ISSA Proceedings 2010 – From Polemical Exchanges To Dialogue: Appreciations About An Ethics Of Communication

• by: Oswaldo Melo Souza Filho - Brazilian Air Force Academy, Pirassununga/SP

1. Introduction
Although agreement and consensus are widely considered respectful and play a fundamental role to solve conflicting situations, how can we deal with circumstances which agreement and consensus seem too far? Is consensus a necessary factor for a fair dialogue? To polemize is a way to manage disagreements and it is commonly presupposed that in order to attain better communication, good relationship and mutual understanding we must require agreement, consensus and common ground conceptions. Are disagreements necessarily unfair? Are agreement, consensus and common ground conceptions to be pursued in all situations? Can people not live in harmony even though they have different opinions or discrepant world-views? Would not it be more beneficial to a more harmonious coexistence to emphasize as Nicholas Rescher a concept of rationality which includes a legitimate diversity, a constrained dissonance, an acquiescence in the difference and a respect for the autonomy of others than taking the consensus as an imperative of reason or as a requirement for its limitations? (Rescher 1995, p. 3, 7, 14)

Disagreement and dissent are attitudes that oppose dogmatism and are important elements of being rationally critic. Karl Popper stated that “the growth of knowledge depends entirely on the existence of disagreement” and even though it may lead to “strife” or “violence” it “may also lead to discussion, to argument and to mutual criticism”(Popper 1996, p. 34). However, why do disagreements instead of rational debates turns so frequently into quarrels or offensive disputes? How do we handle with these extremes situations? Habermas in his theory of communicative rationality has pointed out that “reaching understanding is considered to be a process of reaching agreement among speaking and acting subjects” (Habermas 1984, p. 287). But even critical rationality seems to be insufficient to preclude insulting remarks and irrationals discussions grounded on harsh feelings, desires and beliefs. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Intractable Disputes: The Development Of Attractors

• by: Vesel Memedi - State University of Tetovo, Macedonia

1. Introduction
In this paper an attempt is made to shed some light to a phenomenon that has created problems not only for the theoreticians of conflict resolution, argumentation theories and other various disciplines alike, but for the practitioners as well – the phenomenon of intractable conflicts or disputes. In this paper, I discuss the role played by the “third party” in dealing with disputes of an intractable nature by forming an “attractor” whose gravity is powerful enough to pull inside parties that are engaged in an intractable dispute. This powerful role played by the “third party” will be demonstrated by concentrating on a case study about a conflict in Macedonia between Macedonian governmental forces and Albanian armed groups.

2. Intractable Conflict
According to scholars, like Kriesberg (1999) and Coleman (2003), intractable conflicts are those that persist in a destructive state and seem impossible to resolve.  Kriesberg (1999), for example, stresses three dimensions that distinguish intractable from tractable conflicts: their persistence, destructiveness, and resistance to resolution. I would add that conflicts of an intractable nature are the ones when there is a clash of underlying or fundamental principles between the parties engaged in such types of conflicts, or that they lack common knowledge or consensus about various issues. Despite the fact that such conflicts are uncommon, yet they are very important to understand them better because of our survival as species. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Constituting The “Good Patient” – The Effect Of “Clustered Argumentation” In Dutch Personal Healthcare Budget Policy

• by: Wouter Mensink & Frans A. J. Birrer - Leiden University

1. Introduction[i]
Public policy proposals for radical transformations often draw on a large number of premises. In this paper, we show that argumentation is complicated by what we call a “cluster of arguments”, of which the parts are not evaluated independently, but seem to be either accepted as a whole or rejected as a whole. Our case study examines one such cluster. The case concerns the introduction of a personal budget for healthcare in the Netherlands. This implies that, for particular types of treatments, citizens can opt for receiving a budget that is allocated for their case directly to their bank accounts, rather than receiving care “in kind”. Our analysis is based on a study of the key policy reports that constitute this discussion, as well as on a confrontation with the academic literature.

