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.

1. Rhetoric and Argument
We begin with a history of the relationship between rhetoric and argument. Of course, rhetoric has a long and storied tradition in Western culture. That history traces from humble beginnings in the Greek classical era, through a lofty status as one of the seven liberal arts in the medieval university, and back into relative obscurity. But argument has not always been a part of that history. For a millennium and a half after its classical heights rhetorical theory emphasized elements other than argument. Then, in the 17^th century, the influential Port Royalists formally separated argument from rhetoric, placing the former into the domain of logic. As the enlightenment proceeded that division held. Thus, our story is not of the long history of argument in rhetoric, but of the recent recovery of rhetorical argument. That history must be traced in two phases, pivoting in the 1960s around evolving definitions of rhetoric. In that evolution, rhetorical argument participated in the great intellectual movements of the 20^th century.

By the 1960s, a well rounded study of rhetorical argument had emerged built within the context of neo-Aristotelianism. There were two forces shaping this study. The cultural force shared the movement within American education away from a notion of education as a refining and polishing of human character toward a more practical endeavor. This force had begun in the 19^th century in the United States with the industrial revolution and the Morrill Act, which placed the federal government into the business of encouraging education in technology and agriculture. When the political organization of the American university into departmental divisions picked up steam near the turn of the 20^th century, a revolt began within English departments – the home of language study – championing the practical uses of language over the normative study of literatures. In this move, Aristotle’s Rhetorica (322 b.c.e.) was broadly rediscovered and gave force to the practical study of argument. This was a particularly astute choice in the environment of the day.  Spotlighting Aristotle reached across the divide in pedagogy to the proponents of classical education, and identified rhetoric with the Greek Revival and its celebration of democracy.

Rhetoric is, Aristotle (322 b.c.e) proffered, “the faculty of discerning in every case the available means of persuasion” (1355b). By the early 20th century, departments of English in the United States were beginning to spawn departments of speech or oratory composed of these practicality rebels, and built around practical uses of language. David Zarefsky (1995), in his keynote at this conference in 1994, traced the contribution of this developing discipline to argumentation study. As the 20^th century proceeded, scholars concerned with the practical – both those remaining in English departments and those joining the new departments – developed an interest in rhetoric and Aristotle’s definitions took the lead.

By 1925, William Utterback (1925) noted that all roads to understanding rhetoric led back to Aristotle.  He praised Aristotle not only for his fit to the practical demands of the culture – “The function of rhetoric is to provide the speaker with the tools of his trade” (p. 221) – but also because his method was adaptable to 20^th century intellectual change.  The social sciences were developing at the time, based in admiration for the scientific advances of the early industrial age, and seeking to bring what Stephen Pepper (1942) called a “mechanistic” understanding of human behavior to the practical questions of human activity. Replacing the normative and formal concerns of the earlier age, the mechanistic was marked by analytic methods, that is, the tendency to proceed by dividing things into their parts, exploring each of those parts, and constructing a theory of the relationship among the parts. In addition, this intellectual move focused on the importance of causal chains, particularly those that related to effectiveness.

Utterback (1925) praised Aristotle’s rhetoric for providing a vocabulary to study rhetoric in this fashion. In his account, dichotomies and category systems helped to sort elements of rhetoric. And one of these elements that could be studied was, of course, argument. Argument was conceptualized as that component of the “means of persuasion” denoted as logos. Arguments in turn could be broken into their parts: premises and conclusions. A particularly important dichotomy in this study was that between conviction and persuasion, with argument relating to the former and emotion to the latter. Arguments were understood in terms of their potential effectiveness in practical settings. Rhetorical argument, Utterback noted, was marked by a near-universal model for practical discourse: speakers, seeking to accomplish persuasive purposes, analyzed subjects and audiences.  Based on this intellectual understanding, speakers called upon systems of argument to formulate practical messages seeking to convince others of the truth or goodness of their position. Thus, a facility for argument was located in mental, perhaps even cognitive, processing, with the test of that processing resting in the power of the arguments to effect the convictions and behaviors of others.

Of course, Aristotle’s Organon identified three modes of argument – scientific demonstration, dialectic, and rhetorical argument. But his laying out of the differences among these modes was imprecise enough that the place of the enthymeme – the rhetorical syllogism – and the rhetorical topoi became a convenient inquiry to mature neo-Aristotelian argument. By the 1950s and 1960s, much inquiry was focusing on the meaning of these terms in Aristotle. Because the central thrust of this work was practical, the exploration of argument extended beyond the theory of argument formation to also consider argument as situated in history. Guided by Herbert Wichelns’ “The Literary Criticism of Oratory” (1925), scholars of rhetorical argument studied the great arguments of history and how their use by great men effected the course of history.

By the 1960s a substantial volume of scholarship had accumulated around neo-Aristotelian argument. Wiley (1956), Bitzer (1959), Mudd (1959), Walwick (1960), Fisher (1964), Aly (1965), and Chronkite (1966) had built on the seminal work of James McBurney (1936) to explore the enthymene. Characteristic patterns of proof – neo-Aristotelian versions of Aristotle’s topics – had been developed and described.  Standard histories of influential speakers and writers had been written with attention to their important and powerful arguments, most notably in the three volume set on The History and Criticism of American Public Address edited by Brigance (1943) and Hochmuth (1955). In addition to these intellectual moves, well developed pedagogical systems for teaching neo-Aristotelian argument had developed in departments of English and speech in American universities, particularly in the land grant universities established by the Morrill Act as homes for practical education.

2. A Second Tradition
But there is a critical point of change in our historical narrative. Near mid-century, the dominance of the mechanistic perspective on human behavior began to tease out lively alternatives. By the 1970s the so-called “linguistic turn” had reoriented the study of human activity. The linguistic turn emphasized the centrality of language in understanding and action, thus placing language acts at the center of inquiry. Quite literally, the linguistic construal of context became the central process in which humans related themselves to the world around them. The resulting spread of what Pepper (1942) called “contextualism” through intellectual circles from philosophy through social science and into the humanities turned the attention of those studying the powers of language from mechanical effectiveness to organizing perception and action. Cultures were shaped in the performance of language. Patterns of power were instantiated through the perceptual and volitional possibilities of language forms.

A broad range of intellectual disciplines now turned to understand the powers of language. Certainly Wittgenstein’s ideas about language were key to the linguistic turn, but so also were those in the movements known as structuralism and post-structuralism. The interaction between European and American interest in rhetoric became a fruitful and complex dialogue of influences. Even the term “rhetoric,” still more likely to be embraced as a key term in North America than in Europe, became current on the continent after Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958) subtitled their 1958 book A New Rhetoric.[i] 

As the linguistic turn energized rhetorical studies, definitions of rhetoric began to change. The powers of rhetoric were drawn more broadly in a definition that defined rhetorical study as concerned with “the relationship between language and social order.”  Language under mechanistic ways of thinking was referential: words were assumed to re-present some aspect of non-linguistic reality, and the manipulations of language were judged by their correspondence to manipulations of this non-linguistic world. But after the linguistic turn, contextualist ways of thinking viewed the possibilities and powers of language as shaping human interaction with the world. As opposed to the analytic inquiry of mechanism, the synthetic inquiry of contextualism sought to understand how language’s power to construct context through the assertiveness of text enacted environment into human consciousness and action.[ii]

From the perspective of this broadened view of rhetoric, the inventional process merged many forces drawn from biography and society into a socially meaningful discursive action. Human symbolic exchange replaced the mental processes of strategic design at the center of rhetoric. To this exchange, each participant brought a biography of particular and shared interests and capabilities. The exchange filtered and shaped these into a socially coordinated texture of understanding and action. Argument performed negotiation within this exchange, adapting understanding to circumstances, and participants to understandings, that together guided action (Bryant, 1953).

Obviously, such a move dramatically altered the place of rhetorical argument. The sociolinguistic power of argumentative form to influence ongoing human activity was unmistakable. To be sure, these strands in rhetorical argument predated the linguistic turn by decades. As early as 1917, Mary Yost (1917) had authored “Argument from the Point-of-view of Sociology” in which she argued, “Argument as we read and hear it and use it every day is directly and fundamentally communication between members of a social group, a society in the sociological meaning of the term” (113). In the old dichotomous thinking of the time, Yost was rejecting argument’s association with analytic logic in favor of a practical effectiveness. Yet, the emphasis on the social group as a context for argumentative power was to become a key to understanding the linguistic turn. In 1947, Ernest J. Wrage’s (1947) “Public Address: A Study in Social and Intellectual History” had emphasized that the power of argument to evolve ideas was a vital creative force driving historical change.  By 1963, Karl R. Wallace’s (1963) “The Substance of Rhetoric: Good Reasons” had fixed the motivational qualities of rhetoric in their sociolinguistic force rather than their referential power. During the same time period, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958/1969) had grounded a rhetoric – still mechanical and concerned with effectiveness in many ways – in social contexts. And Stephen Toulmin had written The Place of Reason in Ethics (1950) and The Uses of Argument (1958) which together made the case for grounding the motivational powers of human language in cultural contexts. This developing European thought had infiltrated American thinking on rhetorical argument by the 1960s. By the time Robert L. Scott (1967) declared rhetoric to be a “way of  knowing” in 1967, the linguistic turn was well established in rhetorical argument.

Thus, the two great intellectual movements of the 20^th century – mechanism and contextualism – had spawned two understandings of rhetoric. These two interpretations were not inconsistent, but related from the more narrowly defined neo-Aristotelianism with its analytic patterns and practical concern for effectiveness, to the more general definition of the linguistic turn, highlighting the synthetic power of rhetoric to transform human experience into social activity.

3. Today’s Study of Rhetorical Argument
Now, let me turn from this narrative history of the perspective of rhetorical argument to characterize the disparate research I pointed to earlier – seemingly unfocused forays by theorists, historians and critics associated with the rhetorical tradition. If I have achieved my purpose to this point, my account of the evolution of rhetorical study with the shifting intellectual forces of the 20^th century will indicate the generative coherence of research in rhetorical argument. So, a survey of research tracing to the influences of the tradition is in order.

Many studies today are motivated by a belief that the neo-Aristotelian project remains incomplete: we are learning ever more about the pragmatic effort to invent arguments that will effectively influence others. Indeed, our interest in a historical and useful understanding of Aristotle’s thinking on argument remains alive. Particularly active in the last few years, especially among European classicists, is work to better understand the topics as an approach to rhetorical argument. Interest in reinvigorating Aristotle’s distinction between demonstration, dialectic, and rhetorical argument remains an active pursuit. But our efforts to develop ways of thinking through the strategic, pragmatic problem of invention has extended attention beyond Aristotle to theorists from our own time. David Frank’s recent conference on the work of Chaïm Perelman and the Ontario Societies’ conference on the work of Stephen Toulmin (Hitchcock, 2005; Hitchcock & Verheij, 2006) deepened our appreciation of the potential of those 20^th century theorists.  No doubt Toulmin’s recent death will spur retrospectives that will add to our facility with his working logic.

Our theoretical work has not, however, only attempted to round out the theory of the giants of the neo-Aristotelian project. Pursuit of a better understanding of pragmatic argument has extended to new theoretical work. Most noteworthy among these new approaches is the effort to account for the pragmatic power of visual argument. I would also be remiss if I were not to acknowledge the active project of incorporating the work of informal logicians, the findings of experimental scholars, and the implications of the pragma-dialectical approach of the Amsterdam school into the advice we provide to arguers inventing discourse. The neo-Aristotelian’s vision of effective arguers achieving their defined purposes by formulating arguments after a structured analysis of subject matter and audience remains a primary concern of rhetorical argument.

The pragmatic power of argument has always animated the work of historians who have featured its contribution in biographies of leaders and accounts of political change. Today, our historians continue to document the pragmatic power of effective argument in these contexts. US presidents have been a favorite, a focus no doubt stimulated by general academic interest in the rhetorical presidency during the late 20^th century. But recent work has extended the focus of leadership beyond the obvious target of the head of state, and beyond the American head of state. I would point particularly, for example, to Kelly Carr’s (2010) recent study of Justice Lewis Powell’s invention of diversity as a legal value in the Bakke decision of the United States Supreme Court. Other studies have extended to strategies employed by corporate businesses in encountering the challenges of business life.  James Wynn’s (2009) recent study of Darwin’s use of inductive argument illustrates the line of work in scientific argument. This research has established a firm record of the importance of rhetoric in historical development in many venues of life. In the process it has also enriched the theoretical understanding of how arguers go about achieving pragmatic goals.

But as the definition of rhetoric broadened with the linguistic turn the late 20^th century, historians of argument have also altered their project. Taking the view of Ernest Wrage (1947), these scholars have moved beyond the documentation of effectiveness to document the cultural evolution of argumentative forms. I believe one of the most underappreciated but important documents in rhetorical studies in the 20^th century was The Prospect of Rhetoric, the report of the 1970 National Developmental Conference on Rhetoric. The report of the Committee on Invention took a notably Wragean perspective calling for understanding “the processes of change and habituation which constitute” life, and finding the key to that understanding in “a generative theory of rhetoric” (Bitzer & Black, 1971, p. 230). The most noteworthy early work in this line of inquiry may have been John Angus Campbell’s (1970) essay on Darwin’s development of the evolutionary argumentative form. Campbell traced how Darwin synthesized strains of old form into a new way to structure scientific and popular thought. The argumentative form that Darwin loosed on the world – an evolution driven by natural variety and mechanisms of selection – has carried beyond biology into multiple aspects of life. For example, I call upon the form quite literally in my recent work on argumentative ecology (Klumpp, 2009). Campbell’s interest in science as a domain of argumentative power was a focus of Toulmin’s later work (1972) and the POROI group (Project on the Rhetoric of Inquiry) centered at the University of Iowa whose work has been prominent at our conferences.

But the influence of the Wragean notion that the ideas that drive history are a product of culturally authorized argumentative form has animated our historians of argument beyond the sciences.  Robert Ivie’s interest in the motivations for war led him to track the characteristic arguments with which American presidents call for war. More broadly his book Dissent from War (2007) critiques the argumentative form that justifies war. Another important cluster of work in this tradition has studied the development of nationalistic and democratic form in Central and Eastern Europe since the revolutions of 1988-90.

The detailed catalogs of arguments by the great arguers of the past that characterized the neo-Aristotelian studies in The History and Criticism of American Public Address (Brigance, 1943; Hochmuth, 1955) helped to establish an historical record of success and leadership, and suggested to theorists the patterns of invention that characterized consequential argument. Historical work within the newer definitions of rhetoric has emphasized a kind of social history in contrast to the “great man” history of the neo-Aristotelians. Their histories of the evolution and power of justification complexes project the central role that their perspective gives to argumentative forms in defining cultures. The evolutionary dynamic at the heart of this approach to rhetorical argument places this study near the center of modern intellectual history.

Another characteristic focus of scholarship in rhetorical argument through the neo-Aristotelian era and since is the importance of the public sphere. Christian Kock (2009) recently argued that the essential characteristic of rhetorical argument is its domain: “issues of choice in the civic sphere” (77). He traced this influence through classical rhetorical theory and down into contemporary times. Kock’s emphasis on the venue of argument owes much to the neo-Aristotelian impulse. Indeed, as I have argued, one of the reasons that Aristotle was the favored figure in early work in rhetorical argument was his connection to Greek democracy in the polis, or as Kock calls it “the civic sphere.”

But the most energetic work in the public sphere followed the linguistic turn.  Focusing on the public sphere as a context that placed demands on argument posed different trajectories of inquiry. When the contextualist view on politics began to ask about the quality of participation in democratic social order, rhetorical argument began a necessary exploration of the place and form of argument in the democratic context. Indeed, beside Perelman and Toulmin, the third great European intellectual who has most influenced the study of rhetorical argument is Jürgen Habermas. Habermas began his work as a historian and critic in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962/1989) and The Legitimation Crisis (1973/1975). His history illustrated the usefulness of a new contextualist vocabulary to characterize communication in democracies. But the theory that animated his history turned from more generally rhetorical to explicitly argumentative in his Theory of Communicative Action (1981/1984, 1987). That work also turned from an historical project to a normative one. In rhetorical argument, Tom Goodnight’s (1982) adaptation of Habermas differentiated the personal, technical, and public spheres of argument. This separation became germinal, perhaps because it posed most forcefully the tension between a pragmatic and the more general definitions of rhetoric that were marking the emergence of newer rhetorical concerns. His distinction charted the need to make that transition to normative study of the public sphere.

Habermas’ public sphere also became important because criticisms of his work were extremely fruitful in turning normative ideas about the public sphere into critical treatments of argumentative practice within the contemporary world. By the time the influence of Habermas’ public sphere had worked its way through rhetorical argument, a vast literature sought to understand modern public argument as a social practice. Theoretically, there has been much development, most thoroughly in Gerald Hauser’s (1999) Vernacular Voices, and most recently in Robert Asen’s (2004) search for “a discourse theory of citizenship.”

Critical work since Habermas has been decidedly normative, suggesting that contemporary argumentative praxis comes up short when evaluated against democratic theory (Tannen, 1998). Concern for the breadth of meaningful participation in argument has been primary. But in addition, particular characteristics of modern argumentative form – highlighted by Goodnight’s (1982) focus on the public sphere and Walter Fisher’s (1987a, 1987b) idea of narrative rationality – have spawned considerable critical normative work seeking to improve democratic practice.

The linguistic turn dictated, however, that not all critical work in the public sphere would be normative. One of the accomplishments of the linguistic turn was to transform criticism from an objective, distanced, normative evaluation of rhetoric into an active force in socio-political dialogue. Students of rhetorical argument have responded by overtly offering critique to correct or improve argument within the public sphere. The United States government’s adventure in Iraq in the early 21^st century presented an obvious argumentative morass that reopened many of the questions about deliberative argument and war-making in modern democratic states. For example, my 2005 keynote at the Alta Conference (2006) drew on the Iraq experience to critique the failure to attend to questions of veracity within argumentation theory.

The theoretical, historical, and critical work with the democratic public sphere carried the initial interest of the neo-Aristotelians – citizens governing through argument – into contemporary interest in the power of argumentative form to embody democratic participation. Because argumentative form was viewed as structuring democratic praxis beyond pragmatic decision, the scope of criticism expanded with the definition of rhetoric: who argues, the structural limits on the power of their argument, the appropriate subjects of democratic argument, the quality of argument performed in the argumentative structure, all moved into the purview of rhetorical argument.

This expansive view of the public sphere hints at the final type of study that has become a part of contemporary inquiry in rhetorical argument. Contemporary rhetorical theory’s view that argumentative forms provide a structure of justification for social practice has turned critics to consider that productive power. Absorbing the sensitivities of cultural studies, justificatory implication has become a way to assess the qualities of the argumentative relationships reproduced through performance of argumentative form. Thus, the power of justification highlighted by this expansive view of the public sphere becomes diffused throughout social arrangements in the culture. Michel Foucault’s studies of the praxis of discourse formation, particularly Discipline and Punish (1975/1977), Birth of the Clinic (1963/1973), and History of Sexuality, (1976/1978) has influenced this work.  Raymie McKerrow’s (1993) focus on cultural approaches in the 1993 Alta conference he directed has facilitated the development of this line of research. Ron Greene’s (for example, 2002, 2003) recent work illustrates this interest. It is the justificatory power of argumentative form, founded in revisionary precepts of contemporary contextualist rhetorical theory that have turned students of rhetorical argument toward these diverse interests.

4. The Commitments of Rhetorical Argument
I hope this very brief survey of the variety of studies that compose rhetorical argument has succeeded in seating that variety in the evolving perspective on rhetoric as the intellectual movements of the 20^th century unfolded. But beyond the characterization of these relationships I promised a distillation of the common intellectual commitments, born of that history, that unite this work from the Neo-Aristotelians to the postmoderns.  I believe the commitments can be distilled to three. First,  rhetorical argument recognizes that arguments are per-formed in language. In saying this, we are emphasizing that the power of argument lies not in the correspondence of word-maps with underlying non-linguistic reality, but in deploying the resources of language to negotiate human influence on the environment.  This commitment highlights that argument calls upon the resources of language to invent culturally adapted forms through which it transforms human experience into intellectual and volitional influence. Arguments transform experience into a constructed, meaningful context, and in that ordering of experience humans take their place as players in shaping environment. It is in this way that argument is a source of human power.  Thus, this commitment originates the study of rhetorical argument in the potentialities and performance of language.

