ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Is Praise A Kind Of Advice?

• by: Emmanuelle Danblon - Université Libre de Bruxelles

1. Introduction
In this paper, I will try to capture the fonction of the epideictic genre of the classical rhetoric from a linguistic point of view. This will be done by describing both praise and blame as peculiar varieties of “advices”.

2. Aristotle on epideictic
According to Aristotle, the object of rhetoric is a judgement that the audience should perform on the matter that is presented by the orator. Each of the three rhetorical genres – i.e. deliberative, forensic and epideictic – requires a specific discursive activity of the orator and a specific judgement of the audience. This typology can be summarized as follows:

In the light of this typology, one may observe that Aristotle’s statements remain rather vague about the activity performed by the audience of the epideictic genre. In the deliberative genre, the audience’s activity is a “decision”, i.e. some kind of deontic activity. In the forensic genre, the audience’s activity is a “judgement”, i.e. some kind of epistemic activity. But what about the “evaluation” which is supposed to be the audience’s activity in the epideictic genre? Aristotle, who seemed to be aware of this fuzziness, considered this “evaluation” as an aesthetical activity. Indeed, for him, the audience of the epideictic genre is in charge to judge the orator’s talent. But this way out endangers the internal coherence of the whole typology. In the deliberative and the forensic genres, the matter of the judgement reduces to the object of the discourse (the action (not) to be realized or the innocence/guilt of the defendant). On the contrary, the matter to be decided on by the audience of the epideictic genre is discourse itself.

3. Contemporary theories
Perelman rightly underlined the fact that although epideictic discourses – of praise or blame – have to do with matters that are not disputable (e.g. the greatness of the city, the authority of gods, the virtues of a dead person…), they nevertheless fulfil a function which is not merely aesthetical, since they are used to increase the communion of feelings concerning those values that are already endorsed by the whole community. In my opinion, Perelman implicitly referred to the ancient notion of homonoïa (i.e. concord, conformity, unanimity). As pointed out by Barbara Cassin, homonoïa is an effect created by discourse. In epideictic rhetoric, homonoïa could be seen as the emotion produced by amplification i.e. by the evocation of those prototypes of agents or actions that represent the values of the community. It should induce, in the mind of each citicitizen, a general disposition to some kind of political action. For example, Isocrates’ Panegyric, praises the city of Athens; this praise provokes a homonoïa effect which is such that Athenians citizens are inclined to accept, and to engage in, a war on the Persians.
This conception entails that there is an essential link between the epideictic genre and the deliberative one. Indeed, both aim at triggering a certain type of decision that should precede a certain type of action. This relationship had already been noticed by Greek and Latin authors. It is emphasized in Pernot’s book which directlyinspired me when choosing a title for this lecture: indeed, according to Pernot, praise is a kind of advice.
Pernot remarks that many discourses, like Isocrates’ Panegyric, belong to a hybrid genre, partly epideictic, partly deliberative. In other words, such texts are basically symbouleutic (from sumboulê: advice) – i.e. the orator supposedly performs a deliberative activity – but they are grounded on an encomiastic matter (from enkômion: praise), so that the orator should also perform an epideictic activity. According to Pernot, this is the typical case in which we can see that praise is a kind of advice. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Calculating Environmental Value: The Displacement Of Moral Argument

• by: James Darsey - Northern Illinois University

They took all the trees and put ‘em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar-and-a-half just to see ‘em
Joni Mitchell

“Big Yellow Taxi”

Rather, money endangers religion in that money can serve as universal symbol, the unitary ground of all action. And it endangers religion not in the dramatic, agonistic way of a “tempter,” but in its quiet, rational way as a substitute that performs its mediatory role more “efficiently,” more “parsimoniously,” with less “waste motion” as regards the religious or ritualistic conception of “works.”
Kenneth Burke

