Article published In: Multimodal Argumentation: Special issue of the Journal of Argumentation in Context 13:2 (2024)
Edited by Hartmut Stöckl and Assimakis Tseronis
[Journal of Argumentation in Context 13:2] 2024
► pp. 177–202
Auditory arguments, advertising, and argumentation theory
Hitting sour notes or ringing true?
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.
For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.
This article was made Open Access under a CC BY 4.0 license through payment of an APC by or on behalf of the authors.
Published online: 10 September 2024
https://doi.org/10.1075/jaic.00027.gro
https://doi.org/10.1075/jaic.00027.gro
Abstract
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.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Preliminaries: Arguments, modes of arguing, and argument evaluation
- 3.An advertising scheme: Verbal advertising arguments
- 4.Auditory advertisements
- 5.Advertising as entertainment
- 6.Conclusion
- Notes
References
References (46)
Aguinis, Herman, M. Melissa Simonsen, and Charles A. Pierce. 1998. “Effects of Nonverbal Behavior on Perceptions of Power Bases.” The Journal of Social Psychology 138 (4):455–469.
Berry, Diane. 1991. “Accuracy in Social Perception: Contributions on Facial and Vocal Information.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 621:298–307.
. 1992. “Vocal Types and Stereotypes: Joint Effects of Vocal Attractiveness and Vocal Maturity on Person Perception.” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 181:187–197.
Birdsell, David, and Leo Groarke (eds). 2007. “Special Double Issue on Visual Argument.” Argumentation and Advocacy: The Journal of the American Forensic Association 43 (3–4).
(eds). 1996. “Special Double Issue on Visual Argument.” Argumentation and Advocacy: The Journal of the American Forensic Association 33 (1–2).
Blair, J. Anthony (ed). 2021. Studies in Critical Thinking (2nd ed). Windsor: Windsor Studies in Argumentation.
Bloom, Kathleen, David Zajac, and Julie Titus. 1999. “The Influence of Nasality of Voice on Sex-stereotyped Perceptions.” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 23 (4):271–281.
Burgoon, Judee K., Thomas Birk, and Michael Pfau. 1990. “Nonverbal Behaviours, Persuasion and Credibility.” Human Communication Research 17 (1):140–169.
Dove, Ian J. 2016. “Visual Scheming: Assessing Visual Arguments.” Argumentation and Advocacy 52 (1):254–264.
Ferreira, Ivone. 2021. “Advertising as a Rhetorical Metagenre.” In Media Rhetoric: How Advertising and Digital Media Influence Us, ed. by Samuel Mateus, 29–45. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Graakjær, Nicolai Jørgensgaari, and Anders Bonde. 2018. “Non-Musical Sound Branding: A Conceptualization and Research Overview.” European Journal of Marketing 52 (7):1505–25.
Graakjær, Nicolai Jørgensgaari. 2015. Analyzing Music in Advertising: Television Commercials and Consumer Choice. New York: Routledge.
Grancea, Ioana. 2016. “Visual Modes of Ethotic Argumentation: An Exploratory Inquiry,” Symposion: Theoretical and Applied Inquiries in Philosophy and Social Sciences 3 (4): 375–389.
Groarke, Leo, Catherine H. Palczewski and David Godden (eds). 2016. “Special Issue: Twenty Years of Visual Argument.” Argumentation and Advocacy 52 (4).
Groarke, Leo. 2018. “Auditory Arguments: The Logic of ‘Sound’ Arguments.” Informal Logic 38 (3):312–340.
Groarke, Leo, and Gabrijela Kišiček. 2016. “Compassion, Authority and Baby Talk: Prosody and Objectivity.” In Argumentation, Objectivity and Bias: Proceedings of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation conference, ed. by Laura Benacquista, and Patrick Bondy. Windsor: University of Windsor.
Groarke, Leo. 2015. “Going Multimodal: What is a Mode of Arguing and Why Does it Matter?” Argumentation 291:133–155.
Guyer, Johsua et al. 2019. “Nonverbal Behaviour of Persuasive Sources: A Multiple Process Analysis.” Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour 431:203–31.
Häusermann, Jürg. 2018. “Sound Studies and the Political Components of the Auditory.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language and Media, ed. by Colleen Cotter, and Daniel Perrin, 211–229. New York: Routledge.
Hickson, Mark, Don Stacks, and Nina Moore. 2004. Nonverbal Communication: Studies and Applications. Los Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company.
Kimble, Charles E., and Steven D. Seidel. 1991. “Vocal Signs of Confidence.” Journal of Nonverbal Behavior 151:99–105.
