Introduction

Abstract

In this introductory paper to the special issue, we briefly discuss literature from argumentation studies, pragmatics, and multimodal analysis in order to show how pragmatics has benefited argumentation studies until now, and how it can also benefit multimodal analysis. In the last section we introduce the papers of this issue that focus on the question how pragmatics can benefit multimodal argumentation in particular.

The Pragmatics and Argumentation Interface

“…It can be argued that linguistic aspects of argumentation have attracted scholarly attention ever since the foundation of rhetoric, which originally developed as the study of means of persuasion, and thus, to a fair extent, that linguistics plays an important role in the study of argumentation at large. Given that argumentation is a communicative activity which is predominantly verbal-even if multimodal aspects of argumentation are increasingly being recognised as playing a fundamental role in argumentative practices (see, e.g., Kjeldsen 2015;Tseronis and Forceville 2017;Tseronis and Pollaroli 2018)-it is only natural for the study of verbal resources to be included in rhetoric and argumentation studies. This also means that, presumably, all areas of inquiry in linguistics are potentially relevant to the study of argumentation as well.…”

The front page as a canvas for multimodal argumentation: Brexit in the Greek press

“…For this purpose, we combine principles from multimodal critical discourse analysis (henceforth MCDA; see Machin and Mayr, 2012) and multimodal argumentation (see Tseronis and Forceville, 2017;Rocci and Pollaroli, 2018;Tseronis and Pollaroli, 2018). We consider the front page as a multimodal text, which not only conveys a specific stance but also constructs arguments, recontextualizing Brexit in the Greek public sphere as an event shaking the tectonic plates of the EU status quo.…”