The second commitment follows: argument inherently engages the social.  Humans do things with other humans in a complex dance of reasons and justifications that shape the world and their relationships with others. The social context manifests many dimensions – the cultural, political, historical, even rhetorical tradition – but whatever the highlighted social context, the tradition of rhetorical argument depicts argument grounded in an awareness of, and ultimately achieving, social connectivity. Argument is performed within this connectivity. Thus, the power exercised in argument is at once instrumental and social, one and inseparable. Through argument humans array the power of their language to accomplish their interaction with their environments, material and social.

The third commitment structures our inquiry: rhetorical argument is an observable and consequential activity. We can see it, read it, hear it.  Rhetorical argument is neither a mere window into the mind nor the soul.  It is manifest in human activity. Humans use argument to form the texture of human interaction with each other and with the world around them. The capacity for language entails the unique human capacity to relate to others and to nature through complex argument. Understanding this capacity conceptually and pragmatically requires theoretical, historical, and critical insight. Those working in rhetorical argument do that work.

These commitments orient the way. There is an empiricism of experience as the starting point, with sensitivities to the resources of language and their powers to manifest reasons and justifications in social praxis. The neo-Aristotelians champion the arguer and his or her power to wield influence through this complex. Those influenced by the linguistic turn see the power as more diffuse in cultural processes and social activity. But all focus our study on human use of language to shape activity within society through the power of reason and justification. We believe that taken together the diverse studies in which we engage as we study argument in this way will provide us a well rounded understanding of a fundamental human activity.

5. Rhetorical Argument in the Context of Argumentation Studies
One of my students at Maryland with whom I shared my project for this keynote responded: “Oh, you are doing identity work.” Well, perhaps. For certain, I hope to provide a more vivid recognition of “rhetorical argument” and to encourage others to acknowledge the importance of rhetorical argument in argumentation studies. But my purpose is more than just acknowledgment.

All of us working in argumentation studies today are blessed with a structure of reporting our research that provides a vital circulatory system. We have two wonderful journals that anchor our work, Argumentation and Advocacy, and Argumentation. Other journals supplement these two including Controversia, Informal Logic, and several forensics journals in the United States. This list could be far longer. We have multiple conferences that regularly bring us together for interaction including this conference, the Alta conference, the Wake Forest conference, the OSSA conference, the Tokyo conference.  I have no doubt left out some that I should have recognized. We have a well established book series in Europe, although we still lack one in North America. The volume of work we have produced in these outlets has encouraged our experimentation with the limits of our study. Indeed, it makes singling out authors a chancy practice in a presentation like this.

It is the vitality of argumentation study that we should all take great pride in. And an important part of that vitality is how we reach across our identities to encounter each other’s work. When van Eemeren and Houtlosser (2000) reach out to incorporate rhetorical issues in their pragma-dialectical project, when Christopher Tindale (1999) reaches out to center his work on rhetorical concerns, when Dale Hample frames precepts of rhetorical theory into experimental hypotheses to refine our understanding of argumentative processes, it testifies to the vitality of our research venues.

And I believe that truly valuing each other’s interests entails a fulsome appreciation for the depth of intellectual heritage that establishes identity. So, that has been my purpose today:  to trace that intellectual heritage of rhetorical argument. I have sought to identify the common origins and interests of those who work in rhetorical argument; to trace the diachronic track that evolved rhetorical argument through the 20^th and into our own century; to see the linkages of the key intellectual movements of the 20^th century to that work and how today those movements provide ample roots to turn the diversity of our work from cacophony to symphony. And, yes, were I to repeat that conversation at this conference about what my project is, I would hope that I have created the tapestry from which my interlocutor and I would find that my response “rhetorical argument” would fruitfully carry us into a conversation for a luncheon rather than for pastry and tea.

Christopher Tindale has it about right. To make a society, people argue. They give reasons; they attempt to set each other right. They urge particular interpretations; they attempt to motivate each other to act. As they do this, cultures acquire their character, for good or ill.  They progress in dealing with the circumstances of their shared lives, or they fail. They make choices that evolve their day-to-day activities, and create their histories.  The relationship between humans as creators and users of symbols and the social practices that define their political, social, and cultural activities captures our gaze. Whether framed as the pragmatic skills of arguers seeking influence or the justificatory power of culturally constructed and reproduced argumentative forms, whether pursued theoretically, historically, or critically, these interests have carved rhetorical argument into the texture of our research in productive and lasting ways.

NOTES
[i] Tellingly when the English translation by Wilkinson and Weaver was published in 1969 it reversed the title and subtitle acknowledging the greater currency of rhetoric in North America.
[ii] Although the linguistic turn was a very broadly based movement, many rhetoricians taking the turn in North America were heavily influenced by Kenneth Burke. Yet, Burke’s relationship to argumentation theory has not been an obvious one. In introducing a special issue of Argumentation and Advocacy entitled “Dramatism and Argumentation,” guest editor Donn W. Parson (1993) observed, “‘Finding’ a theory of argument, or positions that inform argument theory, [in Burke’s work] will be an inferential process, and the work may be that of a detective” (146). That special issue explored the relationship between Burke and argumentation theory in some depth, highlighting the relationships of language and social order. In doing so, it may provide an interesting case study on how the evolution of rhetorical theory alters the study of argument after the linguistic turn.

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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.’

We must also explore how geisha is used in France today. For example, the book Idées reçues: Le Japon (Fixed ideas: Japan) indicates that ‘a woman is submissive to men and to her husband,’ which is one of the famous fixed ideas regarding Japan. Japon des Japonais (Japan of the Japanese) also shows that ‘the Japanese woman makes one part of our phantasm to the Orient. To oriental women’s sensuality, she (Japanese woman) adds a little submission to the desire of a man (Pons & Souyri. 2002, pp. 69-70). Japanese women have often been described as the embodiment of the “Orient as phantasm,” the most famous representative of which is the geisha.

According to the second Japanese-French dictionary, Petit Royal (Oubunsha), the term kawaii is translated as mignon (cute), gentil (kind), adorable (adorable), and joli (beautiful). This adjective is considered a key word that represents Japanese popular culture. According to the sixth edition of Kojien, The Dictionary of the Japanese Language, the definition of kawaii is ‘pitiful, poor; must love, feel deep affection; small and beautiful.’ Recently, the utilisation of kawaii is frequent in Japanese women’s magazines to appreciate the “immature” or the childish, describing in particular decorative taste, which is one of the two principal aesthetics in Japan, the other being minimalism. In a contemporary Japanese context, this term is primarily reserved for girls, who are considered weak in a macho society, to qualify any object without distinction (from any fashion style to emperor behaviour) (Koga 2009, pp. 202-215; Yomota 2006, p.10).

The terms geisha and kawaii are foreign words that are used as xenism and peregrinism. According to Dictionnaire de linguistique,
The distinctions between a xenism and a peregrinism allow us to take into account the usage of certain words: a xenism is a foreign word mentioned with reference to a linguistic code of origin and to foreign realities. A peregrinism reflects foreign realities, but its meaning is understood by the interlocutor,[ii] (Debois, Mathée, Gespin, Marcellesi, Marcellesi & Mével, 2001, p. 512)[iii]

Thus, we will examine how the terms geisha and kawaii as xenism and peregrinism are used as argumentative devices in our corpus.

3. Argumentative Functions of Xenism and Peregrinism
As our hypothesis, there are three types of argumentation concerning the usage of foreign words. The first is persuasion concerning the construction of meaning of a loaned neologism; the second, construction of the effect of reality for a text in which the foreign word is used; and third, construction of connivance, in particular, of derision.

3.1. Argumentation via Xenism: Construction of the Meaning of a Loaned Neologism with a Gloss or Definition
As we mentioned, a xenism is used with its gloss or definition. Using a xenism signifies that the gloss of xenism will be a translation or an explanation. For the interlocutor, this term is not yet familiar; he/she has not yet acquired common knowledge concerning this subject. But does this gloss – a translation or an explanation – objectively reflect its actual definition? Could a definition be manipulated not to present the word objectively?

A definition, according to Philippe Breton, could be considered an argumentation of framework; the meaning of the new reference is constructed through some argumentation devices such as “framework” – a description emphasising one side, underestimating the other side. He also says that this manipulation is realised through an authority, which can be a “specialist,” someone with “experience,” or a “witness” as an author’s ethos (Breton 1996, pp.44-45).

On the one hand, since xenism permits the speaker to construct his ethos, his self-image as a specialist in current Japanese culture shows his individual and subjective judgment on this xenism through the gloss. The gloss, or ‘translation, which is presented as pure explanation, does in reality give only one biased idea of [the] sense of the word in the loaned language’ (Steuckardt and Honoré 2006, p. 3). That is, the gloss would permit one to construct a subjective idea as objective.

This type of argumentation is realised when a foreign word appears with its gloss, a subjective definition, as a xenism. In our corpus, we could not find the xenism of geisha, which is in the company of its gloss because, for over 100 years since the first apparition of this term in a French context, it has become traditionally popular; it is not necessary to use a translation or an explanation. So, the argumentation of framework by means of a definition must occur immediately after a new word appears.

3.2. Kawaii as xenism: Gloss in apposition and implicit judgment
The term kawaii qualifies objects related to Japanese culture with a gloss in apposition, which is a definition or a “literal” translation. The gloss[iv] most commonly used for this term is mignon (“cute,” “sweet,” or “kind” in English).
(1) “An incarnation of the kawaii (mignon) culture and a cure for loneliness, dogs number 13 million in Japan today”
(Incarnation de la culture kawaii (mignon) et remède contre la solitude, les chiens sont aujourd’hui 13 millions au Japon.)
(Le Figaro Magazine, 03/24/2007).

(2) This Japanese [Takashi Murakami], who conquers contemporary art with his pop art mixed with Nippon naivety, presents to Paris a panorama of Japanese youth, a happy hodgepodge where the taste known as kawaii (mignon in Japanese) predominates (Ce Japonais [Takashi Murakami], qui a conquis l’art contemporain avec son pop-art mâtiné de naïveté nippone, présente à Paris un panorama de la jeune création japonaise, joyeux fourre-tout où prédomine le goût prononcé pour le kawaii (mignon, en japonais).
(Libération, 07/04/2002).

Here, each object that the term kawaii qualifies is related to Japan, such as dogs in Japan (1) and the popular art of Takashi Murakami (2). That is, the term qualifies the adorable domestic animals or popular culture. Used in this way, kawaii designates things that are not concerned with small animals or popular culture. It appears from these examples that such a gloss is a literal translation, but this is not always the case:

(3) In spite of the coldness and rain, Roppongi Hills, the chic district of Tokyo, had its big opening night party. The two stars of the film, Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire, were welcomed by « kawaii » (trop (very) mignon in Japanese) by hundreds of fans. (MALGRÉ le froid et la pluie, Roppongi Hills, le quartier chic de Tokyo, avait son air des grands soirs de fête. (…)Les deux stars du film, Kirsten Dunst en tenue évanescente en chiffon rose et Tobey Maguire, ont été accueillies par des « kawaii » (« trop mignon » en japonais) par des centaines de fans)

(Le Figaro, Le Figaro Économie, 4/17/2007).

(4) The cosplayers must know the characters that they interpret well (their attitudes,their gestures, etc.), so they must have read [the manga’s] “biography” (…) he must be able to integrate some Japanese terms into his vocabulary. Examples: gomen, which signifies “pardon”; kawaii, which signifies “mignon, adorable”[…].
(Le cosplayeur doit bien connaître le personnage qu’il interprète (son attitude, ses gestes), donc il doit avoir lu sa « biographie » (les mangas).[…] il doit pouvoir intégrer quelques termes japonais à son vocabulaire. Exemples : gomen qui signifie « pardon, désolé », kawaii qui veut dire « mignon, adorable » […].)
(Le Figaro, 02/28/2007).

(5) […] an illustrator working in Japan, she knows how to mix kowai and kawaii, horror and feebleness.
([…] une illustratrice travaillant au Japon, elle sait mêler kowai et kawaii, horreur et mièvrerie)
(Libération, 02/13/2008).

In extract (3), kawaii and its gloss describe the reaction of Japanese supporters of a foreign actress visiting in Japan. In extract (4), kawaii is introduced as a Japanese word qualifying the “cosplay” of manga characters. In extract (5), it is used as one of the characteristics of Japanese animations, of which the other is “horror.” Concerning the gloss, the translation mignon is accompanied by the adverb expressing the excessive quantities trop (“too much” in English) or très (“very” in English) as the familiar language in extract (4) or by the adjective “adorable” in extract (5). Kawaii is also translated as mièvrerie (“feebleness” in English), a substantive with a negative nuance. The first 2 glosses have positive connotations, but the last one has a negative connotation. Thus, the gloss is not a literal translation but a mark of the subjective judgment of the locutor.

3.3. Xenisme kawaii bringing explicit comments in the form of definition
Sometimes, not only is the gloss apposition attached to the term kawaii, but also a certain subjective explanation/interpretation of the locutor. We will look at some examples.

(6) The violence is certainly one of the characteristics of Japanese cartoons and video games. Pokemon belongs to another vein: the cult of kawaii, which is “mignon”. The word which signifies a little sickly sentiment of affection which aroused a child or a small animal became, as like “cute” in Anglo-American, the password of the imaginary world of Nippon youth.
(La violence est certes l’une des caractéristiques de l’univers de la bande dessinée et des jeux vidéo japonais. Les Pokémon relèvent d’une autre veine : le culte du kawaii,  qui est ” mignon “. Le mot qui signifie le sentiment d’affection un peu mièvre que suscite un enfant ou un petit animal est devenu, comme ” cute ” en anglo-américain, le mot de passe du monde imaginaire de la jeunesse nippone.)
(Le Monde, 12/17/1999).

The gloss first cites a translation of the term mignon. A further explanation is as follows: “the sentiment of affection aroused by a little sickly child or a small animal” and “the password of the imaginary world of the Nippon youth.” The objects that this term qualifies delimit this word, defined with regard to children or small animals.

(7) His [Takashi Murakami’s] work borrows especially from the aesthetics of Manga and the culture of kawaii (in other words, mignon). He plays on two perverted and reassuring tensions. Following the example of Walt Disney, he invents his own characters, such as Mr. Dob, a kind of Mickey Mouse, who is sometimes ferocious and ironic, and sometimes sickly.
(Son [Takashi Murakami] œuvre emprunte surtout à l’esthétique du manga et à la culture du kawaii (autrement dit ce qui est mignon). Il joue de fait sur deux tensions, perverse et rassurante. A l’instar de Walt Disney, il invente ses propres personnages, comme Mr. Dob, une sorte de Mickey tantôt féroce et ironique, tantôt mièvre.)
(Le Monde, 10/23/2006).

(8) KAWAII. The expression kawaii which signifies mignon in Japanese, and is borrowed from the exposition of Takashi Murakami at the Cartier Foundation, has become the gimmick (…), which also appreciates all the acid and false manga’s ingenuous aesthetic.
(KAWAII. L’expression kawaii qui signifie mignon en japonais, empruntée à l’exposition de Takashi Murakami à la Fondation Cartier, est devenue le gimmick des modeux qui apprécient aussi toute l’esthétique acidulée et faussement ingénue des mangas.)
(Le Figaroscope,10/23/2002).

In the extract (7), with the gloss mignon (cute in English), the culture of kawaii is presented as one of the sources of imagination for Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. In this extract (8), the term kawaii is explained by means of the signification mignon and by its origin in the exposition of Takashi Murakami. The signification “the acid aesthetic and false ingenuous of manga,”, which is far from the sense of kawaii diffused in Japan, is added to the adjective kawaii.

(9) He [Matsumoto] mixes the perverted cute of kawaii with his habitual ruffled character, the costumes of an eclectic folklore, and the idempotent architecture.
(Il [Matsumoto] mélange le mignon pervers du kawaii avec son trait hérissé habituel, les costumes d’un folklore éclectique et l’architecture idem.)
(Libération, 08/20/2004).

(10) There was Takashi Murakami, whom gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin discovered in France. Very quickly, this artist, coming from manga art, created a group titled Kaikai Kiki. The artists have in common recourse to the long Japanese tradition related to the contemporary phantasmagoria influenced by video games, science fiction, or the observation of Japanese society. It is also called the “Kawaii movement”
(il y a eu Takashi Murakami que le galeriste Emmanuel Perrotin fit découvrir en France. Très vite cet artiste, venu de l’art manga, créa un groupe intitulé Kaikai Kiki. [Les] artistes ont en commun le recours à la grande tradition japonaise liée à une fantasmagorie contemporaine influencée par les jeux vidéo, la science-fiction ou l’observation de la société japonaise. Ce que l’on appelle aussi le mouvement Kawaii.)
(Le Figaro, Le Figaroscope, 05/21/2008).

Kawaii qualifies a Japanese manga, but signifies “mignon-pervers” (cute pervert) in extract (9). In extract (10), this term is used to designate the activity of a popular artist like Takashi Murakami. Here, the signification of this term is far from the way that kawaii is used in Japan.

The xenism kawaii elaborates two ideas about Japanese contemporary popular culture. On the one hand, it is described pejoratively in terms of its cuteness, adorableness, and feebleness, and on the other hand, it is described in terms of its perversity, irony, and fierceness.

The embodiment of two ideas for one xenism, kawaii could confirm that the choice of these glosses is not objective. Furthermore, the second idea for kawaii does not exist in Japan. In spite of these facts, the translation or explanation of the term kawaii is not presented as a subjective interpretation, but as a definition or literal translation.

4. Xenism and Peregrinism : Construction of Effect of Reality and Connivance
Xenism and peregrinism construct the “effect of reality – effet de réel” (Magri, 1995, p. 79) as argumentative devices. Thus, here xenism and peregrinism are used to construct a kind of “Japaneseness” as an effect of reality. The xenisms permit readers to persuade themselves that “this text concerns the real Japan” thanks to the gloss or the explanation. But how does the usage of peregrinisms realise this persuasion?

Using a peregrinism signifies that the meaning of this word has already penetrated into the common knowledge of the society that uses this term. A Peregrinism is one of the forms of implicit. The implicit is an argumentative device[v] (Amossy 2000, pp.151-153; Ducrot 1972, p.12).

When such a peregrinism qualifies objects with which it is not logically associated,[vi] “indirect, scattered, or incomplete” (Amossy & Herschberg Pierrot 1997, p.73) data from which an abstract, reductive schema, and stereotype are constructed are interpreted by the reader through his social shared knowledge.

4.1. The term kawaii as a peregrinism
When used as a peregrinism, the term kawaii could not be found in Le Monde, but it minimally appeared in June 2008 in Le Figaro and in 2004 in Libération.

(11) (…) two girls of 25 years old, dressed in black in Victorian fashion, wearing platform shoes of at least ten centimetres in height, and proclaiming everywhere that they love Dragon Ball Z […], it’s simply “too much kawaii “.
([…] deux filles de 25 ans, vêtues de noir à la mode victorienne, vissées sur des platform shoes d’au moins dix centimètres de haut, qui clament partout que si elles adorent Dragon Ball Z  […], c’est simplement «trop kawaii»)
( Libération, 05/29 /2006).

The word kawaii started to be used without a gloss to designate French women’s costumed as characters of Japanese animations or as “gothic Lolitas.”[vii] The locutor presupposed thus that the interlocutors knew the significance of the term kawaii in the context of Japanese youth culture, so this foreign word would already have penetrated into the culture of interlocutors.

