ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Strategic Maneuvering With The Technique Of Dissociation In International Mediation

1. Introduction
This paper [i] is an illustration of the way in which dissociation becomes a tool of the mediator’s strategic maneuvering, by means of which the disputants’ disagreement space is minimized, decision-making being thus facilitated. The mediator’s argumentative behavior will be explored, investigating the way in which he succeeds in “maintaining a delicate balance” (van Eemeren & Houtlosser 2002) between the dialectical and the rhetorical aims in employing the argumentative technique of dissociation.

As established by van Rees (2006, 2009a), dissociation implies the use of two speech acts – definition and distinction. The analysis conducted in this paper shows the way in which dissociation is employed in the mediated type of discourse with the purpose of defining (and re-defining) ‘peace’ and the conditions of a peace agreement, ‘security’ or other important issues regarding the state of war, and of making a distinction, respectively, between the atrocities of war and the idea of peace. The aim is to strategically pursue both the rhetorical aspects – to achieve rhetorical effectiveness, in the sense of dissociation as bringing about a change in the starting point of the other party, and the dialectical ones – as all the parties want to resolve the conflict reasonably. Consequently, the discussion of the issues of peace and security perfectly shapes the relationship between dissociation and the speech acts of defining and distinguishing and proves how strategic maneuvering functions in real-life argumentation (cf. Muraru 2008c).

The context of international mediation under discussion is illustrated by the particular case in which the American president, Jimmy Carter, acted as a third party in the conflict between Egypt and Israel (1977, 1978, 1979), with the aim of contributing to a dispute resolution. As a result of the Camp David negotiations, two documents were signed (“A Framework for Peace in the Middle East Agreed at Camp David” and “A Framework for the Conclusion of a Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel”) that prepared the ground for the Peace treaty, concluded on March 26, 1979.

2. Conceptual framework
Dissociation is a theoretical concept first introduced by Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca in The New Rhetoric (1969), being treated, like its complementary part – association, as a scheme that characterizes “all original philosophical thought” (p. 190). Therefore, dissociation is viewed as an argumentative scheme, which implies the splitting up of a unitary concept, such as ‘law’, into two other different concepts: ‘the letter of the law’ and ‘the spirit of the law’. Due to the ambiguity of argumentative situations, the main function of dissociation is to “remove an incompatibility” and to prevent an incompatibility from occurring, “by remodeling our conception of reality” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, p. 413).

The dissociation of notions implies a certain change in the conceptual data at the basis of argument, which entails a modification of the “very structure” of the respective independent elements. Thus, the notion of philosophical pairs is introduced, the pair “appearance – reality” being considered prototypical for conceptual dissociation, due to the multiple incompatibilities that exist between appearances. The two concepts that make up the philosophical pair are called term I (“appearance”) and term II (“reality”). Term II can only be defined in relation to term I, being both “normative and explanatory”; it is a “construction”, and not “simply a datum”, establishing, during the dissociation of term I, a rule function of which the multiple aspects of term I are organized in a hierarchy. The fact that term II provides a criterion, a norm, enables judgment-making with regard to the presence or lack of value of the aspects of term I. Therefore, in term II, “reality and value are closely linked” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, p. 417).

Departing from this approach but also drawing on it, M. A. van Rees shifts the perspective of analysis from mainly rhetorical to mainly dialectical view, investigating its various uses as a technique of strategic maneuvering employed in practical discussions. In this type of approach, van Rees in line with other authors (Grootendorst 1999, Gâţă 2007) brings evidence against the treatment of dissociation as an argumentative scheme (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969), viewing it as a technique that helps at solving a difference of opinion, and whose “argumentative potential is based on the fact that the two concepts resulting from the separation of the original notion are portrayed as non-equivalent: the one is represented as more important or more essential than the other” (van Rees 2005a, p. 383). Consequently, dissociation involves a unitary concept expressed by a single term that is split up in two different concepts of unequal value. One of them becomes a completely new term, the other either preserves the aspects of the original term, being redefined, or becomes itself a new term, as well, with its own definition, thus the original term being given up (cf. van Rees 2009a, p. 9).

Gâţă (2007) brings an important contribution to the study of dissociation by the new theoretical model she suggests, introducing the “constitutive moves” (p. 441) on the basis of which the use of dissociation as a way of strategic maneuvering can be better accounted for. This technique “allows the speaker to deconstruct / disassemble a notion by distinguishing some of its particular aspects which are then reordered and re-constructed / re-structured / re-assembled into two new notions”, the terms “deconstruct” / “disassemble” corresponding to distinction, the first component of dissociation, and “re-constructed” / “re-structured” / “re-assembled” corresponding to definition, the second component of dissociation (Gâţă 2007, p. 441)[ii]. In Gâţă’s view (2007), dissociation allows the speaker to de-construct and then re-construct notions by generating or by giving the illusion to create (fresh and new) knowledge and by thus redefining and / or modifying the audience’s and / or the opponent’s experience of the world.

