Page 298 - Lazar, Irena, Aleksander Panjek in Jonatan Vinkler. Ur. 2020. Mikro in makro. Pristopi in prispevki k humanističnim vedam ob dvajsetletnici UP Fakultete za humanistične študije, 2. knjiga. Koper: Založba Univerze na Primorskem.
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“visual arguments” for granted, never really doubted their position abo-
ut visuals having argumentative potential or even force, and never asked any
serious methodological, let alone epistemological questions about VA. All
the papers mentioned above are basically concerned with showing - using
different visuals from different sources - that visuals can convey arguments;
the question, what in the visual under examination can serve as a premi-
se/argument, and what as a conclusion/claim, or how we extract premises/
arguments and conclusions/claims from a visual are rarely addressed with
any systematic methodological rigour. It is only in his 2015 paper (i.e. almost
twenty years after the “discovery” of visual argumentation!), “The Study of
Visual and Multimodal Argumentation”, serving as an introduction to the
thematic issue of the journal Argumentation on visual argumentation, that
Kjeldsen announces an attempt “to take visual argumentation a step further
in order to examine what visual and multimodal argumentation is and how
it may work” (Kjeldsen 2015, 116). One of the rare exceptions in this line of
reasoning is David Godden’s paper “On the Norms of Visual Argument: A
Case for Normative Non-revisionism”, where he discusses the possible ne-
cessity of setting up different normative frameworks for verbal and visual ar-
guments (Godden 2017). But then the overall conclusion of his paper, namely
that every argument containing a visual should count as visual argument, is
rather controversial and a step back in the discussion, while from an episte-
mological and methodological point of view, it should be scrutinized in its
very essence. Which is not the aim of this paper.
On the other hand, there was some criticism of visual argumentati-
on from more “traditional” scholars in the field of argumentation (Johnson
2003; 2010; Patterson 2010) that were never seriously debated by the propo-
nents of VA, and their objections (mostly that different norms and different
criteria should indeed be established in order to evaluate visual arguments
as arguments) were never systematically discussed, let alone rebutted.
In this paper, I want to concentrate on two “milestones” in the deve-
lopment of VA: 1) in the first part of the paper, I am analysing the very first
example of visual argument (“smoking fish”), showing that doubts about
the possibility of visual argumentation have solid empirical, not only epis-
temological and methodological basis, 2) in the second part of the paper I
am showing that claims about visual argumentation are becoming more
and more bold and radical with time from the “possibility of visual mea-
ning” in 1996 (the “smoking fish” example), some proponents of visual ar-
gumentation (Groarke in particular) have come a long way to baldly cla-
674
ut visuals having argumentative potential or even force, and never asked any
serious methodological, let alone epistemological questions about VA. All
the papers mentioned above are basically concerned with showing - using
different visuals from different sources - that visuals can convey arguments;
the question, what in the visual under examination can serve as a premi-
se/argument, and what as a conclusion/claim, or how we extract premises/
arguments and conclusions/claims from a visual are rarely addressed with
any systematic methodological rigour. It is only in his 2015 paper (i.e. almost
twenty years after the “discovery” of visual argumentation!), “The Study of
Visual and Multimodal Argumentation”, serving as an introduction to the
thematic issue of the journal Argumentation on visual argumentation, that
Kjeldsen announces an attempt “to take visual argumentation a step further
in order to examine what visual and multimodal argumentation is and how
it may work” (Kjeldsen 2015, 116). One of the rare exceptions in this line of
reasoning is David Godden’s paper “On the Norms of Visual Argument: A
Case for Normative Non-revisionism”, where he discusses the possible ne-
cessity of setting up different normative frameworks for verbal and visual ar-
guments (Godden 2017). But then the overall conclusion of his paper, namely
that every argument containing a visual should count as visual argument, is
rather controversial and a step back in the discussion, while from an episte-
mological and methodological point of view, it should be scrutinized in its
very essence. Which is not the aim of this paper.
On the other hand, there was some criticism of visual argumentati-
on from more “traditional” scholars in the field of argumentation (Johnson
2003; 2010; Patterson 2010) that were never seriously debated by the propo-
nents of VA, and their objections (mostly that different norms and different
criteria should indeed be established in order to evaluate visual arguments
as arguments) were never systematically discussed, let alone rebutted.
In this paper, I want to concentrate on two “milestones” in the deve-
lopment of VA: 1) in the first part of the paper, I am analysing the very first
example of visual argument (“smoking fish”), showing that doubts about
the possibility of visual argumentation have solid empirical, not only epis-
temological and methodological basis, 2) in the second part of the paper I
am showing that claims about visual argumentation are becoming more
and more bold and radical with time from the “possibility of visual mea-
ning” in 1996 (the “smoking fish” example), some proponents of visual ar-
gumentation (Groarke in particular) have come a long way to baldly cla-
674