(12)   TSUMORI CHISATO (…) recognised the queen of the kawaii motifs.
(TSUMORI CHISATO. (…) reconnaît la reine des motifs kawaii.)
(Le Figaro, 06/30 /2008).

With neither inverted comment nor gloss, the term kawaii is not used to designate the features of popular culture such as manga or the gothic Lolita, but to designate the features of the creations of a Japanese fashion designer. The locutor presupposes thus that the interlocutor knows what kawaii is. Each term implicitly designates the literal meaning kawaii in any way to construct a kind of connivance between the locutor and the reader. But the effects of reality created by the terms kawaii and geisha are not the same. The term geisha is also used to construct connivance through its synecdochical meanings.

4.2. The term geisha as peregrinism.
In French newspapers, the term geisha is not used to designate the real geisha herself but to construct connivance between the locutor and the readers as a synecdoche or a metaphor.

Geisha = epithet noun denoting “Japanese”
The term geisha is synecdochically used as an adjective instead of the word Japanese. In this stage, it would be possible that the term geisha could implicitly include the sense of submission according to the context; therefore, it could be used as a peregrinism.

First, a critical article “Japonaiseries” about the novel Metaphysique des tubes, the Belgian writer Amelie Nothomb‘s autobiography, will be examined:

(13) While reading this insipid “prêchi-geisha,” we deplore that a final original subject is treated in such a disappointing way
(En lisant ce prêchi-geisha insipide, on déplore qu’un sujet somme toute original ait été traité d’une façon si décevante)
(Le Figaro, Le Figaro Littéraire 08/31/2000).

The French expression Prechi-precha signifies “moralising discourse.” For example, it is used in the following way: “He bothers us with his Prechiprecha (moralising discourse).” The expression prechi-geisha is a pun of Prechi-precha. As a matter of fact, this book is not about geishas. In this context, the term geisha could be considered as denoting “Japanese” or “in the Japanese style.” The expression prechi-geisha could signify “discourse in the Japanese style” or “discourse about Japan.” The adjective “insipid” that is, “dry and dull,” evokes the idea that this expression would be used negatively, for example, as discourse by the writer who repeats the same clichés about Japan.

Geisha=traditional Japan
The following three examples are going to be analysed:

(14) Pronuptia (the name of shop) visits the geisha again. […the shop proposes] “japanizing” style in origami named kabuki, chizuko, shogun, or Yokohama
(Pronuptia revisite la geisha […le boutique propose] des silhouettes japonisantes en origami baptisées Kabuki, Chizuko, Shogun ou Yokohama.)
(Le Figaro 06/09/2005).

(15) In addition, we find the geisha corner with its ancient furniture; it’s practically impossible to find a named tansu, or this bath for girls of the last century”
(Ailleurs, on trouve le coin Geisha, avec ses meubles anciens, quasiment introuvables et baptisés Tansu, ou cette baignoire de fille du siècle dernier.)
(Le Figaro 02/10/2005).

In the two examples above, the term geisha is used synecdochically: in the extract (14), it refers to “japanizing style”; furthermore, in the extract (15) the “geisha corner” refers to the corner in which some Japanese traditional furniture is sold (of course, tansu isn’t exclusive only to a geisha’s room, but also to all Japanese). These examples show that the term geisha is such a plausible Japanese word that it can easily evoke the best things related to Japan.

Geisha = “Japanese women”

The term geisha is synecdochically used to designate “Japanese women,” which is expressed in the following two examples.

(16) When Raymond Guerlain offers to a Tokyoite geisha a bottle of Blue Time in 1962, we are amused to read about the embarrassment on the young woman’s face, the symbol of a person who doesn’t wear perfume.
(Lorsque Raymond Guerlain offre à une geisha tokyoïte en 1962 un flacon d’Heure Bleue, on est amusé de lire l’embarras sur le visage de la jeune fille, emblème d’un peuple qui ne se parfume pas.)
(Le Figaro 05/11/2000).

(17) Two brands have invented the new age perfume for geishas again. The perfume is consumed by the Japanese with the greatest discretion
(Deux marques réinventent le parfum pour les geishas New Age. Le parfum est consommé par les Japonaises avec la plus extrême discrétion.)
(Le Monde 05/24/2000).

These articles were published almost at the same time and described perfume for Japanese women. In these examples, the statement could refer to “the young woman” in (16) and to “the Japanese women” in (17). But in the first example, it is ambiguous to decide what the reference of the term geisha is: “a real geisha” or the “young woman.” It depends on the reader’s interpretation. In any event, the fact that the term geisha is implicitly used as an epithet noun denoting traditional “Japanese women” shows that this term could be an argumentative device in a triple sense:
I. The term geisha, one of the most famous Japanese words in foreign countries, is used in contexts unrelated to the geisha to construct a kind of Japaneseness, that is, an effect of realism in the text.
II. Using this term as peregrinism without gloss presupposes that the readers already know it, and this term constructs the connivance between locutor and reader.
III. Using this term with synecdochical signification would not construct simple connivance but one of derision between the locutor and the reader, produced by a humorous act. As Patrick Charaudeau said:

Humorous acts participate in various discursive strategies that dispose a speaking subject to try, in a particular communication situation, to seduce the interlocutor or the audience in producing the effects of several connivances…The connivance of derision tries to make share the insignificance of the target. The derision aims to disqualify the target and lower it. (Charaudeau2006, p.37, p.39)

Could we not say that geisha, which is a stereotyped symbol of phantasm in Japanese woman, is used as synecdoche for  Japan, Japanese, or Japanese women and constructs the connivance of derision to permit the reader to adhere to this text?

5. Conclusion
As we examined, the Japanese words kawaii and geisha used in French contemporary medias are used as argumentative devices such as the construction of meaning, effect of the reality, and, in particular, the construction of derision. What’s more, we could add another argumentative function: reinforcing a stereotyped image of Japan.

As we mentioned, Pierre Loti first introduced the term geisha in his book Madame Chrysanthemum. He wrote, ‘I exploit really the adjective petit (small), mièvre (small, vapid), mignard (cute pejoratively used) – (…) the physical and moral aspects of Japan are completely explained in these three words.”

In our time, more than 100 years after the publication of this book, thanks to the development of information techniques, the distance between Japan and occidental countries such as France has narrowed. But even now, as Brian Moeran discusses about images of Japan presented in British advertisements, Japanese people are often represented as children, women, or incomprehensible (1996, pp. 77-112). The adjective “cute” (pejoratively used, “mignard” in French) that Pierre Loti used to qualify Japanese women and guesha reappears today in the form of the term kawaii, a Japanese xenism or peregrinism in the French media.

Thus, even the new term kawaii recently appeared under the boom of Japanese popular culture; the notion of kawaii could be easily accepted by interlocutors in France who have a common knowledge about one of the stereotypical Japanese characteristics – petit, mièvre, mignard. In addition, the new word kawaii and the traditionally well-known term geisha could be also exploited to reinforce obstinate stereotypical Japanese characteristics: “petit, mièvre, mignard”, which would be as argumentative device in foreign texts on Japan.

NOTES
[i] In particular, we investigated the term geisha in the three newspapers published in 1995, 2000, 2005 and the term Kawaii in the same newspapers from 1999 to 2008. The first reason for this is we had to wait for the apparition of the term kawaii by December 17^th, 1999 in the article “Des figures de la culture « kawaii » imprégnées des valeurs japonaises” published in Le Monde, and it started to be used often in Libération since 2002 and in Le Figaro since 2006. The second reason is that occurrences of the term « kawaii » are minimal. In total, in our corpus, though the term « geisha » appeared 5 times in Le Monde, 5 times in Libération, and 13 times in Le Figaro, « kawaii » was only used 4 times in Le Monde and 11 times each in Libération and in Le Figaro. Articles in which we can find the term geisha are more numerous than articles using the term kawaii. Thus we limited the research period of publication of articles concerning geisha to 1995, 2000, and 2005.
[ii] Jean Dubois et al. explain that being a loan word is the last stage of the loan word, which is introduced into the French vocabulary and which could, for example, enter in some process of derivation and of composition (Dubois et al. 2001, p. 512). In our paper, we do not discuss loan words, which are no longer considered foreign words.
[iii] The translation of all the citations in French is done by the author of the paper.
[iv] Glosses of kawaii, such as mignon in French are not translated in English.
[v] Because the implicit ‘initiates a decoding activity that allows «cooperation» […]The implicit reinforces the argumentation by presenting under indirect and veiled form the beliefs and opinions which construct the undisputed premise[…] and the implicit permits to locutor at the same time to say certain things, and to be able to do as if he did not say them’ (Amossy 2000, p.152).
[vi] For example, the peregrinism Hiroshima is used in French newspapers to qualify Japanese fashion and is not related to the atomic bomb at all (Koma, 2009, pp.40-43).
[vii] Gothic Lolita, sometimes shortened to GothLoli (ゴスロリ, gosu rori), is a combination of the gothic and Lolita fashions. The fashion originated in the late 1990s and has been speculated to be “the social backlash” in response to Japanese fashion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolita_fashion#Gothic_Lolita on July 6, 2010).

REFERENCES
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Yomota.I. (2006). Kawaii ron(an essay on Kawaii), Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo.

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.
It is therefore important to study in depth, as part of the historical project to track the development of informal logic since 1970s, how Johnson and Blair attempted to answer the critical objections. In addition to its significance to the history of argumentation, this paper has implications for theoretical and critical studies of argumentation, such as consideration of goals/purposes of argumentative exchange and use of argumentation schemes in the analysis of extended argument. This paper will initially situate the present research within the history of argumentation studies based on the research agenda proposed in the previous research (Konishi 2009). Then in section 2, the focus will shift to the analysis of the actual argumentative situation that Johnson and Blair faced in the review process of Logical Self-Defense. In section 3, a close historical-rhetorical analysis of the argumentative exchange between Johnson and Blair and the reviewers will reveal how Johnson and Blair maneuvered themselves. The final section will offer conclusions and suggestions for future research.

1. Publication of Logical Self-Defense as a key historical event
Published in 1976, Johnson and Blair’s Logical Self-Defense has been one of the most influential introductory textbooks on argument appraisal using the fallacy approach. The initial motivation to publish Logical Self-Defense came from their interest in refining the fallacy approach that Kahane offered in Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric for evaluating argument in natural language. Not satisfied with Kahane’s fallacy approach on its insufficient attention to the analysis of argument, unclear conditions for each fallacy type and not demanding the students to defend their charge of fallacy (Blair, 2007a), they wrote supplementary materials. In addition to tightening up these theoretical and practical aspects for argument evaluation, they essentially ‘Canadianized’ the textbook, taking examples of argument from Canadian sociopolitical topics (Johnson 2007).

Not only did Johnson and Blair refine Kahane’s fallacy approach, but offered a unique theoretical insight for evaluating different types of fallacious arguments based on the triad criteria of ‘relevance’, ‘sufficiency’, and ‘acceptability’. These criteria are geared toward evaluation, but can be used for classifying different types of fallacious arguments, without resorting to the deduction-induction binarism. These three criteria have been influential within the informal logic movement pedagogically and theoretically. Other than Logical Self-Defense, Damer (2001), Govier (2001), Groarke and Tindale (2004), Konishi (2003), Romain (1997), and Seech (1993) have adopted the triad criteria with some modified wording. In addition to the contribution to pedagogy, the triad criteria have guided scholars to investigating theoretical aspects of argumentation. Johnson (2000) examined how these three criteria and the truth condition constitute the sufficient condition for a good argument. Gooden and Walton (2007) resorted to the acceptability criterion in defending normative binding force of argumentation schemes. Blair (2007b) reviewed scholarship on the triad criteria and defended the tenability with some modifications of their original conceptualization. Although the reason for wide acceptance of the triad criteria is beyond the scope of the current work, suffice it to say that the criteria of relevance, sufficiency and acceptability are important inspirations for pedagogy and theory of informal logic, and thus the publication of Logical Self-Defense marked the key moment for the informal logic movement.

Despite the above significance, a close examination of development of Johnson and Blair’s ideas has not been conducted. According to the research agenda on history of argumentation studies offered by the previous research by the present author (Konishi 2009), historical-rhetorical analysis of important events is one of the major research agenda for developing history of argumentation. How did theorists of argumentation – Johnson and Blair – strategically use symbols to influence others (the publisher and the reviewers) in defending their pedagogically and theoretically important ideas? Using archived materials and oral historical interviews, this article examines the actual argumentative exchange by Johnson and Blair and the two reviewers of the manuscript of Logical Self-Defense, attempting to show how rhetorical dimension of the discourse affects the making of the history.

2. Reconstruction of rhetorical contingencies for publishing Logical Self-Defense
While teaching Applied Logic course at University of Windsor preparing the supplementary materials to Kahane’s textbook, Johnson and Blair started to search for a publisher for their own manuscript. They (1974a) wrote to Gordon Van Tighem, Humanities Editor of McGraw-Hill Ryerson, on February 18, 1974, regarding the possibility of publishing a textbook. Including the first chapter as a sample, they emphasized the significance of using Canadian examples and stated that they want to publish it so that they could make the textbook more readily available to students rather than turn a profit. In May 1974, they (1974b) agreed with McGraw-Hill Ryerson about the publication and promised to finish their manuscript by June 15, 1975. According to a memorandum titled ‘Notes of organizational meeting for Applied Logic text, October 1, 1974’, they were developing lines of thinking to endorse the eventual title of their textbook, Logical Self-Defense.

• Our angle will be that we are treating that part of critical thinking that might be called ‘defensive thinking’. This angle provides a (rough) principle of unity: everything in the text can (more or less) go under the rubric of “something you need to know to be able to think well defensively”.
• … Part I imparts the knowledge and skills needed for self-defence in the rough and tumble of argumentation. Part II imparts the knowledge skills required for Self-Defense against other important and socially prevalent assaults. Part I presents the concept of argument, and a list of the more frequent poisonous species (fallacies). Part II covers three areas [information, advertisements and cliches].

Taking more time to finish the manuscript than Johnson and Blair promised to the publisher, they turned in the manuscript of Logical Self-Defense (then tentatively titled Applied Logic) in August 1975, assuming it would be published. After the manuscript was reviewed, though, both of the two reviewers advised against publication in November 1975. One review (hereafter called Long’s review because it is longer) was critical of logical defects of the manuscript, whereas the other (hereafter called Short’s review) doubted if the manuscript would be marketable. Facing the possibility of the manuscript not being published, Johnson and Blair discussed how to maneuver this difficulty. An undated memo, which seems to be the one that Blair used in calling McGraw-Hill Ryerson, reveals their concerns:

About the criticisms
…We wonder how Jane [Abtamowitz, McGraw-Hill Ryerson’s representative] takes the criticisms. To us they are no problem. We get the impression from Herb [Hildlerly, the former representative of McGraw-Hill Ryerson] that there may now be hesitation about the book, because of them. Is that true?

 What we want to know from Jane and what we want to tell her.

…What do you want us to do now? What is your position now?

After calling Abramowitz, Johnson and Blair understood how their audience took the negative reactions by the reviewers and started to strategize how they would approach the argumentative situation. In Blair’s (1975) understanding, Abramowitz was “sympathetic to the need to get someone who understands the point of the text and is open to the possibility of some kind of applied logical course other then (sic) the traditional intro. to logic course.” However, Blair did not feel she was totally committed to the publication project:
My impression was that she is not entirely enthusiastic about the project herself – not to committed to it. I don’t think she has read the text, or read it with much care. She is afraid her judgement isn’t authoritative: “I’m not a philosopher….” So she takes reviews like Long and Short as authoritative. She said she sees it now as two in favor (us) and two against (Long and Short). That’s why she wants another reviewer.

In this situation, Johnson and Blair thought they should include preface to let the reviewers know how the textbook would be used and to guide the reviewers how to read the manuscript. Also, they (Blair 1975) would like more sympathetic reviewers to read it and were thinking about coming up with their “suggestions for questions” that they would “like the reviewers to answer.” Based on their understanding of the argumentative situation, they advanced arguments to persuade the publisher that the reviewers did not understand the project. How they constructed their arguments is the focus of the next section.

3. Arguments for and against the manuscript of Logical Self-Defense
Among the two reviews, Long’s review (Anonymous, n.d.a), titled “Re: Applied Logic R. H. Johnson & J. A. Blair” was more polemic and provided more substantive criticisms on the manuscript. Recognizing some “virtues (an agreeable style; a lively selection of examples), its logical defects are so serious as to make it a worthless introduction to the subject which it professes to treat” (p. 1 emphasis in original). Dividing logic and stylistics and use of examples, Long advances a claim that the manuscript is not worthy of the name of logic. In the next paragraph, he reiterates that authors are not capable: “(Y)ou will see how much the authors manage to get wrong in the span of a few pages [pages 71-79]” (p. 1 emphasis mine).

Impressing the reader of the authors’ inability at the beginning, Long elaborates how Johnson and Blair ‘get wrong’ in the section of irrelevant reason. Stating that “this is a pretty important section in the book; here for the first time the reader is shown applied logic at work, in the detection of fallacies”, Long puts the burden of proof on Johnson and Blair and demands that their account “be thoroughly convincing” (p. 1). In clarifying Johnson and Blair’s account of the fallacy of irrelevant reason, they use the following argument as an instance of fallacy of irrelevant reason, in which Canadian Minister of Health Marc Lalonde replies to the charge advanced by Grace MacInnis that the Department had been promoting the sale of corn flakes that has little nutritional value.

(1) “As for the nutritional value of corn flakes, the milk you have with your corn flakes has great nutritional value.” (p. 1)
In the reconstruction, Johnson and Blair are quoted by Long as saying:
(2) P1: The milk that one has with corn flakes has great nutritional value.
so) C: Corn flakes have more than a little nutritional value.

Long questions adequacy of this reconstruction by offering an alternative interpretation.

Where does he speak of the “more than little nutritional value” of corn flakes? Is he not rather saying something else, that it is worthwhile to promote the sale of corn flakes – regardless of their nutritional value – because their consumption leads to the consumption of milk, which has great nutritional value? And that, surely, is a defensible position. (p. 1)

Contrasting with his own interpretation, Long charges Johnson and Blair for committing the fallacy of straw person, because their interpretation makes it easier to conclude that the original argument commits the fallacy of irrelevant reason.

In addition to the problematic reconstruction of the argument, Long does not believe Johnson and Blair’s account of the fallacy of irrelevant reason is firmly based on the principles of logic. Discussing the above example and another example that Johnson and Blair offered in the manuscript, Long argues that they failed to account for the difference between two types of the fallacy of irrelevant reason – ones arising from “presupposing a false major (=general) premiss” and ones arising from “presupposing a false minor (=particular)” (p. 2).

Thirdly, in Long’s view, Johnson and Blair’s suggestion to defend the charge of irrelevance is “logically horrible” (p. 2 emphasis in original). They suggest to the critic of the argument that s/he construct another argument in which the conclusion of the original argument is supported by different, relevant premisses. This approach, Long argues, would not convince the original arguer if s/he were tough-minded. Presented with this criticism, the tough-minded arguer would say that the new argument presented by the critic is fine but would still question how it shows the original argument is fallacious. Instead of using this ‘horrible’ method, Long suggests the use of counterexamples, which “has been known to logicians over two millenia, and which Johnson & Blair themselves use, but apparently without realizing that they do!” (p. 3 emphasis in original). The method of counterexamples is to “show argument A to be faulty by producing an argument B, identical in structure with A, which is obviously fallacious” (p. 3 emphasis in original). Contrasting Johnson and Blair’s mwthod with that of counterexamples, Long supports the superiority of the latter method:
So we have the distressing spectacle of professional logicians wittingly advising their readers to follow an inferior procedure while themselves unwittingly following the proper one. No textbook of applied logic which omits to teach the method of counterexamples has any worth. (p. 3 emphasis in original)

In conclusion, Long addresses four weaknesses in Johnson and Blair’s account of irrelevant reason: (1) inadequate reconstruction of the original argument to be evaluated, (2) failure to subdivide the fallacy of irrelevance arising from presupposing a false major or minor premisses, (3) logically horrible advice to defend one’s charge of the fallacy of irrelevant reason, and (4) ignorance of the method of counterexamples[ii]. In developing these criticisms, Long makes use of arguments based on division. Contrastively referring to what Johnson and Blair say and to the stock of knowledge of logic such as straw person, distinction between major premiss and minor premiss or the method of counterexample, Long distinguishes Johnson and Blair from professional logicians, thereby questions Johnson and Blair’s credibility as reliable writers of a logic textbook.