Dissociation is “a powerful instrument to clarify discussions and to structure our conception of reality”, due to the two speech acts that it implies (van Rees 2005a, p. 391), distinction and definition, which belong to the category of what van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984) call ‘usage declaratives’. This function of clarifying concepts and resolving contradictions generates its potential for ensuring the balance between dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness, implied by strategic maneuvering, in the various stages of a critical discussion. Van Rees (2006) discusses the specific dialectical moves in which dissociation can be used, as well as the rhetorical effects of using dissociation in these moves[iii]. Gâţă also states that dissociation can be considered a way of strategic maneuvering which occurs in the confrontation or argumentation stages of a critical discussion and which gets the discussion back to the opening stage. Thus, in introducing a dissociation, the protagonist of a standpoint can select from the topical potential available a notion which he perceives as contradictory, redefining it, precizating[iv] or reterming it, by adapting to the audience’s horizon of expectations. At the same time, he can employ the most appropriate rhetorical devices to enable him to define or reformulate the respective notion in such a way as to best support his standpoint.

3. International mediation as an argumentative activity type
The characterization of mediation from a linguistic perspective with focus on the argumentative dimension is possible only by viewing mediation as a specific type of practice, unfolding in a particular setting, and having certain players. In this sense, as a communicative activity type taking place in an institutionalized setting, mediation is a form of institutional talk, involving certain “goal orientations”, “special and particular constraints on what one or both participants will treat as allowable contributions”, and being associated with “inferential frameworks and procedures” (Drew & Heritage 1992, p. 22). Conflict arises from the inevitable differences that exist between the goals pursued by the institutional participants.

Mediation designates a “cluster of activity types” (van Eemeren & Houtlosser 2009, p. 8) that start from a difference of opinion which has turned into a disagreement, impossible to be resolved by the parties themselves. Consequently, the disputants have to resort to a third party, who, acting as a neutral facilitator of the discussion process, guides the parties in their more or less cooperative search for a solution. The general picture of international mediation promotes the image of the mediator as a central figure, who tries to bring a change in the “behavior, choice and perceptions” (Bercovitch 1991, p. 4) of the participants in the conflict, by exercising his influence over the dispute. By interacting with each disputant separately, and with both together, the mediator “becomes in effect another negotiating  part, an extension of the conflict system” (ibid.).

As argued elsewhere (Muraru 2009b), international or diplomatic mediation, in particular, may be regarded as a rather moderately institutionalized activity type[v], due to the diplomatic relations and practices the parties are engaged in, the disputants being guided by some fixed sets of values and particular norms of behavior, which are culturally bound.

By definition, mediation needs three parties that can reach the phase of negotiation: – the two conflicting parties have, in turn, the roles of protagonist and antagonist of a standpoint, while the third party – the mediator – as a co-arguer, addresses either each of the parties, thus putting forth the position of the opposing party, or both parties, as a common audience. First, the mediator negotiates with each of the disputants in private, and, eventually, the parties get engaged in the negotiation process by themselves. More precisely, as a facilitator of communication, the mediator has the role of helping the parties to agree on reaching the negotiating phase (Muraru 2008b, p. 808).

Mediation is an example of an argumentative activity type in which strategic maneuvering manifests itself. Although the mediator’s main function is to structure and to improve the communication between the parties, in argumentative practice, “his strategic maneuvering is often directed at overcoming the institutional constraints and contributing to the effectuation of an arrangement” (van Eemeren & Houtlosser 2005, p. 81). In order to determine the parties to come to an agreement, the mediator’s role is to clearly reframe the parties’ positions with respect to the divergent issues, and formulate and reformulate the standpoints and starting points advanced by the two conflicting parties. The mediator’s task  is “to clarify what the disputants are arguing and to project alternative trajectories for the discussion” rather than “argue for or against disputant standpoints or tell disputants what to argue” (van Eemeren et al. 1993, p. 120). In this sense, the mediator displays a “co-argumentative” behavior (Greco Morasso 2007, p. 513), his main task being to help the parties to reasonably find a solution to their difference of opinion, which they could not solve by themselves.

Starting from the three-fold classification of mediator roles into communicator, formulator and manipulator, suggested by Touval and Zartman (1985), a characterization of the mediator as a multiple role-player has been made (Muraru forthcoming), on the basis of which I have identified two argumentative dimensions of the mediator – facilitative[vi] and manipulative (in the sense of contributing to conflict resolution)[vii]. Considering this, the discourse of mediation is viewed as involving two types of relations in which argumentative roles shift (cf. Muraru 2008a, p. 2): (1) the two parties act, in turn, in the argumentative exchange, as protagonist and antagonist – each proposing his own definition of the divergent issues in accordance with the corresponding system of values and believes; (2) there is the third party, acting, on the one hand, as a ‘pure’ mediator, in the sense of facilitating the parties’ decision-making, through the roles of formulator and communicator, and, on the other hand, as a negotiator, who resorts to manipulation, in the sense that, he, sometimes tries to force an outcome and sets the things towards imposing a resolution. Each of the three parties strategically maneuvers linguistic and extralinguistic situations, in the sense of resorting to the three elements of topical potential, audience orientation and presentational devices.

4. Dissociation as a tool of the mediator’s strategic maneuvering
Since the focus of this paper is the mediator’s linguistic behavior, particularly the way in which he succeeds in strategically maneuvering the parties, the situation and the issues, the text under analysis belongs to the mediator’s discourse. It is meant to illustrate the way in which Jimmy Carter reformulates the starting points of the discussion with respect to the two parties, and how dissociation is employed with the aim of convincing the parties to put an end to the conflict.

