Page 101 - Žagar, Igor Ž. 2021. Four Critical Essays on Argumentation. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
P. 101
Perception, inference, and understanding
in visual argumentation (and beyond)1
In the previous chapter, I was concentrating on some theoretical concepts
VA was (in my view) lacking (and still is), but should be incorporated in
their conceptual framework in order to better explain how visuals real-
ly function, that is, how they catch the viewers’ attention, how the view-
ers break them down, and how they reconstruct and infer their meaning.
I’ll be returning to some of these concepts at the very end, when (tenta-
tively) introducing the ‘perceptual-cognitive filtering grid’ (a purely techni-
cal working name), a version of pragmatic-semantic interface, indispensa-
ble (but usually implicit) in every meaning construction and interpretation.
My conclusion in the previous chapter, after analyzing Groarke’s fa-
mous Detroit River fruit paper in detail, was that
If after checking and re-checking different photos, different texts,
and the strange fruit that was found in Detroit River, we final-
ly point (and probably gaze) at it, declaring: ‘This fruit is (not) a
bread fruit!’, we have produced a composite utterance, (enchron-
ically) embracing several (at least) seven layers of meaning, be-
longing to three types of signs (conventional signs: words/text;
non-conventional signs: photos, gesture, gaze; symbolic indexi-
cals: demonstrative pronoun ‘this’). (Žagar ibid.: 852)
1 First version of this chapter was published in Steve Oswald and Didier Maillat, eds.,
Argumentation and Inference, vol. II. Studies in Logic and Argumentation, vol. 77.
(London: College Publications, 2018), 439–469.
101
in visual argumentation (and beyond)1
In the previous chapter, I was concentrating on some theoretical concepts
VA was (in my view) lacking (and still is), but should be incorporated in
their conceptual framework in order to better explain how visuals real-
ly function, that is, how they catch the viewers’ attention, how the view-
ers break them down, and how they reconstruct and infer their meaning.
I’ll be returning to some of these concepts at the very end, when (tenta-
tively) introducing the ‘perceptual-cognitive filtering grid’ (a purely techni-
cal working name), a version of pragmatic-semantic interface, indispensa-
ble (but usually implicit) in every meaning construction and interpretation.
My conclusion in the previous chapter, after analyzing Groarke’s fa-
mous Detroit River fruit paper in detail, was that
If after checking and re-checking different photos, different texts,
and the strange fruit that was found in Detroit River, we final-
ly point (and probably gaze) at it, declaring: ‘This fruit is (not) a
bread fruit!’, we have produced a composite utterance, (enchron-
ically) embracing several (at least) seven layers of meaning, be-
longing to three types of signs (conventional signs: words/text;
non-conventional signs: photos, gesture, gaze; symbolic indexi-
cals: demonstrative pronoun ‘this’). (Žagar ibid.: 852)
1 First version of this chapter was published in Steve Oswald and Didier Maillat, eds.,
Argumentation and Inference, vol. II. Studies in Logic and Argumentation, vol. 77.
(London: College Publications, 2018), 439–469.
101
