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Multimodal Argumentation and Rhetoric in Media Genres
Edited by Assimakis Tseronis and Charles Forceville
[Argumentation in Context 14] 2017
► pp. 189–216

Chapter 7
Seeing the untold

Multimodal argumentation in movie trailers

This chapter considers movie trailers as a specific type of multimodal argumentative discourse and asks for their rhetorical and promotional structure. By applying a formal-logical as well as an argumentative perspective combining Pragma-Dialectics and the Argumentum Model of Topics, it aims at a reconstruction of the logical units that guide the viewer’s imagination and hypothesis-making about the story of the promoted film. On this basis, the combined approach makes it possible to reconstruct the standpoint and multimodal arguments of the example movie trailer of the film Gravity.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Movie trailers as multimodal argumentative and enthymematic discourses
  • 3.Enthymematic interpretations: Towards an integrated method for the analysis of movie trailers
    • 3.1Basic meaning construction in movie trailers: The logic of film discourse interpretation
    • 3.2The argumentative reconstruction of movie trailers: Pragma-Dialectics and the Argumentum Model of Topics
  • 4.Multimodal argumentative strategies in the trailer for Gravity
    • 4.1Basic meaning construction in the trailer for Gravity
    • 4.2The argumentative reconstruction of the trailer for Gravity
  • 5.Concluding remarks
  • Notes
  • References
  • List of primary sources
Published online: 20 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aic.14.08wil
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List of primary sources

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Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Febrianti, Yusnita
2019. Indonesian Movie Trailers: Persuading Movie-Goers Through Incomplete Narratives. In Discourses of Southeast Asia [The M.A.K. Halliday Library Functional Linguistics Series, ], ► pp. 111 ff. DOI logo
Hassan Hassan, Inas & Sara Yahya ElMansy
2023. Unleashing Argumentation in Netflix’s Docudramas: Illocutionary Pluralism and Multimodal Rhetoric in the Trailer for Queen Cleopatra (2023). Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies ► pp. 84 ff. DOI logo
Lugea, Jane
2018. The year’s work in stylistics 2017. Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 27:4 ► pp. 329 ff. DOI logo
Macagno, Fabrizio & Rosalice Botelho Wakim Souza Pinto
2021. Reconstructing Multimodal Arguments in Advertisements: Combining Pragmatics and Argumentation Theory. Argumentation 35:1 ► pp. 141 ff. DOI logo

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