While Long advances more substantial criticisms in the three-page review, Short (Anonymous n.d.b) focuses more on the marketability of Johnson and Blair’s textbook. The review points out that Bentham’s Handbook of Political Fallacies, Ward and Holter’s Fallacy: The Counterfeit of Argument, and Michalos’ Improving Your Reasoning “do more in much shorter space”, and they will be “vastly cheaper than” Johnson and Blair’s textbook (p. 1). In addition to the marketability issue, Short makes two brief comments on the substance of the text. First, it points out that “(t)he author’s accounts are not more precise generally. He is just long winded” (p. 1). Then it points out that the scope of the text is “narrow compared to what is covered in most introduction to logic,” and because of this narrow scope, “the book would not be used in ordinary logic courses – which is where the big market is.” Based on these reasons, Short suggests that the publisher publish only the exercise as a workbook. Although Short’s criticisms are more weakly developed than Long’s ones, they still constitute rhetorical obstacles that Johnson and Blair must overcome.

In replying to these negative reviews, Johnson and Blair (1975) resorted to what they should be good at: argumentation. They wrote a twelve-page document that pointed out how the original reviewers “were not fully acquainted with the goals and scope of the text” (p. 12). Understanding that the representative of McGraw-Hill thought the review to be “troublesome”, they felt that they have to re-establish their “credibility” (p. 1). The reconstruction of their credibility “cannot be done briefly, particularly given the nature of Long’s comments” (p. 1). They followed the original structure of the two reviews in their replies, for it would help the publisher “go over those reviews once more, and have them, and the Manuscript, at hand while reading what follows” (p. 1).

On the longer and harsher review by Long, Johnson and Blair (1975) sound polemical at the outset, criticizing Long’s credibility while enhancing their own:
…as we show the below, point by point, Long’s objections are in the main straight mistakes, misreadings of the text, or unsupported controversial opinions taking issue with the considered judgement of the authors. This is not a matter of one opinion against another. We show that Long is, time and again, wrong. It is infuriating to have to take the time to defend the text against the sloppy, churlish, and even stupid comments Long makes. We think you were seriously ill-served by this review. (p. 2 emphasis in original)

After setting a tone of their reply, they address each of the points raised by Long. As regards Long’s first criticism that their reconstruction commits the fallacy of straw person, they remind the reader that natural language argument is often open to alternative interpretation, and that the mere existence of an alternative interpretation does not automatically discredit their interpretation. It would simply mean that adequacy of the two competing interpretations must be determined by reason.

Reminding the reader of the nature of natural language, Johnson and Blair add reasons why their interpretation is more reasonable than Long’s, by referring back to the argumentative text and its background. According to their reference to the context, Lalonde, who has initially advanced an argument on the nutritional value of corn flakes, “does not choose to defend the claim that corn flakes have nutritional value. Instead, he switches to the different question, whether eating corn flakes will lead people to drink milk, which does have nutritional value” (Johnson and Blair, 1975, p. 3). In contrast, Long’s interpretation attributes to Lalonde the argument that “the sale of corn flakes is worthwhile because it leads people to drink milk” (p. 3). However, Johnson and Blair argue that Long’s interpretation dismisses the point that Lalonde attempts to shift the issue. In their judgments, “He (Lalonde) convinces Long, but not the careful critic” (p. 3). Johnson and Blair criticize Long’s alternative interpretation and imply that Long is an uncritical judge.

On Long’s second critique – the failure to subdivide the fallacy irrelevant reason that arises from presupposing a false major or minor premises, Johnson and Blair (1975) do not believe that the distinction will help students become good critics of natural language argumentation:
The question we’ve had to ask throughout is: What distinctions will help students develop the practical skills that this book is explicitly designed to teach? It is a serious misconception of the text to see it as intending to provide a complete presentation of the subject called “applied” or “informal” logic. The goal is not to get across a body of information, but to instill a skill. That is and should be a major selling point of the book. We’ve chosen not to introduce the distinction Long thinks is important. Our reason for doing so is that to teach this distinction would require a digression that stands to confuse and lose some of the practically-oriented students the text is designed for. Our disagreement with Long on this point is in no way a logical defect in the book. (p. 3)

In this passage Johnson and Blair contrast ‘practical skills’ or ‘practically-oriented’ and ‘a body of information’ of applied/informal logic or ‘a digression’. In light of the goal to which the book is written, practical skills are much more important than presenting the body of information about informal logic, and the failure to account for the subtypes of the fallacy of irrelevant reason is therefore not significant. Here they present a hierarchy between practical use to the students and the body of information about informal logic, and appeal to the publisher that Long’s charge, if it were true, does not make any sense in light of the goal of the manuscript. In conclusion, their disagreement with Long on this point is not “a logical defect” of the manuscript, but comes from Long’s failure to understand the nature of the manuscript (Johnson and Blair 1975, p. 2).

On the third line of Long’s critique – ‘logically horrible advice’ to evaluate the fallacy of irrelevant reason, Johnson and Blair (1975) refer to the manuscript and point out Long’s misunderstanding.

…what we actually say on p. 84 [of the manuscript] is this:
“On the basis of this discussion of irrelevance, you can see that to prove condition (2) of Irrelevant Reason satisfied it is necessary to show with specific reference to the argument in question how the truth of the conclusion is independent of the truth of the premise. This is what we did when we charged Lalonde with Irrelevant Reason. We argued that whether milk has nutritional value makes no difference to whether corn flakes have nutritional value, since they are two different substances and their nutritional properties are independent of one another.”
What we actually say bears no resemblance to what Long makes us out to have said. (p. 5)

Clarifying that Long has misread the manuscript, they further attempt to block a potential question that may well come up: “Perhaps you will be thinking that if Long was misled, then can’t it at least be said that in the passage is misleading?” (p. 6) On this potential question, they appeal to their successful teaching practice. They (1975) say: “All we can reply is that in teaching the concept of relevance over the past five years in this course we have never found our student mistake this sort of contrast for a proof of irrelevance” (p. 6 emphasis in original). Contrasting Long’s misreading of the manuscript with the successful teaching practice at University of Windsor, they conclude that “the evidence is mounting – and there’s more – that Long did not read the text with much attentiveness” (p. 6). By charging the sloppy reading of Long, they cast a doubt on Long’s credibility as a reviewer.

On the use of counterexamples, they refer to Kahane (1971), Capiladi (1973), and Fearnside and Holther (1959) and point out that this notion is not widely used in these books. On this basis, Johnson and Blair (1975) conclude that: “(i)t’s absurd to say that our not explicitly introducing the notion of counterexamples demonstrates the worthlessness of the text” (p. 6). In addition, they argue that including the use of counterexamples will force them to deal with the method of logical attack, to which the manuscript was not designed.

To discuss it [the method of counterexamples] would get us into territory we’ve deliberately avoided: strategies of logical offense. We’ve designed the whole text around what might be called “defensive logic” – how to avoid being taken in by others’ bad logic. It would call for an entirely new section – and in fact a different orientation; a different book – to catalogue and teach the methods of logical attack[iii]. (p. 6)

After attempting to demonstrate that Long has not supported his case in his review, Johnson and Blair (1975) remind the publisher of other significant parts of the manuscript on which Long has not said anything. Those significant parts include their treatment of media and advertisement, extended arguments, standardization of arguments, classification of fallacies, appeal to authority or two wrongs:
The list could go on and on. When we think of the variety of questions that even a sympathetic critic could address himself to, and compare the trivial quibbles Long manufactures, we wonder about the time and care he devoted to assessing the text, and indeed about his experience with this philosophical material.

Long’s review was written with such a lack of good faith, and of care, as to be useless to us and to you. It was a waste of your time and money. It’s a waste of our time to have to reply to it. (p. 8)

Throughout the process of replying to Long’s review, Blair and Johnson address the issue of credibility: Long’s interpretation of the argumentative text cannot convince careful critics; his charge on the failure to distinguish two types of irrelevance comes from his inability to understand the nature of the manuscript; his charge of logically ‘horrible’ advice is denied by the successful pedagogical practice; his call for the use of counterexample is not widely supported by logic textbooks and ignores orientation of the manuscript; and he does not say anything on other important aspects of the manuscript. These points collectively weaken the credibility of Long and transform this harsh critic into an uncareful reader who do not understand the nature of the manuscript. With these replies they implicitly enhance their own credibility.

Having concluded that Long’s review was off the point and useless, Johnson and Blair start replying to Short’s review. Their tone toward Short is less harsh and polemical than that toward Long. While acknowledging Shorts’ goodwill, Johnson and Blair (1975) focus more on what they disagree with Short’s review. On the first critique by Short – other textbooks dealing with more fallacies in shorter space, they argue that it is rather “a virtue” of the text, for they deal with “the most frequently occurring ways to spoil an argument” (p. 9 emphasis in original). They emphasize the purpose to which the manuscript was written. It is not for the “the traditional introduction to logic that briefly surveys ‘informal logic,’ nor is it for informational course that tells the students what the traditional fallacies are. Instead, it’s a handbook teaching a skill – a skill that is useful, and immediately applicable in a practical way” (p. 9). Again, they use a contrast between logic for practical skills and logic for the sake of knowledge/information and imply that Short’s comments are not meaningful in light of the purpose to which the manuscript was written.

In addition, Johnson and Blair deny Short’s criticism of the long-windedness of the manuscript, by addressing two audience members that Short do not explicitly consider. First, they consciously speak to the publisher, contrasting their manuscript with others on the market and arguing for the superiority of their own. They point out that those other textbooks do not provide detailed accounts, such as how different fallacies occur, why they are fallacious, why people commit them, and so on. Their manuscript simplifies the taxonomy of fallacies so as not to confuse “people who need a fairly simple working map of the area” (Johnson and Blair 1975, p. 9). Neither do these other textbooks use actual, everyday arguments; they instead use artificial ones. These points would be selling points for the manuscript. Besides, the criticism on the length does not consider another group of the audience of the textbook – university students without much philosophical background:
Note that what would be worrisome would be non-philosophers finding the text long-winded. It can be tedious for a philosopher to work through material treated in detail when he already knows it backward, but not so for a student meeting the ideas for the first time. (Johnson and Blair 1975, p. 10).

Constructing the main readers of the textbook as someone who do not have much philosophical background but need skills in argumentation, they attempt to persuade the publisher that Short’s review is off the mark. Given the main readers of the textbook, they need to offer a detailed account for helping students’ skills for argument evaluation.

Finally, on the issue of narrow scope, Johnson and Blair acknowledge the criticism that standard logic courses covers larger scope of topics than their manuscripts does. However, since the logic course can use more than one text, it does not follow that their work would not be used in logic courses. Besides they remind the publisher that their text has aimed at different markets from the outset, such as humanities courses, communications arts courses, community colleges and high schools. For these reasons, they doubt whether their textbook would not be competitive with other textbooks.

Having responded to these two reviews, Johnson and Blair (1975) offer general concluding remarks. They thought “(i)t is unfortunate that the reviewers were not fully acquainted with the goals and scope of the text” (p. 12). In addition, they request the publisher that the manuscript be sent anonymously to the reviewers, for their affiliation with University of Windsor may remind the reviewers of the university’s previous ties with Catholicism, which may adversely influence how the reviewers think of Johnson and Blair’s credibility. In the last sentence, they advance another punch line against Long:
Finally, we would like to see a copy of our comments about Long’s review get back to him. (p. 12).

4. Summation
Although McGraw-Hill Ryerson seemed to have already agreed with Johnson and Blair to have another round of reviews before they sent their rejoinder, it could have improved Johnson and Blair’s credibility as writers of the textbook for evaluating argumentation while discrediting the initial reviews. Both of the second-round reviewers (Trudy Govier and Michael Gilbert[iv]) positively supported the publication of Logical Self-Defense, and it was eventually published in 1977.

The above close historical-rhetorical analysis of the argumentative exchange between Blair and Johnson and the initial two reviewers presents us with the following issues to be considered: (1) importance of the goal/purpose of argumentation and (2) use of argumentation schemes or argument based on division. In the review process of Logical Self-Defense, parties concerned were Johnson and Blair, the reviewers, and the publishers. In this argumentative situation, what mattered the most for the arguers was not to resolve difference of opinion, to enter into negotiation, or to maintain the difference among arguers: the ultimate purpose/goal of this argumentation was to convince the third party (the publisher) of the substance of writing as well as their own credibility as arguers, with the polemical questioning of the other party’s credibility functioning as a subsidiary purpose/goal. The analysis of this argumentative exchange seems to endorse the view of many theorists of argumentation (Pragma-Dialecticians, Gilbert, Johnson, Govier, to name a few) that the goal of argumentation is important. However, the present article also suggests that applying a certain pre-existing purpose/goal in interpreting argumentative text may systematically deflect our attention to what is actually going in the text. Although this historical-rhetorical analysis does not deny the importance of ready-made goal/purpose of argumentative exchange, it suggests that argumentative dialogues are inherently mixed, and we have to reshape our understanding of the role of the goal/purpose. The goal/purpose is an important construct for argument evaluation, but we should rather leave the goal/purpose as a null set, which arguers and critics fill in each time they enter into argument or argument evaluation. This way, critics can maintain the adequate balance between theory and practice of argumentation. On the one hand the critics can rely on different theories of argumentation in reconstructing the argumentative situation and interpret the illative core and dialectical components of arguments; on the other hand they can avoid distorting what is actually going on in the particular argumentative situation. In other words, any pragmatic theory of argumentation, which emphasizes particular sets of the ready-made purposes/goals of argumentation ought to be viewed as a frame of reference for understanding the argumentative text, but the text in itself should be the starting and end points for offering situated theories that pays enough attention to the argumentative situations.

Secondly, the above historical-rhetorical analysis has revealed that both parties appeal to the argumentation scheme of division, or the use of contrast. Referring to the existing knowledge of logic such as straw person major/minor premiss, and counterexample, Long contrasts Johnson and Blair with ‘professional logicians’, thereby drawing a conclusion that the manuscript ought not to be published because Johnson and Blair are not up to professional logicians. In contrast, Johnson and Blair resort to the argumentation schemes of division and show the difference between the careful critic and the uncareful critic, logic for practical skills and a body of information of applied/informal logic, successful teaching practice and the uncareful critic who is misled, and defensive logic and offensive logic. These differences collectively support Johnson and Blair’s thesis that Long is not a good reviewer and they need another round of review by good reviewers. Resorting to the argumentation schemes of division, both parties express their disagreement on what logic should be or how it should be taught to the students. A more important but discouraging sign in Long’s use of division is that it reveals some bias of a traditionally-trained philosopher to then emerging informal logic movement. Literature of informal logic has repeatedly reported the negative reactions of the establishment of philosophy against informal logic, and this review process clearly shows an instance of the explicitly expressed bias. Although this is a discouraging sign, a historical-rhetorical analysis would help us collect instances of the bias against informal logic and understand what the bias has actually been like, and would help philosophers of argumentation and informal logic strategize how to justify argumentation and informal logic within the discipline of philosophy.

Although this paper has examined one pivotal argumentative exchange in the process of publishing Logical Self-Defense, further in-depth analysis of the whole process of publication of the book must be conducted; for it is not clear yet how Johnson and Blair gradually crystallized the triad criteria of relevance, sufficiency and acceptability through revising the manuscripts several times, or how the second-round reviewers’ comments on the length of the manuscripts helped to decide the final product of Logical Self-Defense. In addition, additional historical-rhetorical analyses of the argumentative exchanges between informal logicians and other philosophers may help uncover the bias of the philosophical community against informal logic. This being said, the author hopes that the present paper has shed light on the emergence of informal logic and convinced the readers of the legitimacy of history of argumentation as a potential significant area of inquiry for argumentation scholars.

NOTES
[i] Although Eemeren, Grootendorst, Snoeck Henkemans, Blair, Johnson, Krabbe, et al. (1996) refer to some historical facts of the recent argumentation theories, they do not critically examine how those facts came into existence. Further promoting history of argumentation studies requires the historical-rhetorical approach. I take this phrase from Turner’s ‘rhetorical history’, a close analysis of archived or unpublished materials and use of interviews in the historical research. It helps us discover how argumentation scholars used symbolic means to propose and defend their scholarly ideas in key historical events.
[ii] One more line of criticism by Long is that Johnson and Blair are not consisitent in the use of letters (A, B, and C, or P1, P2, and P3) in standardizing arguments. Since this is not a strong criticism, this paper does not discuss it.
[iii] Although dismissing the need of counterexamples here, the second edition of Logical Self-Defense explicitly uses the notion (Johnson and Blair 1983, p. 3). It is not clear whether the newer edition has expanded its focus to deal with logical offense as well as defensive logic.
[iv] Michael Gilbert has informed the author that he was the reviewer during the ISSA conference. I appreciate him for providing the information.

REFERENCES
Annonymous. (n.d.a). Re: Applied Logic R. H. Johnson & J. A. Blair.
Anonymous. (n.d.b). Untitled.
Blair, J. A. (1974, October 1). Notes of organizational meeting for applied logic text. Accession number 05-004, file 84.
Blair, J. A. (1975, November 5). Notes from memory and written notes of telephone conversation with Jane Abramowitz of McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 4 November 1975. Accession number 07-101, box 4.
Blair, J. A. (2007). Interviewed by Takuzo Konishi at University of Windsor, March 7.
Blair, J. A. (2007b). Relevance, acceptability and sufficiency today. Anthropology & Philosophy, 8.1-2, 33-47.
Damer, T. E. (2001). Attacking Faulty Reasoning. 4th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Eemeren, F.H. van, Grootendorst, R., Snoeck Henkemans, A.F., Blair, J.A., Johnson,R.H., Krabbe, E.C.W., et al. (1996). Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory: Handbook of Historical Backgrounds and Contemporary Developments. Mawhah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Freeman, J. (1988). Thinking Logically: Basic Concepts for Reasoning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Godden, D. and Walton, D. (2007). Advances in the theory of argumentation schemes and critical questions. Informal Logic 27, 267-292.
Govier, T. (2001) A Practical Study of Argument. 5th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Groarke, L. & C. Tindale. (2004). Good Reasoning Matters!. 3rd ed. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.
Johnson, R. H. & Blair, J. A. (1974a, February 18). Personal correspondence to Gordon Van Tighem. Accession number 07-010, box 4.
Johnson, R. H. & Blair, J. A. (1974b, May 13). Personal correspondence to Gordon Van Tighem. Accession number 07-010, box 4.
Johnson, R. H. & Blair, J. A.  (1975, November 5). Reviews of Applied Logic Manuscript.
Johnson, R. H. & Blair, J. A.  (1977a). Logical Self-Defense. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
Johnson, R. H. & Blair, J. A. (1983). Logical Self-Defense. 2nd ed. Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson.
Johnson, R. H. (2000). Manifest Rationality: A Pragmatic Theory of Argument. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum.
Johnson, R. H. (2007). Interviewed by Takuzo Konishi at University of Windsor, March 6.
Konishi, T. (2003). Ronriatama no Tsukurikata [Logical Competence]. Tokyo: Subarusha.
Konishi, T. (2009). Toward a history of argumentation: Canadian informal logic. In J. Ritola (Ed.), Proceedings of the Seventh Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation Conference. Windsor, ON: OSSA.
Romain, D. (1997). Thinking Things Through: Critical Thinking for Decisions You Can Live With. Mountain View, CA.
Seech, Z. (1987). Logic of Everyday Life: Practical Reasoning Skills. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

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]

However, this formal-logical interpretation of the studies of reasoning and argumentation carried on in the LWS does not do full justice to its subject-matter, research goals and methods of inquiry. There are two reasons supporting this claim:
(1) Although logic became the most important research field in the LWS, its representatives were active in all subdisciplines of philosophy (Woleński 2009). The broad interest in philosophy constitutes one of the reasons for searching applications of logic in formulating and solving philosophical problems.
(2) Some of the representatives of the LWS developed a pragmatic approach to reasoning and argumentation. Concurrently with the developments in formal logic, research was carried out which – although much less known – turns out to be particularly inspiring for the study of argumentation: systematic investigation consisting in applying language and methods of logic in order to develop skills which constitute ‘logical culture’. Two basic skills that the logical culture focuses on are: describing the world in a precise language and correct reasoning. My paper concentrates on the second point.

