The argumentative relevance of pictorial and multimodal metaphor in

advertising

Chiara Pollaroli

Andrea Rocci

IALS

University of Lugano

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accepted for publication in Journal of Argumentation in Context

1. Introduction

The present paper investigates the argumentative relevance of pictorial and multimodal metaphors appearing

in print advertisements. Recently, Jens E. Kjeldsen (2012) has addressed this question considering how

tropes and other rhetorical figures contribute to the enthymematic inferential reconstruction of arguments in

advertisements where the visual component dominates. His claim (p. 243) is that pictorial rhetorical figures

delimit the interpretation of an advertisement and evoke the intended argument: “rhetorical figures may

function argumentatively by directing the viewer’s attention towards certain elements in the advertisement

and offering patterns of reasoning. This guides the viewer towards an interpretation with certain premises

that support a particular conclusion.”

Here, we contribute to this line of research by exploring the hypotheses (1) that the meaning construction

operations activated by pictorial and multimodal metaphors guide the audience along the inference path

proposedi by the enthymematic argument of the advertisement and – if this is the case - (2) that pictorial and

multimodal metaphors guide the audience’s inference through a stable association between the kind of

meaning construction operation realized by a metaphor and the kind of argument schemes invoked to licence

the inferences. This exploration is part of a broader research on the argumentative relevance and rhetorical

significance of pictorial and multimodal tropes (e.g., metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche) in advertising.

These hypotheses presuppose the acceptance of a few key assumptions. First, they presuppose, with Kjeldsen

(2012), that advertising is an argumentative activity, at least in the weak sense that it involves putting forth

arguments in support of claims. Second, they presuppose that metaphors (and other tropes) are independent

of the semiotic mode of communication and that they can be manifested not only verbally, but also

pictorially or multimodally, that is by integrating different semiotic modes (in our study we will only

consider the integration of pictures and written text). Third, they presuppose, again with Kjeldsen (2012), the

parallel assumption that it makes sense to speak of argumentation not only for verbal messages but also for

pictures and combinations of words and pictures. In sections 2, 3, and 4 we provide some background on the

argumentative analysis of advertisements, on current research on the use of pictorial and multimodal tropes

in advertising, with a focus on metaphors, as well as on research on ‘visual argumentation’ within

argumentation theory.

The notion of argumentative relevance, which plays a pivotal role in answering our research question, also

requires some commentary. Intuitively, a feature of a text is argumentatively relevant when, if it were

replaced by another feature, the text would either turn into a non-argument or become an essentially different

argument. Conversely, an argumentatively irrelevant feature is such that it could be substituted or omitted

without the text ceasing to express essentially the same argument. Looking at argumentation through the

Pragma-Dialectical lens of the ideal model of the critical discussion (see van Eemeren and Grootendorst

2004, van Eemeren 2010) helps us give substance to this idea and see what is essential in arguments. An

argument is an attempt to solve a difference of opinion on the merits of the issue. Argumentatively relevant

features of a text are those that are directly relevant in view of the goal of solving a difference of opinion on

the merits. In Pragma-Dialectics, the procedure of analytical reconstruction is precisely meant to capture all

the features of a text that are relevant for resolution at the different stages of the critical discussion, excluding

those that are not. We are thus interested in finding out whether the meaning construction operations realized

by pictorial or multimodal metaphors can contribute to the analytical reconstruction of advertisements as

arguments, and, if so, how precisely and when (under which conditions). In principle, there are several ways

in which, at the different stages of a critical discussion, these meaning construction operations might

contribute to reconstruction. Focusing on the argumentation stage, at least three possible contributions can be

singled out:

(i) Pictorial and multimodal metaphors are necessary to fully reconstruct the content of the

arguments supporting the standpoint;

(ii) Pictorial and multimodal metaphors guide the reconstruction of the structure of complex

argumentation (e.g., distinguishing between multiple, coordinative and subordinative

argumentation);

(iii) Pictorial and multimodal metaphors guide the reconstruction of the argument schemes invoked

to license the inferential step from the argument to the standpoint.

As anticipated above, the paper focuses on level (iii), or, more precisely, on how and when pictorial and

multimodal metaphors simultaneously contribute to reconstruction at levels (i) and (iii).

This investigation of the relevance of pictorial and multimodal metaphors for the inferential structure of

arguments is but a first step in developing a comprehensive account of the argumentative relevance and

rhetorical significance of pictorial and multimodal tropes in advertising, an account capable of explaining

their apparent strategic role in advertising inventio, which is testified by recent research on advertising (see

Section 3). Such a comprehensive account will also have to take into consideration cases where the meaning

construction operations realized by pictorial and multimodal tropes in the advertising messages do not

impact on the reconstruction of the argument. These cases will be taken into consideration because all tropes,

including those that do not provide an input to reconstruction in terms of (i), (ii) or (iii), may turn out to be

significant for the rhetorical strategy of the advertisement. Finally, all rhetorically significant tropes can

nevertheless be indirectly relevant argumentatively, either because they somehow hinder the resolution

process in breach of the arguers’ commitments to reasonableness (see the notion of “derailing of strategic

maneuvring” in van Eemeren 2010) or because they are indirectly beneficial to resolution, contributing to

creating the attentional and emotional ‘frame conditions’ that allow rational argument assessment to take

place among the concrete participants (Jacobs 2000, 2006, 2009).

The analysis of the inferential structure of arguments will be based on the Argumentum Model of Topics

(AMT) developed by Eddo Rigotti and Sara Greco Morasso (Rigotti 2006, 2008, 2009; Rigotti and Greco

Morasso 2010), an approach to argument schemes drawing on the legacy of the Ancient and Medieval

tradition of the topics. This model allows a reconstruction of the enthymematic structure of natural

arguments that takes into account both the material starting point, in terms of the data and endoxaii from

which the argument proceeds, and the procedural starting point, that is of the argument scheme that licenses

the inference. In the AMT, argument schemes are understood in terms of loci. A locus is a basic semantic-

ontological relation whose semantic entailments are invoked as inferential rules (maxims) in an argument.iii

Rigotti and Greco Morasso’s typology of loci, also drawing on the tradition, includes such relations as cause

and effect (efficient cause), action and goal (final cause), means and action (instrumental cause), place and

action, part and whole, genus and species, and analogy. It is immediately apparent that some of these

relations have also been invoked to account for metaphor (analogy), and other classic tropes, such as

synecdoche (part and whole, genus and species), and metonymy (different causal and place relations)iv.

In order to answer our research question and validate our hypotheses, we will analyse a small corpus of 16

product advertisements employing pictorial or multimodal metaphor, compiled from 3 different sources

(Section 5.1). In this contribution we will include a detailed analysis of only a selection of the sixteen

advertisements (Sections 5.2 and 5.3). We will also provide (Section 6) a table which summarizes the most

important results of the analysis of the whole corpus.

2. Advertising as an argumentative activity type

Advertising (from the Latin advertere, meaning ‘to direct one’s attention to’; see Beasley and Danesi 2002:

1) is a mass media communication tool that companies and institutions employ to persuade a relevant public

to buy a product or service (product advertising), to increase their regard and trust of a company or

institution (institutional advertising), to change attitude and behavior towards different aspects of social life

(social advertising). Here we will be concerned with product ads only.

Understood in terms of the approach to activity types of communication proposed in Eddo Rigotti and

Andrea Rocci (2006), the activity types of product advertising result from the mapping of the interaction

scheme of advertising onto a given market, which represents the interaction field. Interaction schemes are

culturally shared recipes for interaction that the participants can access, while interaction fields are the actual

segments of social reality that are affected by the activity. Schemes are, in principle, field-independent and,

as a matter of fact, a great deal of how-to knowledge on advertising is shared across product, institutional

and social advertising, which have markedly different fields of application. This set of field-independent

knowledge that makes up the interaction scheme notably includes knowledge of the advertising discourse

genres (e.g., billboards, TV commercials, flyers, print ads, radio ads, ambient advertising, online pop-ups,

etc.). Product advertising is a broad activity type resulting from the application of the advertising scheme to

an interaction field of the ‘market’ type. Arguably, different markets will give rise to different, more finely

grained activity types: advertising financial services is not the same as advertising food products. For

instance, these two markets are subject to very different kinds of regulations which impact on the

argumentative options open to advertisers. Here we will stop at the level of the broad activity type of product

advertising.

