Page 70 - Žagar, Igor Ž. 2021. Four Critical Essays on Argumentation. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
P. 70
four critical essays on argumentation
Since knowing is seeing and seeing is knowing are deeply rooted and
widely used metaphors in (not just) Western culture, such a rhetorical anal-
ysis, borrowing its tools from multimodal analysis, anthropological lin-
guistics and (critical) discourse analysis, may importantly contribute to the
thriving methodological discussion on how knowledge is extracted from
the visuals, and how visuals generate knowledge.
Twenty years in a short overview
The way I say these twenty years of development of visual argumentation
could be expressed contrastively, almost like an antithesis. On the one
hand, the introduction to this double issue of A&A on VA, written by D.
Birdsell and L. Groarke twenty years ago, is (understandably) still pretty
cautious as to what visuals can do (all emphases are mine):
- ‘[...] the first step toward a theory of visual argument must be a
better appreciation of both the possibility [!] of visual meaning
and the limits of verbal meaning’ (Birdsell, Groarke 1996: 2);
- ‘[...] we often clarify the latter (i.e., spoken or written words) with
visual cues [...]’ (Ibid.);
- ‘Words can establish a context of meaning into which images can
enter with a high degree of specificity while achieving a meaning
different from the words alone’ (Ibid.: 6);
- ‘[...] diagrams can forward arguments’ (Ibid.);
- ‘The implicit verbal backdrop that allows us to derive arguments
from images is clearly different from the immediate context cre-
ated by the placement of a caption beside an image.’ (Ibid.)
If we sum up: visuals may have some argumentative or persuasive po-
tential (there is a possibility of visual meaning, visuals can forward argu-
ments, and arguments can be derived from visuals) but they are usually (al-
ways?) still coupled with the verbal, and can achieve these argumentative
effects only (?) in combination with the verbal. And the pièce de resistance
Birdsell and Groarke are offering to illustrate the claims above (i.e., the pos-
sibility of visual argumentation) is an anti-smoking poster, published by
the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1976 (I’ll be com-
menting on it later on). Here it is:
70
Since knowing is seeing and seeing is knowing are deeply rooted and
widely used metaphors in (not just) Western culture, such a rhetorical anal-
ysis, borrowing its tools from multimodal analysis, anthropological lin-
guistics and (critical) discourse analysis, may importantly contribute to the
thriving methodological discussion on how knowledge is extracted from
the visuals, and how visuals generate knowledge.
Twenty years in a short overview
The way I say these twenty years of development of visual argumentation
could be expressed contrastively, almost like an antithesis. On the one
hand, the introduction to this double issue of A&A on VA, written by D.
Birdsell and L. Groarke twenty years ago, is (understandably) still pretty
cautious as to what visuals can do (all emphases are mine):
- ‘[...] the first step toward a theory of visual argument must be a
better appreciation of both the possibility [!] of visual meaning
and the limits of verbal meaning’ (Birdsell, Groarke 1996: 2);
- ‘[...] we often clarify the latter (i.e., spoken or written words) with
visual cues [...]’ (Ibid.);
- ‘Words can establish a context of meaning into which images can
enter with a high degree of specificity while achieving a meaning
different from the words alone’ (Ibid.: 6);
- ‘[...] diagrams can forward arguments’ (Ibid.);
- ‘The implicit verbal backdrop that allows us to derive arguments
from images is clearly different from the immediate context cre-
ated by the placement of a caption beside an image.’ (Ibid.)
If we sum up: visuals may have some argumentative or persuasive po-
tential (there is a possibility of visual meaning, visuals can forward argu-
ments, and arguments can be derived from visuals) but they are usually (al-
ways?) still coupled with the verbal, and can achieve these argumentative
effects only (?) in combination with the verbal. And the pièce de resistance
Birdsell and Groarke are offering to illustrate the claims above (i.e., the pos-
sibility of visual argumentation) is an anti-smoking poster, published by
the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare in 1976 (I’ll be com-
menting on it later on). Here it is:
70