The discipline which aimed at describing these skills and showing how to develop them was called “Pragmatic Logic”; this is also the English title of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz’s 1965 book Logika pragmatyczna (see Ajdukiewicz 1974). The program of pragmatic logic may be briefly characterized as applying general rules of scientific investigation in everyday communication. This inquiry focused on the question whether the tools of logic can be used to educate people to (1) think more clearly and consistently, (2) express their thoughts precisely and systematically, (3) make proper inferences and justify their claims (see Ajdukiewicz 1957, p. 3). It should be added that this pragmatic approach to logic was something more fundamental than just one of many ideas of the school: it constituted the raison ď être of the didactic program of the LWS. Thus, the pragmatic approach to reasoning and argumentation had a strong institutional dimension: teaching how to think logically was one of the main goals of the school. The joint effort of propagating the developments of logic and exposing the didactic power of logic as a tool of broadening the skills of thinking logically may be illustrated by the passage from the status of the Polish Logical Association, founded on the initiative of Jan Łukasiewicz and Alfred Tarski in April 22^nd, 1936.[iv] The aim of the association was ‘to practice and propagate logic and methodology of science, their history, didactics and applications’ (see The History of the Polish Society for Logic and Philosophy of Science).

The inspiration for exposing this research field in the LWS comes from numerous publications on the origins of the informal logic movement and the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. In their writings informal logicians and pragma-dialecticians explained the phenomenon of revitalizing argumentation theory in the 1970s (e.g. Johnson & Blair 1980; Woods, Johnson, Gabbay & Ohlbach 2002; van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004; Blair 2009; Johnson 2009; van Eemeren 2009). They indicated a pragmatic need to evaluate arguments in the context of everyday communication as one of the main causes of this phenomenon. Thus, at the beginning of the modern study of arguments in the early 1970s we observe the ‘marriage of theory and practice’ in the study of logic (Kahane 1971, p. vii; see Johnson 2009, p. 19). In the case of the LWS this ‘marriage’ was realized by treating formal and pragmatic logic as two interrelated, and not competing, wings of inquiry:

From what has been said above, some similarities are noticeable between the approaches of the LWS and contemporary argumentation theory (including informal logic and pragma-dialectics). My paper aims at making those similarities more explicit, so I raise the question: what relation obtains between logical studies carried on in the LWS and the recent study of argumentation? The answer is given in three steps. In section 2 I present some elements of the conceptual framework of the LWS, which are relevant for exploring connections between the school and argumentation theory. Among those elements there are concepts of: (a) logic, (b) logical fallacy, (c) argument, and (d) knowledge-gaining procedures. These concepts are helpful for introducing the conception of (e) logical culture. In section 3 I discuss some crucial elements of the program of pragmatic logic, which was aimed at elaborating a theoretical background for developing knowledge and skills of logical culture. Among those elements there are: (a) the subject-matter of pragmatic logic and (b) its main goals. Section 4 explores some perspectives for the rapprochement of pragmatic logic with argumentation theory. In the paper I refer to the works of the representatives of the LWS, as well as to the tradition of the school that is continued to this day.

2. The conceptual framework of the LWS
 2.1. Logic
Due to its achievements in formal logic the LWS is usually associated with the view on logic as a formal theory of sentences (propositions) and relationships between them. This understanding of ‘logic’ (so-called ‘narrow conception of logic’) is dissociated from the ‘broad conception of logic’ that embraces also semiotics and methodology of science (see e.g. Ajdukiewicz 1974, p. 2-4). Both conceptions of logic are employed in the tradition of the LWS what is illustrated by the fact that in it ‘logical skills’ encompass not only formal-logical skills, but also skills which can be described as using tools elaborated in semiotics, e.g. universal tools for analyzing and evaluating utterances, and in the methodology of science, e.g. tools for developing and evaluating definitions, classifications, and questions occurring in scientific inquiry (see the Appendix A in Johnson 2009, p. 38-39). An interesting example of the broader account of logic can be found in Tarski (1995, p. xi). ‘Logic’ refers here to the discipline ‘which analyses the meaning of the concepts common to all the sciences, and establishes the general laws governing the concepts’. So, if such a notion of logic is introduced, its obvious consequence relies on treating semiotics (a discipline dealing with concepts) and the methodology of science (the one dealing with principles of scientific inquiry) as fundamental parts of logic[v].

Other members of the LWS gave substantial reasons for treating the methodology of science as an element of logic in the broad sense. Jan Woleński makes this point explicit by focusing on the methodology of science as a discipline that uses tools of logic in exploring the structure of scientific theories:
The philosophy of science was a favourite field of the LWS. Since science is the most rational human activity, it was important to explain its rationality and unity. Since most philosophers of the LWS rejected naturalism in the humanities and social sciences, the way through the unity of language (as in the case of the Vienna Circle) was excluded. The answer was simple: science qua science is rational and is unified by its logical structure and by definite logical tools used in scientific justifications. Thus, the analysis of the inferential machinery of science is the most fundamental task of philosophers of science (Woleński 2009).

Treating the methodology of science as part of  logic is not that obvious for other research traditions because of the fact that methodology of science is seen as associated with philosophy rather than with logic. The broad conception of logic employed by the LWS includes semiotics and the methodology of science within logic, not within philosophy (Przełęcki 1971), which is one of the reasons why this treatment of logic is unique. Another distinctive feature of the LWS is the analytical character of philosophical studies – the very reason for introducing the broad conception of logic. For semiotics and the methodology of science are treated in the LWS as disciplines developing universal tools used not only in scientific inquiry, but also in everyday argumentative discourse where analyzing meanings of terms (the skill of applying semiotics) and justifying claims (the skill of applying the methodology of science) are also of use.

2.2. Logical fallacy
One of the consequences of employing this conception of logic is the LWS understanding of logical fallacies as violations of norms of logic broadly understood. These norms of logic in a broad sense are: (1) rules for deductive inference (formal logic), (2) rules for inductive inference (inductive logic), (3) rules for language use as elaborated in semiotics (syntax, semantics and pragmatics), and (4) methodological rules for the scientific inquiry. If these are the ‘logical’ norms, then consequently there are at least three general types of logical fallacies, i.e. (1) the fallacies of reasoning (also called the fallacies in the strict sense; see Kamiński 1962), (2) fallacies of language use (‘semiotic fallacies’), and (3) fallacies of applying methodological rules governing such procedures as defining, questioning or classifying objects (‘methodological fallacies’).

There are some difficulties with such a broad conception of fallacy. Two major objections against it are:
(a) This conception is too broad because it covers fallacies that are not violations of any logical norms strictly understood. For instance, it would be very hard to point to any logical norm, strictly understood, which would be violated in the case of improper measurement.
(b) The types of fallacies discerned from the viewpoint of the broad conception of logic overlap. For example, the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc may be classified both as the fallacy of reasoning and as a methodological fallacy. The fallacy of four terms may be classified both as a fallacy of reasoning and a semiotic fallacy, because of the fact that it is caused by the ambiguity of terms, and the ambiguity is classified as a semiotic fallacy.

Despite these and other objections, this conception was useful at least in determining a general scope of logicians’ interests in identifying fallacies. For example, affirming the consequent may be classified as a fallacy of reasoning, amphibology as a semiotic fallacy and vicious circle in defining as a methodological fallacy.  This conception of fallacy was briefly presented to show that the conception of logical fallacy accepted by the majority of researchers of the LWS was much broader than that elaborated exclusively from the perspective of formal deductive logic.

2.3. Argument
Another element of the conceptual framework of the LWS is the concept of argument. Since most representatives of the LWS dealt basically with reasoning (e.g. elaborating very detailed classifications of reasoning), the conception of argument is related to the conception of reasoning. For instance, Witold Marciszewski (1991, p. 45) elaborates the definition of argument by associating it with a kind of reasoning performed when the reasoner has an intention of influencing the audience:
A reasoning is said to be an argument if its author, when making use of logical laws and factual knowledge, also takes advantage of what he knows or presumes about his audience’s possible reactions.

This definition is treated by Marciszewski as a point of departure for seeking theoretical foundations of argumentation not only in formal logic, but also in philosophy:
Therefore the foundations of the art of argument are to be sought not only in logic but also in some views concerning minds and mind-body relations including philosophical opinions in this matter.

These general remarks point to the need of analyzing argumentation not only from the formal-logical perspective, but also with bearing in mind the broader context of reasoning performed in any argumentative discourse. One of the ideas that may be used in analyzing arguments in a broader context is the conception of knowledge-gaining procedures. The procedures are treated in the LWS as components of argumentation.

2.4. Knowledge-gaining procedures
From the perspective of the broad conception of logic elaborated in the LWS, arguments may be studied by analyzing and evaluating the main knowledge-gaining procedures (or ‘knowledge-creative procedures’; see Jadacki 2009, pp. 98-100) and their results. According to Jadacki (2009, p. 99), in the Polish analytical philosophy the following knowledge-gaining procedures were examined in detail:
(1) Verbalizing, defining, and interpreting;
(2) Observation (the procedure consisting of experience and measurement);
(3) Inference:
(a) Deduction (proof and testing);
(b) Induction (statistic inference, ‘historical’ inference, inference by analogy, prognostics and explanation);
(4) Formulating problems;
(5) Partition, classification, ordering.

When we take argumentation as a process, it may be studied as a general procedure consisting of activities as those listed above. When one is dealing with argumentation as a product, the results of these procedures are to be analyzed and evaluated. The major research interests in the LWS focused on the following results:
Ad. (1) Concepts and definitions (as the results of verbalizing, defining, and interpreting);
Ad. (2) Observational sentences;
Ad. (3) Arguments understood as constellations of premises and conclusions:
(a) Deductive inference schemes;
(b) Inductive inference schemes;
Ad. (4) Questions (as results of the procedure of formulating problems);
Ad. (5) Typologies and classifications (as results of the procedure of ordering).

As Jadacki emphasizes, the procedure which was carefully investigated in the LWS, was inference[vi]. So, one of the most interesting results of the knowledge-gaining procedures are arguments understood as constellations of premises and conclusions.

2.5. Logical culture
The conception of logical culture joins two components: (1) advances in the logical studies (i.e. research in logic) are claimed to be applicable in (2) teaching critical thinking skills. According to Tadeusz Czeżowski (2000, p. 68):
Logical culture, just as any social, artistic, literary or other culture, is a characteristic of someone who possesses logical knowledge and competence in logical thinking and expressing one’s thoughts.

Thus, the term ‘logical culture’ refers both to the knowledge of logic (as applied in using language and reasoning) and to the skill of performing commonsense and scientific reasoning (Koszowy 2004, p. 126-128). Logic broadly understood elaborates tools helpful in sharpening the skills of the logical culture. The general areas of its application are illustrated by Figure 2:

We may here observe that some skills characteristic of the person who possesses logical culture are also substantial for the two normative models in the study of argumentation: (a) an ideal of a critical thinker in the tradition of teaching informal logic in North America, (b) the ideal of a reasonable discussant in a pragma-dalectical theory of argumentation.

3. The program of pragmatic logic
The concept of logical culture as presented in the previous section is here a point of departure for introducing Ajdukiewicz’s program of pragmatic logic. The term  ‘logical culture’ denotes both knowledge of logic and skills of applying this knowledge in science and everyday conversations, whereas the term ‘pragmatic logic’ refers to a discipline aimed at describing these skills and showing how to develop them.

The program of pragmatic logic is based on the idea that general (logical and methodological) rules of scientific investigation should be applied in everyday communication. Pragmatic logic is a discipline aimed at applying logic (in a broad sense) in teaching and in everyday language use. So, two basic goals of pragmatic logic are: extending knowledge of logic and improving skills of applying it.

3.1. Subject-matter of pragmatic logic
Pragmatic logic consists of the analyses concerning:
(1) Word use: (a) understanding of expressions and their meaning, (b) statements and their parts, (c) objective counterparts of expressions (extension and intension of terms), (d) ambiguity of expressions and defects of meaning (ambiguity, vagueness, incomplete formulations) and (e) definitions (e.g. the distinction between nominal and real definition, definitions by abstraction and inductive definitions, stipulating and reporting definitions, definitions by postulates and pseudo-definitions by postulates, errors in defining).

(2) Questioning: (a) the structure of interrogative sentences, (b) decision questions and complementation questions, (c) assumptions of questions and suggestive questions, (d) improper answers, (e) thoughts expressed by an interrogative sentence and (f) didactic questions.

(3) Reasoning and inference: (a) formal logic and the consequence relation (logical consequence, the relationship between the truth of the reason and the truth of the consequence, enthymematic consequence), (b) inference and conditions of its correctness, (c) subjectively certain inference (the conclusiveness of subjectively certain inference in the light of the knowledge of the person involved), (d) subjectively uncertain inference (the conclusiveness of subjectively uncertain inference, logical probability versus mathematical probability, statistical probability, reductive inference, induction by enumeration, inference by analogy, induction by elimination).

(4) Methodological types of sciences: (a) deductive sciences, (b) inductive sciences, (c) inductive sciences and scientific laws, (d) statistical reasoning.

Since inference is one of the key topics of inquiry, in order to show that the program of pragmatic logic has a similar subject-matter to the contemporary study of argumentation, I shall discuss, as an example, Ajdukiewicz’s account of the ‘subjectively uncertain inference’.

According to Ajdukiewicz (1974, p. 120), a subjectively uncertain inference is the one in which we accept the conclusion with lesser certainty than the premises. It results from the fact that in spite of the premises being true the conclusion may turn out to be false. The instances of this type of inference are such that the strength of categorically accepted premises leads to a non-categorical acceptance of the conclusion. This is illustrated by the following example:

The fact that in the past water would always come out when the tap is turned on, makes valid – we think – an almost, though not quite, certain expectation that this time, too, water would come out when the tap is turned on. But our previous experience would not make full certainty valid (p. 120).

If we are to be entitled to accept the conclusion with less than full certainty, it suffices if the connection between them is weaker than the relation of consequence is. Ajdukiewicz deals with this kind of reasoning in terms of the probability of conclusion:
Such a weaker connection is described by the statement that the premisses make the conclusion probable. It is said that a statement B makes a statement A probable in a degree p in the sense that the validity of a fully certain acceptance of B makes the acceptance of A valid if and only if the degree of certainty with which A is accepted does not exceed p (pp. 120-121).

So, ‘a statement B makes a statement A probable in a degree p, if the logical probability of A relative to B is p’:
P1(A/B) = p.

Furthermore, Ajdukiewicz distinguishes the psychological probability of a statement (i.e. the degree of certainty with which we actually accept that statement) from the logical probability of a statement (that degree of certainty with which we are entitled to accept it). The logical probability is related to the amount of information one possesses at a given stage, because ‘the degree of certainty with which we are entitled to accept the statement depends on the information we have’. This claim is in accord with the ‘context-dependent’ treatment of arguments: argument analysis and evaluation done both in informal logic and in pragma-dialectics depends on the context in which arguments occur. Ajdukiewicz is aware of the fact that evaluating the logical probability of a given statement (P) depends on the actual knowledge of the subject who believes P. The following example confirms this interpretation:
If we know about the playing card which is lying on the table with its back up merely that it is one of the cards which make the pack used in auction bridge, then we are entitled to expect with less certainty that the said card is the ace of spades than if we knew that it is one of the black cards in that pack (p. 121).

This example gives Ajdukiewicz reasons not to speak about the logical probability of a statement ‘pure and simple’, but exclusively about the logical probability of that statement relative to a certain amount of information. Ajdukiewicz points to the fact that this relation between the logical probability and the amount of information we possess in a given context is clearly manifested in the following definition of logical probability:
The logical probability of the statement A relative to a statement B is the highest degree of the certainty of acceptance of the statement A to which we are entitled by a fully certain and valid acceptance of the statement B (ibid.).

This definition is helpful in giving the answer to the question: when is an uncertain inference conclusive in the light of the body of knowledge K? Ajdukiewicz’s answer is given in terms of the degree of certainty of the acceptance of the conclusion:
Such inference is conclusive in the light of K if the degree of certainty with which the conclusion is accepted on the strength of a fully certain acceptance of the premises does not exceed the logical probability of the conclusion relative to the premises and the body of knowledge K (ibid.).

This piece of Ajdukiewicz’s account of the subjectively uncertain inference shows that pragmatic logic deals with defeasible reasoning by looking for objective (here ‘logical’) criteria of evaluating defeasible reasoning. It clearly shows the tendency in pragmatic logic to analyze and evaluate not only deductively valid arguments, but also defeasible ones, as it is done in the contemporary theory of argumentation[vii].

3.2. The goal of pragmatic logic
The goal of pragmatic logic may be extracted from Ajdukiewicz’s view on logic treated as a foundation of teaching. This part of Ajdukiewicz’s analyses shows how important pedagogical concerns are for the program of pragmatic logic. It also explains why logic is called ‘pragmatic’.

For Ajdukiewicz ‘the task of the school is not only to convey to the pupils information in various fields, but also to develop in them the ability of correctly carrying out cognitive operations’ (Ajdukiewicz 1974, p. 1). This excerpt clearly explains why analysis and evaluation of knowledge-gaining procedures and their results is the main goal of pragmatic logic. If teaching students how to reasonably carry out major cognitive procedures (aimed at achieving knowledge) is one of the main purposes of teaching, then pragmatic logic, understood as a discipline aimed at realizing this goal, has as its theoretical foundation the description of the basic principles of knowledge-gaining procedures.

Ajdukiewicz’s crucial thesis is that logic consisting of formal logic, semiotics and the methodology of science constitutes one of the indispensable foundations of teaching. Logical semiotics (the logic of language) ‘prepares the set of concepts and the terminology which are indispensable for informing about all kinds of infringements, and indicates the ways of preventing them’ (Ajdukiewicz 1974, p. 3). The methodology of science provides ‘the knowledge of terminology and precise methodological concepts, and also the knowledge of elementary methodological theorems, which lay down the conditions of correctness of the principal types of cognitive operations, must be included in the logical foundations of teaching’ (p. 3). Ajdukiewicz gives an example of a science teacher, who informs students about the law of gravitation and its substantiation by explaining how Newton arrived at the formulation of the law:
When doing so he will perhaps begin by telling pupils that the said law was born in Newton’s mind as a hypothesis, from which he succeeded to deduce the law which states how the Moon revolves round the Earth and how the planets revolve round the Sun, the law which agrees with observations with the margin of error. That agreement between the consequences of the said hypothesis with empirical data is its confirmation, which Newton thought to be sufficient to accept that hypothesis as a general law (p. 2).

Thus, according to Ajdukiewicz, the role of the methodology of science in the foundations of teaching is revealed by the fact that crucial terms such as ‘hypothesis’, ‘deduction’ or ‘verification of hypothesis’ are in fact methodological and this is why they are useful in the process of achieving knowledge.