Several scholars have acknowledged the essentially argumentative nature of the activity type of product

advertising (Pateman 1980; Slade 2002, 2003; Ripley 2008; Rocci 2009; Walton 2007, 2009; Kjeldsen 2012,

Adam and Bonhomme 2012).

From a Pragma-Dialectical perspective (van Eemeren 2010:235; see also Kjeldsen 2012), product advertising

is a single, non-mixed difference of opinion between a company producing and selling a product – the

protagonist – and a potential consumer – the antagonist – on the issue “whether or not the appraised product

should be purchased”. The protagonist is committed to advance and defend a positive practical standpoint

(‘prescriptive’ in van Eemeren’s terms) which is usually implicit but that can easily be formulated thanks to

the well-defined context where it is created:

Because we know the context of this difference of opinion, we also know the stated aim:

“Buy this!” This is a proposition shared by all commercial advertising. No matter what an

advertisement communicates, it will always, either directly or indirectly, carry this claim.

This ultimate proposition may be called the final claim. Knowing the context and the final

claim, every viewer is provided with a starting point for discovering the premises supporting

the final claim, and thus reconstructing the argumentation. (Kjeldsen 2012: 243)

In other words, we can say that a practical standpoint of the form ‘You should buy product/ service X’

constitutes the generic standpoint (Filimon 2011a, 2011b)v of the activity type of product advertisement. As

observed by Kjeldsen (2012), this generic standpoint plays a major role in guiding the interpretation of the

advertising message. Once a message is recognized as being a product advertisement – which typically

happens thanks to the formal features of the genre adopted and to its collocation within the communication

flow of the medium – the addressee only has to fill in the X in the generic standpoint to infer the standpoint

of the specific ad. In fact, it has been repeatedly observed (see for instance Wüest 2001), that the generic

practical standpoint is very rarely fully explicit because advertisers exploit its role in guiding the interpretive

inferences of the addressee.

In product advertising, the practical standpoint ‘You should buy product/service x’ is almost invariably

supported by a form of means-ends argumentation or practical reasoningvi (an instance of the locus of the

final cause in AMTvii) where the expediency of the buying action – which is obviously not an end in itself –

is inferred from the desirability of the product x. Other forms of practical reasoning that do not move from

the desirability of product x can be found in the so-called direct response advertising. In direct response

advertising, the buying action of the practical standpoint is typically specified with respect to time, vendor

and other circumstances (‘You should buy product x from vendor y at time t’). The expediency of this

specified action can be then motivated by special offers, gifts or by the possibility of winning prizes. These

additional arguments, however, most of the times represent additional reasons supplementing the desirability

of the product itself.

This move from the desirability of the product to the generic practical standpoint ‘You should buy product/

service x’ can be legitimately dubbed the generic practical reasoning of product advertising. This step

remains entirely implicit in most advertisements, which are mostly preoccupied with arguing for the

desirability of the product. In order to do so, they advance “evaluative standpoint[s] in which the product

[…]is positively assessed” (van Eemeren 2010:235). The generic argumentation structure of product

advertising, summarized in figure 1, includes both the generic practical standpoint and the generic evaluative

standpoint.

Figure 1

Most of the verbal text and of the other semiotic means deployed in advertising messages are concerned with

manifesting arguments in support of an evaluative standpoint, which can be explicit, but can as well be left

implicit like higher level practical standpoints. Thanks to the template of the generic argumentative structure

of product advertisements, the positive evaluative standpoints are easily inferred by the addressee and there

could be good rhetorical reasons to leave them implicit.viii In our fine grained analysis of the inferential

structure of product ads based on pictorial and multimodal metaphors, we will focus almost exclusively on

the arguments supporting the evaluative standpoint, leaving out the generic practical reasoning of product

ads.

In this section we have reconstructed product advertising as an argumentative activity type adopting the

Pragma-Dialectical stance of considering argumentation as an attempt of resolving a difference of opinion on

the merits. Yet, is this dialectical stance justified in the case of advertising? Do ads seriously attempt to argue

in a dialectical sense? According to Frans H. van Eemeren (2010:235), a dialectical analysis of product

advertisements “is certainly relevant because listeners and readers will demand faithful information and

good reasons for buying the advertised product, even if the advertisers cannot be expected to make an

attempt at critical dispute resolution”. We believe that van Eemeren’s answer should be complemented by

another kind of consideration. The interaction field in which product advertising arises commits advertisers

to a series of communicative obligations that correspond to a subset of the dialectical obligations of arguers.

These obligations are legally enforceable, as most states have advertising regulations covering false and

deceptive advertising (see Durant 2010, esp. Chapter 10). Interestingly, these regulations typically cover not

only advertisements explicitly containing false material statements, but also advertisements “reasonably

implying” false material information (Durant 2010:182).

If these regulations oblige advertisers to be truthful, they do not oblige them to be relevant, nor oblige them

to argue in the first place. Advertisements can appear to do something other than arguing: narrating fictional

stories, joking, entertaining, engaging the audience in friendly banter, etc. This is an important point in view

of the consideration of the pragmatics and rhetorical design of advertisements. As observed by Scott Jacobs

(2000: 268), the text and visuals of an advertisement are sometimes nothing more than compatible with an

interpretation constructing them as presenting material claims about the product as arguments in support of

the positive evaluation and avoid presenting these claims explicitly or even strongly implying them. As

eloquently shown by Jacobs (2000:268-269), one consequence of presenting argumentation as a weakly

communicated implicatureix of the advertising text is that the advertiser cannot be held accountable for

disputable product claims. The understanding of pictorial and multimodal tropes typically requires

significant and risky inferential work and, consequently, entails considerable interpretive responsibility on

the part of the recipient. In a comprehensive rhetorical analysis of the role of these figures in conveying

advertising argumentation, their potential role in shifting the responsibility of disputable claims on the

interpreter cannot be ignored.

3. Rhetorical devices in advertising

Studies have been conducted on pictorial and multimodal rhetorical devices in advertising in the fields of

linguistics (Forceville 1996, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2012; see contributions by Koller, Caballero, Urios-

Aparisi, and Yu in Forceville and Urios-Aparisi 2009; Mazzali-Lurati and Pollaroli forthcoming), semiotics

(see for example Beasley and Danesi 2002) and marketing (Phillips and McQuarrie 2004; Goldenberg,

Mazursky and Solomon 1999; Goldelberg et al. 2009; Lagerwerf et al. 2012). These studies are concerned

with identifying, characterizing, and classifying rhetorical devices in ads, and also with the assessment of

their impact on consumers in terms of attention, appeal, recall, comprehension, etc.

Starting from a cognitive approach to metaphor – and especially from George Lakoff and Mark Johnson

(1980) – Charles Forceville (1996, 2008a, 2012) acknowledges that metaphor is a manifestation of a deep

and pervasive cognitive process the expression of which is not necessarily linguistic. It is therefore natural to

consider also the pictorial expression of metaphor. Forceville (2008a) outlines a classification of four

pictorial metaphors and gives a characterization of multimodal metaphors, too. Types of pictorial metaphors

are:

(1) hybrid metaphors, i.e., images where an impossible gestalt of both the target and the source conveys

the metaphorical identity,

(2) contextual metaphors, i.e., images where the target is placed in the context of the source,

(3) pictorial similes, i.e., images where the target and the source are juxtaposed,

(4) integrated metaphors, i.e., images where the target is shown in a posture or position that reminds of

the source.

According to Forceville (2007, 2008a:469) multimodal metaphors are metaphors where target and source

“are cued in more than one sign system, sensory mode, or both”. This definition can be applied to the

metaphors analysed here, but requires a clarification. In most of our examples, both the target and the source

are expressed both through the pictorial mode and the written verbal mode. However, this double coding is

not redundant. In other words, we are not confronted with the same metaphor being expressed monomodally

twice, once in the written and once in the pictorial modality. Instead, in order to correctly interpret the source

and the target of the metaphors, the audience has to combine pictorial and linguistic cues. The analysis in

section 5.2 will provide examples of the way in which the integration of both pictorial and linguistic

elements enriches the interpretation of both source and target.

Marketing-oriented research produced studies where different taxonomies of visual rhetorical devices are

proposed. This strand of research is also concerned with the effects of tropes.