Kišiček, Gabrijela. 2014. “The Role of Paralinguistic Features in the Analysis of Multimodal Argumentation.” In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Argumentation, ed. by Bart Garssen, David Godden, Francisca Henkemans, and Gordon Mitchell, 730–741. Amsterdam: Sic-Sat.
. 2016. “Prosodic Features in the Analysis of Multimodal Argumentation.” In Argumentation and Reasoned Action, ed. by Dima Mohamed, and Marcin Lewinski, 629–643. Rickmansworth: Collage Publications.
. 2018. “Can We Translate Sounds into Words? A Response to Leo Groarke’s ‘Auditory Arguments: The Logic of ‘Sound’ Arguments’.” Informal Logic 38 (3):346–361.
Kjeldsen, Jens. 2015. “The Study of Visual and Multimodal Argumentation.” Argumentation 291:115–132.
. 2018. “The Rhetoric of Sound, the Sound of Arguments: Three Propositions, Three Questions, and an Afterthought for the Study of Sonic and Multimodal Argumentation.” Argumentation and Advocacy 1 (8):364–371.
Köksall, Fatma and Umit Inatci. 2021. “Artwork as Representation in Advertising: A Visual Rhetorical Perspective.” In Media Rhetoric: How Advertising and Digital Media Influence Us, ed. by Samuel Mateus, 45–61. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Kress, Gunther. 2001. “Sociolinguistics and Social Semiotics.” In The Routledge Companion to Semiotics and Linguistics, ed. by Paul Cobley, 66–83. London: Routledge.
Oosterhof, Nikolaas, and Alexander Todorov. 2008. “The Functional Basis of Face Evaluation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105 (32):11087–11092.
Pollaroli, Chiara. 2013. “T(r)opical Patterns in Advertising.” In Virtues of Argumentation. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation, ed. by Dima Mohamed, and Marcin Lewinski. Windsor: University of Windsor.
Rezlescu, Constantin et al. 2015. “Dominant Voices and Attractive Faces: The Contribution of Visual and Auditory Information to Integrated Person Impressions.” Journal of Nonverbal Behaviour 391:355–370.
Rigotti, Eddo, and Sara Greco. 2019. The Inferential Configuration of Arguments: The Argumentum Model of Topics: A Topics-Based Approach to Argument Schemes. Amsterdam: Springer.
Ripley, M. Louise. 2008. “Argumentation Theorists Argue that an Ad is an Argument.” Argumentation 22 (4):507–519.
Slade, Cristina. 2003. “Seeing Reasons: Visual Argumentation in Advertisements.” Argumentation 17 (2):145–160.
Sousa, Alfredo. 2011. Os géneros retóricos e a mediatização do discurso político. Paper presented at I Congresso Internacional de Retórica Política, (The rhetorical genres and the mediatization of political discourse. Paper presented at I International Congress of Political Rhetoric) Madrid, January 2011.
Spang, Kurt. 1979. Fundamentos de Retórica Literaria y Publicitaria. (Fundamentals of Literary and Advertising Rhetoric) Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad de Navarra.
Stöckl, Hartmut. 2024. “Detecting generic patterns in multimodal argumentation: A corpus-based study of environmental protection print-ads.” Journal of Argumentation in Context 13 (2):260–291.
Tseronis, Assimakis, and Charles Forceville. 2017. “Argumentation and Rhetoric in Visual and Multimodal Communication.” In Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres, ed. by Assimakis Tseronis, and Charles Forceville, 1–24. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Tseronis, Assimakis, Ramy Younis, and Mehmet A. Üzelgün. 2024. “A proposal for the evaluation of multimodal argumentation: Assessing reasonableness and effectiveness in environmental campaign posters.” Journal of Argumentation in Context 13 (2):292–317.
Vukovic, Jovana et al. 2011. “Variation in Perceptions of Physical Dominance and Trustworthiness Predicts Individual Differences in the Effect of Relationship Context on Women’s Preferences for Masculine Pitch in Men’s Voices.” British Journal of Psychology 102 (1):37–48.
Way, Lyndon, Simon McKerrell, and Paul Bouissac (eds). 2017. Music as Multimodal Discourse: Semiotics, Power and Protest. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
Wildfeuer, Janina, and Chiara Pollaroli. 2017. “Seeing the untold: Multimodal argumentation in movie trailers.” Argumentation in Context 141:190–216.
Willis, Janine, and Alexander Todorov. 2006. “First Impressions: Making up Your Mind after a 100-ms Exposure to a Face.” Psychological Science 17 (7):592–598.
