This is from the documentation for plot.svm
(http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/e1071/e1071.pdf). A couple more examples can be found there as well. But the formula parameter just looks like it specifies the variables to vary over for a given plot. If you post your data or an example of it, we could maybe provide a more detailed solution.
m2 <- svm(Species~., data = iris)
plot(m2, iris, Petal.Width ~ Petal.Length,
slice = list(Sepal.Width = 3, Sepal.Length = 4))