A typology of visual rhetoric in advertising is proposed by Barbara J. Phillips and Edward F. McQuarrie

(2004; see also Lagewerf et al. 2012) with the aim of better understanding advertising pictorial strategies and

consumers’ response to them. They create a matrix of visual rhetorical figures in terms of two dimensions:

the visual structure – the way elements are physically pictured – and the meaning operation – the cognitive

process required to understand the rhetorical figure. Three types of visual structure – juxtaposition, fusion

and replacement – cross three types of meaning operation – connection, comparison for similarity and

comparison for opposition. A combination of Phillips and McQuarrie’s visual rhetorical figures and of

Forceville’s typology of pictorial metaphors shows that visual structures based on replacement come in four

very distinct flavours that perhaps merit the status of visual structures:

(1) replacement where target is in the context of source,

(2) replacement where source is in the context of target,

(3) replacement where target has the shape of source,

(4) replacement where source has the shape of target.

Types (1) and (2) are two versions of Forceville’s contextual metaphor, whereas types (3) and (4) are two

versions of Forceville’s integrated metaphor.

Another influential marketing-oriented investigation on creativity in advertising (Goldenberg, Mazursky and

Solomon 1999) identified a taxonomy of abstract recurrent structures underlying award-winning

advertisements. The structures are identified in a set of ‘deep’ abstract patterns – called creativity templates –

structuring and organizing the whole advertising message. In this study creativity is not conceived as an

unbounded intuition and a constraint-free process, but rather it can be traced back to “few simple, well-

defined design structures” (Goldenberg et al. 2009:1).

The most frequent creativity template encountered in the corpus of award-winning ads analysed by Jacobs

Goldenberg and his group is the Pictorial Analogy Template (later renamed Metaphor Tool in Goldenberg et

al. 2009), where the desired message about the product is conveyed through the use of a “recognized and

accepted cultural symbol” (2009:66). Figure 2 is one of the print advertisements that Goldenberg, Mazursky

and Solomon (1999) report as an example of Pictorial Analogy Template. Here the visual depicts an absurd

scenario where firemen are rescuing a person with a huge Nike-Air training shoe. This is a contextual

metaphor in Forceville’s terms and a meaning operation of comparison for similarity via a visual structure of

replacement in Phillips and McQuarrie’s terms.

Figure 2

The scholars schematize the message of this ad with a ‘linking operator’ connecting elements of a ‘product

space’ and a ‘symbol set’ (figure 3)

Figure 3

Creativity templates, especially the Pictorial Analogy Template, straddle the divide between elocutio and

inventio. Goldenberg, Mazursky and Solomon (1999) do not use rhetorical terms like inventio or elocutio;

yet they want to identify underlying “abstract fundamental schemes” that guide creativity in advertising, for

which they use the analogy of syntactic structures in Chomskyan generative grammar (p. 337). They come to

the conclusion that these schemes exist, that they are teachable and that they are a better method for

generating advertising ideas than the unstructured, purely associative, methods of idea generation commonly

used in the profession. In fact, the main goal of this research is precisely to develop an effective and

teachable structured method for advertising inventio. x If the Pictorial Analogy Template (or pictorial

metaphor) plays such a strategic role in advertising inventio, it then becomes natural to investigate how this

trope relates to the overall organization of advertisements and to their overall effectiveness also from the

point of view of argumentation.

Although developed wholly independently,xi the way of representing the link between ‘spaces’ as in figure 3

cannot but be reminiscent of the connectors and mental spaces of Blending Theory (Fauconnier and Turner

2006 [1998], 2002), a model that is increasingly applied to the analysis of metaphor and other tropes in

cognitive linguistics, semiotics and psychology. Blending Theory, like other cognate cognitive linguistic

approaches, sees metaphor as a manifestation of basic cognitive operations that play a crucial role in human

reasoning.xii A series of recent investigations (Rocci 2009; Forceville 2004, 2012; Semino 2010; Mazzali-

Lurati and Pollaroli forthcoming) have adopted Blending Theory, showing its usefulness in analysing the

meaning operation of pictorial and multimodal tropes, especially metaphors, in advertising. We have

blending when two or more mental spaces – which are data structures informed by frames and typically

corresponding to different domains, or discourse worlds (see Fauconnier and Turner 2006 [1998])xiii– act as

input spaces and project a selection of features to a blended space. The projection is governed by a generic

space which provides the abstract frame structure shared by the input spaces. The result, the blend, is a new

creative frame, containing emergent structure not in the inputs. Considering again the example of the ad for

Nike Air in figure 2, the contextual metaphor is a blended space where a network of inferences from input

spaces – ‘walking’ and ‘firemen rescue’ – governed by a generic space of similarity results in the newly

structured blended space depicted in the visual. Using the frame ‘fireman rescue’ as the source domain of the

contextual metaphor strategically recalls the idea of protection which is the main reason why a potential

consumer should buy Nike-Air training shoes (figure 4).

Figure 4

In this paper we make a basic use of Blending Theory to describe the meaning operation of a metaphor as a

preliminary operation to the reconstruction of its role in the inferential structure of arguments. In other

words, the properties of the mental spaces (input spaces, generic space, and blended space) composing a

metaphor are made explicit; making explicit the generic space is fundamental since this space contains the

abstract shared property that the audience is invited to recognize and that can serve as premise of the

inferential structure of the argument.

4. Visual argumentation

Up to this point we have hinted at the rhetoric of images in terms of elocutio, that is the manifestation of

metaphors in visual images. Yet, the potential of images does not have to be restricted to this step of the

Ancient technique. According to Kjeldsen (2012:240-241), images have the rhetorical ability of presenting

before the eyes – as if it were real – a condensation of meanings which the viewer perceives in a very short

time. For him, it is the quality of ‘semantic condensation’ that allows for an account of images as potential

visual arguments.

The move towards a consideration of the argumentative role of images in multimodal texts emerged with a

special issue of Argumentation & Advocacy in 1996. Contributions in this issue inaugurated a shift of focus

from a dominant verbal perspective of argumentation theorists to a fledging research program addressing

how visuals in advertisements, drawings in political cartoons, diagrams and figures in mathematics, and

photographs in newspaper articles can contribute to argumentative moves being put forward. Since 1996 the

main bone of contention in this strand of research has been whether images, on their own, can be considered

to be arguments or not (Birdsell and Groarke 1996, 2007; Groarke 2002, 2009; Slade 2003; Blair 1996, 2004;

Dove 2012; van den Hoven 2012; Kjeldsen 2012; Roque 2012).

David S. Birdsell and Leo Groarke (2007:103) define ‘visual argument’ as an argument which is conveyed

through images (see also Roque 2012). Although the existence of pure pictorial argumentation is

acknowledged (in, for example, political cartoons; Feteris, Groarke and Plug 2011, van den Hoven 2012),

images often work in combination with verbal components to advance premises and conclusions. In fact,

whether or not an image may play a role in the argumentation is to be established starting from the

communicative context and the genre where it appears. For example, images in advertisements are not

isolated text elements, but they combine with verbal components to convey the intended message.

Images contribute to communication in different ways. Birdsell and Groarke (2007) identify a set of possible

employments of images:

(1) visual flags capture the attention of the viewer and direct it to the argument,

(2) visual demonstrations convey a message that would not easily be conveyed in words (ex. charts,

tables, etc.),

(3) visual metaphors convey claims figuratively,

(4) visual symbols stand for something they represent by some strong association (ex. the cross for

Christianity),

(5) visual archetypes are similar to visual symbols, but they represent something by popular narratives

(ex. extended nose for lying from Pinocchio).

In his reading of Toulmin’s model from the visual argumentation perspective, Groarke (2009) specifies that

visual metaphors can convey data, conclusion, and backing and exemplifies these claims through examples

of political cartoons.

Valerie Smith (2007) suggests looking at images as enthymemes to understand how they can argue, thus

taking into account both the culture-bound premises (endoxa) of this kind of argument and the specific

meaning realised within the given text. Also other scholars (Finnegan 2001, Kjeldsen 2012) see images as

“offer[ing] a rhetorical enthymematic process in which something is condensed or omitted, and, as a

consequence, it is up to the spectator to provide the unspoken premises” (Kjeldsen 2012:241). A wholly-

pictorial political cartoon depicting Clinton as the Titanic in Paul van den Hoven (2012) is the only explicit

‘general argument’ of a complex argumentation; the whole argumentation can be reconstructed departing

from the cartoon itself. However, van den Hoven limits this ability of visual argumentation to contexts where

the role of images is already established and he mentioned that “often the image presents information that

functions as a set of data or as a backing, while the inference principle or the standpoint are verbally

expressed” (p. 260).

