ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Discourse Correspondence Between Argumentative And Grammatical Sequences

• by: Sorin Stati - University of Bologna, Italy

1. The meaning of parallelism
‘Parallelism’ in linguistics became a familiar term in the 20th century, thanks to Charles Serrus’ book “Le parallelism logico-grammatical” (1933). But the relationship between logic and grammar has been the subject of research since the end of the 19th century. See, for instance, “Raporturile între gramaticà si logicé” by the Romanian scholar Lazàr Sàineanu (1891) and especially the long methodological tradition called ‘the logical analysis of the sentence’. Are subject and predicate logical or grammatical units? To what extent must the grammatical sequence of units assimilate logical terminology, and vice-versa? I suggest recognising two levels in the content of argumentative texts, the S-level and the A-level (syntactic and argumentative levels), each one with its specific items. This is our first hypothesis. It was set up because of several terminological analogies, such as ‘(grammatical) proposition’ vs ‘(logical) proposition’, ‘concessive clause’ vs the argumentative figure called ‘concession’, the ’cause’ considered with this name in grammar as well as in logic, and so on and so forth. For more details concerning this kind of analysis see Stati, 2002. In the model of van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1981) segmentation in A-units is constantly compared with that in speech acts, whereas in our model the sequence of A-units is paralleled with the sequence of S-functions. The researcher who adopts the hypothesis of a parallelism between these two levels of analysis has to accept some prerequisites.

A complete parallelism would mean at least two properties:
– an inventory of units, equal in number, on both levels; the units enter
into syntagmatic relations in the text; these relations belong to a relatively small paradigm;
– a certain x-type relation may either belong to a traditional species (our old and familiar acquaintances ‘coordination’ and ‘subordination’) or to a new species, common to both levels; a strong parallelism could mean that to an S-relation x in (a x b) in texts always corresponds the same relation x on the A-level of the same texts considering the A-sequence (m x n). Here a, b, m, n are variables and x is a constant. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Argument As Empire Formation: The Letters Of Elihu Yale

• by: K.E. Supriya - University: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

A chronicle of the history of British empire in India as it was staged from within the confines of Fort St. George in Madras, India has this to say about one of the governor-generals of the British East India company:
An old feeling comes over us directly we leave the highroad and make our own way down the sloped passage across the drawbridge over the moat, past the massive gates and under the echoing tunnel that leads through the mighty walls. Within we see the parapets on which in bygone days the cannon thundered at the foe. We pass on into the great spaces of the Fort; and in our imagination we can people them with ghosts of the illustrious-or notorious-dead. It was here that, in the reign of King James the Second, Master Elihu Yale, assumed the Governorship of Madras, did hard work on the Company’s behalf but also made a large fortune for himself, lost his son aged four, quarreled long and bitterly with his councilors, and was at last superseded (Barlow and Milford 1921: 16).
A leading public intellectual, S. Muthiah, who is part of an emergent cultural movement to preserve British architecture in Madras observes of Elihu Yale “Yale, a strong personality who is alleged to have hanged his groom for being absent without leave, got on well with Europeans and Indians alike” (Muthiah 1999: 43).

