Abstract:
The focus of the study was on the comprehension of visual rhetoric in printed
health learning visuals by literate and illiterate adults. The broad aim of the study
was to establish whether visual rhetorical codes, which usually perform a strong
phatic function, constitute a significant readability barrier in an illiterate adult
target group. The literature investigation of the study covered (1) a semiotic
perspective of the distinction between visual and verbal texts, (2) visual rhetorical
articulation for closed visual texts and (3) the readability of development visuals
with the emphasis on health education.
The design of the empirical component of the study involved the
production of three health education posters with a Tuberculosis theme which
were encoded with varying degrees of visual rhetoric taking existing guidelines
for the design of development visuals into account. In order to measure the
semantic (or literal) and pragmatic (or figurative) comprehension of the visual
rhetoric, 300 voluntary, confidential, structured interviews were conducted with
clinic patients attending Primary Health Care clinics in the greater Bloemfontein
area following the refinement of the test visuals and questionnaires during a pilot
phase. The mainly Sesotho speaking and pre-dominantly female study
population consisted of 150 literate adult patients (>21 years of age, 12 years of
formal schoo.ling or higher) and 150 illiterate adult patients (>21 years of age, 6
years of formal schooling or lower and the demonstrated inability to read and
understand the full text of an acronym).
The working hypotheses of the study, which read that (1) on the semantic level, the comprehension of visual rhetorical codes in a closed visual text does
not differ between literate and illiterate adults, and that (2) on the pragmatic level,
the comprehension of visual rhetorical codes in a closed visual text differs
between literate and illiterate adults, were both accepted following chi-square
analysis which tested for independence of the literate and the- illiterate study
population groups.
Flowing from the result obtained, design guidelines for the utilisation of
visual rhetorical codes in a development communication context, as well
possibilities for further research, were formulated.
