City as Message: A Case Study of Visual Persuasion in Washington, D.C.

We report on a research study that is based, in part, on an edited volume of work to which we contributed (Ragsdale, 2007). In this work, we argued that artistic structures such as museums and places of worship are visually persuasive, that is, that they communicate a persuasive message in the way they are designed, built, and structured. In the present case, we have extended this analysis to include the places in which structures reside. Based on the work of Messaris (1997) dealing with how visual images can be persuasive, we apply the concepts of iconicity, indexicality, and syntactic indeterminacy to demonstrate influence messages communicated by and within the city of Washington, D.C. We discuss Messaris's concepts of visual persuasion, examine the history of Washington, D.C. as carefully planned and designed in part for persuasive purposes, and then apply the concepts to particular aspects of the city's design, layout, memorials, and other structures.