It is the moment after the Camp David negotiations, September 18, 1978, when President Carter addresses the Congress, after two agreements have been signed[viii]. Therefore, the role of his intervention is to mark the end of a negotiation phase, and to clearly delineate the results of the Camp David agreements. To this particular aim, the arguer strategically makes use of the techniques of dissociation in reformulating positions. Thus, at this concluding stage, dissociation is meant to give a precization of the partial conclusion that has been reached (van Rees 2005b, p. 45), this technique being employed with the strategic purpose of highlighting a favorable outcome, in which the mediator has played a crucial part.

(1) Through the long years of conflict, four main issues have divided the parties in­volved. One is the nature of peace— whether peace will simply mean that the guns are silenced, that the bombs no longer fall, that the tanks cease to roll, or whether it will mean that the nations of the Middle East can deal with each other as neighbors and as equals and as friends, with a full range of diplomatic and cul­tural and economic and human relations between them. That’s been the basic ques­tion. The Camp David agreement has defined such relationships, I’m glad to announce to you, between Israel and Egypt.

(2) The second main issue is providing for the security of all parties involved, includ­ing, of course, our friends, the Israelis, so that none of them need fear attack or military threats from one another. When implemented, the Camp David agree­ment, I’m glad to announce to you, will provide for such mutual security.

(3) Third is the question of agreement on secure and recognized boundaries, the end of military occupation, and the grant­ing of self-government or else the return to other nations of territories which have been occupied by Israel since the 1967 conflict. The Camp David agreement, I’m glad to announce to you, provides for the realization of all these goals.

(4) And finally, there is the painful human question of the fate of the Palestinians who live or who have lived in these dis­puted regions. The Camp David agree­ment guarantees that the Palestinian peo­ple may participate in the resolution of the Palestinian problem in all its aspects, a commitment that Israel has made in writing and which is supported and ap­preciated, I’m sure, by all the world.

(5) Over the last 18 months, there has been, of course, some progress on these issues. Egypt and Israel came close to agreeing about the first issue, the nature of peace. They then saw that the second and third issues, that is, withdrawal and security, were intimately connected, close­ly entwined. But fundamental divisions, still remained in other areas—about the fate of the Palestinians, the future of theWest Bank and Gaza, and the future of Israeli settlements in occupied Arab terri­tories. […]

(6) While both parties are in total agree­ment on all the goals that I have just described to you, there is one issue on which agreement has not yet been reached. Egypt states that agreement to remove the Israeli settlements from Egyp­tian territory is a prerequisite to a peace treaty. Israel says that the issue of the Israeli settlements should be resolved dur­ing the peace negotiations themselves. […]

(7) But we must also not forget the magni­tude of the obstacles that still remain. The summit exceeded our highest expectations, but we know that it left many difficult is­sues which are still to be resolved. These issues will require careful negotiation in the months to come. The Egyptian and Israeli people must recognize the tangible benefits that peace will bring and support the decisions their leaders have made, so that a secure and a peaceful future can be achieved for them.
(September 18, 1978, pp. 1534-36)

In his capacity of a co-arguer (drawing on Greco Morasso’s (2007) view that the mediator displays a co-argumentative behavior), the mediator’s task at the concluding stage is to establish the results of the negotiations and to supervise the way in which the two disputants agree on the tenability of the respective standpoint (cf. van Rees 2009a, p. 78).

Carter begins by re-stating the issues that underlie the conflict situation: both stressing the points on which some kind of agreement has been reached, and outlining the elements of disagreement, which are still the subject of further negotiations. The issues are introduced by means of dissociations, by implicitly performing the speech acts of distinction and definition. The “nature of peace” (par. 1) is the top priority among the various divergent issues, always (in all of Carter’s interventions) being mentioned first, since the resolution of several of the other problems both derives from and is dependent on achieving peace. Thus, Carter dissociates between the notion of ‘peace’ implicitly defined (by employing the verb “mean”), as the cessation of war (term I) on the one hand, and as a state where harmonious diplomatic relationships develop (term II), on the other. The mediator obviously promotes term II as the norm, valuing the “range of diplomatic and cultural and economic and human relations” higher than term I, which is negatively valued due to the presence of the adverbial element “simply” (“peace will simply mean”). In this way, Carter’s attempt is to introduce a notion of real peace, thus creating an explanation and a norm that the peace should satisfy. In Konishi’s (2003, pp. 638-639) interpretation, term I designates the ‘apparent peace’, represented by the lack of war, and term II the ‘real peace’, represented by the harmonious coexistence of all the states in the Middle East.

The same analysis is conducted with regard to the other issues. “Security of all parties involved” or “mutual security” represents the norm and is dissociated from the concept of security defined as the mere lack of fear of “attack or military threats” (par. 2). Closely linked to the idea of security is the problem of border delineation (par. 3): whether “secure and recognized boundaries” are the result of the granting of self-government or of the withdrawal of Israel to the borders before the 1967 conflict. Carter himself stresses the elements of progress (par. 5) implicitly suggesting the role the American intervention has played, by particularly emphasizing the element of time (“over the last 18 months”), at the same time, progress being introduced as self-evident (“of course”).

