoric of the Image.” Image, Music, Text.
New York: Hill and Wang. 1977

As the name implies, in this essay Barthes examines the rhetoric of the image through his analysis of a Panzani advertisement. He chooses medium of advertising “Because in advertising the signification of the image is undoubtedly intentional” (33). Barthes argues that there are three messages in the image. There is a linguistic image, which is the association of the image with the text that accompanies it, the language that anchors the image. In the case of the Pazani ad , the linguistic message is “Italianicity,” and it is both denotational and connotational. We see the word Panzani and recognize that it is Italian and the name of the brand, and because the company is selling products to make Italian food, we assume that an Italian brand name would be superior by its very nature of Italianness. There is also the message of the “pure image” which in the case of this ad depicting “two euphoric values: that of the freshness of the products and that of the essentially domestic preparation for which they are destined” (34).  This visual picture signifies that the product in the can will match the sense of goodness evoked by the image. There is the denotative message which reveals what the product is, and the connotative message triggers associative responses in the viewer. The fact that there are connotative meanings represented by images gives way to the rhetoric of the image. He concludes that “the world of total meaning is torn internally (structurally) between the system as culture and the syntagm as nature: the works of mass communications all combine, through diverse and diversely successful dialectics, the fascination of a nature, that of story, diegesis, syntagnm, and the intelligibility of a culture, withdrawn into a few discontinuous symbols which men ‘decline’ in the shelter of their living speech” (51).

It is important to understand the rhetoric of the image as consumers and producers on multiple levels. Here Barthes uses a simple example to theorize the complex making of meaning in a visual world. As we shift from a print to screen dominated culture, word to image, it is important to teach students how to critically analyze the rhetoric of images as well as use images rhetorically. I have my students analyze many different texts that appear in many different modes. Often I have them analyze advertisements, political cartoons, websites, and magazine pages. In doing this, I am teaching them the rhetoric of the image. Barthes’ work informs this practice.