Page 69 - Žagar, Igor Ž. 2021. Four Critical Essays on Argumentation. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
P. 69
Is there anything like visual argumentation?
A short exercise in methodical doubt1
In 2014 journal Argumentation and Advocacy was celebrating
the groundbreaking work on visual argument that appeared in
the journal’s 1996 (double) issue on visual argument. Since that
time, visual argument has become a central topic in argumenta-
tion theory and been featured in presented papers and published
articles that explore case studies and investigate the possibility
of a theory of visual argumentation (published on Argthry, 28th
August 2014).
As an interested bystander who was not a partisan of visual argumen-
tation (VA) nor an active participant in more or less heated debates around
VA, I would like to start with a very short overview of these passed twen-
ty years. Then—extensively commenting on Leo Groarke’s paper ‘Six Steps
to a Thick Theory’—I will concentrate on some basic concepts AV is, in my
view, lacking, but should be incorporated in their conceptual framework in
order to better explain the following rhetorical problems: how visuals func-
tion, that is, how they get or catch the viewers, how the viewers break down
the presented visuals, and how they reconstruct their meaning.
1 First version of this chapter (titled ‘Against visual argumentation: multimodality as
composite meaning and composite utterances’) was published in Dima Mohammed
and Marcin Lewinski, eds., Argumentation and reasoned action, vol. I: Proceedings
of the 1st European conference on argumentation. Studies in Logic, vol. 62. (London:
College Publications, 2016), 829–852.
69
A short exercise in methodical doubt1
In 2014 journal Argumentation and Advocacy was celebrating
the groundbreaking work on visual argument that appeared in
the journal’s 1996 (double) issue on visual argument. Since that
time, visual argument has become a central topic in argumenta-
tion theory and been featured in presented papers and published
articles that explore case studies and investigate the possibility
of a theory of visual argumentation (published on Argthry, 28th
August 2014).
As an interested bystander who was not a partisan of visual argumen-
tation (VA) nor an active participant in more or less heated debates around
VA, I would like to start with a very short overview of these passed twen-
ty years. Then—extensively commenting on Leo Groarke’s paper ‘Six Steps
to a Thick Theory’—I will concentrate on some basic concepts AV is, in my
view, lacking, but should be incorporated in their conceptual framework in
order to better explain the following rhetorical problems: how visuals func-
tion, that is, how they get or catch the viewers, how the viewers break down
the presented visuals, and how they reconstruct their meaning.
1 First version of this chapter (titled ‘Against visual argumentation: multimodality as
composite meaning and composite utterances’) was published in Dima Mohammed
and Marcin Lewinski, eds., Argumentation and reasoned action, vol. I: Proceedings
of the 1st European conference on argumentation. Studies in Logic, vol. 62. (London:
College Publications, 2016), 829–852.
69