Departing from the profile of the mediator who typically seeks agreement by leaving aside or ‘postponing’ the issues that are less likely to be solved, Carter’s ambition is to shed light on all the divergent issues that nurture the conflict situation. Thus, he is aware that a true resolution is possible only if the most ardent problem is to be clarified – “the painful human question of the fate of the Palestinians” (par. 4). Though not explicitly introducing a dissociation, it can be easily inferred from his words that he distinguishes between two categories of Palestinians: the ones ‘who live’, and the ones ‘who have lived’ in these disputed regions. Dealing with such a delicate issue, and considering the contrasting views of the disputing parties on this matter, the mediator, in compliance with his strategic role, maintains a neutral attitude, thus placing each of the two categories of Palestinians outside the category of simple Palestinians, each of them being more highly valued by the Arabs or by the Israelis.

Unlike the first three issues on which agreement has been reached, whose progress has been emphasized by Carter by means of the reiterative sentence “I’m glad to announce to you”, the Palestinian problem still remains a point of disagreement, a fact signaled at the level of language by the use of the modal ‘may’ expressing permission (par. 4). The effect of the use of ‘may’ is strategically counterbalanced by the strong commissive ‘guarantees’. The larger context of this dispute is characterized by a change in the Israeli position with regard to the acceptance of the Palestinians at the negotiating sessions, as opposed to the initial attitude of total rejection of this matter. In this sense, President Carter particularly emphasizes the commitment on the part of Israel (par. 4). Again the use of “I’m sure” introduces his viewpoint as universally accepted, preventing the audience from casting any doubt on it.

Another issue upon which “agreement has not yet been reached” (par. 6) is the removal of the Israeli settlements. The reformulation of the parties’ standpoints with reference to this matter is realized by means of indirect speech: “Egypt states…”, “Israel says…”, in this way trying to preserve as much as possible from the original version of the disputants. Thus, Egypt refuses to enter negotiations without the Israelis’ acceptance to remove the settlements, while Israel refrains from committing itself to any kind of action with respect to this issue.

Although the areas of agreement are recurrently stressed – “there has been, of course, some progress” (par. 5), “both parties are in total agreement” (par. 6), “The summit exceeded our highest expectations” (par. 7), we infer from investigating the text that Carter attributes a crucial role to the elements of disagreement. These are restated by enumeration (par. 5), and reiterated and overemphasized (par. 7) with the aim of maintaining the parties’ active interest in the divergent issues. His assertive (“we must also not forget”) can be reinterpreted as a directive by means of which Carter suggests that these issues should be dealt with as a matter of “urgency”. The same illocutionary force is conveyed by the meaning of the structure “the magnitude of the obstacles” (par. 7). Carter ends by encouraging the negotiations between the parties, stressing once more “the tangible benefits” of achieving peace.

Considering the fact that dissociation can be used “to negotiate inherent tensions in a critical discussion” (Gâţă 2007, p. 441), and that one of its constitutive moves is concession-making, the mediator uses this technique to reformulate the parties’ standpoints and starting points with the aim of eliciting some compromise and of suggesting solutions for agreement[ix]. Carter also brings along his preference for one position or the other when he chooses to maintain the particular viewpoint of a party by attributing it a normative value, or treating it as the standard position (for instance, when he introduces his own view that the settlements should be withdrawn)[x]. However, most of the times, the mediator chooses to advance a new definition of a particular issue, both preserving some of the initial information from the parties’ way of conceiving of the respective problem, and adding some fresh details, so that the newly-defined issue has gained new nuances as a result of dissociation. Also, in reformulating or rephrasing the position of a party, the mediator may clarify or enrich the stated position (cf. Arminen 2005, pp. 193-4). In this way, he contributes to reshaping positions closer to an agreement, which implies that the divergent issues can be more easily dealt with, and the new formula becomes more acceptable, thus both parties being more prone to concessions, due to the face-saving mechanism that the mediator promotes.

I believe that this first stage of concluding can be ascribed a double interpretation. On the one hand, it illustrates Gâţă’s view that, at this stage, dissociation may generate either a side-discussion, or a discussion with a different standpoint from the initial one, which has already been agreed upon (Gâţă 2007, p. 442). On the other hand, dissociation is employed with the purpose of convincing the larger audience that the commitments expressed in the beginning have been at least maintained if not totally fulfilled.

In this particular diplomatic context, the issues which have found no solution become the initial standpoints of the repeated side-discussions at a micro level, which are treated as parts of a Macro critical discussion (cf. Muraru 2009a). Therefore, this first phase of concluding has only established the points of agreement under a written form, the decisive phase being that of implementation of the provisions in the written documents, and concluding the Peace Treaty. In addition, I consider that the instance of international mediation analyzed here consists of several side-discussions, in which the starting points have repeatedly changed and on which agreement has eventually been reached by the opponents, the results being used in the main discussion. Thus, dissociation is regarded as dialectically sound, as both the procedural and the material requirements have been met. Functioning as a filter, the mediator is the party “in the middle” who puts the change in starting points up for discussion, on behalf of each party, which, by means of compromise solutions, eventually accept the change.