Yet, images are able to express the inferential principle of arguments: it is the case when rhetorical figures

are employed (Kjeldsen 2012). We have already mentioned this point in section 1: Kjeldsen’s claim is that

rhetorical figures provide lines of reasoning that direct the reconstruction of argumentation.xiv He analyses

some multimodal print advertisements following Toulmin’s model and he shows an example in which a

causal argument scheme is elicited by an hyperbolic visual ellipsis and an hyperbolic visual metaphor. In the

argumentative reconstruction, the image is translated into the verbal mode and it usually represents the

ground or backing for argumentation because “both ground and backing usually emerge as facts, evidence

and categorical statements, [and] they appear to be more readily expressed visually than warrants do”

(Kjeldsen 2012:247).

The process of reconstructing the argumentation in terms of premises and conclusions forces the analyst to

translate the image into words (or ‘reducing into’), with the consequent possible loss of meaning. Van den

Hoven (2012:266-270) proposes an iconic format of argumentative reconstruction where the visual text is not

translated in propositions, but it “is placed in an argument structure in its mimetic quality”.

The rhetorical qualities of images (in the terms we have reported above from Kjeldsen 2012) are not given

the attention they deserve in the argumentative reconstruction. In a note explaining the Clinton-Titanic

political cartoon, van den Hoven (2012:258) makes evident that many elements of the frame ‘Titanic’ have

been lost in the argumentative reconstruction. Thus, we are allowed to ask ourselves: what is the role of the

visual elements which are left out of argumentation? Kjeldsen (2012) hypothesizes the existence of an

ethotic argument: some advertisers create artful appealing visuals to promote the brand or the company and

toning down the product. This use of images is close to the visual flag identified by Birdsell and Groarke

(2007).

These studies on pictorial argumentation are fundamental for our analysis on the argumentative relevance of

metaphor in advertising. The comprehension, interpretation and reconstruction of the meaning of images is

strongly affected by the context and discourse genre in which they are inserted; since advertisements are

argumentative activity types in which the viewer is directed to interpret the visuals as pertinent to the text,

thus as having a role in the argumentation. As Kjeldsen argued, pictorial tropes and figures of speech give

cues about the reasoning scheme in the ad. Even if something of the semantic richness and realistic presence

of images may be lost in the argumentative reconstruction, the grounding relevance of images can be

highlighted.

5. Analysis

5.1 Corpus design

We have selected a corpus of sixteen print advertisements. The corpus is obviously not a representative

sample in any quantitative sense. It has, however, been designed with the goal of ensuring the relevance of

our argumentative analysis for the advancement of current research on pictorial and multimodal metaphors in

advertising. The adverts have been drawn from three sources:

8 print ads come from articles on rhetorical figures and advertising written by scholars not related to

argumentation theory: Dramamine ad from McQuarrie and Mick (1996), Clerget ad from Forceville

(1996), Nike Air and Penn ads from Goldenberg, Mazursky and Solomon (1999), Kingfisher ad from

Phillips (2000), Avante ad from Forceville (2008a), Botergoud ad from Goldenberg et al. (2009),

Sony ad from Lagerwerf et al. (2012). Pictorial and multimodal metaphor are still not fully

established categories and cannot be considered straightforward descriptive labels. Therefore, there

is a real risk that each researcher considers a slightly different range of phenomena and, as a

consequence, proposes not a new account of the same data, but a theory of something slightly

different. We wanted our argumentative analysis to be relevant to phenomena that are recognized as

pictorial and multimodal metaphors in the literature, in particular by scholars who are not

specifically interested in argumentation.

4 are award-winning print ads. Bosch and Volkswagen Park Assist ads were awarded by Epica

International Advertising Awards in 2012 (epica-awards.com), Volkswagen original accessories ad

was awarded the bronze prize by the Art Directors Club Italy (ADCI) in 2010, and the Pizza&Love

ad was awarded a gold prize for best print ad by Ads of the World (adsoftheworld.com) in 2011.

Goldenberg, Mazursky and Solomon (1999) have shown that advertising awards are a reasonable

proxy of quality judgement by expert professionals and, at the same time, that there is an

exceptionally high proportion of ads based on the metaphor template (Pictorial Analogy Template)

among award winning ads. It was important to ensure that our first exploration of the argumentative

relevance of metaphor tackled these highly valued, creative ads. The selection of the 4 ads was based

on our judgement in recognizing metaphor. Particular attention was paid to detecting the visual

structures of pictorial metaphor.

The remaining 4 print ads are taken from a single issue of Donna Moderna (12th December 2012), an

Italian weekly women’s magazine. Again, we used our judgment in recognizing metaphor, paying

attention to detecting visual structures. This last sample ensures that also ads that have not aroused

the interest of either advertising scholars or professionals can be analysed argumentatively.

The following two sections illustrate the analytical procedure that we applied to the 16 ads of our corpus by

examining three paradigmatic cases. This illustration will be also an occasion for a fuller presentation of our

main analytical tools: the Argumentum Model of Topics and Blending Theory.

5.2 From multimodal metaphor to arguments from analogy: two examples

The text of the print ad for Fior Fiore Coop coffee machine from Donna Moderna (figure 5) invites the

reader to ‘enjoy an Italian masterpiece every day’ and highlights the fact that this coffee machine was

manufactured 100% in Italy. As regards the meaning operation and visual structure (Phillips and McQuarrie

2004), here an operation of comparison for similarity is obtained via a type (2) replacement (see our

distinction of visual structures based on replacement in section 3), where the source is placed in the context

of the target: the painter’s palette replaces an absent tray in the context represented by the coffee capsules

and coffee machine. This configuration corresponds to Forceville’s (2008a) contextual metaphor and to

Phillips and McQuarrie’s (2004) similarity via replacement. The pictorial component allows us to construct a

metaphor that can be verbalized as follows: COFFEE MACHINE IS PAINTING. However, the texts of the

headline and baseline play a crucial role in restricting the interpretation of the source and target respectively:

thus brush and palette become the tools used to produce an ‘Italian masterpiece’, while the machine and

capsules are recognized as a ‘100% made in Italy’. Thus the actual multimodal metaphor of the advert is

ITALIAN COFFEE MAKING MACHINE IS ITALIAN PAINTING MASTERPIECE.

Figure 5

The meaning operation realized by this multimodal assembly is analysed using Blending Theory in figure 6.

A similarity is created between the two input spaces which share the generic abstract structure of ‘Italian art

which uses some tools to create masterpieces’. The blend is a creative metaphorical image where coffee

made with Fior Fiore Coop coffee machine is a masterpiece painting and capsules are colours on a palette.

Figure 6

Having reconstructed the meaning operation realized by the multimodal metaphor, we can now move to our

main question and find out how this meaning operation, and, in particular, the generic space that the reader is

led to discover, contributes to the argument presented by the ad. There may be a strong temptation, at this

point, to think that the interesting work is done and that we have already captured how the advertisement

worksxv in persuading the audience. We believe that it is prudent to resist this temptation. The reconstruction

of the metaphorical blend is not, in itself, an account of the inferential structure through which an argument

supports a standpoint.xvi

As mentioned in the introduction, we will make use of the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) to provide

this account. This model has the advantage of making explicit the inference configuring actual arguments,

thus highlighting the foundation of the strength of the argument (Rigotti and Greco Morasso 2010) and

allowing to directly compare argument schemes to the conceptual schemes underlying tropes. Within AMT

arguments are considered to be composed of a topical dimension and an endoxical one: the enthymematic

structure of natural arguments is reconstructed taking into account the endoxical dimension in terms of

particular facts of the case (data) and culturally taken-for-granted generalizations (endoxa), and the topical

dimension in terms of inferential rules (maxims) and the ontological relations (loci) from which they derive.

The inferential process from an argument to a conclusion works when the maxim from the topical dimension

combines with the taken for granted premise (endoxon) from the endoxical component.

