From visual rhetoric to multimodal argumentation: exploring the rhetorical and argumentative relevance of multimodal figures on the covers ofThe Economist

Assimakis Tseronis

doi:10.1177/14703572211005498

Abstract

Visual rhetoric is more often than not identified with the search for patterns of visual form and content which convey meaning in ways that resemble the meaning construed by known rhetorical figures. Despite the numerous proposals for the classification of figures construed verbally or visually, there has been no systematic attempt to account for the different ways in which these may contribute to the argumentative structure of persuasive messages. In this article, the author studies comparatively the figures of metaphor, antithesis and allusion, cued visually or verbo–visually in the multimodal genre of front covers. He starts from the assumption that the front cover constitutes a multimodal argument in the sense that it invites the reader to buy the specific issue on the grounds of the featured story and the stance that the editors express over it. The goal is to identify the semiotic configurations that distinguish one figure from the other, and to establish conditions under which these figures can be shown to contribute meaning that serves the argument conveyed by the front cover.

Highlights

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions hDtOtpIs:1//0do.i1.o1rg7/710/1.1417770/134577023527121210100505449988 ways that resemble the meaning construed by known rhetorical figures
Various typologies of visual rhetorical figures have been proposed. The authors of these typologies, are not interested in the different ways in which rhetorical figures help to construct the persuasive message of the advertisement
That is why I study rhetorical figures in a concrete genre, that of the news magazine front cover, which I consider to constitute a multimodal argument in the sense that it invites the reader to buy the specific issue on the grounds of the featured story and the stance that it expresses over it (Tseronis, 2015, 2017)

Summary

Introduction

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions hDtOtpIs:1//0do.i1.o1rg7/710/1.1417770/134577023527121210100505449988 ways that resemble the meaning construed by known rhetorical figures. Of the three rhetorical effects that Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) distinguish, metaphor can be said to increase presence, in the sense that it proposes an understanding of one thing in terms of another, thereby highlighting certain aspects and backgrounding others from the source domain, which helps to put the target domain in a certain perspective.8 In addition, a metaphor becomes argumentatively relevant when the mappings between the source and the target domain contribute content for the argument that may be reconstructed from the front cover.

Results

Conclusion