Treated as an inherent part of the mediator’s strategic maneuvering, the technique of dissociation has contributed, both dialectically and rhetorically, to the resolution of the dispute. The dialectical contribution refers to the way in which Carter has provided a more precise interpretation of the standpoints, which the opponents have considered as tenable, the mediator also establishing and clarifying, by resorting to usage declaratives (i.e., defining), the results of the discussion. The rhetorical effect is that Carter has chosen the interpretation of the conclusion that serves his interest best, formulating it accordingly. For example, Carter’s commitments in the opening stage included the Palestinian question, as well. In the concluding stage, dissociation has served as a means “to evade unwelcome consequences” (van Rees 2009a, p. 88), thus Carter succeeding in escaping the unfavorable implications that a failure in solving the Palestinian issue would entail. From exploring the text, one can easily see that the emphasis on the elements of progress particularly help the mediator to present the situation in a favorable light, making use of specific markers which enable him to rule out any further argument.

Consequently, by strategically maneuvering both the process and the content of mediation, the mediator has succeeded in reshaping positions so that they would fit both the parties’ understanding and definition of the respective situation (cf. Arminen 2005, p. 170), and the mediator’s own conception of the particular reality underlying conflict.

5. Conclusion
The analysis of this fragment is an illustrative example of the use of dissociation as a major technique employed in the mediation context, in the sense that the disputants’ positions may be interpreted as the two terms which make up a dissociative structure. Both opponents seek peace, which implies goal compatibility, but they differ with respect to what peace entails, and to the means of pursuing this goal. Consequently, the mediator’s strategic role is to reconcile the two incompatible positions.

In the process of argumentation in an international conflict context, dissociation becomes a technique the mediator resorts to, in order to contribute to the resolution of the dispute. It is employed, in this particular case of international mediation, with the aim of solving the inconsistencies between the two conflicting parties – Egypt and Israel, serving the purpose of clarification and explanation of contextualized terms and concepts such as ‘peace’, ‘security’, or ‘territory’.

By making use of such an argumentative technique, the mediator has facilitated the parties’ decision-making, by succeeding in changing the starting points of their discussion (as can be seen in the reformulations of the terms in the peace treaties – the proposal and the final version), thus dialectically managing to solve the conflict. The use of definition and distinction as the speech acts involved by dissociation enhance the dialectical purpose of the concept of strategic maneuvering, employed with the purpose of clarifying positions, and ‘precizating’, since they belong to the category of usage declaratives. At the same time, the rhetorical effect is felt at the level of reformulations that imply redefinitions of the terms, which are presented without further argument, thus dissociation being introduced as self-evident. Moreover, rhetorically, (re)definitions contribute to establishing a case of partial or total consensus.

In the context of international mediation dissociation has an argumentative potential. It becomes the instrument by means of which the process of the parties’ strategic maneuvering is realized, with the aim of conflict resolution, both by arguing reasonably and by suggesting a solution that serves their interests best.

NOTES
[i] This study is financed by the Romanian Ministry of Education through the National Council of Scientific Research in the framework of PN II  PCE  ID 1209/2007 (Ideas) project.
[ii] Gâţă (2007) illustrates the way in which strategic maneuvering functions in practice by  providing the analysis of some argumentative excerpts from a media electronic forum debate in French on whether Paris needs the Olympic Games in 2012.
[iii] As van Rees states, “dissociation my serve dialectical reasonableness by enabling the speaker to execute the various dialectical moves in the successive stages of a critical discussion with optimal clarity and precision”, and rhetorical effectiveness, because this technique enables the speaker to “present a particular state of affairs in a light that is favorable to the speaker’s interest” (2006, p. 474).
[iv] “Precization” is a term coined by Naess (1966) in interpreting formulations from a semantic point of view. Van Rees considers that precization contains “important aspects of what goes on in dissociation” (2009a, p.13), especially in relation to distinction, and, consequently, she has adopted it in her treatment of dissociation.
[v] In claiming that international mediation, in particular, can be viewed as a moderately institutionalized type of activity I am slightly diverging from van Eemeren and Houtlosser’s view (2005) who consider the general phenomenon of mediation as a weakly institutionalized activity type.
[vi] The role of facilitator that Carter assumes refers to ‘impartiality’ and ‘equidistance’ in offering the same view to both disputants, and making available the same resources to both. Therefore, fairness is the kind of behavior that leads to success, but also a behavior that is mutually acceptable to and accepted by the parties participating in the conflict, in the sense of ‘soundness’ of argumentation. In other words, it refers to the mediator ‘reasonably doing what is in the parties’ best interest’.
[vii] The idea of manipulation implied by Carter’s behavior is deprived of the negative connotation of the word, and it is seen as the rhetorical side entailed by strategic maneuvering. Therefore, the role of manipulator is interpreted as the role the mediator assumes when the conflict has reached a stalemate, thus enabling the mediator to put some pressure on the disputants, in order to move things towards a resolution path.
[viii] In Muraru 2009a, I have treated the particular instance of mediation as a Macro-critical discussion, providing an analysis of the four dialectical stages of the reconstructed mediation. Thus, I have established that the Macro-concluding stage is sub-divided into two sub-stages, the text under analysis in this paper, being part of the first sub-stage. This explains why the formulation of the divergent issues by the mediator tends to be judged as being part of the opening stage, since the issues become the starting points of another side-discussion.
[ix] Rewards, offers, concessions, and compromise solutions are considered “kinds of allowable contributions” (van Eemeren & Houtlosser 2007, p. 388) within the institutions of mediation and negotiation. Therefore, due to the fact that the various moves advanced by the parties under the form of specific speech acts are part of this argumentative activity type, they are not considered fallacious. Consequently, judged within the constraints imposed by the particular activity type of mediation, Carter’s behavior is evaluated as reasonable, since it proves to have contributed to the successfulness of the situation.
[x] Although most of the approaches to mediation envisage neutrality as the main characteristic of the ideal mediator, I consider that a mediator’s major achievement is that of generating a successful outcome. In this sense, successful mediation includes the mediator’s active direction and participation as he works with the disputants in a constructive way directed at defining the dispute and at generating solutions (Cobb and Rifkin 1991, p. 49). Therefore, a mediator needs to remain as neutral as possible only as long as this attitude essentially contributes to conflict resolution. If neutrality becomes a constraint on the mediator’s behavior, thus obstructing the decision-making process and forcing the mediator to deny his role in the construction and transformation of the conflict (ibid., p. 41), then, giving up neutrality is considered an allowable move.

