ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Arguments About ‘Rhetoric’ In The 2008 US Presidential Election Campaign

• by: Robert T. Craig - University of Colorado at Boulder

Barack Obama’s prowess in the art of rhetoric, for which he had gained a national reputation with a stirring keynote speech to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, was much commented upon during the 2008 US presidential election campaign and became a stimulus for public debate on the necessity, value, and danger of rhetoric as a political-communicative practice. Extending work by Craig (1996, 1999, 2008; Craig & Tracy 2005) on normative concepts and arguments in ordinary metadiscourse (practically-oriented discourse about discourse), this paper presents an initial survey of arguments about rhetoric that appeared in public metadiscourse of the 2008 campaign. Issues that emerged in this debate engaged classic lines of argument between rhetorical and critical traditions of thought concerning the legitimacy of rhetoric, thus showing the continuing relevance of those traditions and their capacity to illuminate essential tensions in democratic public discourse.

1. “Rhetoric” in the 2008 campaign
US presidential election campaigns follow an extended course in which candidacies for major party nominations are usually announced more than a year in advance of the national election. Candidates campaign to raise money and compete in a long series of intra-party state contests (primary elections and caucuses) that stretch through the early months of the election year and determine the selection of delegates to national party nominating conventions held in the summer. Party candidates are formally designated at those conventions and then campaign as standard bearers of their parties until the early November presidential election. The national discourse that surrounds the campaign is punctuated by the rhythms and contingencies of this long process. Thus, the debate about “rhetoric”, both leading up to and following the 2008 election, ebbed and flowed through a series of key news events, which it will be useful to chronicle briefly as background to the following analysis. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Are Motivational Thoughts Persuasive And Valid?

• by: Emmanuelle Danblon - Université Libre de Bruxelles

1. Introduction
In this paper, I would like to examine the rhetorical status of the 1948 Human Rights declaration.
In order to do this, I first go back to Perelman’s theory of argumentation by shedding a light on its juridical thought. This approach will question the status of “natural law” from a rhetorical point of view, as it is expressed in the 1948 Human Rights Declaration, considered as an expression of natural law today.

Second, I describe four levels of belief expression, and their discursive and rhetorical functions, as they appear in the Human Rights charter:
– a literal level
– a conventional level
– a fictional level
– a motivational level

It will be argued that such a complex construction is possible thanks to rhetorical skills that are shared by every speaker and hearer.
Finally, I analyze the human rights charter’s first article in the light of four levels of representation. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Argumentative Structure In Octavius Of Minucius Felix: The Role Of The Thesis And The “Status Quaestionis” In The Development Of The Structure

• by: De Nardis Vito - University of Lugano, Switzerland

1. Work and Author
Minucius Felix, the author of “Octavius”, is among the clearest and most original voices of Christian literature. A lawyer by profession, he was of African origins and lived and worked in Rome at the end of the second century. He was a contemporary of Tertullianus, but, unlike him, he is not in favour of an abrupt break with the classical tradition and prefers the ground of philosophical dispute. His literary work is the only one of the apologetical Latin literature in dialogue form. The dialogue takes place on the beach of Ostia and it involves three characters: the pagan Caecilius, the Christian Octavius and Minucius himself. Octavius reproaches Caecilius for worshipping a statue of the god Serapis and Caecilius suggests explaining their own reasons in support of their religious models, naming Minucius judge of the controversy. After the two speeches, however, the one made by Caecilius against Christianity and the other by Octavius in favour of Christianity, there is no need to come to a final judgment because Caecilius admits defeat. Minucius, with his dialogue, shows he is firmly convinced he is able to interact with his interlocutor, provided that they are both guided by reason and honesty. Minucius shows his argumentative intelligence not only in the tones he uses but also in the interweaving of the literary and philosophical references proposed by Octavius in his confutation of the pagan positions and consequent demonstration of the rationality of Christianity.

