Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres

313 Pages·2017·58.673 MB·English

by  Assimakis Tseronis, Charles Forceville

Multimodal
A
r
g
u
m Argumentation
e
n
t
a and Rhetoric
t
i
o
n
in Media Genres
i
n

C
o
n
t edited by
e
x
t Assimakis Tseronis
14
and Charles Forceville
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres
Argumentation in Context (AIC)
issn 1877-6884
This book series highlights the variety of argumentative practices that have become
established in modern society by focusing on the study of context-dependent
characteristics of argumentative discourse that vary according to the demands of the
more or less institutionalized communicative activity type in which the discourse
takes place. Examples of such activity types are parliamentary debates and political
interviews, medical consultations and health brochures, legal annotations and judicial
sentences, editorials and advertorials in newspapers, and scholarly reviews and essays.
For an overview of all books published in this series, please see
http://benjamins.com/catalog/aic
Editors
Frans H. van Eemeren Bart Garssen
ILIAS & Leiden University ILIAS & University of Amsterdam
& University of Amsterdam
Editorial Board
Mark Aakhus Eddo Rigotti
Rutgers University University of Lugano
Marianne Doury Sara Rubinelli
CNRS Paris ILIAS, Swiss Paraplegic Research &
Eveline Feteris University of Lucerne
ILIAS & University of Amsterdam Takeshi Suzuki
G. Thomas Goodnight Meiji University
University of Southern California Giovanni Tuzet
Cornelia Ilie Bocconi University
Malmö University, Sweden David Zarefsky
Sally Jackson Northwestern University
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Gábor Zemplén
Manfred Kienpointner Budapest University of Technology
and Economic
University of Innsbrueck
Volume 14
Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres
Edited by Assimakis Tseronis and Charles Forceville
Multimodal Argumentation
and Rhetoric in Media Genres
Edited by
Assimakis Tseronis
Charles Forceville
University of Amsterdam
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
8
the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
doi 10.1075/aic.14
Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress.
isbn 978 90 272 1131 6 (Hb)
isbn 978 90 272 6469 5 (e-book)
© 2017 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
other means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com
Table of contents
Preface vii
introduction
Argumentation and rhetoric in visual and multimodal communication 1
Assimakis Tseronis and Charles Forceville
chapter 1
Rhetoric, argumentation, and persuasion in a multimodal perspective 25
Georges Roque
chapter 2
The rhetorical and argumentative potentials of press photography 51
Jens E. Kjeldsen
chapter 3
Editorial cartoons and ART: Arguing with Pinocchio 81
Leo Groarke
chapter 4
Arguing with illustrations: A visual archaeological debate about
the proper place of Australopithecus africanus 111
Ian J. Dove
chapter 5
Perspective by incongruity: Visual argumentative meaning
in editorial cartoons 137
Paul van den Hoven and Joost Schilperoord
chapter 6
The argumentative relevance of visual and multimodal antithesis
in Frederick Wiseman’s documentaries 165
Assimakis Tseronis and Charles Forceville
vi Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres
chapter 7
Seeing the untold: Multimodal argumentation in movie trailers 189
Janina Wildfeuer and Chiara Pollaroli
chapter 8
Employing film form and style in the argumentative analysis
of political advertising 217
Magnus Hoem Iversen
chapter 9
Embodied argumentation in public debates: The role of gestures
in the segmentation of argumentative moves 239
Jérôme Jacquin
chapter 10
The “seeds” of charisma: Multimodal rhetoric of Mussolini’s discourse 263
Isabella Poggi
Name index 291
Subject index 295
Preface
In 1995, G. Thomas Goodnight, then editor of the American Debate Association’s
journal Argumentation and Advocacy, commissioned David Birdsell and Leo
Groarke to edit a special two-volume issue on visual argument (1996, Vol. 33, Nos.
1&2). Birdsell and Groarke faced skepticism in the speech communication and
philosophy communities that there could be such a thing as visual arguments. They
accepted the burden of proof and took on the tasks of finding convincing examples
and of identifying the distinctive properties of visual arguments. Gradually the case
was made and the burden of proof was successfully shifted from the proponents
to the skeptics. How different was the situation ten years later when Birdsell and
Groarke edited a follow-up special issue of Argumentation and Advocacy (2007,
Vol. 43, Nos. 3&4) and could write about developing a theory of visual argument.
Now a second decade has passed, and the present volume constitutes yet an-
other benchmark in the growth and development of these ideas. There is still plenty
of work to be done in spelling out how visual argument occurs in different contexts
and some of it is ably represented in this collection. But there also have been two
new developments. One is the appreciation of the fact that visual argumentation is
not just a species of argumentation but also a species of communication. Located in
this broader setting, the rich treasury of semiotic theories becomes available to shed
light on visual argumentation. A connection has been made between theorists of