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ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Elements For An Argumentative Method Of Interpretation

When are we, in fact, arguing? Even one and the same author may offer more than one definition of what he understands by argumentation: this is partly because the problem of argumentation is not confined to a single area of knowledge or of practical life. Definitions of argumentation are as varied as the different positions taken on the question of what exactly we do when we argue. Be that as it may, we are struck by the fact that the problem of argumentation (above all in its application to hypothetic-inductive methods) has not been analysed as a problem linked to interpretation.

In this paper the hypothesis that it is in philosophical hermeneutics that the foundations of the so-called speculative theories of argumentation are to be found is presented. To show the consistency of this hypothesis an analysis of concepts (plausibility, dialectic, rhetoric, heuristic reasoning, and reasoning topic) will be presented in order to show the hermeneutical basis of developments in the field of argumentation theories.

The link between argumentation and interpretation is clear for two reasons: firstly, because if ‘argumentation is one of the activities characteristic of rational life’(Corcoran 1989, pp. 17), this is owing to the fact that the radical necessity of interpreting the political, social, historical, institutional and personal environment in which our existence takes place (and not only our own environment anchored in the present but the past and future too, whether we know it or not), makes argumentation another means to govern that fundamental and primordial disposition of human existence which avails itself of interpretation as both a means and an end. The second reason is that, from a logical point of view, the application of argumentation to hypothetic-deductive and hypothetic-inductive methods goes without saying, insofar as both methods have conjectural starting points. We can distinguish this second reason, which is logical, from the first one, which points to ontological and historical dimensions.

Defining argumentation as being involved in the reduction of new problems to other old ones which have been resolved, Corcoran (1989) combines the strictly logical and the ontological. But, also according to the same author, neither deductive nor inductive methods are truly methods leading to the discovery of hypotheses. Consequently, there are auxiliary procedures for discovering hypotheses which could also be used to discover chains of reasoning. These avenues of hypothesis discovery are really heuristic avenues, that is, they form part of an ars inveniendi which is rooted in an ars interpretandi in contrast to the ars indicandi, because unlike the latter they do not conform to demonstrative logic. Thus, for example, the method by analogy is a heuristic procedure.

Applying interpretative or conjectural procedures may lead to the production of proofs when, for example, a heuristic procedure is used that consists of developing, from an originary hypothesis, arguments which are confirmed as true. This is how interpretations and conjectures based on petitio principii may become proofs. All of this gives us an idea of the epistemic potential of interpretative processes in their heuristic dimension.

According to Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, the heuristic function usually estimates the cost of a solution which begins from the state in the node n‘ (Russell and Norvig 2003) and which, no matter how one looks at it, manages to construct a function by learning from experience, since every optimal solution of a given problem provides elements or examples enabling the function h(n) to be learnt. In other words, each example is made up of a solved path state, which is why it is said that an heuristic strategy – whether subsequently applied to a piece of reasoning – uses knowledge of a problem in a sense that goes beyond the definition of the problem in itself. This strategy brings into play learning and reasoning modality that is not deductive but rather inductive.

Inductive learning can only take place if information relevant (for whatever reason) to the development and description of the problem is offered to the system which is to carry out the calculation. Often, however, when this procedure is deployed, the conclusions obtained do not properly follow from the argumentation. It is also common, when the heuristic and exploratory interpretative procedure is not carried out rigorously, to blame it for logical limitations that do not stem from it, but rather from the logic-discursive procedure with which we conduct the arguments. When this procedure is not carried out rigorously, we invalidate the heuristic procedure (such as extracting from the petitio principii other true and conclusive propositions that let us take the petitio as a proof), transforming it instead into a mere fallacy or erroneous conclusion – which is due either to an erroneous chain of reasoning or to basing the force of the reasoning on a mistaken interpretation of the implicit sense of that petition of principle.

All these factors seem to call into question the appropriateness of the linear model based on mechanical reasoning and learning and even on conceptions of language as a mere instrument for representing knowledge. These conceptions of heuristic and hermeneutic reasoning are highlighted, for example, in the design of intelligent environments, which requires us to investigate the cognitive processes involved in reasoning – a highly topical field in Artificial Intelligence. In this field, logical agents are no longer designed with regard to language programmes based on prototypical reasoning patterns of propositional logic (for example, following the development of patterns of inference that can be applied to derive chains of conclusions to lead us to a desired objective). On the contrary, nowadays more complex models are taken into account, such as, for example, those that consist of the description of actions for carrying out calculations and interpretations of situations in which a possibility axiom is given (which gives an idea of when it is possible or necessary to carry out a determinate action) and an effect axiom (which gives an idea of what happens when an action is performed or of what changes are possible as a result of carrying out an action).