A Grammar of Motives
In May, 1997, Robert Costanza and a group of colleagues published in Nature the results of a meta-analysis of studies designed to measure the economic value of the environment. Perhaps due to the dramatic nature of their findings – they estimated the annual value of ecosystem functions and services at probably around $33 trillion in U.S. dollars compared to annual global gross national product of about $18 trillion – the report received considerable publicity, including coverage in the United States on National Public Radio and in the New York Times (Costanza, et al. 1997; Stevens 1997). Though the figures are stark, and probably startling to most, the fundamental argumentative strategy, the justification of environmentalism on purely economic grounds, a striking and controversial departure from traditional appeals for the defense of the environment, is part of a quietly growing trend. Kenneth Boulding, in the 1960s, called for such an accounting as a way to talk about the “throughput” of what he characterized as the “cowboy economy” (Boulding 1970: 97). Eric Freyfogle’s denominator is “free-market environmentalism,” and he identifies as its purpose “to structure resource-use decision making so that decisions respond, not to bureaucratic mandates, but to the more disciplined signals of the market” (Freyfogle 1998: 39). Costanza and his colleagues illustrate this purpose in the opening sentence of their report: “Because ecosystem services are not fully ‘captured’ in commercial markets or adequately quantified in terms comparable with economic services and manufactured capital, they are often given too little weight in policy decisions” (Costanza et al.1997: 253; sa Breslow 1970: 102-103).

The co-authors of the report in Nature, in their individual productions, represent a substantial voice on the academic side of this trend (Costanza et al. 1997: 260), but this is not arcane academic theory. Paul Hawken, co-founder of Smith and Hawken, makes precisely the same argument from a commercial perspective. “In order for a sustainable society to exist, every purchase must reflect or at least approximate its actual cost, not only the direct cost of production but also the costs to the air, water, and soil; the cost to future generations; the cost to worker health; the cost of waste, pollution, and toxicity” (Hawken 1993: 56). As for political manifestations of free-market environmentalism, Freyfogle points to the U.S. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Argumentation And Children’s Art: An Examination Of Children’s Responses To Art At The Dallas Museum Of Art

• by: Mark B. DeLoach - University of North Texas & Dana Engstrom DeLoach - Dallas Museum of Art

Until recently, relatively little attention has focused on the role of argument in the visual arts. In the last few years, however, and concurrent with the attention given to argument in other disciplines, argumentation scholars have begun to theorize about the intersection of argument and art. In 1996, a special edition of Argumentation and Advocacy examined visual argument, with essays that speculated about the argumentative functions in visual art and political advertisements. In their introductory essay to that special edition, David Birdsell and Leo Groarke write: In the process of developing a theory of visual argument, we will have to emphasize the frequent lucidity of visual meaning, the importance of visual context, the argumentative complexities raised by the notions of representation and resemblance, and the questions visual persuasion poses for the standard distinction between argument and persuasion. Coupled with respect for existing interdisciplinary literature on the visual, such an emphasis promises a much better account of verbal and visual argument which can better understand the complexities of both visual images and ordinary argument as they are so often intertwined in our increasingly visual media (Birdsell & Groarke 1996: 9-10).
Although there is no consensus as to whether or not there should be a theory of visual argumentation, the attention given to the concept in this special issue merits further consideration.
The parallels between the fields of art and argumentation are striking. Both are concerned with the theoretical and the practical. Argumentation is concerned with the philosophical underpinnings of the making and interpreting of arguments, as well as the practical side of teaching the construction of arguments for others’ consumption. Art also must be concerned with the philosophy of the interpretation and construction of art works, as well as the practical and pedagogical aspects of teaching students to create art. Participants in both fields are also involved in the critical process, with the concomitant responsibility of speculating about the development of critical approaches and methodologies. Finally, and most relevant to this study, both are concerned with the realm of the symbolic.

In 1997, an exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art celebrated the role of animals in African Art. Particular works in this exhibition were supplemented with “imagination stations,” or sketchbooks with colored pencils, which allowed children to draw their reactions to this art. Children were guided by instructions developed by the education staff at the museum. These instructions asked the children to describe their reactions to the art and to put it into a context specific to their own backgrounds, such as asking the children to draw an animal that they were familiar with in a similar context to the one in the artwork. These sketchbooks were collected by museum staff, and provide the textual basis for this study. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Semantic Shifts In Argumentative Processes: A Step Beyond The ‘Fallacy Of Equivocation’

• by: Arnulf Deppermann - Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität

