Unleashing Argumentation in Netflix’s Docudramas: Illocutionary Pluralism and Multimodal Rhetoric in the Trailer for Queen Cleopatra (2023)

Abstract

Trailers for movies are generally considered aesthetic independent multimodal fragmented discourse. Since one of the key features of trailers for docudramas is to promote arguments in order to propagate the importance and worthiness of documentaries to be watched, trailers rely heavily on limited fragmented compositions and implicitness to arouse the viewer’s curiosity. This study aims to provide an enthymematic interpretation of the trailer for Netflix’s brand-new docudrama Queen Cleopatra, which has resulted in immense controversy in Egypt since its release in April 2023. Thus, the study investigates how the enthymematic property of the selected trailer is constructed through the illocutionary pluralism in the characters’ argumentative polylogues and presented through the interplay of verbal-visual semiotic resources such as montage techniques, music, moving images, colors, etc. This study adopts Wildfeuer and Pollaroli’s (2017) theoretical framework of multimodal argumentation in movie trailers supported by Lewiński’s (2021) illocutionary pluralism in argumentative polylogues. The framework foregrounds the importance of the surrounding context (Pragma-Dialectics) in multimodal rhetoric and dwells upon two levels: logic of film discourse interpretation and argumentative reconstruction of the movie trailer. Findings have revealed that the interplay of cross-modal devices and speech acts stimulates spectators to form hypotheses and draw inferences on the cinematic discourse they are subsequently invited to watch and thus to retrieve arguments in support of the claim that the advertised documentary is worth watching.