In spite of these connections between heuristic and hermeneutic reasoning, the history of hermeneutics, insofar as epistemic procedure is concerned, has taken the connection as a case of simple misunderstanding (a somewhat blunt way of expressing the problem we referred to above). The function of hermeneutics (clearly epistemic, in my opinion) has been said to be simply that of a preliminary study for arriving at a correct interpretation or understanding in cases where there is something confused, unclear, unintelligible or misunderstood – and that ‘something’ generally had to be made intelligible, clear and perceptible.

However, the very fact of asserting that heuristic procedures – in one way or another always interpretative – are linked with argumentational ones weakens the idea that perhaps there are arguments that give rise to cogent reasoning per se. Normally a piece of reasoning is considered cogent per se if its conclusion follows logically from the premises it has provided. But this requisite may be present and yet appear in such a context that people do not recognise the consistency of the conclusion, either because they do not accept the premises used or because they are simply ignorant of them. This should give us an idea of how far the interpretative and the strictly logical processes converge in practice and to what extent they are indistinguishable and undifferentiated due to the fact that, in effect, in practical life they are not distinct or differentiated. So, in spite of logical accuracy in the chain of reasoning, an argument may not be a proof for one person or group of persons in a specific context, and will in such a case be judged simply as a petition of principle. Sometimes this phenomenon (a logical one, in which the pragmatic elements inherent in reasoning play a part) is confused with a problem relating to the use of erroneous interpretations. In other words, a petition of principle is confused with a mere interpretation lacking epistemic or logical value. In my opinion, this phenomenon, which occurs so frequently in communication in our shared everyday life, stems from this reason: a correct argument is not merely the result of an inferential process; thus, even an adequate interpretation does not always appear in the form of a cogent argument.

Our expectation of being successful in our interpretations is logical. This can be appreciated when we consider how annoying it can be when our interlocutor formulates interpretations that are manifestly erroneous on the basis of events, texts, stories, etc. which ought to give rise to different interpretations. We are used to linking interpretative processes with logics or, at least, with certain aspects of logic which, although we treat them somewhat flexibly in casual conversation or, in general, in our shared everyday life, we cannot nevertheless refrain from demanding or assuming in all our speech acts.
Moreover, it must be pointed out that the fact that we discredit our interlocutor by saying: ‘That’s just your interpretation!’, merely underlines what was said above, namely, that the reason why this is precisely a form of discrediting or reproach comes from the fact that a question whose elucidation ought to lead to some kind of reasoning communion has been made to depend on the interlocutor’s subjectivity. When this happens, we speak of erroneous interpretations, that is, interpretations that fail to fulfil their heuristic function adequately and which are, for that reason, as illogical as they are personal or subjective.

We maintain, all things considered, that one of the key arguments concerning the connection between interpretation and argumentation lies in the fact that the existence of both premises and conclusion(s) has a purely functional character in argumentational processes. This is precisely because arguments have an interpretative scope and other propositions, conclusions or interpretations are induced from them, which means they are all, from this point of view, provisional.

Corcoran has referred to this problem, pointing out that it is particularly striking that many sceptical philosophers or even epistemological nihilists have concluded that no proposition is known to be true in itself. However, few of them have shown, on the basis of this assertion, that what it really indicates is that no reasoning is known to be valid if we think that in order to establish the validity of an argument it is necessary to hold other arguments to be valid, which would imply that there would always have to be some necessarily valid argument, in order for the rest to be considered valid. Every argument is specific and singular, that is, there is no outline or a priori of argumentation. This implies that every inductive process is based on specific arguments and, consequently, supported by heuristic procedures of a hermeneutic kind. If this is true, it seems reasonable to widen the investigative domain of the discipline of logic to include the strictly hermeneutic problem.
On the basis of what has been said above, we believe that Corcoran (1989) gives another tentative definition of argumentation more consistent and complete than the previous one. It incorporates all the problems mentioned up to now as it considers that an argument is a system of three parts: a group of propositions called the group of premises, a single proposition called the conclusion and a discourse called the chain of reasoning.

At this point we must recognise that the formulation of arguments, both by hypothetico-inductive and hypothetico-deductive methods, employs premises that are taken as valid or other arguments whose validity is taken as demonstrated. In general, these are the plausible arguments and propositions which Aristotle considered worthy of consideration or trust – to the extent that they had a good reputation. In this sense, Vega has defined the endoxa as ‘dialectic propositions which are more or less accepted or acceptable’ (Vega 1993, p. 6)[i].