Since his work’s addressees are the learned pagans, the literary and philosophical sources he considers belong to the classical tradition, in particular to Cicero and Seneca, thus avoiding taking the Bible as the direct source of reference and authority. Minucius prefers emphasizing the differences in the continuity: “Octavius”, in fact, doesn’t mark the end of the classical world and the passage to Christianity on the line of an abrupt break with it, as proposed by Tertullianus, but on the acceptance, as common ground to share with the other, of the noblest principles of the Greek-Latin philosophical culture. In the cultural project of Minucius, there is no space for extreme radical positions; instead, features such as the search of coherence, the pursuit of knowledge and the fulfillment of the universal values of the “virtus” are central. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Argumentation In Tourism: An Analysis Of User-Generated-Contents About Lugano (Switzerland)

• by: Silvia De Ascaniis, Lorenzo Cantoni & Stefano Tardini - University of Lugano

1. Argumentation in the (e)tourism context
Tourism is an experience which needs to be communicated (Inversini & Cantoni 2009). In fact, both if it was wonderful or terrible, a travel experience is usually shared with others; telling it, discussing it, comparing it with previous experiences is nearly a need for someone who just came back from a journey.
Tourism is an experience of freedom, since it gives the tourist the opportunity to decide where, how and with whom to spend her free-time, fulfilling those desires which are usually subordinated to the duties and rules of the daily life.

Many elements of a journey contribute to shape a unique experience, but each journey is usually fixed in the memory because of one or a few more aspects, which makes it special and different from all the others. Such aspect represents the dominant value that a certain travel experience detains for the tourist. The touristic value of the journey one of the authors made in Rome some years ago, for instance, resides in the capacity the city has to evoke ancient civilizations. Every corner in Rome speaks of the glorious Roman empire, and reveals the roots of the European culture. This aspect constitutes the value that the author ascribes to her tourism experience in Rome and, thus, to the destination itself. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Points And Purposes Of Argumentative Texts

• by: Jason M. Dickenson and James A. Lorié - Law School Admission Council

1. Preliminaries
What does it take to understand an argument? We can’t hope to provide the answer to this question in full here. We will instead focus on an obvious point about which there is universal agreement: understanding an argument requires that one be able to identify the argument’s conclusion. This apparent truism, however, might not be quite as simple as at first it appears. Arguments do not spring forth from the universe by themselves; they have authors. And their authors have purposes in making their arguments that are not necessarily identical to their conclusions. Indeed, it is another common idea that it in order to fully understand an argument, it is a good idea to identify the author’s purpose in making that argument. We want to suggest that these two claims are in fact closely related, and that, in fact, comprehension of the conclusion of the argument and the argument as a whole is often heightened by seeing how the author’s activity of attempting to establish that conclusion can be re-described as activity of another (but related) sort.

We approach this matter as developers of a high-level reading and reasoning test—the LSAT (Law School Admission Test). The LSAT is a high-stakes test used for admission into law school in the US and Canada (also currently by one law school in Australia). We will be focusing here on reasoning as found in longish argumentative texts, which appear in the reading comprehension section of the test (our test has four scored multiple choice sections, one of which is reading comprehension). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – A Critical-Rationalist Approach To Premise Acceptability

• by: Antoni Diller - University of Birmingham

1. Introduction
In this paper I consider the problem: ‘When is a statement acceptable as a premise in an argument?’ This question is widely discussed in informal logic and practical reasoning circles, but most of these considerations presuppose the correctness of a justificationist epistemology: where the information comes from is of paramount importance in assessing its legitimacy. This is explicit in the title of an important paper by Freeman (1996): “Consider the Source”. Not only has justificationism got many faults, some of which I mention in the next section, but also the audience to whom the argument is addressed  tends to be overlooked. In an argument we are, typically, trying to convince one or more people of something that they are initially reluctant to accept. We do this by showing them that it follows from premises that they do accept. My approach puts the emphasis on the audience to whom the argument is addressed.

I see premise acceptability as being part of the broader issue of testimony and I have developed a critical-rationalist account of how we respond to the assertions of others: we accept them unless we have a reason not to. (Critical rationalism is opposed to all forms of justificationism.) We do not need a reason to accept testimony. We have a tendency to believe other people and the default position when we hear or read an assertion is simply to accept it. The proposal I present in detail below is that a premise is acceptable in an argument if the audience has no objection to it. I also show that this proposal is better than a widely accepted account of premise acceptability. Read more