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Rhetoric

Brian Larson

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Flag-Waving: Visual Arguments, Verbal Reconstruction, And Speaker Intentions, Brian Larson Jul 2018

Flag-Waving: Visual Arguments, Verbal Reconstruction, And Speaker Intentions, Brian Larson

Brian Larson

This study extends previous work in visual argumentation by studying speakers’ own verbal reconstructions of their visual communicative acts. The researcher interviewed 70 persons wearing or carrying American flags at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia in July 2016, to determine whether “speakers” make arguments by wearing or carrying it. For more than 20 years, theorists have debated whether it is meaningful to speak of "visual arguments," whether they can be purely visual, non-verbal communication, and whether and how they can be reconstructed in the form of the conclusion-support structure of an argument. This analysis provides …