Page 75 - Žagar, Igor Ž. 2021. Four Critical Essays on Argumentation. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
P. 75
is there anything like visual argumentation?
Goffman’s frames
Frames I will be concentrating on in this paper are not semantic frames as
developed and defined by Charles Fillmore in 1977 (though even seman-
tic frames (may) have a role in potentially argumentative interpretation of
visuals as I will try to point out at least fragmentary), but frames that help
us organize our everyday experience, frames as developed by sociologist
Erving Goffman in his influential book Frame Analysis: An Essay on the
Organization of Experience (1974).
What are Goffman’s frames? In his own words:
When the individual in our Western society recognizes a par-
ticular event, he tends, whatever else he does, to imply in this re-
sponse (and in effect employ) one or more frameworks or sche-
mata of interpretation of a kind that can be called primary. I say
primary because application of such a framework or perspective
is seen by those who apply it as not depending on or harking back
to some prior or ‘original’ interpretation; indeed a primary frame-
work is one that is seen as rendering what would otherwise be a
meaningless aspect of the scene into something that is meaningful.
(Goffman 1974: 21)
Goffman distinguishes between natural and social frameworks.
Natural frameworks ‘identify occurrences seen as undirected, unoriented,
unanimated, unguided, purely physical’. (Ibid.: 22) Social frameworks, on
the other hand,
provide background understanding for events that incorporate
the will, aim, and controlling effort of an intelligence. [...] Motive
and intent are involved, and their imputation helps select which of
the various social frameworks of understandings is to be applied.
(Ibid.: 24)
There are different frames one can apply to a single event/entity, as in
our two reconstructed examples with a square ball and the Notre-Dame
Gargoyles, but ‘we tend to perceive events in terms of primary frameworks,
and the type of framework we employ provides a way of describing the event
to which it is applied’. (Ibid.: 24)
For a contextualized illustration, let us go back to the smoking fish ad-
vertisement (Figure 1). The authors (Birdsell and Groarke) first admit that
‘visual images can, of course, be vague and ambiguous. But this alone does
75
Goffman’s frames
Frames I will be concentrating on in this paper are not semantic frames as
developed and defined by Charles Fillmore in 1977 (though even seman-
tic frames (may) have a role in potentially argumentative interpretation of
visuals as I will try to point out at least fragmentary), but frames that help
us organize our everyday experience, frames as developed by sociologist
Erving Goffman in his influential book Frame Analysis: An Essay on the
Organization of Experience (1974).
What are Goffman’s frames? In his own words:
When the individual in our Western society recognizes a par-
ticular event, he tends, whatever else he does, to imply in this re-
sponse (and in effect employ) one or more frameworks or sche-
mata of interpretation of a kind that can be called primary. I say
primary because application of such a framework or perspective
is seen by those who apply it as not depending on or harking back
to some prior or ‘original’ interpretation; indeed a primary frame-
work is one that is seen as rendering what would otherwise be a
meaningless aspect of the scene into something that is meaningful.
(Goffman 1974: 21)
Goffman distinguishes between natural and social frameworks.
Natural frameworks ‘identify occurrences seen as undirected, unoriented,
unanimated, unguided, purely physical’. (Ibid.: 22) Social frameworks, on
the other hand,
provide background understanding for events that incorporate
the will, aim, and controlling effort of an intelligence. [...] Motive
and intent are involved, and their imputation helps select which of
the various social frameworks of understandings is to be applied.
(Ibid.: 24)
There are different frames one can apply to a single event/entity, as in
our two reconstructed examples with a square ball and the Notre-Dame
Gargoyles, but ‘we tend to perceive events in terms of primary frameworks,
and the type of framework we employ provides a way of describing the event
to which it is applied’. (Ibid.: 24)
For a contextualized illustration, let us go back to the smoking fish ad-
vertisement (Figure 1). The authors (Birdsell and Groarke) first admit that
‘visual images can, of course, be vague and ambiguous. But this alone does
75
