ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Keynote Address: Rhetorical Argument

• by: James F. Klumpp - University of Maryland

At this conference four years ago, one of my European colleagues began a conversation with the question:  What is your project?  My response – “rhetorical argument” – drew a confused stare and an “Oh!” As I pondered this moment, the texture of modern argumentation studies came to the fore. We are a coalition of approaches and projects, gazing somewhat at the same human phenomenon, but from different perspectives and with different sensitivities. In this coalition, there are groups that we recognize and generally understand regardless of our own interests. There is the pragma-dialectical approach most vibrantly practiced under the influence of those here at the University of Amsterdam. There are the informal logicians spawned principally from philosophy departments in North America. There are the studies of conversational argument applying qualitative and quantitative social scientific methods to understand day-to-day interpersonal argument.  These are three easily identifiable groups.

But those whose work is closest to mine are not so easily captured in a single thought or with a single name. There are those of us who study the history of the theory of argumentation from the classical period to the present. There are those who examine arguments in their historical context, tracing their power to direct social order in particular ways.  There are those who are concerned with the place of argument in political processes, the challenges of the moment in the texture of democratic life, and the improvement of argument’s contributions to the public sphere. In fact, these diverse concerns were arguably the founding agenda of modern argumentation studies. Yet, those pursuing them today often seem to us – at least to my interlocutor at the last conference in Amsterdam – as more intellectual waifs than children of a common and seminal argumentation study. So, my purpose today is to focus, to explain, and to encourage: to provide an account of that parentage; to locate the origins of the commonality in this work; to trace its development to the present day; and to bring its blurry lines into sharper focus; to consider the questions and approaches of rhetorical argument. To accomplish this purpose, I will offer a history, a characterization, and finally a distillation. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Foreign Words As Argumentative Devices: Japanese Words In French Newspapers

• by: Kyoko Koma - Vytautas Magnus University

1. Issues
What is the argumentative intention of using Japanese words in foreign contexts? Prior to the 1990s, traditional Japanese words known in France consisted of geisha, samouraï, sushi, etc. In the 1990s, when Japanese popular culture such as mangas, extravagant street fashions, and video games, was imported to France and other countries, the term kawaii started to appear in French media. In our paper, which focuses on the traditional Japanese word geisha and the recently appearing Japanese word kawaii and classifies the two words as xenism or peregrinism, we examine the argumentative functions used in contemporary French national newspapers Le Figaro (conservator), Libération (left), and Le Monde (centre-left), published from 1995 to 2008.[i] How is each word used as an argumentative device? Are there differences in the argumentative functions of the two words? Or are these functions similar?

2. The Foreign Words Geisha and Kawaii in French Context
72 Japanese words appear in the French Dictionary CD-ROM of Le Petit Robert 2008, of which 69 words are nouns and 3 words are nouns and adjectives: nippon, zen, and kamikaze. Geisha appears in this dictionary, but kawaii does not.

The French dictionary Le Robert dictionnaire historique de la langue française indicates that the term geisha was ‘firstly Gallicised as guecha (1887) [in the novel Madame Chrysanthème by Pierre Loti], and it was rewritten as geisha (1889) according to the transliteration of the Japanese word.’ The term geisha is traditionally known in France; Geisha means ‘Japanese singer and dancer who is rented for certain meetings and amuses the men with her conversation, her music, and her dance.’ Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Logically Defending For Publication: An Analysis Of The Review Process Of Logical Self-Defense

• by: Takuzo Konishi - University of Pittsburgh, USA

Although there has been some historical research on the development of argumentation studies in the US and Canada, it is safe to say that history of argumentation studies on the second half of the last century is less developed than the theory and empirical research of argumentation. As other fields of inquiries such as economics, political theory, and communication studies have history of those inquiries as their components, history of argumentation studies should exist and constitute the field of inquiry called argumentation. In addition to refining theories of argumentation proposed by Toulmin, the New Rhetoric Project, informal logicians, Pragma-Dialecticians, we need to examine under what historical contingencies those theories were proposed and defended. With a hope of developing history of argumentation as a legitimate subfield of argumentation studies, this paper attempts to offer a historical-rhetorical analysis of one pivotal argumentative exchange for the development of informal logic: the review process for publication of Logical Self-Defense[i].

