Argumentation, relevance theory and persuasion: an analysis of onomatopoeia in Japanese publications using manga stylistics
Rohan, Olivia, Sasamoto, RyokoORCID: 0000-0002-1644-6897 and Jackson, Rebecca
(2018)
Argumentation, relevance theory and persuasion: an analysis of onomatopoeia in Japanese publications using manga stylistics.
International Review of Pragmatics, 10
(2).
pp. 219-242.
ISSN 1877-3095
This paper presents an application of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995) to pictures by studying the role that weak implicatures may play in the persuasiveness of multimodal argumentative discourse. We take a relevance-theoretic approach to the discussion of visual and multimodal argumentation with a particular focus on the role of onomatopoeia. To examine the possible mechanism by which persuasion operates through onomatopoeia, we analyse a corpus of Japanese-style comics (manga), where visuals and verbal text interact to convey onomatopoeia. We argue that the use of onomatopoeia in manga contributes to the recovery of weak implicatures which, in turn, helps to reinforce the persuasiveness of the communicated messages in the examples analysed.
Metadata
Item Type:
Article (Published)
Refereed:
Yes
Uncontrolled Keywords:
onomatopoeia; the showing-saying continuum; impressions; multimodality; manga; relevance