Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing - Volume 38, Issue 1, 2016

Multimodal argumentation: Building bridges between argumentation theory and multimodal analysis

Since the end of the 90s there has been an increasing interest in the analysis of images and in their interplay with written language. Even though images, especially when used in advertisements, have already been studied within rhetorical approaches to communication and visual studies, there still lacks a systematic account of their contribution to the way standpoints are put forward and argumentation is advanced. At the same time, within the field of discourse analysis interest has been expressed in the analysis of visual and other non-verbal elements of communication. Nevertheless, no special attention has been paid within this field to those communicative situations where the support of a standpoint with arguments and the acceptability of the argumentation are at stake. In order to be able to analyse the various aspects of multimodal documents on their merits and to account for their argumentative relevance it is necessary to build bridges between argumentation theory and multimodal analysis. This paper discusses critically the current state of affairs regarding the analysis of multimodal documents from an argumentation studies perspective and argues for a systematic study of the interplay of the verbal and the visual modes within the framework of Pragma-dialectics. Three print advertisements are analysed in order to illustrate the merits of such an approach to the argumentative analysis of multimodal documents.

Interchangeable or not? The middle response option and the non-response option in Voting Advice Applications

In Stemwijzer, the Netherlands’ most popular Voting Advice Application, users express their opinions to political statement on a three-point scale (agree, neither of both, disagree) supplemented with a no-opinion answer (skip this question). Based on these answers, Stemwijzer gives a voting advice: it computes which political party’s or parties’ viewpoints have most similarities with the user’s views. The current research is aimed at determining whether VAA users use the middle response option and the non-response option the way they are meant; the middle response option should indicate an attitude in the middle of the scale, expressing ambivalence or a dilemma. This attitude is included in the voting advice, whereas the non-response option indicates a non-attitudinal response that is not taken into account in the voting advice. To investigate how the middle response option and non-response option are used, inhabitants of the city of Helmond were asked to fill out a VAA (N = 55); some while thinking aloud (N = 20). In addition, all participants were interviewed about their answer choices afterwards. Results show that functions of the middle response option and non-response option are interchangeable. However, when explicitly asked to describe these functions, VAA users are better able to make a distinction. Results also show that VAA users are unaware of the consequences a choice for the middle response option or the non-response option has for the voting advice. All in all, the findings show that users too often choose the middle response instead of the non-response option.

Powerful language: A literature review on language intensity in four research fields

In recent decades, language intensity, intensification and intensifiers are studied in different research fields: in descriptive linguistics, evaluative literature, social psychology and text analytical discourse studies. However, questions raise about the interpretations researchers in those fields have regarding language intensity: their concepts are diverse. First, it is questionable what kind of utterances are strengthened through language intensity: evaluative or descriptive utterances. Secondly, there are differences between the studies whether language intensity only contain strengthening or also weakening elements. Thirdly, the amount in which the meaning of an utterance changes through language intensity is debatable. Lastly, language intensity studies differ in the linguistic elements that are considered as intensifying elements. In this literature review, the research traditions are compared: how is language intensification studied in various fields, where do they contribute and where are the bottlenecks? This article concludes with a proposal for a unified approach to language intensity, intensification and intensifiers as a stylistic phenomenon, in order to carry out more systematic research on this topic in the future.

Fatal spelling errors? An experimental study into the way in which spelling errors in job application letters and sponsorship requests affect decision making

In this article we study how professionals value spelling errors in job applications and sponsor letters and how these judgements affect their decisions to hire a candidate or donate money. In a 2x2x2 experiment 398 participants read an application letter or a sponsorship request letter with or without spelling errors and evaluated several aspects of the letter, the author and the chance of a successful outcome of the procedure. When we compare the direct effects of spelling errors on several aspects of evaluation we find no important differences between the two genres in the way spelling errors affect judgements. When we analyze the relations between the evaluation aspects with the help of mediation analysis, we find that the path from spelling error to attributed success of the application is mediated by the evaluation of the writer while the attributed success of the sponsor letter is mediated by the evaluation of the text quality. The results are discussed in view of the opinion chic that spelling errors are fatal in job applications.