Visual as Multi-Modal Argumentation in Law

Although the legal context is a formalized framework, in judicial proceedings there is also room for multi-modal argumentation. To the traditional logical mode, multi-modal argumentation theory has added three additional modes (the so-called “alternate” modes: visceral, kisceral, and emotional). They complement the logical mode in unclear legal cases, those with vague and ambiguous premises (both legal and factual). What is discussed here is visual argumentation as part of the visceral mode. Visual arguments can be appropriate in legal argumentation as evidence used to determine the lower premise. However, “thick” visuals invite alternate arguments to be applied in legal argumentation. This “invitation” is not exactly the same as with “thick” verbal texts because what is at issue are different semiotic resources.

Adding limits to argumentative reconstruction: the case of taste in argumentation

This paper questions the use of the argumentative reconstruction technique as a criterion for identifying arguments. To perform this, I stress a type of argument that appeals to taste. I proceed as follows: first, I relate such a technique to the ways in which pragma-dialectics and informal logic have defined argumentation. Second, I present some borderline cases to reconstruction technique such as argumentation through directives, expressives and commissives speech acts, narrative argumentation, and visual argumentation. Third, I add to these cases that of an argumentation that appeals to taste by analyzing a dialogue. Fourth, I conclude the article by offering reasons to study cases such as the one presented and by introducing some problems derived from the present study.

Arguing with Images as Extended Cognition

In this paper the role of images in argumentative settings is analyzed from a cognitive angle. In particular, the proposal of this paper is to see visual argumentation as a specific form of extended and distributed cognition. In order to develop this idea, some of Wittgenstein’s insights are used to put evidence produced by research on temporal-spatial reasoning processes into philosophical perspective. Some contemporary argumentative analyses of visual argumentation are also discussed using commercial and political examples. The paper finishes with the notion of collective minds in order to specify the general idea of arguing with images as extended cognition.

Position paper on argument and multimodality

This short position paper argues that new semiotically-anchored approaches to multimodality offer much for other disciplines now engaging with multimodality. In particular, the account of multimodality introduced is argued to position current discussions of the potential role of multimodality in argumentation studies more effectively, untangling several problematic distinctions drawn previously. Questions concerning the existence of visual argumentation, the necessity of propositionality, and the nature of argumentation are reconstructed from an inherently multimodal perspective.

Visual rhetorical argumentation

In semiotics and the study of pictorial communication, the conceptualization of visual rhetoric and argumentation has been dominated by two connected approaches: firstly, by providing an understanding of visual rhetoric through tropes and figures; and secondly, by interpreting pictures as texts that are read and decoded in the same way as words. Because these approaches provide an opportunity to understand pictures as a form of language, they contribute in explaining how pictures can be used to argue. At the same time, however, these approaches seem to under-communicate two central aspects of pictorial argumentation: its embedment in specific situations and the distinguishing phenomenological aesthetics of pictures. This paper argues that the study of visual argumentation must understand pictures both as languageandas a material aesthetic event. The possibility and actuality of visual argumentation is partly explained by understanding argumentation as a cognitive and situational phenomenon, and partly by introducing the notion of symbolic condensation. It is suggested that reconstruction of visual argumentation should be supported by reception analysis.

Visual Argumentation in Commercials: the Tulip Test1

Argumentation theory used to be concerned exclusively with verbal arguments, but in recent years visual argumentation has become a new field of study. After explaining why the notion of visual argument makes sense, we will explore how visual arguments can be reconstructed and compare this with the reconstruction of verbal arguments. We will argue that the reconstruction of visual argumentation follows broadly the same method as that of verbal argumentation. Finally we are going to show how the steps of reconstruction look like in practice by analyzing the visual arguments presented in a commercial for a Dove cosmetic product.