WORKSHOP 11 June 2026

PICTURING NORMS FOR ARGUMENTATION

On the occasion of Bita Heshmati’s defence of her thesis Visual Argument: Concepts and Methods for Analyzing the Argumentative Uses of Images.

Date: 11 June, Location: University of Groningen, Faculty of Philosophy, Oude Boteringestraat 52, Groningen, Room Omega.

14:00 – 14:30 Prof. dr. Sara Greco (Università della Svizzera Italiana) Argumentative portraits. Images of garment workers in digital activists’ argumentation on sustainable fashion

14:30 – 15:00 Dr. Gabriela Kišiček (University of Zagreb) Auditory Arguments in Legal Discourse

15:00 – 15:30 Tea

15:30 – 16:00 Dr. Roosmaryn Pilgram (Leiden University) Strategic Use of Third-Party References in Argumentative Discourse

16:00 – 16:30 Dr. Emar Maier (University of Groningen) Dogwhistle emojis are literally just pictures

16:30 – 17:15 Discussion on Evidence in Multimodal Argumentation

This workshop is made possible with financial support from the Center for Language and Cognition and the NWO-funded project The Normativity of Multimodal Argumentation.

Prof. dr Sara Greco, Università della Svizzera Italiana

Argumentative portraits. Images of garment workers in digital activists’ argumentation on sustainable fashion

This paper focuses on individual portraits of garment workers in the argumentation by digital activists advocating for a more sustainable fashion system during the Fashion Revolution campaigns. I argue that seemingly similar photographs of individual garment workers, which often appear in Fashion Revolution campaigns (mainly developed on Instagram and Twitter/X), play an inferential role in different argument schemes based on different loci. In particular, I compare two different cases of argumentative portraits, examining their role in argumentative inference and considering whether the inferential difference also implies a difference in the “positioning of the viewer” in terms of Kress & van Leeuwen (2020; see also Pocock, in preparation). Alongside the empirical analysis, I also discuss the theoretical combination of the Argumentum Model of Topics for the analysis of argumentative inference (Rigotti & Greco 2019) with the ART approach developed by Groarke (2019). 

Groarke, L. (2019). Depicting visual arguments: An “ART” approach. In F. Puppo (Ed.) Informal logic: A “Canadian” approach to argument (pp., 332-374). Windsor Studies in Argumentation (WSIA), Volume 9. https://windsor.scholarsportal.info/omp/index.php/wsia/catalog/view/123/303/1653-1 

Kress, G., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2020). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. Routledge.

Pocock, E. (in preparation). Argumentation and meaning-making in skincare advertising. PhD dissertation, University of Malta-USI.

Rigotti, E., Greco, S. (2019). Inference in argumentation: A topics-based approach to argument-schemes. Cham: Springer. 

Auditory Arguments in Legal Discourse

Dr. Gabrijela Kišiček, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb 

We are surrounded by sounds in our everyday lives. Some are so inherent to our environment that we hardly notice them. However, there are situations in which sounds, or the absence of sound, become relevant and even crucial in argumentative discourse. In such cases, we are dealing with auditory argumentation as part of multimodal argumentative discourse. The most common examples of the use of sound as argument can be found in advertising discourse, a representative example of multimodality. However, this talk focuses on legal argumentation, specifically on the use of sound in real-life court cases.

The talk examines four well-known criminal cases in order to discuss the role of sound in each trial, reconstruct the auditory arguments presented, and highlight the influence these arguments had on the outcome of the cases.

Strategic Use of Third-Party References in Argumentative Discourse

Dr. Roosmaryn Pilgram, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Universiteit Leiden

In argumentative discourse, parties can refer to people outside the discourse in various ways (“My friends told me to get help” or “I’ve heard that it’s best to wait”). The people referred to in these references can perform different argumentative functions: they might, for instance, serve as spokespersons or authorities in authority argumentation, or their ideas might serve as starting points in the discourse. In this talk, I will explore the extent to which the linguistic form of these references relates to their argumentative functions and the strategic use of third-party references in argumentative discourse. 

Dogwhistle emojis are literally just pictures  

Dr. Emar Maier, Faculteit Wijsbegeerte en Neurolinguistics and Language Development, CLCG, Faculteit der Letteren, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen

Emojis can be effectively used as dogwhistles, as in ('clown world') signaling that the world has gone crazy with leftwing elitist ideologies. I consider this phenomenon in light of an ongoing debate in emoji semantics between pictorialists (emojis are little pictures) and lexicalists (emojis are word-like symbols). I argue that many dogwhistle emojis crucially rely on depiction to retain plausible deniability, a key feature of dogwhistles.

Discussion on evidence in multimodal argumentation

We discuss the connections between evidence and argumentation by zooming in on one or more of the following examples:

1. O. J. Simpson example – 911 call
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHf93uxgKBI

2. Oscar Pistorius example
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BMMeYM7jRo&t=66s

3. Byron Smith example – murder recording
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6RGXGgTr6g

4. George Floyd murder trial – this is a particularly interesting case in which George Floyd’s well-known phrase, “I can’t breathe,” was used as an argument by the defense.

5. Fact-checking on Tiktok

     https://www.tiktok.com/@demagog.cz/video/7306799164023704864