Page 142 - Žagar, Igor Ž. 2021. Four Critical Essays on Argumentation. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
P. 142
four critical essays on argumentation
(1) The smoking fish (where all the text was removed from the
picture);
(2) The poster ‘UvA for Women’ (exactly as it was presented in
Groarke 1996: 112) and
(3) Jacques-Louis David’s painting La Mort de Marat (Marat’s Death).
Each visual was preceded with a necessary but short introduction—
necessary for historically or chronologically framing the visual (but not
explaining the context)—while following each visual there were two ques-
tions, constructed in as neutral way as possible, at the same time trying
to avoid a very actual possibility in this kind of surveys that respondents
wouldn’t understand what the goal (the intention) of these questions was.
The questionnaire was distributed/administered to three differ-
ent age groups, with different educational and professional background,
all European, with Slovenian citizenship: Group 1: STUDENTS, Group 2:
RESEARCHERS, Group 3: SENIORS.
There is no place in the summary to comment on all the answers the
three groups gave about the visuals (in the chapter they are discussed in
detail), but this small pilot research (which is to be continued and upgrad-
ed) convincingly showed that direct—linear, uniform and ‘objective’—ar-
gumentative impact of ‘pure’ visuals on different audiences is rather small
or none. In other words, different audiences (different by age, education, cul-
tural and social background ...) infer differently (or different ‘things) and via
these inferences come to different conclusions (if any at all).
That is why, to conclude, I tentatively propose a basic scheme, a model
(in the making), or a grid, of how (and why) interpretations of visuals (but
not just visuals, verbal arguments operate in the same way) may function,
what may trigger the inferences leading to specific interpretations (and
why), what these interpretations depend on (i.e., what are the necessary
and/or sufficient conditions for such interpretations to unfold), and what
may be their restrictions and limitations.
142
(1) The smoking fish (where all the text was removed from the
picture);
(2) The poster ‘UvA for Women’ (exactly as it was presented in
Groarke 1996: 112) and
(3) Jacques-Louis David’s painting La Mort de Marat (Marat’s Death).
Each visual was preceded with a necessary but short introduction—
necessary for historically or chronologically framing the visual (but not
explaining the context)—while following each visual there were two ques-
tions, constructed in as neutral way as possible, at the same time trying
to avoid a very actual possibility in this kind of surveys that respondents
wouldn’t understand what the goal (the intention) of these questions was.
The questionnaire was distributed/administered to three differ-
ent age groups, with different educational and professional background,
all European, with Slovenian citizenship: Group 1: STUDENTS, Group 2:
RESEARCHERS, Group 3: SENIORS.
There is no place in the summary to comment on all the answers the
three groups gave about the visuals (in the chapter they are discussed in
detail), but this small pilot research (which is to be continued and upgrad-
ed) convincingly showed that direct—linear, uniform and ‘objective’—ar-
gumentative impact of ‘pure’ visuals on different audiences is rather small
or none. In other words, different audiences (different by age, education, cul-
tural and social background ...) infer differently (or different ‘things) and via
these inferences come to different conclusions (if any at all).
That is why, to conclude, I tentatively propose a basic scheme, a model
(in the making), or a grid, of how (and why) interpretations of visuals (but
not just visuals, verbal arguments operate in the same way) may function,
what may trigger the inferences leading to specific interpretations (and
why), what these interpretations depend on (i.e., what are the necessary
and/or sufficient conditions for such interpretations to unfold), and what
may be their restrictions and limitations.
142