With AMT we set out to reconstruct the endoxical and the topical dimensions of the argument supporting the

main evaluative standpoint of the Fior Fiore Coop ad. As we will see, we have to do here with a complex

argumentation of the subordinative kind, consisting of two chained enthymemes. The multimodal metaphor

is relevant for the reconstruction of the deeper enthymeme. Here we provide a reconstruction of each

enthymeme in terms of the categories of AMT, obtaining the diagrams in Figures 7 and 8, which are

familiarly called Y-structures. The baseline text stating that ‘Fior Fiore Coop coffee machine is 100%

Italian’ is an explicit verbally-presented premise directly supporting the evaluative standpoint of the ad. This

premise presents factual information about the product that functions like a minor premise in the enthymeme,

a datum in AMT’s terms. Considering this premise and the interaction field in which the argumentation takes

place (the market of capsule coffee machines), it is reasonable, in this case, to hypothesize that the evaluative

standpoint is comparative: ‘Fior Fiore Coop is superior to non-Italian coffee machines’. At a certain level,

advertisers always argue in front of their competitors; but the degree of awareness that the consumer has of

the different options can vary. In our case we have a market dominated by one very strong non-Italian brand

(Nespresso), of which the consumers are certainly aware. In AMT all enthymemes are based on underlying

relations in a common-sense ontology (loci), that provide the required inference licence (maxim) to the

enthymeme.xvii Here the aspect of the ontology of the standpoint that enables the inference is a relation of

species (‘the Fior Fiore Coop machine’) to genus (‘Italian coffee making implements’). The common-sense

ontology of genus/species relationships generates the following maxim: ‘If something holds for the genus, it

also holds for all its species’.

Figure 7

This maxim enables Fior Fiore Coop to inherit any properties of the genus to which it belongs. What we

need at this point is relevant information about the genus to transfer to the species. This is the task of the

endoxical premise, which is a background generalization. In the present case what we need is something like:

‘in coffee making, Italian productions are superior (to non-Italian ones)’. Combined with the datum, the

endoxon allows us to deduce an interim conclusion: ‘Being superior to non-Italian productions holds for the

genus of which Fior Fiore Coop coffee machine is the species’. This interim conclusion has the proper

logical form to interact with the maxim as a minor premise and deduce the conclusion/standpoint. As the

Aristotelian name suggests, AMT endoxa typically correspond to general beliefs and values accepted in the

relevant community of arguers. Yet, it is also possible to have endoxa whose acceptance depends on, or is

reinforced by, further subordinate argumentation. In our case, the endoxon ‘In coffee making, Italian

productions are superior (to non-Italian ones)’ is supported, or, at least, reinforced by an argument conveyed

thanks to the multimodal metaphor. This argument, reconstructed and visualized in the Y-structure in figure

8 is based on the locus from analogy.

Figure 8

The locus from analogy generates inference licences (maxims) stemming from the fact that certain entities

are comparable in some relevant respect, i.e., that there is at some level an isomorphism between the entities.

Rigotti and Greco Morasso (2010:499-500) insist on the closeness of analogical argumentation to

argumentation based on genus-species relationships: in their view, entities related by analogy are entities that

are recognized to belong to a common functional genus

A functional genus (Walton and Macagno 2009:158) xviii is a special kind of genus: a category that is

recognized as relevant for some local purpose, but may have yet to be named. A functional genus is not an

established culturally shared genus, it is not a category whose relevance is stably recognized within some

cultural, social or scientific practice, it is not (yet) part of some formal categorization system, taxonomy or

theory. In order for analogical argumentation to work, the relevant functional genus needs to be shared

between the arguers; but it may well remain part of tacit background knowledge.

We can now fully appreciate the argumentative relevance of the blend realized by the multimodal metaphor

that we have reconstructed in figure 6: the blend prompts the recognition and activation of a functional genus

(corresponding to its generic space) and the simultaneous recognition of ‘Italian fine arts’ and ‘Italian coffee

making’ as two species of the newly discovered genus of ‘activities for which Italy has a great tradition of

excellence’. Thus we can say that the blend provides the endoxical premise of the Y-structure in figure 8.

Not only in the basic sense that the blend expresses the premise, but also in the stronger sense that the blend

ensures its endoxical status. By processing the blend, the addressee comes to recognize, almost to see, that

there is a functional genus to which the source and target entities belong.

The implicit datum of the enthymeme can be identified with the audience’s experience that, for the case of

fine arts, belonging to the functional genus entails a judgment of superiority, or at least of preference, for

Italian products/goods produced in Italy. While completely implicit, the datum is quite realistic in view of

the Italian audience of the ad: the great artistic heritage of Italy is one of the few ‘untouchable’ pillars of

national pride. From the endoxon and the datum the interim conclusion of the endoxical line can be derived:

‘Both coffee making and fine arts belong to a functional genus that entails the superiority of Italian

productions.’ At this point, one of the maxims of the locus from analogy can be invoked: ‘If X belongs to the

same functional genus of Y and belonging to this genus entails Z for Y, then Z is entailed for X too’.xix

Thanks to this maxim, we can move from the interim conclusion to the final conclusion, transferring the

judgement of superiority from X (‘Italian fine arts’, which is the source of the metaphor) to Y (‘Italian coffee

making’, the metaphor’s target).

The same locus from analogy and the same maxim, are invoked in the print ad for Avante TV channel

(Forceville 2008a:470-471; here figure 9) published in the Dutch magazine for young boys Kijk. Forceville

explains that:

In this ad for a TV channel, the metaphor is REMOTE CONTROL PAD IS SWISS ARMY KNIFE.

Whereas the target and source are predominantly rendered pictorially, the numbers, symbols,

and letters (‘progr’) help identify the remote control pad part of the metaphor, which

qualifies the metaphor as multimodal rather than purely pictorial. (Forceville 2008a:470)

At the level of visual structure, we have the fusion of a Swiss Army knife and a remote control pad. In

addition to Forceville’s remarks we observe that the baseline ‘Avante. A TV channel to explore’ enriches

and partially shifts the interpretation of the source and target of the metaphor. At the level of the meaning

operation it is watching the TV channel Avante – to which the remote control pad is linked metonymically –

that is blended with the idea of tinkering and exploring – to which the Swiss Army knife is linked

metonymically too. Again the copy of the advertisement plays an important role in guiding the correct

construal of the two input spaces that in the pictorial part are metonymically signalled by the fused objects

(figure 10). At the same time, the choice of the Swiss Army knife for the source, among various

multifunctional tools, is strategic; surely it was chosen thinking of the typical reader of the magazine, but it

was chosen also because it evokes a set of associations (an implicative complex for Black 1979; see also

Forceville 2008b and Danesi 1993, 2002) that makes the object likeable to young boys. As Forceville

(2008a:471) points out “the similarity is created (see Black, 1979:36); outside the present context we would

probably fail to see spontaneously any similarity between a remote control pad and a Swiss army knife.”

Figure 9

Figure 10

It is this created similarity that prompts the recognition and acceptance of a most unlikely endoxon: the

Swiss Army knife and Avante TV channel belong to the same functional genus of ‘playful tools that allow

one to indulge in many boy’s activities and explore the world’ (figure 11). Again the endoxon needs to

combine with a (mostly) implicit datum: the recognition that the likeability/ desirability of the Swiss Army

knife is caused precisely by its belonging to the functional genus of ‘playful tools that allow one to indulge in

many boy’s activities and explore the world’. From endoxon and datum the following provisional conclusion

can be deduced: ‘both Avante and Swiss Army knife belong to a functional genus that entails the desirability

of the tool’. At this point, the same maxim that was invoked in the previous example can be applied to

transfer the desirability to the product being advertised.

Figure 11

Both the Avante ad and the Fior Fiore Coop ad employ multimodal metaphors to convey an argument from

analogy. Yet, they differ in the use of it since Avante employs metaphor and locus from analogy directly to

transfer the desirability of an object to the product (thus supporting the evaluative standpoint of the ad),

whereas Fior Fiore Coop employs metaphor to reinforce the acceptability of an endoxon (‘In coffee making,

Italian productions are superior/preferable’), which, in turn, is enlisted to support the evaluative standpoint.

In both cases the multimodal metaphors are relevant for the arguments that the advertising messages put

forth. The meaning operations of multimodal metaphors unravelled through Blending Theory contribute

directly to the argumentation by providing essential information for reconstructing the inferential structure of

the arguments put forth in an enthymematic structure.