Elihu Yale was the governor in residence at the fort between 1687 and 1692 as he sought to secure trading rights, within a larger mission of firmly establishing Great Britain as sole economic and political masters of the vast regions of the Indian subcontinent from a tract of land which to this day houses the bedrock of British Empire, Fort St. George. Yale took over the helms of the British East India company at a time when Madras became an embattled zone among the Portugese, Dutch, and the British. The quest for gaining commercial monopoly and its political concomitant, ascendancy over Portugese and Dutch, which subsequently spawned the birth of Empire, consumed the administrative agendas of a succession of governor-generals between mid and end of the 17th century, including Yale.
Between the grand sweep of history and the finer intricacy of historical figures, between gallantry and notoriety, visionary politics and strategic practices, can be found a series of letters penned by Yale from within the fort. While Yale is sometimes the sole writer, other letters are the work of a cohort of councilors or affectionately called ‘the Gang’. The grand irony that the edifice of one of the most expansive, durable, and larger-than-life colonial regimes, that of Britain in India, was put in place through the simplicity and personableness of letters is only matched by the majesty, decorum and strategic choices embedded in the form and tone of the arguments advanced by Elihu Yale in service of the Crown of England as one of its administrative heirs. And there is an uncanny continuity between the tragedy that ensued from the English will to colonize Indian people and the vulnerability of turbulent precolonial times. This can be semiotically traced across the universe of arguments that emerged to manage the exigent and beleaguered enterprise that was the British East India Company. The turbulence can be understood as the effect of embarking upon an expansionist mode that is clearly evidenced in these missives. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Bakhtin’s Theory Of Argumentative Performance: Critical Thinking Education In Japan

• by: Takeshi Suzuki - Tsuda College

There may be no rational way to convert our point of view people who honestly hold other positions, but we cannot short-circuit such disagreements. Instead, we should live with them, as further evidence of the diversity of human life. Later on, these differences may be resolved by further shared experience, which allows different schools to converge. In advance of this experience, we must accept this diversity of views in a spirit of toleration. Tolerating the resulting plurality, ambiguity, or the lack of certainty is no error, let alone a sin. Honest reflection shows that it is part of the price that we inevitably pay for being human beings, and not gods.
(Stephen Toulmin, 1990, 30)

1. Introduction
In recent years there has been a growing interest in critical thinking on the part of Japanese educators. They have been attempting to realize the paradigm shift from knowledge and memorization-oriented education to critical thinking and opinion-formation education. Actually, in 2001 the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology proposed the ‘Educational Reform Initiative’ that emphasized the power to think (Suzuki, 2001a, 17). Also, in 1994 the Japan Association of College English Teachers (JACET) formulated the Special Interest Group on Critical Thinking across the Curriculum.
In this essay, I would like to discuss first the definition and curriculums of critical thinking. Second, let me explain why the Japanese people need to learn critical thinking skills. Next, let me offer the cooperative learning method as an example of a critical thinking-oriented classroom based on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concepts. Fourth, let me present sample programs of critical thinking education in Japan. Finally, I would like to propose a critical thinking course combined with English education for the Japanese students.

2. The Definitions and Curriculums of Critical Thinking Education
To begin with, critical thinking can be defined as the ability to analyze information and ideas from multiple perspectives carefully and logically. It also asks students to critically examine commonly accepted beliefs and claims. Therefore, some say that critical thinking is “thinking about thinking” (Sproule, 1987; Suzuki, 2001b).
There are several approaches to critical thinking in the United States as well as Europe. Although it is impossible to cover all specific curriculums, let me present some major cases. First, a critical thinking movement started in the American educational community in the late 1970’s (Sproule, 1987). As a result, a number of American schools now make critical thinking courses mandatory for graduation. Rather than focusing on rote memorization and testing, the students are required to learn how to think logically and present critical ideas.
At the college level, there are two types of courses that are held to be most effective: ‘logic’ courses directed by the philosophy department and ‘argumentation’ courses directed by the speech communication department. For instance, in the early 1980’s the California State University and College (CSUC) system decided to include a semester-long course in critical thinking as a graduation requirement. The CSCU requirement is stated as follows:
Instruction in critical thinking is to be designed to achieve an understanding of the relationship of language to logic, which should lead to the ability to analyze, criticize and advocate ideas, to reason inductively and deductively, and to teach factual or judgmental conclusions based on sound inferences drawn from unambiguous statements of knowledge or belief. The minimal competence to be expected at the successful conclusion of instruction in critical thinking should be the ability to distinguish fact from judgement, belief from knowledge and skills in elementary inductive and deductive process, including an understanding of the formal and informal fallacies of language and thought (Ganer, 1989, 1). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Keywords As Passwords To Communities

• by: Stefano Tardini - University of Lugano

The purpose of this paper is to assess the role of cultural keywords in argumentation processes which take place within communities’ boundaries.
The paper will focus on the relationship between keywords and endoxa, i.e. that set of values, rules, knowledge and beliefs that are assumed to be shared within a community. In particular, it will analyze one of the main argumentative functions of keywords: the negotiation of the membership to a community. Keywords, in fact, might be considered as passwords that allow or disallow individuals to be part of a community, to enter it, and to understand it.

