Defining emerging TERMINOLOGY; visual literacy, visual narratives, visual story telling,visual rhetoric and visual allegory

 While I construct and then deconstruct my case studies my focus is on the question; How are the indigenous social-cultural influences reflected through design? I feel that in exploring this question I shall be unearthing answer to other questions that I outlined in the ‘mapping post’.

As I review visual communication literature and practices, the terms that I come across continually are visual literacy, visual narratives, visual story telling, visual rhetoric and visual allegory.

 

Articulating my case studies, I find myself depending more and more on these terms to define the phenomenon I discover, and to further investigate my claim i.e. identification of a context specific a visual grammar (that the audience associates with and understands) based on the context the visual appears in.

For example in my case studies, the point of focus in Pakistani truck art is its iconographic rhetoric; The visual icons illustrating the historical as well  as contemporary influences in Pakistani socio-cultural context through strong iconography. Icons based on indigenous subjectivity reflecting indigenous worldviews. To contend Pakistani truck-art as a popular art form, we can deconstruct it as a comprehensive knowledge archive about the prevailing local beliefs and attitudes. For example, the strong spiritual influence in truck art reflects the role spirituality plays in the common man’s life in Pakistan, at the same time influential political figures denote the power structures in this context. Favorite actors and actresses painted on the back of the trucks reflect the colorful nature and choices in the Pakistani visual context. Similarly the visual treatment of Lollywood cinema billboards as well as political advertising billboards reveal a strong message about beliefs and attitudes in Pakistani social and political context. These are a blend of exaggerated visual depiction of fantasy and local mindsets. Their purpose may be publicity design but when visually deconstructed the elements revealed are self-explanatory of the political structures, power structures and socio- cultural structures in the context they are created and viewed in.


Here the question that surfaces is; what are the terms I rely on to explain, explore and deconstruct the communication implication of these popular mass cultural productions; visual literacy, visual narrative, visual story telling, visual rhetoric or visual allegory? Looking at these terms and wanting to employ them within the context of this research I realize a strong need to define them generally and specifically as I refer to them in my  graphic communication design research.