5.3 Multimodal metaphor without analogical argumentation: the case of the missing icebergs

Bosch ad for fridges with NoFrost Technology (figure 12) is an interesting case. In terms of the creativity

templates identified by Goldenberg and his group (see section 3), it could both be ascribed to the Pictorial

Analogy Template and to the Extreme Consequences Template, which is the second most frequent

advertising template and which depicts an unpleasant situation resulting from not using the product

advertised. In fact, Bosch ad shows an unpleasant situation resulting from not using the product by depicting

an iceberg-shaped block of ice inside a freezer. That the ambiguous photo indeed depicts a freezer, and not

an ice cave or some other Artic environment, becomes clear only by reading the baseline which says “If you

have icebergs in your fridge, they are missing somewhere else. The NoFrost Technology prevents icing in

the freezer and saves energy”. Apart from making the identification of target and source more accessible the

baseline text informs us that the unpleasant situation depicted is the symptom of another unpleasant situation:

the fact that the icebergs are missing somewhere else.

Figure 12

The visual structure of replacement (target with the shape of source) manifests a blend that is only

superficially a metaphor (icing looks like an iceberg, because both are pieces of ice). This metaphor can be

verbalized as follows: ICE IN THE FREEZER IS ICEBERG. Yet, the multimodal metaphor is conceptually

motivated by a chain of causally connected facts. Each one of these facts is a metonymy of the ‘cause-for-

effect’ type: ICE IN THE FREEZER IS [A CAUSE OF] GLOBAL WARMING, GLOBAL WARMING IS [A CAUSE OF]

ICEBERG MELTING IN THE ARTIC. .xx The effect of the metonymy is to tighten and shorten to human scalexxi

the long and loose causal chain of global warming that links the fact of having icing in the freezer and the

melting of polar icecaps. By reducing the causal process to human scale the agency and responsibility of the

addressee in the process are highlighted: it is almost as if your fridge ‘steals’ the polar icecaps! The blend in

figure 13 reflects this double metaphorical and metonymical mapping. In fact, the blend has two distinct

generic spaces: (a) ‘piece of ice’ corresponds to the basis of similarity (metaphor), while (b) ‘consequences

and causes of global warming’ corresponds to the general frame connecting the causally linked events

(metonymy).

Figure 13

How does this blend contribute to the argument supporting the standpoint of the ad? Using AMT we are able

to reconstruct a subordinatively complex argumentation consisting of three enthymemes (figures 14, 15 and

16) supporting the standpoint ‘if there is frosting in your fridge it is reasonable ceteris paribus to adopt a

Bosch fridge with NoFrost Technology’. The baseline contains the concrete attribute of the product (datum)

‘the NoFrost Technology prevents icing in the freezer and saves energy’ supporting the standpoint (figure

14). The locus invoked is the final cause, with the maxim ‘If a means is capable to bring about a goal it is

reasonable ceteris paribus to implement it’.xxii

Figure 14

The endoxon of the enthymeme in figure 14 – ‘if there is frosting in your fridge you should terminate what is

going on’ – is not a primary endoxon as it results from the subordinate enthymeme in figure 15. This second

enthymeme exploits the widely shared endoxon that it is a bad thing to be contributing to global warming

and clearly invokes the AMT locus from termination and setting up (see Greco Morasso 2011) and the

maxim is ‘If a situation is undesirable it is desirable to terminate it’ (figure 15).

Figure 15

The datum of the argument scheme in figure 15 ‘If there is frosting in your fridge then necessarily your

fridge causes global warming’ presents an hyperbolic exaggeration of the cause-effect relation. Advertisers

take advantage of this exaggeration and warn the consumer not to be ‘one of those people who causes global

warming’. This datum is supported by the third subordinate enthymeme in figure 16. The conditional sub-

argument presents the datum ‘if there is frosting in your fridge it is because the fridge is energy inefficient (it

is caused by energy inefficiency)’ and the endoxical premise ‘energy inefficiency is a cause of global

warming’. The ontological relation between the datum and the standpoint is one of efficient cause; the

maxim at work here is ‘If an event X is necessarily caused by a situation Y which also necessarily causes an

event Z, then the occurrence of X necessarily entails the occurrence of Z (is a certain sign of Z)’.

Figure 16

The multimodal text of the ad gives us mere hints for the reconstruction of this enthymeme. The metonymy

linking missing icebergs and icing in the fridge hints to a causal connection. However, it is clear that it is not

a direct one: in the real world icing in the fridge does not cause global warming! It is reasonable to suppose

that many readers of the ad will stop at a shallow processing of the message (see O’ Halloran 2003) and will

simply assume that there is some causal connection between these facts. Argumentative reconstruction,

however, needs to check how a critical, resolution oriented, reader would make sense of the ad. The mention

of energy saving in the baseline gives a hint to the correct reconstruction of the causal relations: the icing is

caused by energy inefficiency, which is also a contributing cause of global warming (and polar ice melting).

It can be observed that the specific maxim selected in the reconstruction is the one that the hypothetical

critical reader will have to apply to derive the conclusion from this causal configuration.

The Bosch NoFrost ad is interesting because it is superficially based on a multimodal metaphor, but it turns

out to have an inferential configuration where the locus from analogy plays no role. Instead, the meaning

operation in the blend turns out to be relevant for conveying an argument based on a causal locus, thanks to

its actual metonymic nature. Here the multimodal metaphor ICE IN THE FREEZER IS ICEBERG alone does not

impact directly on the reconstruction. However, the metonymy ICE IN THE FREEZER IS [A CAUSE OF] GLOBAL

WARMING, GLOBAL WARMING IS [A CAUSE OF] ICEBERG MELTING IN THE ARTIC does impact on the

reconstruction and it is argumentatively relevant. As mentioned in the Introduction, relations identified in

Rigotti and Greco Morasso’s typology of loci include different causal relation and these are related to

metonymy. This is the case for the Bosch NoFrost example.

6. Results of analysis

Our hypotheses (see Introduction) were: (1) that the meaning construction operations activated by pictorial

or multimodal metaphors guide the audience’s inference by manifesting the kind of locus invoked to license

the step from premises to conclusions in the enthymematic argument of the advertisement; and – if

hypothesis (1) is validated – (2) that a stable association exists between the meaning construction operation

activated by a pictorial or multimodal metaphor and the locus invoked. Section 5.2 has demonstrated

analytically (see Jacobs 1990) the plausibility of hypothesis (1) providing a detailed account of two examples

where the processing of the metaphor manifests the locus on which the inferential structure of the ad hinges.

Section 5.3 also provided an analysis of an ad where it is not directly the metaphor that guides the

reconstruction of the enthymeme. While this analysis further supports hypothesis (1), it also represents a

prima facie counterexample to hypothesis (2). As long as the Bosch ad can be seen as a case of multimodal

metaphor it disconfirms the hypothesis of a stable association of metaphor with the locus from analogy. The

analysis of this ad, however, also suggested a further avenue of investigation as the trope in question

combines features of metaphor and metonymy and it is the latter that is responsible for reconstructing the

causal reasoning of the ad. At is point it is worth broadening the view, by considering the results of the

analysis of the 16 advertisements of our corpus in terms of Blending Theory and AMT (summarized in Table

1), bearing in mind that the sample was created for purposes of qualitative analysis only (see Jacobs 1986,

Jackson 1986). Indeed, we have interpreted and analyzed each print ad separately; however, for reasons of

space, we are not discussing each analysis in full but rather we have collected them in Table 1. The table is

not meant either to compare or to count the frequency of the loci that we have found out in our corpus.

Table 1

Image of the advertisement Headline Visual structure Argumentative

loci

Nike Air

(from Goldenberg, Mazursky and

Solomon 1999)

The Air Essential. Something soft

between you and the pavement.

Introducing two new walking shoes from

Nike with Nike Air cushioning in the

heel. They’re very safe place to land.

Replacement

(target in the

context of source)

Analogy

Clerget

(from Forceville 1996)

Regardez mes chaussures! Le chaussure

en beauté.