In the review process of the manuscript of Logical Self-Defense, Johnson and Blair had to overcome arguments against publication by two reviewers. What were those objections and how did Johnson and Blair attempt to fulfill their dialectical obligations? Given that the triad criteria of argument evaluation (relevance, sufficiency, and acceptability) offered in Logical Self-Defense have been influential to introductory textbooks and research on informal logic, non-publication of Logical Self-Defense must have presented a different landscape of argumentation theory in general, and informal logic in particular. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Pragmatic Logic: The Study Of Argumentation In The Lvov-Warsaw School

• by: Marcin Koszowy - University of Białystok

1. The main question
Logical studies in Poland are mainly associated with the Lvov-Warsaw School (LWS), labeled also the Polish school in analytical philosophy (Lapointe, Woleński, Marion & Miskiewicz 2009; Jadacki 2009).[i] The LWS was established by Kazimierz Twardowski at the end of the 19th century in Lvov (Woleński 1989, Ch. 1, part 2). Its main achievements include developments of mathematical logic (see Kneale & Kneale 1962; McCall 1967; Coniglione, Poli & Woleński 1993) that became world-wide famous thanks to such thinkers as Jan Łukasiewicz, Stanisław Leśniewski, Alfred Tarski, Bolesław Sobociński, Andrzej Mostowski, Adolf Lindenbaum, Stanisław Jaśkowski and many others (see e.g. Woleński 1995, p. 369-378).

In ‘the golden age of Polish logic’, which lasted for two decades (1918-1939), ‘formal logic became a kind of international visiting card of the School as early as in the 1930s – thanks to a great German thinker, Scholz’ (Jadacki 2009, p. 91).[ii] Due to this fact, some views on the study of reasoning and argumentation in the LWS were associated exclusively with a formal-logical (deductivist) perspective, according to which a good argument is the one which is deductively valid. Having as a point of departure a famous controversy over the applicability of formal logic (or FDL – formal deductive logic – see Johnson & Blair 1987; Johnson 1996; Johnson 2009) in analyzing and evaluating everyday arguments, the LWS would be commonly associated with deductivism.[iii] Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The Ways Of Criticism: Four Parameters

• by: Erik C. W. Krabbe & Jan Albert van Laar - University of Groningen

1. Introduction [i]
The notions of criticism and of argument are very much related, both at a practical and at a theoretical level. In practice, a critical attitude is often manifested by ‘being argumentative’ in one’s comments and appreciations, whereas arguments are associated with a critical stance sooner than with a constructive one. In daily parlance, both “criticism” and “argument” even share some negative connotations, such as meddlesomeness and quarrelsomeness. In the theory of argumentation, there are no such connotations, but the theoretical concepts of criticism and of argument are all the same closely related. Argumentation can be either critical (opposing someone else’s point of view) or constructive (defending one’s own point of view) or both. Moreover, some sort of critical stance is often seen as essential for all argumentation, including the constructive kind, since argumentation is conceived as an instrument to overcome doubt, and doubt seems to imply a critical stance. In pragma-dialectics, the normative model for argumentation proposed is that of a critical discussion in which standpoints are critically tested (Van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984, 1992, 2004). Also, at the intersection of argumentation studies and artificial intelligence, dialogue protocols and models for persuasion dialogue have been developed that start from the assumption that argumentation and criticism are closely interwoven (Prakken 2005; Parsons, Wooldridge & Amgoud, 2003). Thus criticism seems not only to lie at the origin of argument, but also to pervade the whole argumentative procedure. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Cultural Diversity, Cognitive Breaks, And Deep Disagreement: Polemic Argument

• by: Manfred Kraus - University of Tübingen

1. Introduction
Almost every argumentation scholar will be familiar with the famous skit by Monty Python’s Flying Circus called The Argument Clinic (Monty Python 1987; video 2006). A man (played by Michael Palin) comes to the ‘Argument Clinic’, wishing to “have an argument”. After various failed attempts he finally enters the room where an “arguer” (played by John Cleese) offers such service. Yet the argument does not develop the way the client has expected, since when he double-checks that he is in the correct room, Cleese confronts him with a bluntly dishonest statement (“I told you once.”), thereby provoking contradiction from the client, but in the following dialogue confines himself to merely contradicting any statement the client will make. Even when the client tries to define that an argument is not “the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes”, but “a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition”, and tries to use logic and reason to defeat Cleese, the latter continues to proceed in exactly the same way, until in the end the enervated client rushes out of the room with an exasperated “Oh shut up!”

This sketch makes us laugh, and this is what it is meant to. But what it draws its funny esprit from is the fact that we will all remember having experienced such or similar scenes in reality. Seemingly futile polemic argument appears to be characteristic of our present-day argument culture. TV talk shows confront us daily with disputers yelling at each other and flinging arguments into each other’s faces without ever listening to the other side. And are not today’s political debates more often than not characterized by mere cantankerousness and gain-saying rather than by veritable argumentation? To be honest, even academic discussions oftentimes hardly do any better. Read more