Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Words and Images in Argumentation

  • Published:
Argumentation Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In this essay, I will argue that images can play a substantial role in argumentation: exploiting information from the context, they can contribute directly and substantially to the communication of the propositions that play the roles of premises and conclusion. Furthermore, they can achieve this directly, i.e. without the need of verbalization. I will ground this claim by presenting and analyzing some arguments where images are essential to the argumentation process.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. When talking of images in this context, I mean external man-made images, like pictures, symbols, icons, diagrams, maps, etc. My account is not intended to cover mental or natural images. I will also restrict my examples to static images, even though I suspect the lessons I will try to draw would also apply to moving images.

  2. This in no way commits us to taking propositions to be structured entities. As Bealer (1993, 1998) has insisted, talk of combining constituents into a proposition need not be taken too literally, as if a proposition was literally assembled out of its parts in the hearer’s mind. Instead, it is better to think of the hearer as inferring what proposition is being communicated out of the information provided by words, context and images. A more detailed account of this process can be found in the aforementioned (Stainton 2006) and (Sperber and Wilson 1986, 1995).

  3. A more detailed account of my own take on Stainton’s views on this point is developed in Barceló (forthcoming).

  4. On the similarities and differences between verbal directions and maps, see Tversky and Lee (1999).

  5. However, we do speak of propositions being true on them. For example, in Eugene and Federika’s argument, we may say that it is true that on the map the street is closed (Malinas 1991).

  6. For an exception, see Prakken (2011).

References

  • Alcolea-Banegas, Jesús. 2009. Visual arguments in film. Argumentation 23: 259–275.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Areni, Charles S. 2002. The proposition-probability model of argument structure and message acceptance. Journal of Consumer Research 29: 168–187.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Barceló, Axel, (forthcoming), Subsentential Logical Form. Crítica.

  • Barwise, Jon. 1993. Heterogenous Reasoning. In Working Papers on Diagrams and Logic, ed. Jon Barwise and Gerard Allwein, 1–13. Bloomington: Indiana University Logic Group Preprint No. IULG-93-24.

  • Bealer, George. 1993. A solution to Frege’s puzzle. Philosophical Perspectives 7: 17–60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bealer, George. 1998. Propositions. Mind 107: 1–32.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Birdsell, David S., and Leo Groarke. 1996. Toward a theory of visual argument. Argumentation and Advocacy 33: 1–10.

    Google Scholar 

  • Birdsell, David S., and Leo Groarke. 2008. Outlines of a theory of visual argument. Argumentation and Advocacy 43: 103–113.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blair, John Anthony. 1995. Premise Adequacy. In Analysis and Evaluation (Proceedings of the Third ISSA Conference on Argumentation, University of Amsterdam, June 21–24, 1994), Vol. II, ed. F.H. van Eemeren, R. Grootendorst, J.A. Blair and C.A. Willard, 190–202. Amsterdam: SicSat.

  • Blair, John Anthony. 1996. The possibility and actuality of visual arguments. Argumentation and Advocacy 33: 23–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blair, John Anthony. 2003. The rhetoric of visual arguments. In Defining visual rhetorics, ed. C.A. Hill and M. Helmers, 137–151. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carney, Russell N., and Joel R. Levin. 2002. Pictorial illustrations still improve students’ learning from text. Educational Psychology Review 14: 5–26.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Copi, Irving M. 1961. Introduction to logic. New York: Mac Millan.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crane, Tim. 2009. Is perception a propositional attitude? Philosophical Quarterly 59: 452–469.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gaskin, Richard. 2008. The unity of the proposition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert, Michael. 1994. Multi-modal argumentation. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 24: 159–177.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilbert, Michael. 1997. Coalescent argument. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goodwin, William Mark. 2009. Visual representations in science. Philosophy of Science 76: 372–390.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Groarke, Leo. 1996. Logic, art and argument. Informal Logic 18: 105–129.

    Google Scholar 

  • Groarke, Leo. 2002. Towards a pragma-dialectics of visual argument. In Advances in pragma-dialectics, ed. F.H. van Eemeren, 137–151. Amsterdam: SicSat, and Newport News: Vale Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Groarke, Leo. 2008. Informal Logic. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/logic-informal/>.

  • Groarke, Leo. 2009. Five theses on Toulmin and visual argument. In Pondering on problems of argumentation: Twenty essays on theoretical issues, ed. Frans H. van Eemeren and Bart Garssen, 229–239. Amsterdam: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • Groarke, Leo, and C. Tindale. 2004, 2008, Good Reasoning Matters! (3rd edn, 4th edn, Toronto: Oxford University Press.