However, pragmatic logic is to be applied not only to scientific research or at school, but also to everyday speech communication. As Ajdukiewicz clearly states, pragmatic logic is not the opposite of formal logic, but both formal and pragmatic logic complement each other. Moreover, pragmatic logic is much more useful for the teacher, who aims – among other things – at training students to make statements that are relevant, unambiguous and precise, which is ‘one of the principal tasks of school education’ (Ajdukiewicz 1974, p. 3).

4. Pragmatic logic and argumentation theory: towards bridging the gap
The overview of the concepts of logic, logical fallacy, argumentation, logical culture, pragmatic logic, subjectively uncertain inference and the logical foundations of teaching gives support for the claim that in the LWS and in argumentation theory there are similar tendencies of crucial importance. One of the issues is that the two disciplines share in fact the same subject-matter. To show this in detail, however, would require further inquiry.

Future research should also answer the question of how the main ideas of pragmatic logic may be of use in the analysis, evaluation and presentation of natural language arguments. Research on such applicability of pragmatic logic may focus on the analysis of those components of the program of pragmatic logic which also constitute the subject-matter of argumentation theory. Some similarities may be treated as a point of departure for further systematic exploration of the connection between pragmatic logic and argumentation theory. Figure 3 sketches future lines of inquiry by showing the relation between three research topics in pragmatic logic and in argumentation theory:

Moreover, some fundamental assumptions of pragmatic logic harmonize with methodological foundations (i.e. the subject-matter, goals and methods) of informal logic and pragma-dialectics. The main assumptions of this kind are: (1) the normative concern for reasoning and argumentation and (2) the claim that the power of the study of reasoning and argumentation manifests itself in improving critical thinking skills.

As it was shown above, the representatives of the LWS were fully aware of the pragmatic need of studying everyday reasoning. And the ideas of Ajdukiewicz were aimed to be systematically applied to teaching and educational processes. The title given by Ajdukiewicz to one of his papers (Ajdukiewicz 1965: What can school do to improve the logical culture of students?) clearly illustrates this approach to teaching logic. In order to stress the pragmatic dimension of this project, it should be mentioned that Ajdukiewicz together with other thinkers of the LWS applied the program in their work as academic teachers. In the Preface of his Introduction to Logic and to the Methodology of Deductive Sciences (1995) Tarski states:
I shall be very happy if this book contributes to the wider diffusion of logical knowledge. These favorable conditions can, of course, be easily overbalanced by other and more powerful factors. It is obvious that the future of logic as well as of all theoretical science, depends essentially upon normalizing the political and social relations of mankind, and thus upon a factor which is beyond the control of professional scholars. I have no illusions that the development of logical thought, in particular, will have a very essential effect upon the process of the normalization of human relationships; but I do believe that the wider diffusion of the knowledge of logic may contribute positively to the acceleration of this process. For, on the one hand, by making the meaning of concepts precise and uniform in its own field, and by stressing the necessity of such a precision and uniformization in any other domain, logic leads to the possibility of better understanding between those who have the will to do so. And, on the other hand, by perfecting and sharpening the tools of thought, it makes man more critical – and thus makes less likely their being misled by all the pseudo-reasonings to which they are in various parts of the world incessantly exposed today (Tarski 1995, p. xiii).

The program of pragmatic logic shows that the idea of the necessity of choosing formal and informal analyses of arguments is a false dilemma. For instead of competing with each other, formal logic and pragmatic logic are both legitimate instruments of research and teaching[viii].

NOTES
[i] LWS is characterized as an analytical school which was similar, to some extend, to the Vienna Circle (Woleński 1989; Woleński 2009) It should be noted, however, that Polish analytical philosophy is a broader enterprise than the LWS, since there were prominent analytic philosophers, such as Leon Chwistek or Roman Ingarden, who did not belong to the school (Jadacki 2009, p. 7). However, the analytic approach to language and methods of science constituted the key feature of the research carried on in the school.
[ii] Heinrich Scholz, who is claimed to be the first modern historian of logic (Woleński 1995, p. 363) called Warsaw one of the capitals of mathematical logic (Scholz 1930).
[iii] Deductivism is the view concerning the criteria which allow us to distinguish good and bad reasoning. The main thesis of deductivism states that good reasoning in logic is minimally a matter of deductively valid inference (Jacquette 2009, p. 189). The logical tradition of the LWS accepts deductivism, however it deals not only with reasoning, but also with broader ‘logical’ norms of defining, questioning or ordering. For the detailed characteristic of deductivism in formal and informal logic see Jacquette 2007, Jacquette 2009 and Marciszewski 2009.
[iv] The first President of the Association was Jan Łukasiewicz. The other members of the first Executive Board were Adolf Lindenbaum, Andrzej Mostowski, Bolesław Sobociński and Alfred Tarski. The constitution of the Association was adopted in 1938 (see The history of the Polish Society for Logic and Philosophy of Science).
[v] I do not claim, however, that the broad conception of logic, as accepted in the LWS, is unique. Examples of such a broad understanding of the term ‘logic’ may be found in the works of Antoine Arnauld and Pierre Nicole (Port Royal Logic), John Stuart Mill (The System of Logic. Ratiocinative and Inductive) and Charles Sanders Peirce (Collected Papers) (see the Appendix A in Johnson 2009, p. 39).
[vi] This is why classifying various types of inference was one of the crucial tasks for the representatives of the LWS (see Woleński 1989).
[vii] In the paper I do not discuss whether defeasible inference is a separate type of inference, as distinct from inductive inference. For the brief overview of the literature on this topic see e.g. Johnson 2009, p. 32.
[viii] I am grateful to Prof. Ralph H. Johnson for discussion which was inspiring for raising the main question of this paper. I thank Prof. Agnieszka Lekka-Kowalik for her helpful comments.

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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.

But then, there is not just one kind of criticism. Merely expressing critical doubt is certainly different from expressing an opposite point of view, and expressing such a point of view is again different from arguing for that point of view. All three are different from raising specific objections against a point of view, or against an argument, or against parts of an argument, or against the arguer, or against the circumstances in which the argument has been presented. This paper purports to contribute to a systematic characterization of these and other kinds of critical reaction and thus to contribute to the dialectical approach to argumentation. In this, others have preceded us (Aristotle 1976; Finocchiaro 1980; Freeman 1991; Snoeck Henkemans 1992; Pollock, 1995; Govier, 1999; Johnson, 2000; Walton, 2010), and we have ourselves each attempted to contribute to this enterprise as well (Krabbe 2007; Van Laar 2010).

In this paper, we deal with the term “criticism” in the sense in which the term pertains to negative evaluations, rather than in a sense that also pertains to positive evaluations. (Nevertheless, such criticism can itself be called constructive when making valuable contributions to a discussion.) We aspire to discuss negative critical reactions in a wide sense, encompassing such criticisms as pertain to (expressions of) propositions, arguments, parts of arguments, and (the applications of) argument schemes, as well as those pertaining to arguers and institutional circumstances – criticisms which relate to such issues as understandability, admissibility, validity, appropriateness, reasonableness, consistency, timeliness, and civility. But we shall not discuss such aspects of critical reactions as fail to contribute to the contents of an argumentative exchange. Thus one could ‘critically react’ to an opponent by grabbing his shoulders and shaking him gently. Would this add content to the exchange? Of course, it might. If in some culture or in some special circumstances, this would be the way to express that one disagrees with the opponent’s point of view, it would as such add some content and be among the critical reactions we intend to cover; however, the circumstance that the expression of disagreement is performed by grabbing and shaking, rather than by a speech act, will not be part of our concerns. And then, the grabbing and shaking may also fail to express anything that must be taken into account as a part of the argumentative exchange, and thus fail to be part of our concerns altogether. From now on, we shall use the term “critical reaction” exclusively for those (aspects of) reactions that do contribute to an argumentative exchange (dialogue).

It should be mentioned that not all reactions in dialogue are critical. Reactions of agreement or acceptance, or requests to grant a concession would not count as such. The same holds for elucidations and explanations of earlier contributions, and indeed for arguments offered in response to criticism. What is missing in these reactions is a negative evaluation of the move they react upon or at least a suggestion that such a negative evaluation may be forthcoming. One might stretch the concept of critical reaction to the extent that an elucidation of one’s earlier contribution would count as criticism of a request for elucidation, and that arguments would count as criticisms of doubts or requests for arguments. One might also claim that acceptance of a statement is a criticism of that statement as being superfluous, since one agrees. Taking this line, all reactions in dialogue could be said to be critical in some sense. In this paper, we shall not go that far, but exempt from the realm of critical reactions those reactions that merely comply with the requests (to accept, to elucidate or to argue) contained in the move one reacts upon. We do so because of the lack of obviousness of the negative evaluation content of such reactions, if any.

Rather than straightforwardly heading towards a general classification of types of critical reaction – based upon a division of genera into species – we shall attempt to characterize critical reactions in terms of four parameters or factors (based upon Van Laar 2010): the focus of a critical reaction (Section 2), the norm appealed to in a critical reaction (Section 3), the illocutionary force of a critical reaction (Section 4), and the level at which a critical reaction is put forward (Section 5). Each parameter can take several values, which are characteristic features of critical reactions of certain types.

By examining these parameters, we attempt to contribute to a systematic conceptual analysis of the various ways of criticism. A characterization of the distinct kinds of critical reactions will be helpful, for example, when trying to understand various reactions in an argumentative discourse. But also the development of models or protocols for reasonable persuasion dialogue will be facilitated by theoretically motivated characterizations of critical reactions. Finally, given the wide terminological and conceptual divergences in the area of critical reactions, we hope these parameters facilitate the making of reasoned choices.

2. Focus
Each critical reaction has a focus, which functions as a precondition for a critical reaction of a particular type (cf. Wells & Reed 2005). This may be a focus on a move of a particular type, or on a special part of a move, or on a sequence or combination of moves, put forward by the interlocutor, and possibly reconstructed by the critic. Because one can take a critical stance towards any kind of contribution, each type of speech act in an argumentative exchange can be at the focus of a critical reaction. What is more, an argumentative move can be seen as having four aspects: it expresses a particular proposition, by employing a particular locution put forward with a particular illocutionary force, by a particular person, within a particular situation. So, the focus of a critical reaction, besides being aimed at a particular kind of speech act, can be propositional, locutional, personal or (in other respects) situational in character. We shall first list the most prominent kinds of focus and then discuss these aspects.

First, a critical reaction can focus on (parts of) an elementary argument as reconstructed by the critic. An elementary argument is an illative core of a (possibly more complex) argument, having just one justificatory step. It contains a standpoint (or conclusion) and a set of premises (reasons) containing exactly one connection premise (cf. Walton & Krabbe 1995, p. 128). The connection premise is a conditional statement, having the conjunction of the other premises as its antecedent and the standpoint as its consequent, which – within an argumentative context – expresses the commitment to accept the standpoint as soon as one has accepted the reasons in the antecedent. Often, the connection premise remains implicit, and in such cases the procedure for making it explicit is straightforward.

One of the parts of an elementary argument a critical reaction can focus on is the standpoint advanced by the proponent. This may happen before the elementary argument has been advanced – and in fact elicit the argument. Such a critical reaction may be focused on an expression of an opinion by the interlocutor, whether this expression has been marked as a standpoint or not (if not, the criticism will turn the expression of opinion into a standpoint, see Houtlosser 2001, p. 33). Of course, critical reactions can also focus on other parts of an elementary argument, or on a combination of parts. Where critical reactions on individual parts of an elementary argument are concerned, a threefold distinction can be upheld: such a critical reaction focuses on a standpoint or on a reason advanced in support of a standpoint (turning that reason itself into a substandpoint), or on a connection premise (on the three ways hypothesis, cf. Walton 2010). Comparing this three-fold distinction with the criteria for good arguments in Informal Logic, it is clear that critical reactions to the standpoint are not connected with any of these criteria, but the criticism of a reason corresponds to the criterion of acceptability whereas the criticism of a connection premise may either involve the criterion of sufficiency or that of relevance (Johnson & Blair 1983, p. 34). The distinction between the latter two cases is not one of focus but rather one of strategic advice (discussed below in Section 4).

It can be useful to characterize a critical reaction on an elementary argument in more detail as being focused on a special type of reason belonging to a specific argument scheme (Garssen 2001) or kind of argumentation. For instance, a reaction could focus on the ‘normality premise,’ belonging to defeasible arguments, which expresses that circumstances are not exceptional, or it could focus on the ‘desirability premise,’ belonging to the pragmatic argument scheme (a kind of practical reasoning), which expresses the desirability of a particular goal.

Second, a critical reaction can focus on a more complex argument, such as a basic argument that is built up from several elementary arguments (cf. Walton & Krabbe 1995, p. 129). This happens when it is pointed out that there occurs a shift in the meaning of a particular term in the course of a chain of arguments, or when it is alleged that a chain of arguments is circular and begs the question, or when it is shown that various parts of the complex argument are mutually inconsistent. The critic can also charge the arguer of having made mistakes in suppositional arguments: for instance, when the arguer has derived an absurdity after having introduced a supposition to be refuted, but then subsequently misidentifies the responsible premise (see Aristotle (1965) in Sophistical Refutations 5 on the fallacy of non causa, 167b21-36).

Third, the focus of a critical reaction can be on a kind of argumentative move that does not itself present (a part of) an argument. A challenge, to take an example, can be the focus of a critical reaction when it is alleged that the critic’s challenge is inappropriate due to the critic’s having conceded the proposition at issue at an earlier stage. In a similar vein, one can critically react towards requests for clarification, for example because any further clarification would be superfluous. In such cases, a request can be pictured as a delaying tactic. More in general, a critical reaction can be focused on any kind of critical reaction. But there are also other moves that one can critically react to, for instance proposals. When one party, defending a standpoint, proposes a premise that is to function as a shared point of departure, a possible critical reaction by the other party could be that accepting that premise as a starting point would come down to accepting the standpoint. The critical reaction, in such a case, is aimed at preventing an arguer from begging the question.

Fourth, a critical reaction can focus at a combination of argumentative moves (which could all be different from moves needed for constructing an elementary or complex argument). For example, it could be pointed out that one’s opponent refuses to concede a proposition that is immediately implied by a proposition granted earlier. In that case the criticism focuses on the combination of the present move of refusal and the earlier move of concession.

When focusing on such (parts or combinations of) moves of the interlocutor, the emphasis can be on one or other of the four aspects of a move. Consider first propositional critical reactions. If such a reaction focuses directly on the content of a standpoint or of a reason, it can be called a tenability criticism, “Why P?” (Krabbe 2002, p. 161); if it focuses on the content of a connection premise, it can be called a connection criticism, “Why would I be committed to Q if I were to concede P in the current circumstances?” (cf. Krabbe 2002, p. 160).

A locutional critical reaction focuses on the formulation of a standpoint, reason or connection premise, or of some other contribution. It may either be concerned with unclarity of the propositional content or with unclarity of the illocutionary force of the contribution. In the first case, it aims at getting the speaker to indicate into more detail what proposition he tries to express, “What do you mean by P?”; or it aims at pressing him to adapt his formulation on some other ground, for example because the terminology is biased, or distasteful. A locutional criticism concerned with unclarity of propositional content can also focus on a complex argument when pointing out a fallacy of equivocation, or when pointing out the lack of terminological coherence in the opponent’s set of commitments. In the second case, when the illocutionary force is unclear, a locutional criticism aims at getting clearer about the kind of speech act performed by the other side: is he offering an argument or an explanation? Is this multiple argumentation or coordinative argumentation? Is this a mere concession or a stronger kind of commitment?

A personal critical reaction ‘attacks’ the person who brought forward an argumentative contribution, for example by saying something like “you’re not in a position to argue in favor of (or: against) P in a credible way due to a general flaw in your character (or a specific bias, etc.)” or “You shouldn’t argue about Burma; you have never been there.”

A situational critical reaction can point out that the circumstances of the dialogue are such that the other side’s contribution is inappropriate. For instance, it can be told to the interlocutor that he has performed an inappropriate kind of speech act: he should not himself have made a concession for he is in the present dialogue the proponent in an unmixed interchange and therefore is not to make concessions to defend his standpoint, but to employ concessions made by the opponent in order to do so. Or, external circumstances may make a move inappropriate: “Defending this very standpoint in the current societal circumstances enhances violence”, or “Challenging proposition P is impolite and therefore not allowed in this family.” Though directed at a particular person and sometimes implying a personal attack, the focus is on the situation rather than just on the person.

3. Norm
Each critical reaction appeals to a particular kind of argumentative norm. One can relate to a norm in various ways. One merely follows a norm, without appealing to it, when one fulfills the obligations prescribed by the norm. for example, if, when one is supposed to provide an argument if asked to do so, and is indeed asked to do so, one provides an argument. One merely utilizes a norm, again without appealing to it, when one makes use of a right provided by the norm. For example, one utilizes the norm according to which the parties can take turns, simply by performing one’s move when the interlocutor has finished speaking. However, one appeals to a norm by putting forward a critical reaction (of a kind that is sanctioned by the norms) in order to put some pressure on the interlocutor to respond in a certain way. So, by challenging a standpoint, the critic is utilizing the freedom rule (also called Commandment 1, Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004, p. 190) which allows her to challenge, but she is also, although implicitly, appealing to the obligation-to-defend rule (Commandment 2, ibid., p. 191) in order to press the arguer to present an argument. One appeals to a norm, in the special sense of emphasizing it, in case the critic not only appeals to the norm, but is also rubbing it in, meaning that she is more or less clearly conveying the message that her critical reaction is pertinent because of the fact that this norm is operative. So, when the critic puts forward a challenge, and in addition stresses that the arguer is under the obligation to provide an argument, she is quite explicitly emphasizing a burden of proof rule. Below we shall repeatedly give examples of these two ways of appealing to norms (implicitly, and explicitly by emphasizing the norms). In the remainder of this subsection, however, we shall concentrate on the distinction between three kinds of norms, rather than on ways to refer or appeal to them.

First, there are the so-called rules for critical discussion (a normative model for persuasion dialogue). These rules mark the distinction between argumentatively reasonable and unreasonable dialogue moves (fallacies). A critic may charge an arguer with having violated one of these rules. Such a charge would amount to an appeal to the rule in the sense of emphasizing. Of course the charge may be ill-founded. When a critic appeals to a norm that she considers to be part of the constitution of genuine critical discussion but we do not, her critical reaction must be seen by us as an incorrect appeal to a rule for critical discussion.

Second, there are norms of optimality, which mark the distinction between argumentative moves that are really good and those that, though not fallacies, are unsatisfactory in some argumentative respect (lapses or blunders). For instance, if a proponent can choose between a stronger and a weaker argument, the stronger argument is to be preferred (cf. Krabbe 2001, on the discussion rule “Try to win”). Since one’s lapses or blunders are usually ‘advantageous’ for one’s interlocutor, the latter may leave them unnoticed. But she may also point out that the argument, though not fallacious, is flawed and therefore unconvincing. External observers of an argumentative discussion often appeal to optimality norms to criticize the participants.

Third, there are the so-called institutional norms. Argumentative norms that are institutional can be seen as marking the distinction between dialogue moves that are appropriate within the institutional setting, and those which are inappropriate within the setting. In the latter case we may speak of faults. In contradistinction to the rules for critical discussion, these norms are not part of the general explication of argumentative reasonableness. However, they do apply in particular types of context, where the participants use argumentation for special purposes that supplement the goal of resolution of a difference of opinion, for instance the purpose of resolving the difference of opinion in one’s own favor (Van Eemeren & Houtlosser 2002). Van Eemeren and Houtlosser discuss these institutional settings as ‘argumentative activities’ (2005, pp. 76-7; cf. Van Eemeren 2010, Ch. 5). For example, when engaged in legal proceedings, additional rules apply to the argumentative moves put forward by the participants, for in order for the difference of opinion to have been resolved in a manner that is not merely dialectically reasonable but also legally admissible, various additional constraints must have been taken into account. These additional constraints can be emphasized as norms in critical reactions.

