Hunting has played an important role in the survival of humanity since the beginning. The huntresses are also key figures in the hunting society.
The number of huntresses increased exponentially by 495% between 1998 and 2017, from 423 to 2521 in 19 years (Hungarian National Hunting Chamber, 2017). This exponential growth also shows in the gender ratio: in 1998, the proportion of men among the total number of registered hunters was 99.2%, and today their proportion has dropped to 96.1%. As a result, there is an increase of representation of huntresses in various media platforms, such as hunting magazines, online sites and forums and social networking sites. In other words, the visual representation of huntresses should not be ignored, as it is a key player in the hunting society in Hungary. And thanks to their media representation they can help shape the attitudes towards hunting, and help introduce new people to the scene.
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My presentation deals with the visual communication, representation and appearance of Hungarian huntresses in media. Images have always played an important role in human history. They help express ourselves.
When humans create something visual, they participate in the process of visual rhetoric. This process involves the conscious decision to communicate as well. They make choices about the strategies to employ in areas such as color, form, media, and size (Foss, 2005). So it is not surprising that visuality plays an important role nowadays too.
Like verbal rhetoric, visual rhetoric depends on strategies of identification (Hope, 2008), so the main focus of this research is how huntresses represent themselves, what tools and platforms they use for this.
And since hunting has a long tradition in our country, it is natural for all ages to be represented in hunting community. Thus, it is natural for these different age groups to represent themselves differently and use other platforms in the online space. In my presentation, ageing will appear through media representation of different huntress age groups.
In my research, I carry out a content analysis on several online platforms, analyzing how various huntresses represent themselves on these sites. I will code the differing representations to find the most common tropes and ways different people choose to represent themselves as huntresses. During the research, I will focus on observing which platforms are used by different generations, and how the various generations choose different tools to represent themselves as huntresses.
Keywords: huntresses, visual rhetoric, age-based visual representation
References:
Hope, D. S. 2008. Gendered Environments: Gender and the Natural World in the Rhetoric of Advertising. In Hill, C. A. & Helmers, M. (Eds.) Defining Visual Rhetorics (155–177) Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers.
Foss, S. K. 2005. Theory of Visual Rhetoric. In Smith, K. & Moriarty, S. &
Barbatsis, G. & Kenney, K. (Eds.) Handbook of Visual Communication. Theory, methods, and media (141–152). New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
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Gabriella NÉMETH
Corvinus University of Budapest
gabriella.nemeth@uni-corvinus.hu
The other side of the coin: Meanings behind visual codes. The rhetorical–semiotic analysis of the representations of ages
The rhetorical–semiotic analysis is a complex analysis of meaning behind images, behind the codes of representations. This presentation intends to be the other side of the coin in so far as it strives to be an answer to the presentation of Eszter Deli (The one side of the coin: The visual codes of images. A rhetorical – semiotic approach to identify certain codes of representation). By uniting the visual rhetorical theory of PPP with the mental construction theory of the Kenney’s representation theory of visual communication, Deli has definitely provided a complex theoretical frame that thoroughly analyzes structure, code and the rhetorical aim. However, it does not answer the question how meaning is constructed and whether there is a meaning behind the images in a semantic, a syntactic or a pragmatic sense. This presentation strives to build upon the complex theoretical approach of PPP–mental construction theories offered by the former presentation, however, it takes a step forward by introducing the in-depth analysis of meaning as well as the lack of semantic meaning of representations. In the present study, the method of rhetorical–semiotic analysis is provided which unites visual rhetorical tropes with the three types of signs (icon, index, symbol) offered by Peirce and with causal, resemblance and convention theories of the representation theory of Mitchell. Based on the work of Aczél, Bencze, Lakoff and Johnson, Phillips and McQuarrie, I deliver a method to differentiate syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects of rhetorical–semiotic artefacts using codes and I also emphasise that the structure of representation does not necessarily involve semantic meaning. By a complex rhetorical–semiotic analysis of media images, I outline the structural and meaning dimensions of the ways old generation is being portrayed in the media. The two presentations (Deli and Németh) will have a common conclusion. Product, process and procedure combined with the mental construction theory is a complex theory of the system of codes (Deli). The rhetorical–semiotic analysis is a complex analysis of meaning behind the representations (Németh).
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Keywords: meaning, icon, index, symbol, semantic, syntactic, pragmatic, rhetorical tropes
References:
Aczél, Petra. 2015. Retorika és kommunikációkutatás. Magyar Nyelv, 111(3). (311–318.)
Bencze, Lóránt. 2005. A szóképek és az alakzatok szemiotikai megközelítése. In: A. Jászó, Anna & Aczél, Petra (Eds.) A szóképek és a szónoki beszéd (51–65) Budapest: Trezor Kiadó,
Kenney, Keith. 2011: Representation Theory. In K. Smith, S. Moriarty, G.
Barbatsis, & K. Kenney (Eds.) Handbook of Visual Communication.
Theories, Methods, and Media. (99–117) London: Lawrence Erlbaum
Lakoff, George, & Johnson, Mark. 1980: Metaphors We Live By. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Mitchell, W. J. T. 1994. Picture theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Phillips, Barbara J., & McQuarrie, Edward. F. 2004. Beyond Visual Metaphor: A New
Typology of Visual Rhetoric in Advertising. Marketing Theory, 4 (1–2), 111–134.
Hartshorne, Charles, & Weiss, Paul (Eds.) 1994. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University.
Laura NISTOR
Sapientia – Hungarian University of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
nistorlaura@uni.sapientia.ro