Page 95 - Žagar, Igor Ž. 2021. Four Critical Essays on Argumentation. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
P. 95
is there anything like visual argumentation?
And if we consult the verbal part of the encyclopaedia, connected to
this fruit, we find the following (once more, please, pay attention to empha-
ses in italics):
Macula pomifera, commonly called Osage orange, hedge apple,
horse apple, bois d’arc, bodark, or bodock is a small deciduous tree
or large shrub, typically growing to 8-15 meters (26.49 ft) tall. It is
dioecious, with male and female flowers on different plants. The
fruit, a multiple fruit, is roughly spherical, but bumpy, and 7.6-15
centimetres (3–6 in) in diameter. It is filled with sticky white la-
tex. In fall, its color turns a bright yellow-green.
[...]
Osage orange occurred historically in the Red River drainage of
Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas and in the Blackland Prairies,
Post Oak Savannas, and Chisos Mountains of Texas. It has been
widely naturalized in the United States and Ontario. (Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maclura_pomifera)
As you can see for yourself, the verbal description of Macula pomif-
era actually fits the Detroit River fruit much more accurately than the de-
scription of breadfruit. And since we learn that the Osage orange ‘has been
widely naturalized in the United States and Ontario’ it is much more prob-
able that it fell in the water someplace along the Ontario river than that it
found its way into the river from one of the Caribbean facilities in Ontario.
Thousands of words and a single picture
What can we learn from this? Above all that sayings like: ‘A picture tells a
thousands words’ should be indeed taken seriously. But, to be (absolutely)
sure which of these thousands words refer to that particular picture we have
in front of us in these particular circumstances, we have to cut down (on)
those words considerably. On the other hand, without any words at all, we
can hardly identify the exact meaning of the picture
In other words, there seem to be no pure visual arguments (as there
are, probably, very few purely verbal arguments; if any at all), and instead
of visual argumentation (or purely verbal argumentation, for that matter)
we should (always) talk about multimodal argumentation and multimod-
al meaning (combining, in our case, at least visual and verbal, but other se-
miotic modes are usually involved as well, such as gesture and gaze). But
95
And if we consult the verbal part of the encyclopaedia, connected to
this fruit, we find the following (once more, please, pay attention to empha-
ses in italics):
Macula pomifera, commonly called Osage orange, hedge apple,
horse apple, bois d’arc, bodark, or bodock is a small deciduous tree
or large shrub, typically growing to 8-15 meters (26.49 ft) tall. It is
dioecious, with male and female flowers on different plants. The
fruit, a multiple fruit, is roughly spherical, but bumpy, and 7.6-15
centimetres (3–6 in) in diameter. It is filled with sticky white la-
tex. In fall, its color turns a bright yellow-green.
[...]
Osage orange occurred historically in the Red River drainage of
Oklahoma, Texas and Arkansas and in the Blackland Prairies,
Post Oak Savannas, and Chisos Mountains of Texas. It has been
widely naturalized in the United States and Ontario. (Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maclura_pomifera)
As you can see for yourself, the verbal description of Macula pomif-
era actually fits the Detroit River fruit much more accurately than the de-
scription of breadfruit. And since we learn that the Osage orange ‘has been
widely naturalized in the United States and Ontario’ it is much more prob-
able that it fell in the water someplace along the Ontario river than that it
found its way into the river from one of the Caribbean facilities in Ontario.
Thousands of words and a single picture
What can we learn from this? Above all that sayings like: ‘A picture tells a
thousands words’ should be indeed taken seriously. But, to be (absolutely)
sure which of these thousands words refer to that particular picture we have
in front of us in these particular circumstances, we have to cut down (on)
those words considerably. On the other hand, without any words at all, we
can hardly identify the exact meaning of the picture
In other words, there seem to be no pure visual arguments (as there
are, probably, very few purely verbal arguments; if any at all), and instead
of visual argumentation (or purely verbal argumentation, for that matter)
we should (always) talk about multimodal argumentation and multimod-
al meaning (combining, in our case, at least visual and verbal, but other se-
miotic modes are usually involved as well, such as gesture and gaze). But
95