We take the idea of an institution in a broad sense, including rather mundane activities such as having a colloquial conversation, or discussing current affairs, in addition to more formalized activities such as being engaged in a lawsuit, a parliamentary discussion, a public debate or a debating contest. Norms to the effect that particular topics are, within certain circumstances, not up for debate, or to the effect that certain character traits or personal circumstances can disqualify a person as a serious participant can be regarded as special norms that characterize some (and not all) argumentative activities.

4. Force
A third parameter to be used for characterizing the ways of criticism is that of the illocutionary force of a critical reaction. Conspicuous here are reactions in the form of requests, assertives, and strategic advice.

Requests
First, a critical reaction, whatever the norm appealed to and whatever the focus, can be put forward as a directive in the form of a request; either for argument or for clarification. Requests for argument (or: challenges) have a propositional focus, “Why P?”, whereas requests for clarification have a locutional focus, “What do you mean by formulation P?” In both cases, the request aims at an extension of the argument as constructed at some stage of the dialogue. Requests utilize the rules for critical discussion, and appeal to them in an implicit manner. By filing a request for an argument or a clarification, the critic is capable of pressing the arguer to provide the requested argument or clarification on the basis of certain rules for critical discussion. The implicit, normative appeal of a request for an argument would, if made explicit, yield something like: “in order for you to fulfill your burden of proof, as laid down in Rule 3 for critical discussion, or Commandment 2 of the code of conduct (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004, pp. 139 and 191), you must provide an argument as requested.” The urgency of a request for clarification becomes clear from a similar message, which could be made explicit to yield: “in order for you to adequately express yourself, as required in Rule 15 for critical discussion or Commandment 10 of the code of conduct (Van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004, pp. 157 and 195), you must provide a clarification as requested.” Normally, the reference to the applied rules remains fully implicit in such requests, but sometimes the norms are emphasized, rather than merely appealed to implicitly.

Assertives
Second, instead of merely requesting an argument or a further explication, a critic can reconstruct and negatively evaluate (a part of) a contribution by the other side, by making an assertion to the effect that there is a flaw of some kind in the interlocutor’s contribution. Critical reactions such as these have been dealt with by Finocchiaro as ‘active evaluations’ (1980, p. 339). When pointing out a flaw, the critic is actively taking part in the discussion about the matters at issue in the criticized contribution by putting forward a negative evaluation in which she appeals to one or more norms: the flaw needs repair. The critic can do so but nonetheless refrain from alleging that her interlocutor has been unreasonable on the ground of having violated some rule for critical discussion (a norm of the first kind) or inept on the ground of having violated some institutional norm (a norm of the third kind).

One prominent way of pointing out a flaw is to deny a proposition that has been expressed or employed by the interlocutor or to assert a proposition that implies a denial. Such denials come in two kinds, depending upon the messages conveyed to the other participant. If party A denies a proposition P that has been used by party B, saying “not P”, this denial can convey the relatively weak message that B will not be able to defend his standpoint that P vis-à-vis party A. This so-called weak denial is not itself a kind of standpoint that requires a defense when challenged. Instead, it expresses an expectation to the effect that, according to A’s assessment, party B will not be capable of constructing a case for his main standpoint that will turn out to be convincing for A. If requested to defend ‘not P’, party A can justifiably answer “It is not my opinion that P is not the case, and therefore I am not willing to present an argument in favour of ‘not P’; instead I am evaluating negatively your strategic chances of finding an argument that will convince me.” A weak denial does, however, come with an obligation for the critic to be open about her considerations that brought her to this assessment: what makes her think that B lacks the means for persuading her? So, there is, instead of a burden of proof, a kind of burden of giving some explanation, be it that this burden will have to be rather limited considering that the critic herself may not have full access to the grounds of her assessment. In short, a weak denial will always be a purely critical move, rather than a constructive one.

A second kind of denial is the strong denial. With a strong denial, “not P,” party A conveys the message that A will be able to defend this denial against B’s critical testing. Such a counterstandpoint does carry a burden of proof, when challenged. So, besides being critical, such a move is constructive, generating a mixed dispute in which argumentation (for P) is parried by counterargumentation (argumentation for not-P).

If the focus of a weak or strong denial is on the propositional content of the connection premise, the critic is pointing out a justificatory flaw. Such flaws can also be pointed out in ways other than by denials, for example by presenting a counterexample. Methods using assertives, other than denials, for pointing out flaws can also be found in critical reactions in which it is alleged that a formulation used by the other side contains biased terms or harmful ambiguities. Or when the evidence is pictured as legally inadmissible; or when it is held that the interlocutor has exceeded the time limit. In each case, the assertive that points out the flaw may itself be supported by arguments (see Krabbe 2007, pp. 60-61, on strong objections).

Strategic advice
Third, when raising a challenge or when pointing out a flaw, party A can choose to accompany this critical reaction by some of the counterconsiderations that party B must take into account when making further decisions as to whether and, if so, how to proceed in his attempts to persuade A of B’s standpoint P. Within an argumentative context, these counterconsiderations function as directives conveying strategic advice to B. Such strategic advice is critical in so far as it conveys the message that a negative evaluation is forthcoming if the proponent will turn out to be incapable of defusing the counterconsideration. We will provide a few examples. First, a challenge can be accompanied by a consideration that explains to B why A is critically disposed to P. The message to B then is that B must adapt his persuasive strategy in such a way that this motive for a critical stance will be defused. For instance, a challenge directed at the connection premise, “Why if P then Q?,” can be accompanied by the counterconsideration that P does not suffice to establish Q (conveying the message that additional reasons should be supplied or that a specific objection should be met), or by the counterconsideration that P is not clearly relevant for Q (conveying the message that argumentation must be supplied to show the relevance; see Snoeck Henkemans 1992, p. 89-93 and 2003, pp. 408-410). Second, it has been stated above that weak denials should generally be accompanied by considerations that explain why party B will turn out to be unable to persuade A. But such considerations would of course be overruled if B were to defuse them in some way or other. Hence they provide strategic advice for B. Third, strong denials can be accompanied by counterargumentation. Such argumentation can fulfill two functions: a constructive persuasive function (persuading B of not-P), but we refrain from discussing this function since we are concerned with critical, rather than with constructive moves. In the present context it is more to the point to stress the function of providing party B with considerations that must be refuted before party A will retract her critical doubt towards P.

5. Level
The fourth and last parameter is that of level. The distinction we have in mind has to do with the directness with which a dialogue move contributes to the argumentation in favour of one of the standpoints adopted in the discussion. Quite direct contributions will be located at the ground level dialogue, while more indirect contributions – moves that are about the dialogue rather than about the issue at hand – are to be located at the next meta-level of dialogue or at levels even higher up in the hierarchy (Krabbe 2003). Although it is difficult to draw a borderline, we think such a distinction can be upheld.

Clearly, a move in which a proponent puts forward an argument in favour of a challenged proposition, or in which a critic puts forward a counterargument against some part of the argument of the other (and so in favor of some kind of strong denial), contributes directly to the issue discussed, and so this move will be a ground level move. The same applies to the clarification of a part of the argument, for example by explaining what was meant by this or that expression. Requests for further arguments or for clarification of an argument will be seen as quite directly contributing to the argumentation in that the response aimed for is an argument or a clarification. So, these moves are considered to be ground level moves as well.

However, if a party’s move deals, for instance, with the strategy adopted by himself or by the other side, the contribution may still be seen as dealing with the standpoints at issue, but only indirectly so. The primary topic is a strategy that has been, can be or should be adopted (or not adopted). So, what we have called weak denials are to be seen as initiating a meta-level dialogue. Similarly, moves offering explicit strategic advice are meta-level moves.

An example of an explicit strategic advice can be found in Plato’s Euthydemus, where Ctesippus challenges Dionysodorus’ claim that Dionysodorus and Euthydemus really know everything:
Here Ctesippus interrupted: For goodness’ sake, Dionysodorus, give me some evidence of these things which will convince me that you are both telling the truth.
What shall I show you? he asked.
Do you know how many teeth Euthydemus has, and does he know how many you have?
Aren’t you satisfied, he said, with being told that we know everything?
Not at all, he answered, but tell us just this one thing in addition, and prove that you speak the truth. Because if you say how many each of you has, and you turn out to be right when we have made a count, then we shall trust you in everything else. (Euthydemus 294c, Plato 1997, p. 732)

When a party claims that the other side has transgressed a rule for critical discussion or an applicable institutional norm of some kind, the moves must be seen as being primarily about the legitimacy or appropriateness of part of the preceding dialogue, and thus as initiating and contributing to a meta-level dialogue. When the critic puts forward a negative evaluation by charging her interlocutor with having breached a norm, strongly emphasizing the norm, her evaluation will count as a request for some kind of repair, as is generally the case with pointing out flaws. But in addition, the interlocutor is accused of having put forward a move that hinders or even blocks either the resolution-goal of their discussion (a fallacy) or one of the goals inherent in the institutional activity (a fault). All such charges take place at a meta-level of dialogue.

Charges of faults (in the present sense) occur for instance when party A points out to party B that defending a certain proposition will have unacceptable social consequences (the charge may of course be unjustified). One may think of the self-fulfilling prophecy that ensues when a prime minister too much stresses its country’s economical troubles, or of cases where it is said that our adversaries will profit if anyone would take a critical stance towards a standpoint. Also personal attacks can be seen as charges at a meta-level that the interlocutor has violated an institutional norm, in that case a norm to the effect that for instance the arguer’s financial involvement, lack of expertise or insincerity is inappropriate for the kind of discussion at hand. Those personal attacks that are dialectically illegitimate constitute ad hominem fallacies.

6. Conclusion
As has become evident from our discussion of the four parameters, there exists an enormous variety of critical reactions. These must be taken into account within argumentation studies aimed at the development of norms for argumentation and of practical guidelines for those who wish to engage in argumentative activities, displaying rationality as well as persuasiveness. In Table 1 below we provide a survey of the critical reactions on the basis of the four parameters.

Table 1.

In order to proceed in these areas we think it to be important to apply and illustrate the notions in the present approach, comparing them with notions of critical reactions as they exist within such areas as formal dialectic, pragma-dialectic and computation, so as to facilitate the development of a clear and useful inventory of critical reactions. In fact, we took some steps in that direction, which were here omitted by lack of space, but will hopefully be published in a sequel. These applications, illustrations and comparisons concern texts by (1) Aristotle on objections and criticisms in the Topics and the Sophistical Refutations, (2) Finocchiaro on active involvement (Finocchiaro 1980, 1987, 1997), (3) Freeman on central questions in a basic dialectical situation (Freeman 1991), (4) Pollock on rebutting defeaters and undercutting defeaters (Pollock 1995), and (5) Snoeck Henkemans on complex argumentation in critical discussion (Snoeck Henkemans 1992, 2003).

One thing that has become clear to us, at the present stage of research, is that criticisms often constitute subtle argumentative instruments that do not only carry negative messages for the interlocutor, but are often helpful in that they provide various kinds of strategic advice.

NOTES
[1] For inspiration, we would like to thank Doug Walton. For helpful comments, we are indebted to the members of various audiences, to two anonymous referees, and to the editors.

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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.

Dissatisfaction with what she feels is a deplorable trait of our Western argument culture provoked Deborah Tannen’s notorious book The Argument Culture (Tannen 1998; 1999). Tannen’s claim is that in our Western societies we argue too much, even when we do not really essentially disagree. In contrast, she advocates a concept of society that would look for common ground rather than dissent and for ‘truth’ rather than debate.

It is easy to see that the little dispute in the Argument Clinic violates each and every one of the pragma-dialectical procedural rules for critical discussion (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1984, pp. 151-175; 2003; 2004, pp. 135-157) and never gets beyond the confrontation stage. Such an argument that shows no noticeable attempt at resolving the basic dissent by rational means, but consists in nothing but repeated contradiction and gainsaying, we will call a polemic argument.

This paper will try to analyse the preconditions under which and the situations in which such cases of polemic argument are likely, if not bound to occur. In this endeavour, we will make use of the concept of “deep disagreement” developed by Robert Fogelin (Fogelin 1985) and the notion of “cognitive breaks” (“coupures cognitives”) recently identified by Marc Angenot in his book Dialogues de sourds (Angenot 2008, p. 19). It will emerge that deep disagreements typically arise from a lack of common ground between arguers, and that one of the major sources for such a lack and hence for cognitive breaks and deep disagreement is the diversity of the cultural backgrounds of the individual arguers, a problem that rapidly gains in importance in our increasingly multicultural societies. We will determine the sectors and areas in which cultural diversity may manifest itself and the ways in which these diversities may affect the forms, functions, contents, and evaluations of arguments. Based on the theory of antilogical reasoning as a cognitive method developed by the Greek sophists, we will finally seek to establish an underlying logic and rhetoric of purely polemic arguments and to delineate the conditions under which they may still be integrated into a standard of a rational and critical discussion and may play a useful role by helping clarify the issue at stake and the conflicting positions for a broader third-party audience.

2. Common Ground, Deep Disagreement, and Cognitive Breaks
All argumentation necessarily starts from dissent; without any dissent there would be no reason for arguing. But it needs common ground to build on, if it is meant to make any substantial progress. Such common ground is usually provided by a common cognitive, normative, or cultural environment shared by the arguers. The more common ground there exists between the arguers, the better the prospects for a statement to be successful as a speech act and argument. This ‘common ground’ has been described as “shared knowledge” by Ralph Johnson and J. Anthony Blair (Johnson & Blair 2006, p. 77), as “mutual knowledge” or “mutually manifest cognitive environment” by Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson (Sperber 1982; Sperber & Wilson 1986), a term also adopted later by Christopher Tindale (Tindale 1999, pp. 101-115), and as “the normative environment the arguers inhabit together” by Jean Goodwin  (Goodwin 2005, p. 111). In the same sense, Michael Billig speaks of “common sense” (Billig 1991, p. 144) and of “communal links, foremost among which are shared values or beliefs” (Billig 1996, p. 226), and Douglas Walton of “common knowledge” (Walton 2001, pp. 108-109) or “general knowledge shared by the speaker, hearer, and audience” (Walton 1996, p. 251).

In a similar way, Aristotle bases the plausibility of dialectical arguments on what he calls endoxa, i.e. generally accepted opinions, which according to a definition he gives in the Topics (1.1, 100b 21-23) is “what is acceptable to everybody or to the majority or to the wise”, as opposed to that which is true by necessity. Aristotle’s notion of endoxa introduces a clearly audience-related element. According to him, arguing is a cooperative cognitive process that happens between arguer and recipient. Accordingly, it is essential that the arguer make sure not only that his or her argument’s premises are adequate, but also in particular that their adequacy is made conspicuous to the recipient (Goodwin 2005, pp. 99 and 111). This cognitive process is clearly enhanced by the extent of common understandings, concepts or ideas shared by both sides.

Yet more often than not such common ground or environment that would ensure successful argumentation is not universal. Values or beliefs arrange themselves into sets of beliefs or belief systems, the importance of which for a correct understanding of the communicative process of argumentation has been emphasized by various theorists (see Gough 1985; Groarke & Tindale 2001; Rescher 2001). Particularly Jim Gough has argued for a view in which such systems of belief “are relative to different individuals in different groups in different contexts” and may thus come into conflict with each other (Gough 2007, p. 499).

Yet in cases in which there is little or no such common ground, argumentation as a communicative process may entirely fail, so that no resolution of the conflict by means of rational argument seems possible. It was for such cases that Robert J. Fogelin first introduced his notion of “deep disagreement” that would be characterized by “a clash of framework propositions” in a Wittgensteinian sense (Fogelin 1985, p. 5). Fogelin distinguishes between two kinds of argumentative exchange: He assumes that “an argumentative exchange is normal when it takes place within a context of broadly shared beliefs and preferences” (p. 3), with which he includes that “there must exist shared procedures for resolving disagreements.” (p. 3). In cases, however, “when the context is neither normal nor nearly normal”, for Fogelin “argument […] becomes impossible,” since “the conditions for argument do not exist.” (pp. 4-5). “The language of argument may persist, but it becomes pointless since it makes an appeal to something that does not exist: a shared background of beliefs and preferences.” (p. 5). In such cases, Fogelin speaks of deep disagreements (p. 5).

A normal reaction to this would be to simply stop arguing. Yet Fogelin seems to be aware of the fact that this is not what normally happens. In most cases, people will nonetheless continue their argument, even though it has become “pointless” since it is bound to fail on a rational level. This gives rise to the question Angenot asks: Why is it that people continue arguing so frantically even though there are obvious “coupures” in their argumentative logic (Angenot 2008, p. 15) and cognition (pp. 17 and 19) that are more or less “insurmontables” (p. 17) and separate arguers from each other to such an extent that they even cannot understand each other’s arguments, since they don’t apply the same “code rhétorique” (p. 15)? Angenot’s ultimate answer is that people do not argue in order to convince anyone, but in order to justify and assert their own position (pp. 439-444) with a certain “imperméabilité” (p. 21). As a consequence, each side will bluntly deny the rationality of the other side’s arguments and declare them plainly absurd, a situation Fogelin describes in terms of “radical perspectivism” (Fogelin 2003, pp. 73-74), which means that “conceptual frameworks” may not only not be shared by opposing parties in an argument (p. 72), but even “wall us off from others enveloped in competing conceptual schemes” (p. 74). If, under such conditions, the argument continues – and it frequently does –, then the result can only be “dialogues of the deaf”, as Angenot calls them, or polemic argument, as we define it (yet not argumentation in the true sense of the word).

Polemic argument, of course, may as well be just wilfully polemic, and the deep disagreement may be faked for provocative purposes without there being any real deep disagreement (as is the case in many TV shows, and oftentimes also in politics). But it may as well be the result of a genuine deep disagreement, as is the case for instance in the debates on abortion, reverse discrimination, the Terri Schiavo case on the removal of life-supporting measures, the debate on separation of francophone Québec from Canada, or dissent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fogelin’s radical and shocking claim that nothing can be done to resolve deep disagreements on a rational level has provoked various reactions from Informal Logicians and argumentation scholars in general. It has been attacked by several scholars: Andrew Lugg (1986) meant to save Informal Logic from this challenge by pointing out that Fogelin’s main examples of the abortion and positive discrimination debates were inappropriate, since in both those cases, in spite of the continuing debate, a perfectly “normal” argumentative exchange was going on. Don S. Levi, too, failed to see how deep disagreements would constitute any limitation on what can be achieved by critical thinking, since in his view the main focus should not be placed on the final verdict about the argument, but on the acquisition of a better understanding of the issues involved (Levi 2000, pp. 96-110). Richard Feldman, while in principle sympathizing with Fogelin’s pessimistic view, argued that “suspending judgment” could be a rational solution, and that consequently there could be no “reasonable disagreement” (Feldman 2005a; 2005b; 2006; 2007). Richard Friemann (2005) suggested that emotional backing could help resolve deep disagreements, and David M. Adams (2005) objected that Fogelin had not specified any a priori conditions that would make a disagreement deep. Yet on the other hand, Fogelin’s thesis has also been defended, among others by Peter Davson-Galle (1992), by Dale Turner and Larry Wright (2005), by Christian Campolo (2005), or by van Eemeren, Grootendorst, Jackson & Jacobs, who do admit that such types of disagreements may mean a serious challenge to the pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion, since in those cases participants do not enter into the discussion with a resolution-minded attitude, but with very personal interests which each of them regards as privileged and beyond discussion (van Eemeren, Grootendorst, Jackson & Jacobs 1993, pp. 171-72). In a similar way, John Woods has described what he calls “closed-minded disagreements” under the name of “standoffs of force five” (Woods 1992; 1996; 2004, p. 194-199), which he declares intractable; in that respect, he even speaks of “paralysis” and “argumentational blockages” (Woods 1996, p. 650). Moreover, as early as in the fifties, Henry W. Johnstone Jr. had already identified the possibility of “radical conflicts” and “radical disagreement” (Johnstone 1954; 1959, pp. 2-3; 132-133).