Replacement

(target in the

context of source)

Analogy

Avante

(from Forceville 2008a)

Avante. A TV channel to explore. [Space

travel – espionage – discoveries – science

– military forces – submarines – motors –

aerospace – expeditions – cars – boats –

inventions]

Fusion Analogy

French Open

(from Goldenberg, Mazursky and

Solomon 1999)

Official ball of the 1988 French Open Fusion Instrumental

cause

and

Analogy

Botergoud

(from Goldenberg et al. 2009)

Butter made with seasalt Replacement Material cause

Dramamine

(from McQuarrie and Mick 1996)

First rule of travel Replacement

(target in the

context of source)

Analogy

Sony

(from Lagerwerf et al. 2012)

120mb, 250mb, 500mb, 2GB and now

5GB. Mega storage.

Fusion Final cause

Kingfisher

(from Phillips 2000)

Replacement

(source with the

shape of target)

Analogy

Bosch

(gold prize by Epica in 2012 category

“homes, furnishings and appliances”)

If you have icebergs in your fridge, they

are missing somewhere else. The NoFrost

Technology prevents icing in the freezer

and saves energy.

Replacement

(target with the

shape of source)

Final cause

and

Termination and

setting up

and

Efficient cause

Volkswagen

(gold prize by Epica in 2012,

category “automobiles”)

Precision parking. Park Assist by

Volkswagen.

Replacement Final cause

Volkswagen

(bronze prize by the Art Directors

Club Italy in 2010)

Accessori originali Volkswagen. Basta un

particolare sbagliato per distruggere un

mito. [Original accessories by

Volkswagen. A wrong detail is enough to

destroy a myth.]

Replacement 2 Final cause

and

Analogy

Pizza&Love

(gold prize by Ads of the World in

2011)

Fight for the last slice Juxtaposition Final cause

and

Termination and

setting up

Lavazza A Modo Mio

(from Donna Moderna 12th

December 2012)

Soavemente, a modo mio. [Pleasingly, in

your own way]

Juxtaposition Analogy

Herbal Essences

(from Donna Moderna 12th

December 2012)

Doma i capelli più selvaggi in 1 solo

shampoo. [Tame the wildest hair with

only one shampooing]

Juxtaposition Analogy

Fior Fiore Coop

(from Donna Moderna 12th

December 2012)

Goditi ogni giorno un capolavoro italiano.

[Enjoy every day an Italian masterpiece]

Replacement Genus to

species

and

Analogy

Askoll

(from Donna Moderna 12th

December 2012)

Emozioni quotidiane [Everyday

emotions]

juxtaposition Analogy

In 11 of the 16 ads of the corpus the inferential configuration is based on a locus from analogy and can be

reconstructed along the lines of the examples discussed in 5.2; three of them present the locus from analogy

in combination with another locus (locus from instrumental cause in French Open ad; two loci from final

cause in Volkswagen King Arthur ad; a locus from genus to species in Fior Fiore Coop ad). The remaining 5

print advertisements are organized following these loci: a locus from material cause in Botergoud butter ad; a

combination of locus from final cause, locus from efficient cause and locus from termination and setting up

in Bosch ad; a locus from final cause both in Sony ad and in Volkswagen hedgehog ad; a combination of

locus from final cause and locus from termination and setting up in Pizza&Love ad. For each of these five

ads, the visual structure hints at some similarity relation between source and target and thus at a metaphorical

relation.

Hypothesis (2), thus, is not fully validated: there is no stable association between pictorial and multimodal

metaphor and the locus from analogy in the cases of ads for Botergoud, Bosch, Sony, Volkswagen, and

Pizza&Love.

Interestingly, in this part of the sample we find other instances of the particular characteristics that were

detected in the Bosch ad in 5.3. Consider, for instance, Botergoud butter ad, which was taken by Goldenberg

et al. (2009) as an example of the ‘metaphor tool’. In the visual structure of the ad the butter curl’s shape

resembles a sea wave, suggesting a metaphorical relation: BOTERGOUD BUTTER IS SEA WAVE. The fact that

both Botergoud butter curls and sea waves are salty is consistent with this similarity interpretation. Yet, even

if this image of salty butter waves is clearly inviting, what is decisive from an argumentative viewpoint is not

simply the similarity (both the butter and the sea are wave-shaped and salty) but the indication of the origin

of the ingredient: Botergoud butter is made with sea salt. It is the locus from the material cause (the relation

between the ingredient and the product) that enables the transfer of the positive connotations of sea salt

(supposedly a natural, healthy, higher quality ingredient) to Botergoud butter, as shown in the AMT analysis

in figure 17. Seen from this angle, the relationship between Botergoud butter and the sea wave turns out to be

metonymical: the material for the product.

Figure 17

7. Conclusions

In this paper we have explored the issue of the argumentative relevance of pictorial and multimodal

metaphors in print product advertisements, focusing on the relationship between the meaning construction

process at work in the trope and the inferential structure of the argument. First, we have laid down the

groundwork, characterizing advertising as an argumentative activity type and outlining its generic

argumentation structure. From a brief examination of the literature on pictorial and multimodal tropes and on

visual argumentation we have drawn the basic tools for describing the visual structure of tropes and the idea

that it is possible to reconstruct pictorial messages as enthymemes, albeit with a partial loss of their semantic

richness. In the second part of the article, we set out to investigate the argumentation stage of a small corpus

of print ads using Blending Theory to capture the meaning construction operation of the metaphors and the

Argumentum Model of Topics to reconstruct the inferential structure of the enthymemes. Coupling these two

analyses made it possible to look at the correspondence between metaphors and loci. The analyses show that

the meaning construction operation of pictorial or multimodal metaphors can guide the reconstruction of an

enthymeme based on the locus from analogy. In such cases, metaphors work at the level of the endoxical

premise of the argument by pointing out to the viewer the relevant category – functional genus – to which

source and target belong. Thus, metaphors turn out to be jointly relevant at the level of the reconstruction of

premises (see level i in section 1) and in the recovery of the argument scheme (see level iii in section 1).

Most of the ads in our corpus exhibit the same kind of inferential functioning based on the locus of analogy,

but other loci are also present. This finding gives some support to our initial hypothesis (1) that multimodal

metaphors guide the audience along the inference path proposed by the argument and provides a prima facie

disconfirmation of hypothesis (2) that they do so through a stable association between the metaphorical

meaning construction operation and the locus from analogy. The counterexamples are constituted by ads

where the pictorial and multimodal elements are analysable as metaphors, because they involve a mapping

based on visual similarity (e.g., icing in the freezer looks like an iceberg, butter curl looks like a sea wave).

However, they are not based on analogy at the inferential level since they invoke different loci-relations,

mainly causal ones. We have observed that in these examples the meaning construction operation realized by

the trope is complex and combines features of metaphor and metonymy. Further research is needed to find

out whether a stable correlation exists between pictorial or multimodal metonymy and the invocation of

causal loci in the argument. In order to properly carry out this research it will be necessary to deepen our

understanding of multimodal metonymy, which remains an under-researched topic (see, however, Forceville

2009), and develop principled criteria for setting it apart from metaphor.

Another issue which remains open for future investigation is the ‘seriousness’ of advertising argumentation:

does an advert argue or does it mostly entertain while pretending to argue? How far can we go in imposing a

maximally argumentative reconstruction (see van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004) of the advertising

message without losing contact with a pragmatically realistic account of its interpretation by an ordinary

consumer? Advertising often provides reasons to potential consumers in the form of weak communicative

implicatures (see section 2, and Jacobs 2000) so that the advertiser’s argumentative commitment is easily

deniable and the text can be taken either as completely non argumentative, or as a playful pretence of

argument. A comprehensive pragmatic and rhetorical analysis of multimodal advertising texts will have to

ascertain to what extent the choice of multimodal resources, and of tropes in particular, is affected by these

tactical considerations.

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i On arguments proposing an inferential path see Pinto’s (1996:168) characterization of arguments as “invitation to

inference”. On the active role of the audience in enthymematic arguments see Bitzer’s (1959) classic paper. Rocci

(2006) contains a detailed discussion of how the pragmatic inferences that the audience has to draw to reconstruct the

implicit premises of an enthymeme are intertwined with the argumentative inference that the enthymeme invites the

audience to draw to secure acceptance of the conclusion.

ii “In Aristotle, the adjective endoxos (from en ‘in’ and doxa ‘opinion’ or ‘fame’) refers to propositions that are in the

common opinion and, as a consequence, are generally accepted within a community (see Tardini 2005:281). In the

Topics, Aristotle gives an articulated definition of endoxa: “ ‘[endoxa are those opinions] which commend themselves

to all, or to the majority, or to the wise – that is or to all of the wise or to the majority or to the most famous and

distinguished of them’ (Topics I:100b 21-23)” (Rocci 2006:425).

iii To put it in a different way: our knowledge of the meaning of a locus-relation coincides with knowing its maxims.