1. Cultures and communities
In order to better understand the role of cultural keywords in argumentation processes that take place within given communities, it will be useful to outline in brief the relationship between the concepts of ‘culture’ and ‘community’. These two concepts, in fact, are strictly related to each other: culture can be considered as the substance of communities, since it is their non-hereditary collective memory, it is what enables them last over time (Lotman & Uspenskij 2001: 43). The relation between communities and cultures is a relation of mutual implication: on the one hand, in fact, cultures offer the conceptual categories of communities and generate their grammars and their signs; on the other, a community necessarily shares, in some ways or in some respects, a culture, and in the same time it generates a culture. We can conclude that culture is the shape of the communal life of a community, and that on the other hand communities can be considered as ‘instantiations’ of cultures.
The Semiotic School of Moscow-Tartu has singled out three different but complementary ways in which culture can be conceived of from a semiotic point of view: culture can be considered as a hierarchy of particular semiotic systems, as a family of texts linked to a set of functions, or as a device that generates these texts (Lotman & al. 1975). We can thus distinguish two basic meanings in the word ‘culture’: culture as a system, and culture as a family of texts, i.e. as a ‘hypertext’. Both meanings can be led back to a common root: the concept of culture as a structure of reception: culture, in fact, is a structure that welcomes man on the one hand by teaching him the nitty-gritty of reality, on the other by providing him with its categories, by teaching him how to relate with reality (Rigotti 2002).
Corresponding to the two basic meanings of ‘culture’, two ways of conceiving of communities can be pointed out: a community can be seen as a set of people who just have something in common, i.e. who share a culture as a system, or as a group of people who interact, who share common texts, i.e. who share a culture as a hypertext. We call the former ‘paradigmatic communities’, the latter ‘syntagmatic communities’. Paradigmatic communities are characterised by similarity: their members are similar, they share similar interests, similar ways of thinking and of arguing, similar features, and so on. Syntagmatic communities, on the contrary, are characterised by differences: through members’ interactions, in fact, combinations of elements emerge, which can carry out both different and complementary functions.
To the first typology belong communities such as the community of the Italians, the community of the inhabitants in Milan, the community of English speaking people, the community of pediatricians, the community of the Catholics, and so on. Usually the members of such communities don’t know each other, they don’t communicate each with all the others, but they have the perception of belonging to the community, they are aware of being part of it. Examples of syntagmatic communities are communities of practice (i) such as the families, the colleagues, the members of a work group, the classmates, the members of a club, and so on. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – The Conceptual Basis Of Visual Argumentation – A Case For Arguing In And Through Moving Images

• by: László Tarnay - University of Pécs

1. The problem of explicating images as arguments
Argumentation theory in the past decades have evolved basically from what was once called new rhetoric. This genetic trait has considerably determined both the methodology and the scope of the theory. It determined its methodology in the sense that the definition of argument always already implies that an argument is something that can be made explicit; that is it is explicated formally as a step within a chain of reasoning. This requirement imposes propositionality on anything to be assessed as argument. Let us call this the requirement of propositionality. No wonder that those forms of communication which do not bear propositionalty on their sleeves like pictures, music or smell should fall outside the scope of argumentation theory. But not entirely. Undoubtedly  there is a growing interest in analyzing images (first and foremost advertisements or cartoons) as explicit arguments or as potential sources for retrieving arguments in certain contexts (especially when they are used with an identifiable intention to persuade). In these cases images, sounds or other non-verbal objects (henceforth we sample out images as a paradigm case) are treated as texts or conveyors of texts. It is in this manner recent approaches to extend argumentativity to visual objects (e.g. Groarke, 1996) tend to see a continuity rather than a rupture between the verbal and the visual (forms of argumentation): they are looking for a general level at which verbal and non-verbal forms of argumentation can be equally described and compared. This general level is expressed in a meta-language and it is only in the latter that images can be said to fulfill the requirement of propositionality.