visual argument and communication scholars who have for years been developing
theories of multimodal communication. The other development is that, at the same
time, an appreciation of the nature and role of rhetoric has been increasingly re-
stored to argumentation theory – due to various factors, ranging from reappraisals
of the ancient Greek sophists to the persistent advocacy of contemporary scholars
of rhetoric. Just as argumentation theorists in general have been modifying their
theories to accommodate the rhetorical dimension of argument – witness, for ex-
ample, the expansion of the pragma-dialectical approach to accommodate strategic
maneuvering – so, too, those focusing attention on visual argument are addressing
the nature of the rhetorical dimension in multimodal argumentation. The chapters
collected in this volume both reflect and foster these two developments.
Accordingly, the chapters in this book represent permutations and combina-
tions of the following: visual communication, visual argumentation, visual rhetoric,
viii Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres
rhetoric, multimodal rhetoric, multimodal communication, and multimodal argu-
mentation. Are we witnessing, with the publication of Multimodal Argumentation and
Rhetoric in Media Genres, the emergence of a new international and multi-disciplinary
field of inquiry? One cannot help asking the question, given the convergence of the
variety of disciplines, theoretical perspectives and research centres represented in
this volume.
The authors come from a wide range of scholarly backgrounds. These include:
argumentation theory [Pragma-Dialectics] (Tseronis), media studies and multi-
modal communication (Forceville), art history and visual argument (Roque), rhet-
oric and visual communication (Kjeldsen), philosophy [informal logic] (Groarke),
philosophy [mathematical logic] (Dove), language and communication (Van den
Hoven), cognition and visual communication (Schilperoord), multimodal linguis-
tics and media studies (Wildfeuer), communication studies and multimodality
(Pollaroli), political communication and journalism (Iversen), argumentation the-
ory and interactional linguistics (Jacquin), and psychology of communication and
multimodal communication (Poggi). The 13 contributors are located in 11 univer-
sities in eight countries. Each brings her and his perspective to bear on multimodal
communication, and in particular rhetorical and argumentative communication.
Almost all of the chapters focus on thematic or case studies, and these are
wide-ranging in subject matter – from how press photographs argue rhetorically to
Mussolini’s conveyance of charisma; from how editorial cartoons convey meaning
and arguments to how illustrations settled an archaeological debate over early hu-
man ancestors; from the argumentation in movie trailers to the influence of form
and style in political advertising films; from the role of gestures in embodied argu-
mentation to the role of antithesis in Wiseman’s documentary films. The variety of
topics is matched by a variety in the theoretical perspectives the authors bring to
bear on them. This mélange of topics and approaches has the virtue of inviting the
reader to step outside the confines of her or his silo of theoretical concentration,
and be exposed to a number of new theoretical perspectives that can only enrich
understanding of multimodal argumentation and rhetoric.
Assimakis Tseronis and Charles Forceville are to be congratulated for assem-
bling an all-star cast of a good many of the leading scholars working on these topics
today. The work collected here represents their latest thinking on their topics, for
either their chapters were written expressly for this book, or else they are revisions
responding to reviewers’ comments of papers presented at recent conferences. As
well, the editors’ introduction is a truly encyclopedic guide to recent literature that
nurtures contemporary theoretical and analytical approaches to argumentation and
rhetoric in visual and multimodal communication. Their précis in their introduc-
tory chapter of each of the other ten chapters in the book is in each case a helpful
orientation for the reader.
Preface ix
As might be expected, given this variety of approaches, definitional profusion
invites terminological confusion. Tseronis and Forceville try to steer clear of the
“definitional snake pit.” Their practical solution is to count as semiotic modes written
language, spoken language, static images, moving images, music, non-verbal sound,
gestures, gaze and posture. In communication combining any of these modes, when
a party seeks to convince another about her or his claim there is an instance of mul-
timodal argumentation, which is, thus, “a rational and social activity in which two
or more modes play a role in the procedure of advancing a standpoint and testing
its acceptability.” Such activity can be studied descriptively or normatively, focusing
on the product or on the process, and employing insights from logic, rhetoric or
dialectic. These deft stipulations will stand the reader in good stead navigating the
twists and turns of this rich collection of leading-edge research.
J. Anthony Blair
Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric
University of Windsor