In naturally occuring argumentation, words which play a crucial role in the argument often acquire different meanings on subsequent occasions of use. Traditionally, such semantic shifts have been dealt with by the “fallacy of equivocation”. In my paper, I would like to show that there is considerably more to semantic shifts during arguments than their potentially being fallacious. Based on an analysis of a debate on environmental policy, I will argue that shifts in meaning are produced by a principle I call ‘local semantic elaboration’. I will go on to show that semantic shifts in the meaning of a word, the position advocated by a party, and the questions that the parties raise during an argumentative process are neatly tailored to one another, but can be incommensurable to the opponent’s views. Semantic shifts thus may have a dissociative impact on a critical discussion. By linking the structure of argumentation to its pragmatics, however, it may be revealed that there are two practices that account for a higher order of coherence of the debate. The first practice is a general preference for disagreeing with the opponent, the second practice is the interpretation of local speech acts in terms of an overall ideological stance that is attributed to the speaker. Because of these practices, parties do not criticize divergent semantic conceptions as disruptive, but they treat them as characteristic and sometimes even metonymic reflections of the parties’ positions.

1. The fallacy of equivocation
Starting with Aristotle’s fallacies dependent on language (Aristotle 1955: 165 b 23ff.), the impact of shifts in the meaning of words on the validity of arguments has been a standard topic in the study of fallacies (as a review, see Walton 1996). Traditionally, such shifts have been dealt with by the ‘fallacy of equivocation’. We can say that a fallacy of equivocation occurs, if the same expression is used or presupposed in different senses in one single argument, and if the argument is invalid because of this multiplicity of senses. Moreover, in order to be a fallacy, the argument must appear to be valid at a first glance, or, at least, it has to be presented as a valid argument by a party in a critical discussion. Equivocation can be produced by different kinds of semantic shifts, for example, switching from literal to metaphorical meaning, using homonyms, confounding a type-reading and a token-reading, using the same relative term with respect to different standards (see Powers 1995, Walton 1996).
Like many others, Woods and Walton (1989) analyze equivocation as a fallacy in which several arguments are put forward instead of one. If the ambiguous term occurs twice, then there is at least one argument in which the ambiguous term is interpreted in an univocal way, and there is at least one other argument in which it is interpreted differently. Each of these arguments is invalid: The first argument is invalid, because in one of its assertions, the ambiguous term must be disambiguated in an implausible way to yield a deductively valid argument; the second argument is unsound, because it is deductively invalid. So, analytically, the fallacy of equivocation can be viewed as a conflation of several arguments. In practice, however, this ‘several arguments’ view seems to be very implausible. Woods and Walton posit that people reduce the cognitive dissonance that resulted from being faced with invalidating readings of the argument by conflating them into one that is seemingly acceptable. This “psychological explanation” for the “contextual shift”, that allows for two different readings of the equivocal term to occur in one argument (see Woods & Walton 1989: 198ff.), is not convincing. First, there is no reason why a person should generally be disposed to accept the argument in order to reduce cognitive dissonance – why doesn’t she simply reject it, if she discovers the fallacy? Secondly, most textbook examples of equivocation are puns or trivial jokes. Their humourous effect is founded on the incongruence between the plausible, default reading of the potentially equivocal expression on its first occasion of use and the divergent disambiguation it has to receive on its second occasion, if it is to make sense (Attardo 1994). That is, people just do not develop alternative readings, which they afterwards conflate, but they restrict themselves to contextually plausible readings.[i] It seems then that it is not a conflation of several arguments that leads to the acceptance of an equivocation. I suggest that it is simply the identity of the form of an expression that can be misleading, because it can erroneously suggest the identity of meanings, as long as there is no definite semantic evidence which points to the contrary. This view is in line with the observation that gross equivocations -for instance those that rest on homonyms which share no contextually relevant semantic features (like “bank”)- are easily discovered, while in the case of subtler equivocations, people often “feel” that there’s something fishy about the argument without being able to locate the trouble precisely. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Argument Theory And The Rhetorical Practices Of The North American ‘Central America Movement’

