Faculty of Social Sciences
ATTENTION: THIS COURSE'S PROGRAM IS TEMPORARY AND WILL BE UPDATED IN THE
FUTURE. THE OFFICIAL PROGRAM WILL APPEAR ON MOODLE
Visual Studies*
63-012-18
Lecturer: Dr. Galia Yanoshevsky
School year: 2014
Semester: 1st
Credit: 1 annual credit
Office Hours: Wednesday 10-12
Office: Northern Campus, 1004 Kort Building, room 402
Office phone: 03-5318232
Email: galia.yanoshevsky@biu.ac.il
A. Course objectives and purposes:
This class is about visual studies. We will focus on questions of interpretations of visuals, from
painting, through photography, caricatures and film.
We will start out with some theories of pictures (Barthes, Mitchell, etc.). We will also introduce the
theory of argumentation and will look at the various components of an argument (claims, premises,
conclusions). We will then try to find out if and how visuals (photographs, movies, advertisements,
newspapers, digital media) can be argumentative (i.e. appeal to our reason) and not just
persuasive (i.e. appeal to our emotions).
B. Course Topics:
 Introduction - Picture theory (Mitchell, Barthes)
- Semiotics: images, symbols, representation
 Introduction – Argumentation theory (Aristotle, Perelman)
- the rhetorical triangle: ethos, pathos, logos
- the speaker
- the audience
- the structure of argument
- appeal to emotions
 Pictures as arguments
o Text and image
o Framing in the written press
o Image events
o Making a point through photography: photographers and political controversies.
o Emotions and advertisements
o The reasonable language of advertisements
o Visual arguments in scientific textbooks (optional)
o Visualizing geography – the visual construction of public space (optional).
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C. Course Requirements and Final Grading*
Reading assignments: pass/fail note + presence – 20% (required for passing the course)
Exam – 80%
Note: presence is mandatory. More than three absences will result in automatic course
cancellation.
D. Course Program
1. Introduction
Read: Mitchell, Barthes
2. Introduction
Read: Perelman
3. The rhetorical triangle: the speaker, the audience and the message/ethos, Pathos, Logos
Read: Toulmin
4. The structure of argument
Read: Amossy, Doxa
5. Reaching the reader : Premises
Read Groarke
6. Can Toulmin be fitted for visuals?
Read Kress & van Leeuwen
7. Front page layout and argumentation
Read Delicath & Deluca
8. Framing Image events
Read Cara Finnegan
9. Photography 1. The skull controversy and the naturalistic enthymeme
Read Cole (Battle of Paris)
10. Photography 2. Framing the Algerian War– Guest Lecturer: Nir Avissar
Read Helene Joffee
11. The language of advertisement – Appeal to emotion
12. The reasonable language of Advertisements
Read Yanoshevsky: Decision Making in advertisements
13. Conclusion and mock-up exam.
Bibliography
References with an * are mandatory reading
Adam, Jean-Michel, and Marc Bonhomme. L'argumentation publicitaire : rhétorique de l'éloge et de
la persuasion. Paris: Nathan, 1997.
N/A
* Amossy, Ruth, “How to Do Things with Doxa: Toward an Analysis of Argumentation in Discourse”,
Poetics Today 23:3 (Fall 2002), pp. 465-487. [‫]תדפיס‬
Ejournal (424131)
* Barthes, Roland. The Responsibility of Forms. Ed. Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Lang,
1985.
001.51 BAR r (82728) – English library
Birdsell, David S.and Leo Groarke. "Toward a Theory of Visual Argument.” Argumentation and
Advocacy 33 (1996): 1-10.
Ejournal (438060)
Blair, Anthony J. “The Possibility and Actuality of Visual Arguments." Argumentation and Advocacy
33 (1996): 23-39.
Ejournal (438060)
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Blair, Anthony J., “The Rhetoric of Visual Arguments.” Defining Visual Rhetoric. Eds. Charles A. Hill
and Marguerite Helmers. Mahwah, New Jersey, London: Laurence Erlbaum Associates, 2004: 4162.
Reserved under DEF 2004 (1132715)
Blair, Anthony J., “The Possibility and Actuality of Visual Arguments." Argumentation and
Advocacy 33 (1996): 23-39.
