Structures as Argument: The Visual Persuasiveness of Museums and Places of Worship
Editor: J. Donald Ragsdale
Date Of Publication: Dec 2007
Isbn13: 9781847183866
Isbn: 1-84718-386-7
Structures as Argument assesses museums, places of worship, monuments, and cemetery stones as means of visual persuasion. It argues that structures are equally capable of influencing viewers as speeches or advertisements are and that to miss this essential feature of them is to fail in understanding their cultural roles.

The book spotlights museums ranging from such cultural icons as the Louvre and the British Museum, to such museums of collective memory as the Anne Frank House, to museums of pure visual persuasion such as the Doge’s Palace in Venice. It features places of worship which range from Notre-Dame de Paris, to the Spanish missions of San Antonio, Texas, to the Protestant churches of America and includes a chapter on non-Western structures such as Chinese museums and Buddhist temples.

Structures as Argument makes a significant contribution to the theory of persuasion, visual communication, and art history. It utilizes a theory of visual signs developed by Paul Messaris out of the semiotic theory of C. S. Peirce. In so doing, it demonstrates that artifacts of war, cathedral iconography, positioning of art objects for effect, and the art of gravestone sculpture all may be thought of in terms of means of social influence.

J. Donald Ragsdale is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication Studies at Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas, USA. He holds the PhD from the University of Illinois and is a member of the Southern States Communication Association, the National Communication Association, and the International Communication Association.

"Structures as Argument: The Visual Persuasiveness of Museums and Places of Worship edited by J. Donald Ragsdale opens a novel way to view and interact with structures that most people have grown to take for granted. Museums and places of worships are reframed as much more than containers of people and artifacts. Rather, readers are asked to consider the designers of the containers and the arrangers of their interiors as very smart strategists with messages to put forward; and to consider ourselves as members of their audience.

Thus those structures may be to their audience a cultural icon, or a polemic or a reminder of collective memory or a partisan advocate or finally an exercise in “pure visual persuasion.” Ragsdale and his co-authors furnish detailed and fascinating commentary on the likes of otherwise familiar structures (taken in order): the Louvre, the museum at Dachau, the Ann Frank House, the Tate Modern, and the Sistine Chapel and many others.

With this skeleton in place the chapters in Structures as Argument flesh out the thesis contained in the title by extending and applying it to museums of natural history plus their iterations on their websites and to European gothic cathedrals, Spanish missions of the American southwest, the contemporary protestant church scene and to nonwestern manifestations of this same rhetorical impulse.

Throughout their whole treatment, Ragsdale and his co-authors employ the elaborated likelihood model of Petty and Cacioppo (1985) to demonstrate how structures take the peripheral route into our awareness, depending on “music, light, color, scent, and other such mood-inducing forms . . . [that are] not to be thought about critically but rather to be felt or experienced directly . . . .” In short, the book prepares one to see the museum or place of worship with new eyes and to be wary of their builders’ persuasive designs.”

—Richard L. Conville, Professor, Department of Speech Communication, The University of Southern Mississippi

"Ragsdale and his colleagues provide the first systematic approach to the varied ways our museums, cathedrals, churches, shrines, and other monuments create persuasive arguments. What distinguishes this approach is the careful integration of central communication concepts drawn from persuasion theory. Because of the cultural and temporal diversity of these varied examples, they also draw upon concepts from intercultural communication theory to connect the persuasive appeals to the widely varied audiences. The exciting examples range from prominent museums and great cathedrals to Asian shrines and cowboy churches in rural America. Such a widespread array provides convincing evidence of the strength of the central arguments in the book.

This book will appeal to a very wide audience ranging from tourists to experts who are interested in visual communication and persuasion, to art historians and museum curators. The writing style permits ready access by the layperson and will challenge them to recognize the serious historical and cultural implications of what they might casually observe. This book is an early entry in a comparatively new field of study and will expand the reader’s view, no matter how sophisticated, to embrace unexpected purposes associated with these visual structures. Nearly any reader can identify with one or more parts of this wonderful tour of these somewhat neglected dimensions of culture."

Dr. Brooks Hill, Professor/Chair, Department of Speech and Drama, Trinity University

Price Uk Gbp: 39.99
Price Us Usd: 59.99

Sample pdf (including Table of Contents)