I am infinitely grateful that the workshop on multimodal argumentation I started at Salzburg last April now find its nearly seamless and very smooth continuation at the University of Groningen. Moving to the Netherlands, people interested in studying arguments expressed in multiple semiotic modes find an established and networked community of well-versed argumentation scholars. Generally, this is owing to a long-standing Dutch research tradition that honors the significance of logic and rhetoric in descriptions of everyday argumentation. Specifically, in the case of present-day Groningen, this has to do with a recent cooperation between philosophers, linguists and multimodality (communications) people, who share an interest in exploring the reconstruction and evaluation of multimodal arguments (in modern media).
The two-day workshop takes place on 13 and 14 June 2024 and features 16 contributions on the varied field of multimodal argumentation. While some are more strongly concerned with theoretical or methodological issues of argument reconstruction and evaluation, all presenters feature an application of their proposed framework to topical instances of multimodal argumentation in diverse media. These range from advertising (both commercial and social) and activism over product demonstrations and televangelism to online extremism and fact-checking videos on social media.
I look forward to meeting many of the colleagues who gathered at Salzburg and some new faces. I am happy that an idea we jointly developed with Janina Wildfeuer and Assimakis Tseronis saw the light of day and is now on the verge of becoming serial.
copyright poster design: Franz Tilman Frommann (Instagram + @franztilman)
Prof. Dr. Hartmut Stöckl 