Multimodal argumentation and intersemiotic inferences: a semiolinguistic study

Abstract

The discourse emerges from the multisemiotic complexity that characterizes language and, for this reason, encompasses different dimensions in the investigation of discourses materialized in texts.  In this paper, based on Semiolinguistic Theory of Discourse, proposed by Charaudeau (2008; 2016; 2018), we intend to demonstrate that the argumentative dimension of a discourse can be engendered by the strategic use of different modalities, which we call multimodal argumentation. For this, using notions of internal centripetal inference and external centrifugal inference we analyze three media texts constituted by the compulsory association of word and image, namely: cartoon, comic and advertisement, in addition to discussing the relationship, apparently dissonant, between headline and photograph that figure in two news, subjectivity of the production instance in a predominantly informative genre. The analyses indicated that, through a specific cut of the social space, the subjects involved in the communicative exchanges integrate and correlate the multiple semioses in the processes of production and movements internal and external to the utterance.