How to create a visual rhetorical figure?

Abstract

It's common to distinguish between two types of rhetoric: the rhetoric of argumentation and the rhetoric of figures. Although figures are one of the most important instruments of argumentation, we will deal with them here within a semiotic framework. To begin with, we will remain at a general level, applying to verbal language as well as to images, and ask ourselves which semiotic tools we need to describe the mechanisms of a figure. There are three of them: the pragmatic concept of cooperation, the semantic concept of isotopy, and the very general concept of articulation (articulation being the property of a semiotic unit to subdivide into smaller units). As far as the mechanism of the figure is concerned, it is a four-stage process that explains the cognitive and innovative effects of the figure. We will then ask whether the image has the necessary properties to produce a figure.  This will be demonstrated using a specific image. We will then explore the world of visual figures, raising the epistemological question of the validity of transposing terminologies developed for verbal language to images.