• by: Julia Dietrich - University of Louisville

1. Introduction
They loved us when we stood in front of the Galleria and sang “El Salvador’s another Viet Nam” to the tune of “Walking in a Winter Wonderland.” But the situation in El Salvador was different from Viet Nam, and we knew that the equation was an oversimplification. But we also knew that we needed something that would get the public’s attention, something that would help them connect with an issue on which we wanted to change American policy.
“We” here is the group of people who made up the Central America Movement, and most, specifically, the Pledge of Resistance, in Louisville, Kentucky. The goal of that group, and of the movement in general, was to end U.S. government support for repressive right-wing governments in Central America and to end the support of the Reagan administration for the Contras who sought to overthrow the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The Movement sought to influence policy entirely through democratic means, entirely by using the resources always open to citizens in a democracy: the formation of public opinion and the persuasion of senators and representatives who would be voting on aid bills. Cutting off funding for Reagan administration initiatives was the best procedural way to disable the administration’s policy. The only “illegalities” in which the Movement as I know it engaged were acts of very public – the more public the better – civil disobedience. Throughout the 1980s, the issue of Central America policy never became a “determining” one; that is, it was never an issue on which the majority of Americans based their votes and thus one on which the administration was loath to be at odds with a segment of the electorate. The task of the Central America Movement in North America, therefore, was to try to bring the issue before the public, to persuade the public to oppose administration policy, and to persuade legislators to vote against funding requests.

The success of the Central America movement is difficult to judge. Across the nation, individual senators and representatives came to oppose Contra Aid, and finally the flow of aid was stopped. The Iran-Contra scandal was an embarrassment to the Reagan administration but, to the general disappointment of the Central America Movement, did not precipitate a national revaluation of U.S. Central America policy. Church groups in the North America formed twinning relationships with congregations in Central America, and speaking tours brought activists from the region to audiences all across North America, increasing awareness of the region and familiarity with its issues as seen from a perspective different from that of the administration. It is generally accepted that regimes in Central America are more democratic than was the case in the 1980s. Reconciliation commissions in El Salvador and Guatamala have worked to move those countries beyond armed left/right conflict. Elections in winter of 1990 removed the Sandinista Party from power in Nicaragua and replaced it with a coalition government preferred by the U.S. government. In short, from the perspective of the Central America Movement generally, the news is mixed. It can point to many successes but cannot claim overall to have made Central America policy a key interest of American voters nor to have created popular and legislative support for American policies that would favor the poor or more widely distribute education and health care opportunities among the population in Central America. Contra aid has ended, but a principle of self-determination for the nations of that region has not been enshrined in American foreign policy or American popular opinion. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Methods For Evaluating Legal Argumentation

• by: Fritz Dolder - University of Basel

1. Introduction: Description and evaluation of legal argumentation
Descriptive studies of legal argumentation attempt to recognize and classify specific patterns, categories or topics of arguments in different contexts and to relate their occurrence to the different contexts. The aim of descriptive methods is to generate a morphologically true picture of the argumentation as evidenced by means of methodological criteria, or to “reconstruct” argumentation by means of such methodological tools (Schroth 1980: 122/123).
Methods of critical evaluation, on the other hand, attempt to assess the quality of argumentation, i.e. to generate a judgement based on the compliance of that argumentation with standards of a given kind, such as standards for rational discussion, logical, linguistic, scientific or other (cf. Feteris1995: 42). It is the aim of the present paper to discuss some of the numerous standards proposed for evaluating legal argumentation. The only common starting point for such an investigation consists in the fact that the standards to be investigated should be perceived as such by the audience of the legal argumentation.
With regard to their data basis evaluation of argumentation can be staged either on individual patterns of argumentation found in a specific legal text, or on the argumentative “style” in a sample accumulated from an appropriate number of individual patterns of argumentation selected by adequate sampling techniques, e.g. a sample of texts of a specific court, time period, or legal specialty (Dolder/Buser 1989: 382/383, Dolder 1991: 126, 128). Investigations staged on accumulated samples offer the advantage that the parameters observed can be evaluated by quantitative methods.

2. Materials and methods
Empirical investigations have been staged on the published text of “decisions” (Urteilsbegründungen) of the Federal Court of Switzerland and some lower Swiss courts in the field of civil and commercial law. These legal texts represent the justification of the ruling of the court and are the final, most formal and solemn stage of the argumentation process taking place in judicial proceedings. As such they are supposed to take into account all arguments raised by the parties in the course of the procedure, insofar as they are held relevant by the court. These justifications are submitted to an audience consisting not only of the parties to the procedure, but, at least if the decisions are published, also of other courts and the professional legal community. On the basis of these properties they offer an interesting material for argumentation studies (Perelman 1979: 209 with reference to T. Sauvel). Read more