Yet, with the studies of intermediality on the horizon, it seems to be a more tenable alternative to drive a wedge between image and text, instead of giving full vent to their convertibility. The main reason is that there is an equivocation in the explication of images as arguments. For, when images are ‘translated’ into a meta-language to compare with verbal arguments, they are taken to represent arguments, viz. they are see as intrinsically argumentative. The theorist’s aim then naturally is to recover ‘those’ arguments in his meta-language. On the other hand, images can be used as a whole as arguments, just like any object can. For example, Sperber & Wilson describe a situation when Mary wants Peter to mend her hair drier not by asking him openly but by leaving it lying around. They call such cases as instances of ostensive-inferential communication, viz. communicating without a code. (Sperber & Wilson, 1968, 30) It can hardly be said that the hair drier represent an argument. Rather it is meant to elicit some inference in the target person, viz. it is used to persuade him (or her) or to make him (or her) perform a particular action. The theorist’s aim can only be to reflect the cognitive effect achieved by the hair drier left lying around, and the thus recoverable arguments are external, and not intrinsic, to the object in question. If we accept that images can be used in this manner, they can fulfill the requirement of propositonality but indirectly: they cannot be said to ‘translate’ into the meta-language. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Argument To Death And Death As An Argument: Logic, Rhetoric, Dialectics, And Economics

• by: Tchouechov V. - Vitebsk State Technological University

In the ordinary English the expressions containing an appeal to death are used very often. During Christian marriage service is used, for example, the famous phrase: “Till death us do part”, that is, people will stay together and love each other until one of them dies. Football fans know very well the meaning of term “sudden death”. “Death rattle” and “death wish” are another examples of verbal constructions containing in it an appeal to death. In perspective of philosophy of argumentation (argumentology) death is not only the natural end of life; time and manner of dying; the state of being dead. A death phenomenon occupies a specific place in human communication as a whole and in verbal intercourse, in particular. To elucidate the death’s unique role in argumentative discourse I coined the term “an argument to death” and tried to discover some elements (or probably only some hints) about nature of the argument as well as its place in totalitarian argumentation (Tchouechov, 1999, 784). Argument to death is a verbal construction (discourse (text)) containing appeal to natural and social end of life, time and manner of dying and is a very important means of convincing and (or) persuasion.

If we look through any textbook on logic written in English, Russian, Belorussian and many other languages, we certainly find this argument. Stephen N.Tomas wrote for example:
“Anyone who said, “All men are mortal and Socrates is a man, but Socrates is not mortal” would be involved in a self-contradiction. Here, as in any other deductively valid argument, if one accepts the truth of the reasons, then one has no choice but to acknowledge the truth of the conclusion. But few (stressed by me – V.Tch.) important arguments are this simple” (Tomas, 1981,105-106). This is using the argument to death in evident way.
In other textbooks we can not find using the argument evidently, like in the textbook written by Morris R. Cohen and Ernst Nagel. In their textbook the following discourse about radicalism is used: “All social radicals are a danger to society; Tom Mooney is a social radical; it follows that Tom Mooney is a danger to society” (Cohen and Nagel, 1993, 76). The authors supposed that in radicalism anyone is balanced on the border of death and life, and social radical Mooney is a real danger to society.
Unlike Cohen and Nagel, Howard Kahane used the argument to death but he did not realize it more evidently when he gave the following simple example: “Since it is wrong to kill a human being (premise); it follows that capital punishment is wrong (conclusion), because capital punishment takes the life of (kills) a human being (premise) (Kahane, 1995, 4). Read more