3. Cultural Diversity and Deep Disagreement
One of the major factors that may account for diversity of belief systems between arguers, and hence also for deep disagreement, is most certainly the cultural environment each individual has been brought up in or acculturated to. It is only in our globalized and multicultural postmodern world that this obvious fact has become fully manifest, explicably so since culture-specific presuppositions in argumentation frequently remain implicit in terms of unstated premises. In the same sense, Aristotle’s endoxa have also been interpreted as “culturally shared values” vs. topoi as culturally shared rules of inference (Rigotti & Rocci 2005, p. 128).

Whereas culture-specific belief systems may enhance mutual understanding of the argumentative exchange when employed within a cultural community (i.e. when shared by both sides), they are highly likely to create problems in the case of cross-cultural argument. In a cross-cultural argumentative dialogue substantial parts of one arguer’s set of beliefs may not be shared by the other arguer, a fact that may cause incomprehension or misapprehensions. Arguments can thus be culture-specific, culture-determined, and therefore culture sensitive (see Kraus 2010).

Some such notion of cultural sensitivity appears to be addressed by Johnson and Blair, when, in Logical Self-Defense, they define ‘ethnocentrism’ as “a tendency to see matters exclusively through the eyes of the group or class with which one identifies and/or is identified” and declare “most prominent among such groupings […] those by religion, culture, nation, gender, race, and ethnic background” (Johnson & Blair 2006, p. 192). While for Johnson and Blair ‘ethnocentric attachments’ are legitimate, in fact even inevitable, a problem arises whenever they turn into an ‘ethnocentric attitude’, i.e. “one that assumes (probably never explicitly) that our culture is somehow better than others’ culture or else that what is true of our culture is also true of others’ culture.” (p. 192). For Johnson and Blair, an ‘ethnocentric attitude’ is one of the principal causes of fallacious reasoning (p. 192), by reason that it violates the standard of acceptability (p. 58); yet one might as well also say that it may result in a “clash of framework propositions”, which, according to Fogelin, will produce deep disagreement.

“Argumentation is a cultural phenomenon,” says U.S. argumentation educationalist Danielle Endres (2003, p. 293; 2007, p. 381), and she is most certainly right. The study of diversity in argument cultures and of cross-cultural or intercultural argumentation has become a thriving field of global research. But while in earlier times cultural studies searched rather for commonalities between cultures, in recent years, based on empirical field research, the focus has progressively shifted to differences between cultures.

Endres identifies three basic respects, in which arguments may differ across cultural boundaries: forms, functions, and evaluations of argumentation (Endres 2003, p. 294), to which one might wish to add contents. Fogelin, in his analysis, seems to focus on functions and evaluations when he insists that, in a “normal” exchange of arguments, “there must exist shared procedures for resolving disagreements” (Fogelin 1985, p. 3), whereas Angenot appears to concentrate mainly on forms and contents.

The most relevant current approach to cultural diversity is the so-called ‘cultural dimensions approach’, which is “based on the assumption that a culture is best represented by the values and beliefs that a group of people hold in common” (Hazen 2007, p. 7). Its most influential version has been developed by the Dutch scholar Geert Hofstede (1991, 2001). According to Hofstede, cultures can be differentiated on the basis of four value dimensions: 1) individualism vs. collectivism (the degree to which individuals are autonomous from or integrated into groups), 2) power distance (the degree to which people accept or do not accept unequal distribution of power, i.e. hierarchies), 3) uncertainty avoidance (the amount of tolerance for or avoidance of uncertainty and ambiguity), and 4) masculinity vs. femininity (the degree to which gender roles are fixed and respected).

Hofstede’s fairly abstract and generalizing categories are certainly useful, but need to be fleshed out by some material contents. In this respect a taxonomy developed by Barry Tomalin and Susan Stempleski is useful. According to Tomalin and Stempleski, cultures can be defined (and contrasted) by three interrelated elements: 1) ideas (values, beliefs, institutions); 2) products (e.g. customs, habits, food, dress, lifestyle); 3) behaviours (e.g. folklore, music, art, literature) (Tomalin & Stempleski 1993, p. 7).

As far as contents of arguments are concerned, cultural diversity may be said to manifest itself in any one or a combination of the following elements: First and foremost, there are values, norms, codes, and institutions. These may be of religious provenance (including e.g. religious values, beliefs, dogmas, commandments, taboos, views of gender roles etc.), associated with political ideas (e.g. freedom, democracy, legal systems, civil rights vs. hierarchic thinking), or of a more general philosophical and ethical character (e.g. human rights, ethical codes, rules of conduct).

A second group is represented by the elements that form the collective memory of a cultural group, such as the narratives of a society’s myths and history, but also outstanding cultural achievements such as products of literature and art, etc.

A third tier is formed by the standards that regulate everyday social life and interaction, such as language, customs, habits, routines, codes of honour, sense of shame, sense of humour, eating and drinking habits, etiquette, fashion and general lifestyle. With this group would also belong what is called popular culture.

It is easy to see how for instance religious or political values and norms, but also more everyday customs and habits that may enter into an argument as premises may clash in a cross-cultural dispute, so as to create deep disagreement that will not be resolvable as long as the differences in fundamental values are not resolved, which appears not to be feasible by way of rational argument.

As far as functions are concerned, there are cultural communities, such as many Asian or Native American ones, in which the aim of argumentation is not, as in our Western tradition, to win a case against an opponent, but to talk controversial matters over patiently until consensus and harmony can be reached (Endres 2003, p. 294). The focus is on community rather than rivalry and competition.

Forms of arguments and styles and patterns of reasoning, too, may be valued differently in different cultural communities. An argument from authority or expert evidence, for instance, will have a much different effect in communities with high power distance such as most Asian societies, as opposed to communities with low power distance such as Western societies. But even so, a particular authority that is acknowledged by one cultural group need not necessarily be so by another one. This notably applies to religious authorities, as is obvious from the debate on abortion, in which one side claims that abortion is murder since their religion tells them so, which is however declared absurd or non-relevant by their opponents.

Similar discrepancies obtain for arguments from popular opinion (Goodwin 2005, p. 108-109). A statement such as “Everybody thinks that English should be spoken everywhere in the world” may perhaps hold good for the U.S., but other nations may see things differently. Even ad hominem arguments, particularly in their abusive variant, are clearly open to cultural sensitivity, since there is substantial disagreement among different cultures as to what qualifies as a personal affront.

But even a simple argument from example will only work well if the example is known to and acknowledged as such by the interlocutor. Otherwise there will be no common ground to build on, and the argument will go unheard. This applies to all examples taken from a specific cultural group’s collective memory, i.e. from its myths, history or literature. For instance, an argument such as “Non-violence may ultimately prevail, as Gandhi’s example proves” will presuppose some knowledge of modern Indian history.

Evaluation of arguments, finally, is the most delicate point of all. A first issue is relevance. An argument that holds good for one cultural community will appear completely irrelevant to another. For instance, a Native American tribe’s argument that no nuclear waste site should be built on a particular mountain, since that mountain was a serpent lying asleep that would get angry when awakened (Endres 2007, p. 383), was bound to fall on deaf ears with local politicians and engineers. Similarly, the local First Nations’ argument that Mount Uluru (Ayers Rock) in the central Australian outback must not be climbed, because the path crosses an important dreaming track, was bluntly ignored by the Australian Prime Minister, who made access to Uluru for tourists a condition for handing the title to the area back to its original owners.

In a similar way, an argument that would be regarded as sufficient support for a claim in one cultural community, may appear insufficient to a different community. That we must not pollute this planet, since it is God’s creation, might be considered a sufficient argument by devout Christians, but clearly less so in a more secular environment, even if the argument is not considered irrelevant.

Cultural diversity will also strongly affect the strength of arguments. For instance: “You should work more than is requested in your contract, since this is for the best of your company” will be a strong argument in collectivism-oriented cultures such as most Asian societies, but a fairly weak one in highly individualist societies such as most Western ones.

Arguments may even backfire when the addressee, by supplying a contrary premise, interprets them to the contrary of what they were meant to say; or they may unwillingly embarrass or insult the addressee, such as when the former French president Charles de Gaulle defended French colonial policy in Guinea by arguing that France had done many good things to that country, as was amply demonstrated by the perfect French spoken by its president Sekou Touré (Kienpointner 1996, pp. 49-50). De Gaulle’s argument presupposed that francophonization of the colonial population was a positive value. But African anti-colonialists, to whom the argument was addressed, will surely have interpreted this as an expression of cultural imperialism.

Of course, not every argument that is culture sensitive will necessarily produce deep disagreement. According to Danny Marrero, cultural difference in argumentative dialogues comes in three grades: slight, moderate and radical (Marrero 2007, p. 4-6). In dialogues with slight cultural difference, the arguers belong to different groups with minor cultural variations, but still share a clearly defined common ground (p. 4). In a dialogue with moderate cultural difference there is an intersection of the sets of cultural beliefs, but only certain items are shared between the arguers, so that there is only limited common ground (p. 5). In an argumentative dialogue with radical cultural difference, however, there is no common ground at all. “Each arguer has a cultural-specific system of beliefs, values and presuppositions” (p. 5). This is the basis for deep disagreement.

On the other hand, by far not all arguments are culture sensitive at all. Arguments of the type “John should be at home, since there is light in his apartment” or “You should take your coat, since it is raining outside” may qualify as culture-independent. But it can nonetheless be reasonably stated that cultural diversity may be one of the principal causes for deep disagreements.

4. Antilogical Reasoning
At this point, let us for an instant return to the Argument Clinic. When, after minutes of mere gainsaying from the part of his opponent, the client complains that “an argument isn’t just contradiction,” John Cleese retorts: “It can be.” (Monty Python 1987). But can it really? Can mere contradiction in any way be a basis for argumentative resolution of problems?

In that respect, it is helpful to look back some two-and-a-half millennia to the age of the Greek sophists. Those early thinkers had developed a serious method of establishing knowledge by opposition of two contrary statements. This method was to be employed in cases in which certain knowledge was unavailable. Practical examples of this strategy can be found in a judicial context in Antiphon’s Tetralogies (four antilogical speeches in a judicial case; Mendelson 2002, p. 110-112; Tindale 2010, p. 107), in a political context in Thucydides’ pairs of opposed speeches (Mendelson 2002, pp. 103-106; Tindale 2010, pp. 107-108), or in a more philosophical context in the anonymous treatise called Dissoi Logoi (“Opposed speeches”; Mendelson 2002, pp. 109-110; Tindale 2010, pp. 102-104) as well as in Gorgias’s treatise On Not-Being. It was the sophist Protagoras who formulated the axiom that, with respect to any topic, two contradictory statements may be formulated and confronted with each other (frg. B 6a), which became the basic principle of the sophistic technique of antilogia or ‘anti-logic’ (Mendelson 2002, pp. 45-49; Schiappa 2003, pp. 89-102; Kraus 2006, p. 11;).

This theory, however, had a well-defined epistemological foundation (Kraus 2006, pp. 8-9). In his treatise On Not-Being or On Nature, Gorgias advocated the following three statements: There is nothing; even if there were something, it would be unknowable; and even if it both existed and could be known, it could not be communicated to others. Based on such sceptical epistemological views, Gorgias eliminated any reliable criterion of truth. There will be no way of distinguishing a false statement from a true one. All statements will be gnoseologically equal. Hence, since there is no criterion of truth, but only doxa (appearance), any doxa may easily be replaced by another more powerful one by means of logos (speech or reasoning). There is thus, according to Gorgias, always, and necessarily so, a clear cognitive break between individual arguers.

Regarded from this point of view, it is certainly not by accident that all the preferred examples for cases of deep disagreement that are constantly evoked by modern theorists (abortion, positive discrimination, artificial life-supporting measures, political separatism etc.) involve discussions of basic ethical, religious or political values, i.e. topics that typically belong to the realm of doxa (cf. Angenot 2008, p. 46), in which there can be no question of ultimate truth, but both sides may equally claim to have good arguments.

Moreover, it appears that the sophists regarded the ‘art of logoi’ (as they used to tag what was later called rhetoric) basically as an art of combat, as a competition (Kraus 2006, pp. 3-5). Plato, in his dialogue Protagoras (335a 4-8), has Protagoras boast that he would be able to win at any competition of logoi, provided that he was master of the rules; similarly, in the Gorgias (456c 7-457c 2), the sophist from Leontini compares rhetoric with combative sports such as boxing, fencing or wrestling. The pivotal term in all these passages is agṓn, ‘competition’. Also in the Sophist (225a 2-226a 4), as one of the subdivisions of the ‘art of competition’ (agōnistikḗ) there appears the art of ‘arguing contradictorily’, or ‘contradiction’ (antilogikḗ), which then becomes Plato’s standard term for what he thinks is the general sophistic practice of employing logos. This description may not be inappropriate, since references to agṓn, to antilogía, and to combative or competitive arts can be found all over the sophists’ original texts. For instance, the title of one of the most famous works of Protagoras’s, Antilogiai, alludes precisely to the technique described by Plato,

The repeated reference to competition and sports is significant. For sports imply rules and umpires, champions and prizes. The agṓn of logoi which the sophists have in mind is thus more than just mere altercation, it is a well-regulated competition, governed by rules and supervised by impartial umpires, in other words, a formal debate.

In the course of the contemporary turn toward a renaissance of sophistic thinking championed by scholars such as John and Takis Poulakos (J. Poulakos 1983; 1987; 1995; T. Poulakos 1988; 1989), Bruce McComiskey (2002) and others – not to speak of Victor Vitanza’s idea of a modern ‘third’ sophistic (Vitanza 1991) – the technique of antilogical reasoning has been revalued. Michael Mendelson, in a recent book (2002, p. 49), finds in it “the conscious effort to set contrasting ideas or positions side by side for the purpose of mutual comparison”, and he identifies it as a “radically egalitarian” strategy that protects no position as sacrosanct, but, “[i]n giving voice to ‘all pertinent’ logoi, […] creates an opportunity not only for conventionally ‘weaker’ positions to be heard, but, in the juxtaposition of probabilities, for the dominant order to be challenged and even overturned if the alternative case can be made to the satisfaction of those involved.” (p. 56). He thus makes it the root of modern debate.

Nola J. Heidlebaugh, too, in an attempt to tackle the question how, in an age of fractured diversity and pluralism, contemporary society can productively address issues of deep disagreement such as, for instance, the abortion problem, which are considered intractable owing to an “incommensurability” (using Thomas S. Kuhn’s term) of the fundamental conceptions underlying the conflicting positions, draws on the “antithetical method” of the ancient sophists in order to overcome such disagreements by means of an application of classical rhetoric that understands itself as situated, contingent, and practical (Heidlebaugh 2001, pp. 29-48). She observes that, for Gorgias, “the saying of one thing is what makes possible the emergence of its opposite,” and “contradictories emerge as a means of generation in Gorgias’ thought.” (p. 39).

Christopher Tindale, in his most recent book on sophistic argument, devotes a whole chapter to the analysis of antilogical argument. He emphasizes the open-mindedness and fairness of this technique which “sets before the audience a full range of possibilities from which they (and the author) might choose.” (Tindale 2010, p. 110). “Selective biases that favor one perspective over the other” are avoided, so that the audience’s own choice is encouraged and is left completely free and autonomous; there is no advocacy or preference for whatever side (p. 111). Hence, “[n]ot insisting on a truth from among opposing views but working to gain common insights from them is a strength of this approach.” (p. 111).

How might this model help in cases of deep disagreement? Can it help establish an underlying logic of purely polemic argument and delineate conditions under which a standard of a rational and critical discussion may still be maintained?

Maybe the common interest two polemic arguers share in a certain issue already establishes a minimum of common ground that can be built on (see Lueken 1992, p. 283). Maybe even agreement on the fact that there is incommensurability of conceptions and hence the disagreement is intractable may be a rational progress (Lueken 1992, p. 280). The possibility of “reasonable disagreement” (in John Rawls’s sense) in cases of epistemic underdetermination has recently been defended against Feldman’s scepticism (2007) by Marc A. Moffett (2007), Christopher McMahon (2009), and Alvin I. Goldman (2010). With a bit of luck, and some further reflection on both sides, however, even if there is disagreement on a basic level, maybe more common ground can be gained on a higher level, by the “subsumption” of the competing positions under a more comprehensive or overarching problem, by the “elaboration of a more global view which could embody the opposing theses,” as was Chaïm Perelman’s rather optimistic view (1979, p. 115). Other authors have called for more pragmatic solutions by way of “games” of reasoning (“Begründungsspiele”) and “stagings” of situations (“Situationsinszenierungen”) such as “free” exchanges of views (with rational discussion rules temporarily suspended), or learning games (Lueken 1992, pp. 215-347), or by tried and tested methods of classical rhetoric such as commonplaces, topics, and stasis theory (Heidlebaugh 2001, pp. 49-137).

But even if the opponent arguers never gain any common ground themselves, the repeated assertion of their contrary positions, and be it by mere gainsaying, may still help clarify the competing positions for a third party, namely the greater audience that witnesses the dispute. Models for such a view are close at hand. There will always, by definition, be something like deep disagreement between opposing parties or advocates in court or in a political debate, even if this disagreement is sometimes unduly exaggerated or even faked. None of the two parties will accept any of the opponent’s arguments (or pretend not to do so). But the real addressee of their arguments, the one who is really capable of being influenced (see Bitzer 1968) and who will really need to be persuaded, is not the opponent, but the deciding body, i.e. the jury, the assembly, or the electorate. Hence, for instance, a polemic and seemingly aporetic TV debate between politicians of opposing parties may, by forcing the parties to make explicit their positions and arguments, still help the witnessing TV viewer find or better define his or her own position in the controversy.

Possible solutions of situations of deep disagreement by introducing a third party have been advocated earlier, e.g. by Richard Friemann (2001), Vesel Memedi (2007) or Simona Mazilu (2009). We suggest here that, based on the model of the cognitive method of two logoi as developed by the sophists, a rational and critical discussion of issues about which there is deep disagreement may be substantially furthered even by polemic argument, by way of setting out to a broader audience all possible positions in full clarity and in stark contrast so as to enable them to make their choices. For if there really is deep disagreement that cannot be resolved by rational argument, yet decisions must be taken in limited time (as is generally the case for instance in jurisdiction or legislation), such decisions will only be possible by way of deliberate choices that must be made on the basis of an impartial presentation of competing positions. And even if Michael Gagarin may be right in stating that “opposed speeches cannot have the aim of persuading the audience” (Gagarin 2002, p. 30), this may just not be their proper aim; they may well fail in persuading their immediate opponent, but they may nonetheless still help enucleate, highlight, and clarify the essential points in a controversial debate for a third party – the party that makes the ultimate decisions –, and thus lead to a “better understanding of the issues,” as Levi (2000, p. 109) has called for.

5. Conclusion
The above considerations started out from the observation that situations of deep disagreement may arise when common ground between arguers is minimal or non-existent, and when there are cognitive breaks involved, and that, when the argument is continued in spite of that situation, it will turn into merely polemic argument that consists in nothing but contradiction, gainsaying and endless repetition of the same arguments without any substantial move forward.

It was further demonstrated that one of the major sources of such lack of common ground, of cognitive breaks and hence also of deep disagreements may be cultural diversity between arguers that can bring about a clash of basic religious, political, or ethical values that are not considered open to discussion by the parties involved. Since owing to the process of globalization clashes of cultural values are getting increasingly frequent and relevant in processes of argumentation in our present-day multicultural and pluralistic societies, this problem cannot be neglected.

Yet it turned out that, based on the model of the sophistic technique of antilogia, a solution may nonetheless be possible. The model suggests that contrasting arguments can have a cognitive function and may produce insight on a higher level. By making explicit the basic points of disagreement by way of setting them out in contrast, even purely polemic argument may still play a useful role in the rational discussion of controversial issues in a broader public, so that there is after all a way of integrating polemic argument into the rational model of a critical discussion – maybe not for the Argument Clinic, though, for that case is really hopeless.

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