Ideally, all maxims pertaining to a certain locus are semantic postulates of the locus-relation within a certain folk

ontology.

iv Metonymy is a rhetorical trope where one term (vehicle or source) substitutes another term (target) “by means of its

relation to” it (Lakoff and Johnson 2003[1980]: 39; Kövecses 2010:173). In cognitive linguistics, the two terms of a

metonymy are understood as belonging to the same domain (Kövecses 2010). Some examples are producer for product

in She’s wearing an Armani, object used for user in The guitar is not well tonight, container for the contained in Have

another glass!, institution for the people responsible in You will never get the university to agree to that, the place for

the event in Pearl Harbor still has an effect on our foreign policy, the place for the institution in The White House isn’t

saying anything, instrument for action in She shampooed her hair, effect for cause in It’s a slow road, time for an object

The 7:20 is late (Lakoff and Johnson 2003 [1980]:35-40; Kövecses 2010:171-173; Fahnestock 2011:103).

v The idea that certain argumentative activity types can be described in terms of the generic form of the standpoints that

stem from the main purpose of the activity has been first developed by Filimon (2011a) in order to analyze the genre of

CEO’s letters to investors accompanying companies’ annual reports. In Filimon’s work the idea is then further extended

to the reconstruction of the generic argumentation structure immediately supporting the generic practical standpoint of

the letters. The idea of a generic argumentation structure, as we will see promptly, is relevant also to the analysis of

advertisements.

vi On advertising as practical reasoning see also Walton (2009).

vii As Rigotti (2008:566) shows “within the ontology of action, [the] locus from the final cause focuses on the relation

connecting the end (goal, purpose) of an action with the action itself.” We can identify an argumentation governed by a

locus from the final cause in every product advertisement having as the final conclusion the positive standpoint You

should buy product X.

viii A billboard for Pampero rum released in Italy in the 90s had, in fact, good reasons to leave the positive evaluative

standpoints implicit. The headline ‘Il rum più bevuto nei peggiori bar di Caracas [The most drunk rum in the worst bars

in Caracas]’ is presented as the only explicit reason for buying the product, which seems to be inconsistent with the

positive evaluative standpoint that viewers expect to encounter in product advertisements. How can the worst bars in

Caracas give a positive view of the product? The viewer is invited to evoke the scenario of the seediest parts of Caracas,

with, for example, very warm bars where sweaty masculine men and attractive women drink and dance. These traits of

the places where the rum is drunk are presented as relevant appealing features related to an alcoholic drink, thus making

them part of the argument for the standpoint ‘It is desirable to drink Pampero’.

ix The notion of weakly communicated implicature is not used by Jacobs (2000) but we believe it perfectly fits the kind

of communication design that he is describing in advertisements. The notion of weakly communicated implicatures or

weak implicatures has been developed within Relevance Theory, in particular in connection with the meaning effects of

poetic language (see Pilkington 2000). Weak implicatures are assumptions that can help in the construction of a relevant

interpretation of an utterance but are not necessary to arrive at such an interpretation. Recipients assume a greater

degree of responsibility when deriving weaker implicatures, which, as a consequence, can be less surely ascribed to

authorial intention. Alan Durant (2010:198) concludes his discussion of deceptive advertising from a legal and

pragmatic point of view by observing that, in view of the fact that claims can be implied with different degrees of

strength, it is difficult to draw a line between the “implied meanings authorized by an advert” – which “should be

considered the responsibility of the advertiser” – and those that are “wilful reading, fuelled by desire or aspiration on

the part on the consumer”. This uncertainty on where to draw the boundary “allows considerable scope for potentially

unfair commercial practices”.

x There is a profound consonance between this research and those few scholars, such as Marsh (2007), who approach

rhetorical inventio in advertising from an explicitly rhetorical perspective. Marsh deals precisely with those “idea-

generation processes” to which the advertising literature refers with the term “creativity” and which correspond to

“rhetorical invention” (Marsh 2007:170). According to Marsh, while advertising scholarship suggests starting the idea

generation with product analysis, no structured method is actually proposed to accomplish this task. The method

proposed by Marsh applies the four Aristotelian causes (formal, material, efficient, final) to product analysis in order to

provide a set of relations to go beyond simple reliance on the copywriter’s “associative ability” (Marsh 2007:174). In

the Argumentum Model of Topics (Rigotti and Greco Morasso 2010) the four Aristotelian causes feature prominently

among the ontological relations underlying argumentative inference (see, for instance, Rigotti 2008 on final cause).

xi David Mazursky, personal communication, February 2011.

xii The power of metaphor as the most natural way of creating new concepts departing from already known ones was

already clear in Gianbattista Vico’s La scienza nuova (for a study on Vico’s thought on metaphor see Danesi 1993).

xiii Fauconnier and Turner (2006 [1998]: 307) give the following preliminary characterization of mental spaces: “Mental

spaces are small conceptual packets constructed as we think and talk, for purposes of local understanding and action.

Mental spaces are very partial assemblies containing elements, and structured by frames and cognitive models. They are

interconnected, and can be modified as thought and discourse unfold.” On the relation of mental spaces to domains and

discourse worlds see Fauconnier (1994:xxxvi-xxxvii).

xiv The argumentative role of rhetorical figures has been acknowledged since Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1992)

pointing out that rhetorical figures would be useless without their argumentative role (see also Reboul 1989, Fanhestock

1999, Tindale 2004, Plantin 2009).

xv A discussion of these big background issues clearly exceeds the limits of this paper. Certainly, given that we import

the machinery of Blending Theory in a study concerned with argumentative inference, it becomes legitimate to ask how

much of its underlying views of human inference we want to import. We hope to fully discuss this issue in a future

publication. For the time being, our AMT analyses of the inferential structure of the ads already makes clear what we

consider an adequate treatment of inference in view of the critical/evaluative goals of argumentation theory.

xvi Note that, by design, mapping operations on mental spaces are not necessarily truth-preserving (nor presumption

preserving) and, as such, they do not immediately suit the normative and critical preoccupations of argumentation

theory. Fauconnier (1994:xxxix-xl) makes it very clear that the constraints governing mental space creation do not rule

out “contradiction”, but just “impossible cognitive construction”, that is “cases where the grammatical instructions for

building a mental space cannot be carried out”.

xvii Also in other theories we find a close idea that argument schemes are necessary for the reconstruction of

enthymemes because they “enable an argument analyst to fill in implicit assumptions needed to make sense” of an

enthymeme (Cf. Walton, Reed and Macagno 2008:189). Furthermore, Katzav and Reed (2004) see argument schemes

as being based on conditional “relations of conveyance”, which include cause, part, class membership, etc.

xviii Rigotti and Greco Morasso take the notion of a common functional genus from Walton and Macagno (2009:158). In

their paper they also discuss in detail the Pragma-dialectical version of arguments from analogy (Cf. for instance Van

Eemeren et al. 2007: 138), which does not make use of the notion of functional genus. Reasons of space and of

exploding complexity prevent us to discuss here the alternatives to AMT. So, we simply stick to applying the AMT

account of argumentative inference to the question of the argumentative relevance of pictorial and multimodal

metaphors.

xix We are enormously grateful to Eddo Rigotti for the long and insightful discussions on the treatment of the locus from

analogy in AMT, and, in particular, for suggesting this maxim.

xx Barcelona (2003:10-12) argues that it may be the case for metaphor to be conceptually motivated by metonymy or,

vice versa, for metonymy to be conceptually motivated by metaphor. The interaction of metaphor and metonymy is still

a debated issue in cognitive linguistics (see contributions in Barcelona 2003 and in Dirven and Pörings 2002).

xxi ‘Achieve human scale’ is the purpose of all blending operations (Fauconnier and Turner 2006 [1998]:339). Newly

structured blended spaces must be easily grasped and handled by human beings.

xxii The expression ceteris paribus ‘all other things being equal’ signals that this specific maxim of the locus from the

final cause is defeasible: there might be other preferable means to bring about the same goal. On the different maxims

of the locus from the final cause and their defeasible or demonstrative nature see Rigotti (2008).