Five Theses on Toulmin and Visual Argument

Abstract

A growing body of argumentation literature recognizes “visual” arguments—arguments conveyed with visual images—as an important ingredient of public discourse and debate. A number of authors (among them Birdsell & Groarke, 1996, 2006; Blair, 2003; Groarke, 1996, 2002; Shelley, 1996, 2003) have shown how such arguments can be understood in terms of the theories of argument manifest in pragmadialectics, informal logic, and contemporary and traditional rhetoric. The present article considers such arguments from the point of view of the data-warrant account of argument that Toulmin famously develops in Chapter III of The Uses of Argument (Toulmin, 2003).1