Ideograph (rhetoric) - Critical Use of Ideographs

Critical Use of Ideographs

At the end of his essay defining the ideograph, McGee says that

“A complete description of an ideology . . . will consist of (1) the isolation of a society’s ideographs, (2) the exposure and analysis of the diachronic structure of every ideography, and (3) characterization of synchronic relationships among all the ideographs in a particular context.”.

Such an exhaustive study of any ideology has yet to materialize, but many scholars have made use of the ideograph as a tool of understanding both specific rhetorical situations as well as a broader scope of ideological history. As a teacher, McGee himself made use of the ideograph as a tool for structuring the study of the rise of liberalism in British public address, focusing on ideographs such as “property,” “patriarchy,” “religion,” “liberty.” Other scholars have made a study of specific uses of ideographs such as “family values” and “equality.” Some critics have gone beyond the idea that an ideograph must be a verbal symbol and have expanded the notion to include photographs and objects represented in the media.