  • Holliday, William G. 1975. The effects of verbal and adjunct pictorial-verbal information in science instruction. Journal of Research in Science Teaching 12: 77–83.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Ralph H. 2000. Manifest rationality. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnson, Ralph H. 2003. Why ‘visual arguments’ aren’t arguments. In Il@25. A Conference Celebrating the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the First International Symposium on Informal Logic. URL = <http://web2.uwindsor.ca/courses/philosophy/johnsoa/visargtext.htm>.

  • Johnson, Ralph H., and J. Anthony Blair. 2000. Informal logic: An overview. Informal Logic 20: 93–107.

    Google Scholar 

  • King, Jeffrey C. 1996. Structured propositions and sentence structure. Journal of Philosophical Logic 25: 495–521.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lunsford, Andrea A., and John J. Ruszkiewicz. 2005. Everything’s an argument, 3rd ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.

    Google Scholar 

  • Malinas, Gary. 1991. A semantics for pictures. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 21: 275–298.

    Google Scholar 

  • Perini, Laura. 2005. The truth in pictures. Philosophy of Science 72: 262–285.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Prakken, Henry. 2011. Argumentation without arguments. Argumentation 25: 171–184.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Richards, Thomas J. 1978. The language of reason. New York: Pergamon.

    Google Scholar 

  • Richards, Daniel Thomas. 2009. Visual argument reconsidered: “Objective” theory and a classical rhetorical approach. A Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of Clemson University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts Professional Communication.

  • Shelley, Cameron. 1996. Rhetorical and demonstrative modes of visual argument: Looking at images of human evolution. Argumentation and Advocacy 33: 53–68.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shelley, Cameron. 2001. Aspects of visual argument: A study of the March of progress. Informal Logic 21: 85–96.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson. 1986. Relevance: Communication and cognition. Oxford: Blackwell (revised edition, 1995).

  • Stainton, R.J. 2006. Words and thoughts: Subsentences, ellipsis and the philosophy of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Suppe, Frederick. 1977. The search for philosophic understanding of scientific theories. In The structure of scientific theories, ed. Frederick Suppe, 1–232. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tarnay, László. 2003. The conceptual basis of visual argumentation. In Proceedings of the fifth conference. ISSA, ed. F.H. van Eemeren, J.A. Blair, C.A. Willard, and A.F. Snoeck Henkemans, 1001–1005. Amsterdam: Sic Sat.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tindale, Christopher W. 1999. Acts of arguing: A rhetorical model of argument. Albany, New York: University of New York Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Toulmin, Stephen Edelston. 1958. The uses of argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tversky, Barbara, and Paul U. Lee. 1999. Pictorial and verbal tools for conveying routes. In Spatial information theory: Cognitive and computational foundations of geographic information science, ed. Christian Freksa and David M. Mark, 51–64. Berlin: Springer.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • van Eemeren, F.H., and R. Grootendorst. 2004. A systematic theory of argumentation: The pragma-dialectical approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walton, D.N. 1990. What is reasoning? What is an argument? Journal of Philosophy 87: 300–419.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

I am very thankful to the members of the Tecuemepe seminar (Carmen Curcó, Laura Duhau, Ángeles Eraña, Leonard Clapp, Eduardo García-Ramírez, Ekain Garmendia and Elías Okón) and Juan Pablo Aguílar for feedback on earlier versions of this paper. I also greatly appreciate the many comments from the reviewers of Argumentation. I also want to thank Leo Goarke and Sergio Martínez for their encouragement to develop my views on this topic, and the material support from the following research projects: “Representación y Cognición” (PAPIIT IN401611-3), “Lenguaje y Cognición” (CONACYT 083004) and “Intervención de organismos vivos: los límites del arte en el entrecruzamiento con la ciencia y la tecnología” (PAPIIT IN 403911).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Cto. Mario de la Cueva s/n, Cd. Universitaria, Coyoacán, 04500, DF, Mexico

    Axel Arturo Barceló Aspeitia

Authors
  1. Axel Arturo Barceló Aspeitia
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Axel Arturo Barceló Aspeitia.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Barceló Aspeitia, A.A. Words and Images in Argumentation. Argumentation 26, 355–368 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-011-9259-y

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-011-9259-y

Keywords

Search

Navigation