Page 139 - Žagar, Igor Ž. 2021. Four Critical Essays on Argumentation. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
P. 139
summary
and arguments can be derived from visuals), but they are usually (always?)
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 possibili-
ty of visual argumentation) is an anti-smoking poster (Smoking Fish with
a caption ‘Don’t you get hooked!’), published by the U.S. Department of
Health, Education and Welfare in 1976.
The authors (Birdsell and Groarke) first admit that ‘visual images can,
of course, be vague and ambiguous. But this alone does not distinguish
them from words and sentences, which can also be vague and ambigu-
ous’. (Birdsell, Groarke 1996: 2) Than they qualify the poster as ‘an amal-
gam of the verbal and the visual’ (ibid.), which, again, sounds quite accept-
able. But then they conclude: ‘Here the argument that you should be wary
of cigarettes because they can hook you and endanger your health is for-
warded by means of visual images ...’ (Ibid.: 3) Which is obviously not the
case. Without the verbal part, the caption ‘don’t you get hooked!’, the post-
er could be understood (framed) as a joke, as a cartoon, where, for exam-
ple, smoking is presented as such a ubiquitous activity that even anglers
use cigarettes to catch fish. Only when we add the verbal part, ‘don’t you
get hooked!’—where ‘hooked’ activates a semantic frame of knowledge re-
lating to this specific concept (Fillmore 1977: 76–138), which includes ‘get
addicted’, and is, at the same time, coupled with a visual representation
of a hook with a cigarette on it—is the appropriate (intended) frame set:
the poster can now, and only now, be unequivocally understood as an an-
ti-smoking ad, belonging to an anti-smoking campaign.
This is the reason, I emphasize, why visual argumentation should con-
centrate more on different possible entry and exit points in data representa-
tion and interpretation of hypothetical visual arguments. As a kind of a
case study—exposing possible caveats as well as cul-de-sacs of visual argu-
mentation—I then concentrate on Leo Groarke’s proposal of reconstruct-
ing visual arguments as presented and conceptualized in his 2013 article
‘The Elements of Argument: Six Steps to a Thick Theory’, published in the
e-book What do we know about the world?: Rhetorical and Argumentative
perspectives. The object of Groarke’s analysis is a photo of a fruit found on
the Detroit River that he identified as a breadfruit. What I am objecting to
in this chapter is methodological approach Groarke is using in identifying
the fruit:
139
and arguments can be derived from visuals), but they are usually (always?)
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 possibili-
ty of visual argumentation) is an anti-smoking poster (Smoking Fish with
a caption ‘Don’t you get hooked!’), published by the U.S. Department of
Health, Education and Welfare in 1976.
The authors (Birdsell and Groarke) first admit that ‘visual images can,
of course, be vague and ambiguous. But this alone does not distinguish
them from words and sentences, which can also be vague and ambigu-
ous’. (Birdsell, Groarke 1996: 2) Than they qualify the poster as ‘an amal-
gam of the verbal and the visual’ (ibid.), which, again, sounds quite accept-
able. But then they conclude: ‘Here the argument that you should be wary
of cigarettes because they can hook you and endanger your health is for-
warded by means of visual images ...’ (Ibid.: 3) Which is obviously not the
case. Without the verbal part, the caption ‘don’t you get hooked!’, the post-
er could be understood (framed) as a joke, as a cartoon, where, for exam-
ple, smoking is presented as such a ubiquitous activity that even anglers
use cigarettes to catch fish. Only when we add the verbal part, ‘don’t you
get hooked!’—where ‘hooked’ activates a semantic frame of knowledge re-
lating to this specific concept (Fillmore 1977: 76–138), which includes ‘get
addicted’, and is, at the same time, coupled with a visual representation
of a hook with a cigarette on it—is the appropriate (intended) frame set:
the poster can now, and only now, be unequivocally understood as an an-
ti-smoking ad, belonging to an anti-smoking campaign.
This is the reason, I emphasize, why visual argumentation should con-
centrate more on different possible entry and exit points in data representa-
tion and interpretation of hypothetical visual arguments. As a kind of a
case study—exposing possible caveats as well as cul-de-sacs of visual argu-
mentation—I then concentrate on Leo Groarke’s proposal of reconstruct-
ing visual arguments as presented and conceptualized in his 2013 article
‘The Elements of Argument: Six Steps to a Thick Theory’, published in the
e-book What do we know about the world?: Rhetorical and Argumentative
perspectives. The object of Groarke’s analysis is a photo of a fruit found on
the Detroit River that he identified as a breadfruit. What I am objecting to
in this chapter is methodological approach Groarke is using in identifying
the fruit:
139