The focus of our analysis is on how the personal budget policy affects how the patient is constituted as a healthcare actor. The patient seems to be attributed a new role. We argue that discussions on this new role in fact aim to constitute a new subject of healthcare, a “good patient”, to use a term that was introduced by the Dutch Public Health Council (RVZ 2007). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Construction Types And Argumentative Functions Of Possibility Modals: Evidence From Italian

• by: Johanna Miecznikowski - Università della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano)

1. Introduction
Modality has to do with communicating about possibilities rather than about the actual world, with construing alternative scenarios and with assessing the relationships between scenarios. This mode of communication has obvious affinities with argumentation, a communicative activity in which speakers compare and evaluate alternative views, exploring their relationships with beliefs and known facts. That is why linguistic expressions happen to have both modal and argumentative functions, as shows the example of negation markers, used to mark states of affairs as non-real, but also to disagree (cf. among others Anscombre & Ducrot 1983). In other words, modal expressions – among which negation markers, mood, conditional constructions and modal verbs as well as other expressions of possibility and necessity – happen to function as “argumentative indicators” (cf. Snoeck Henkemans 1997, van Eemeren et al. 2007).

According to the pragmatic-dialectical approach to argumentative indicators, the range of possible argumentative functions of linguistic expressions covers the content level, the level of discourse relations, the level of speech act types and illocutionary force, as well as the discursive-sequential level of signaling particular argumentative moves or discussion stages. Within this framework, considerable attention has been paid to pragmatic and dialogical aspects, i.e. to indicators that are useful to reconstruct stages and moves in a critical discussion (cf. also, among others, Tseronis 2009). As to modal expressions, they have been analyzed first and foremost as markers of the degree of commitment to a standpoint (Snoeck Henkemans 1997, p. 108-117). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – “Crisis” And Argument By Definition In The Modern American Presidency

• by: Maureen C. Minielli - Kingsborough Community College, City University of New York

Definitional argumentation theory remains a subject of significant study, primarily through the examination of argument about definition (Schiappa, 1993) and argument from definition (Schiappa, McGee, 1999). Although Zarefsky (1997) has briefly surveyed argument by definition, attention to this perspective remains anorexic. This essay begins to rectify that oversight by illuminating argument by definition through an analysis of modern presidential crisis rhetoric. This essay posits that argument from definition has as its locus the definition itself but argument by definition resituates that locus to the definition’s user or creator. This essay first differentiates and clarifies argument by definition from argument from definition before examining five areas of “concerns” about argument by definition by argumentation scholars through the lens of the modern American presidency and the word crisis. This essay suggests that words like crisis contain core elements germane to any crisis situation but are flexible and modifiable depending on the user, the user’s definition, and the crisis event. It also identifies several issues arising of out presidential definitional usage, including time, ethos, intent, strategies and audience as well as the need for additional crisis rhetoric essays examined from an argumentative perspective. The essay concludes with a call for additional studies encompassing several crises within a specific presidency as well as more attention devoted to the notion of time. In addition, I suggest that scholars should incorporate more primary research into their analyses, an approach fully embraced by other branches of academe. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The Reasonableness Of Responding To Criticism With Accusations Of Inconsistency

• by: Dima Mohammed - University of Amsterdam & University of Lugano

1. Introduction
Responding with accusations of inconsistency to criticism is an interesting way of strategic manoeuvring in public political confrontations. In this way of manoeuvring, a politician who is confronted with a critical point of view replies that the criticism advanced is inconsistent with another position of the critic. The accusation of inconsistency is usually intended to have the criticism retracted, as a way of eliminating the alleged inconsistency, sparing the politician the difficulty of refuting the criticism. On the one hand, one may think that pointing out an inconsistency in the position of an arguer and urging him to eliminate it is a perfectly legitimate response. After all, arguers should not assume mutually inconsistent positions simultaneously. On the other hand, however, pointing out that the criticism advanced is inconsistent with another position of the critic is often used by politicians as a way to silence their critics.

In this paper I shall investigate the reasonableness of the kinds of responses in which an arguer replies to critical points of view by means of accusations of inconsistency. I use the theory of strategic manoeuvring (van Eemeren, 2010; van Eemeren & Houtlosser, 2002b, 2007) to analyse the responses as instances of a particular way of confrontational strategic manoeuvring; and I attempt to formulate conditions for their dialectical soundness. In line with van Eemeren and Houtlosser, I consider an instance of strategic manoeuvring to be reasonable as long as the critical testing procedure is not hindered by the accuser’s attempt to direct the discussion towards a favourable outcome. Read more