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Part of
Argumentation across Communities of Practice: Multi-disciplinary perspectives
Edited by Cornelia Ilie and Giuliana Garzone
[Argumentation in Context 10] 2017
► pp. 317–338

Chapter 13
Attacks on the cartoonist’s strategic manoeuvring

An argumentative analysis of criticism on political cartoons

Political cartoons may be understood as instances of visual or multimodal argumentative discourse. When a political cartoon is a subject of controversy, the criticism of the cartoon may therefore be aimed at the argumentation. For the purpose of a systematic analysis of visual and multimodal argumentation that gives rise to controversy, I make use of insights of the extended pragma-dialectical argumentation theory by van Eemeren (2010). The analysis provides a starting point to determine what aspect of strategic manoeuvring is criticised and to specify the derailment of strategic manoeuvring the cartoonist is accused of. Accordingly, the analysis facilitates a refined evaluation of the accusation in which general soundness conditions are amended or supplemented by relevant institutional conditions. In this study I will concentrate on controversies on political cartoons that make use of visual metaphors to scrutinize politicians’ behaviour or actions.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The structure of the argumentation underlying the political cartoon
  • 3.Criticism aimed at the visual metaphor
  • 4.Criticism aimed at the standpoint
  • 5.Criticism aimed at the sub-standpoint
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aic.10.14plu
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