Ejournal (438060)
Burgin, Victor. “Looking at photographs.” Thinking Photography, Ed. Victor Burgin. London:
Macmillan, 1994 (1982).
770.1 THI 1982 (1132702) – French library
* Cole, Joshua, "Remembering the Battle of Paris", French Politics, Culture and Society, vol. 21,
no. 3, Fall 2003, pp. 21-50.
Ejournal (1217529)
* Delicath, John W. and Kevin Michael Deluca. “Image Events, The Public Sphere, and
Argumentative Practice: The Case of Radical Environmental Groups.” Argumentation 17 (2003):
315-333.
Ejournal (131783)
Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader. London: Hutchinson, 1981.
801.9 ECO r (7196) – 1979 ed. – English and Literature libraries
* Finnegan, Cara, 2001, "The Naturalistic Enthymeme and Visual Argument: Photographic
Representation in the Skull Controversy", Argumentation and Advocacy, Winter 2001: 133-149.
Ejournal (438060)
Fleming, David. “Can Pictures be Arguments?” Argumentation and Advocacy 33 (1996): 11-22.
Ejournal (438060)
* Groarke, Leo, 2007, "Four theses on Toulmin and Visual Argument", Lecture given in OSSA,
International Conference on Argumentation, June 2007.
N/A
Groarke, Leo. “Toward a Pragma-dialectics of Visual Argument.” Advances in Pragma-dialectics.
Ed. Frans H. van Eemeren. Amsterdam : Sic Sat/ Virginia : Vale Press, Newport News, 2002 : 137151.
N/A
* Joffee, Helen, "The Power of Visual Material: Persuasion, Emotion and Identification". Diogenes,
2008: 55: 84-93.
Ejournal (452832)
Kohn, Ayelet. “Comic Strip, Poem, and Journal Article: Three Models of Image/text.” Hebrew—a
Living Language, III: studies on the Language in Its Social and Cultural Contexts, Literature,
Meaning, Culture 30. Eds. Rina Ben-Shahar and Gideon Toury. Tel-Aviv: Tel-Aviv University and
Hakibbutz Hamehuchad, 2003: 167-189. (Hebrew).
‫שפ תשנ"ג‬.‫ עבר‬B408 (214561) – Judaica, Stacks (in central library) and Translation libraries
* Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen. “Front Pages: (The Critical) Analysis of Newspaper
Layout.”Approaches to Media Discourse. Eds. Alan Bell and Peter Garrett. Oxford/
Massachussetts: Blackwell, 1998: 186-219.
302.23014 APP 1998 (1096099)
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* Mitchell, W.J. Thomas. Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology. Chicago: Chicago University Press,
1987.
704.94 MIT i (48875) – English and Philosophy libraries
Mitchell, W.J. Thomas. Picture Theory. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
700.1 MIT p (289899) – English library
O’Keefe, Daniel J. “The concepts of argument and arguing.” Advances in Argumentation Theory
and Research. Eds. J.Robert Cox and Charles Arthur Willard. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1982: 3-23.
N/A
* Perelman Chaim, 1982. The Realm of Rhetoric, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame,
London,. Ch. 2 “Argumentation, Speaker and Audience” pp. 9-20. [ ‫] תדפיס‬
808 PER r (14241) – English library
168 PER r (14241) – Philosophy library
Shelley, Cameron, 1996, "Rhetorical and Demonstrative Modes of Visual Argument: Looking at
Images of Human Evolution", Argumentation and Advocacy, Fall 1996: 53-68.
Ejournal (438060)
Toulmin, Stephen, The Uses of Argument, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1958, pp. 94107.
160 TOU u (228361) – Philosophy library
* Toulmin, Stephen. E. The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003
(1958).
160 TOU u (228361) – Philosophy library
Yanoshevsky, Galia, "The Possibility and Actuality of Image Events: Framing Image Events in the
Press and on the Internet," Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture, edited by
Joseph
Wilferth
and
Kevin
DeLuca,
Enculturation
6.2.,
2009,
http://enculturation.gmu.edu/6.2/yanoshevsky. 25 p.
* Yanoshevsky, Galia, "Advertising and High-Risk Decision Making – Publicity as bouleusis", Paper
presented at the international conference on rhetoric (Usages et fonctions de la rhétorique.
Regards interdisciplinaires sur la raison pratique), Brussels, 16-18 May 2013.
N/A
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