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Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres
Edited by Assimakis Tseronis and Charles Forceville
[Argumentation in Context 14] 2017
► pp. 51–80

Chapter 2
The rhetorical and argumentative potentials of press photography

This chapter demonstrates the rhetorical and argumentative potentials of press photographs. More specifically, it examines photographs of the terrorist attacks on the USA on 9/11, 2001, and photographs of the Syrian toddler, Aylan Kurdi, who drowned during the migrant crisis in Europe in autumn of 2015. The chapter examines how these photographs exhibit argumentative dimensions and are used in argumentative ways in specific situations. A rhetorical, situational and textual-contextual approach demonstrates how a 9/11 photograph performed epideictic rhetorical functions, and how the images of Aylan Kurdi performed deliberative rhetorical functions. The chapter also examines the counter-argumentation to the Aylan Kurdi images and the widespread appropriation of the images into new argumentative forms.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The genre of press photography
  • 3.The rhetorical perspective
    • The situational and the contingent
    • Decisions about action
    • A form of human action and interaction
    • The establishing and sustaining of common values
  • 4.A situational textual-contextual approach to multimodal argumentation
  • 5.The epideictic functions of a 9/11 photograph
    • 5.1The attacks on New York
    • 5.2Victim 0001
    • 5.3The epideictic rhetoric of Victim 0001
  • 6.The deliberative functions of the Aylan Kurdi images
    • 6.1The European migrant crisis
    • 6.2The Aylan Kurdi images
    • 6.3The response to the Aylan Kurdi images in the United Kingdom
    • 6.4Counter-argumentation to the Aylan Kurdi images
    • 6.5The sharing and appropriation of the Aylan Kurdi images
  • 7.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aic.14.03kje
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