Journal of Argumentation in Context - Volume 13, Issue 2, 2024

In this essay, we explore the ways in which argumentation theory can be applied to multimodal advertising. In our discussion we emphasize “auditory” advertisements: advertisements that depend on non-verbal sounds. We show how key tools developed by argumentation theorists (KC tables, argument diagrams, and argument schemes) can be used to analyze and assess advertisements of this sort. Doing so demonstrates one way in which standard methods of argument analysis and evaluation can be applied to one important multimodal genre.

This paper is about argumentative exchanges in which two or more parties disagree about the appropriateness of the use of images (e.g., press photographs, drawings, pictures, and other visual elements) in argumentative contexts. We label such argumentative exchanges as metavisual disputes. In the first part of the paper, we develop this notion by employing theories in the philosophy of language, specifically Plunkett’s notion of metalinguistic disputes (2015) and Mankowitz’s propositional account (2021). In the second part of the paper, we illustrate the phenomena of metavisual disputes by analyzing two tweets relating to the migrant situation at the Polish-Belarusian border in 2021–2022. We argue that the viewers’ perspective characterizes a metavisual dispute in which they evaluate the use of images in the tweets by raising particular criticism against it.

This article extends to the study of populist argumentation a framework for the analysis of inferences implicitly emerging from multimodal artifacts. The framework builds on a post-structuralist approach to populism and integrates multimodal critical discourse studies and argumentation studies, specifically the Argumentum Model of Topics. Particular emphasis is laid on the contribution of visual discourse to the process of inference-making in interrelation with verbal discourse. We illustrate the framework by examining the social media posts of three populist right-wing parties/party members from Sweden, Greece and Romania. Finally, we discuss future avenues for the analysis of populist communication practices online from the perspective we propose.

The present study devises and puts into practice an annotation scheme for interrogating the patterns of multimodal argumentation found in environmental protection print-advertisements collected between 2018 and 2022. 134 ads featuring the sub-topics climate change, deforestation, pollution, and preservation have been subjected to annotations for various features on four levels: genre/text, image, multimodal argument and multimodal coherence/rhetoric. By contrast with previous, predominantly case-based studies in argumentation, the approach presented here aims not to reconstruct single instances of multimodal argumentation but to identify recurrent patterns along with their typical features. The results show distinct regularities in the way arguments for environmental protection are constructed from large images and short text.

We argue that the evaluation of multimodal arguments needs to take into account the semiotic resources used to communicate them as well as the context in which they are produced and interpreted. Thus, in addition to the critical questions pertaining to the scheme that help assess the internal cogency of the argument and thereby its reasonableness, we propose asking questions regarding the cognitive and rhetorical dimensions of the argument in order to assess how effectively the semiotic design helps the addressee to process it and how effectively it is adjusted to the audience and context. To illustrate our proposal for a three-dimensional evaluation of multimodal argumentation, we analyze comparatively three environmental campaign posters that present in varying degrees of semiotic complexity the negative consequences of not taking action regarding the protection of the environment.