As we shall see later, an argumentation theory in the philosophical sense cannot be applied to political, epistemological, ontological, ethical, etc., problems without being fully integrated into the specific topic. It is this consideration that reveals the close connection between the argumentational and interpretative processes because, in simple terms, the interpretative procedure begins where deductive reasoning is not applicable, that is, where measurement exists only in terms of degrees of plausibility. Vega expresses this problem in the following terms:

In other words: for an argument < {α1, α2,… αk}, αn > to be truly a proof, its power of acceptability or plausibility must be greater than that of the bare proposition αn in the given discursive framework[ii]. (Vega 1993, p. 14)

Whether an argument is plausible or not is a problem that depends on discursive frameworks, that is, on pragmatic and historical contexts whose meaning can be defined as the final, but provisional, product of the complex logic of interpretation. Schnädelbach expresses the thesis that we are attempting to sketch out in the following terms:
If discursive rationality is essentially a matter of the faculty of judging (…), the context of criticism and justification can never be bound completely by rules, even when it must follow (…) certain fundamental rules (for example, those of grammar or logical consistency). Consequently, a logic of argumentation as a purely axiomatic-deductive theory will never be possible (…)[iii].  (Schnädelbach 2000, p. 409)

Marafioti, Zamudio and Rubione (1997) consider that some of the main approaches to the problem of argumentation have taken insufficient account of aspects such as the influence social institutions exert upon argumentational discourse, suggesting that a sociology of argumentation is needed. It is equally important that the construction of argumentation theories acknowledges the value of studying argumentation from a psycholinguistic standpoint in which the subjects under investigation would include problems such as the psychogenesis of argumentational competence and the shared contextual assumptions that give rise to inferences.

The definitions of argumentation presented in the previous paragraph have been developed in the history of argumentation theories by approaches such as that of Anscombre & Ducrot, for whom argumentation is a communicative act in which an utterance is presented with the aim of supporting a conclusion and the application of other utterances may contribute to its argumentational force (a property of exclusively discursive argumentation, since not all arguments used have the same force or the same argumentational weight). These other utterances are aimed at supporting the same conclusion or another one which, appearing more obvious in a determinate context, could strengthen, or even appear as a proof of, the conclusion to be debated. Victoria Escandell (1999, p. 109) has expressed this well, pointing out that with respect to the problem of argumentation, in contrast to the English pragmatic tradition, which is more interested ‘in emphasising the character of action underlying all linguistic communication’ the French tradition (which includes Anscombre & Ducrot both in their individual work and in their collective work) has paid more attention to the principles which determine the argumentational effects of utterances than to the linguistic context itself in which these take place, since it is true that, in communicative practice, utterances that can be characterised as arguments deviate from the classic discursive laws of logic.

All of this reveals the existence of argumentational operators and connectives so subtle or complex that they may be present in texts whose function, in principle, is not argumentational but rather poetic, narrative, descriptive, etc. And this is true without even taking into account the Habermasian standpoint regarding speech acts as triggers of the pragmatic units; in certain social and political contexts, these units animate the argumentational power of texts independently of semantic content originally established with the aim of obtaining determinate levels of validity. If I am not mistaken, all of this strengthens Ducrot’s standpoint regarding the pre-eminence of the argumentational function of language over the other functions, to the extent that it underlies all the rest.

The works of Anscombre & Ducrot are relevant in this respect, above all in relation to the following point: although utterances can be argumentationally oriented by means of formal procedures (their contribution being a complex semantics that embraces pragmatics), their interpretation seems to depend on specific formal means. Thus, in communicative processes, interpretation represents the other side or inverse argumentation and can be explained as the cognitive process by means of which the receiver distinguishes the argumentational connectives and operators and so comes to establish a final value in the equation of meaning. However, this definition is still excessively semantic, since it is true that in most cases we find that both the arguments and the conclusions are implicit, and therefore the task consists generally in knowing how to interpret the argumentational orientation of a discourse in pragmatic and semantic terms rather than in meticulously distinguishing its operators and connectives in formal terms.

One could derive a corollary regarding the research hypothesis of the authors: namely, that the interpretative processes realise other dimensions of discursive reasoning such as a comprehensive discernment of the situation, an appropriate assessment of the topoi explicitly and/or implicitly employed, as well as rhetorical techniques and the dialectic limits used to orient the discourse or utterance in an argumentational way, in order to show, at one time, the probability of a particular argument or, at another time, to argue against it, etc. Anscombre & Ducrot’s standpoint is notably summed up in this passage:
Our thesis is that in language there are restrictions that determine this presentation. For an utterance E1 to be able to count as an argument in favour of E2 (conclusion) it is not enough that E1 actually does give reasons for accepting E2. The linguistic structure of E1 must also satisfy certain conditions that make it suitable, within a discourse, to constitute an argument for E2. (Anscombre & Ducrot 1988, p. 8).

The conditions which the linguistic structure, E1, must satisfy in order to be (discursively) suitable as reasoning are given by the type of argumentational trigger that links them. For Anscombre & Ducrot, just as rhetoric was for Nietzsche, the sense of the linguistic unit does not depend on properties denoted by it in a world situated, in a naively realist way, in the exterior. Nor does the linguistic unit depend on thoughts, but rather upon the discourses that can be associated with such a unit: it is in virtue of these discourses that a determinate argumentational trigger can be given.

Consequently, these points of view broaden the definition put forward above, because they present argumentation as a situational problem by maintaining the existence of argumentational situations and argumentational fields per se. Sometimes these situations are more direct in relation to the construction and reconstruction of argumentational schemes, and sometimes they are more indirect.

Brown and Yule’s proposals have paid more attention to that other side of the problem of argumentation, which here we understand as the problem of interpretation, which concerns not only arguments in themselves but also argumentational situations, argumentational force and its degree of relevance in a communication context, argumentational operators and connectives, as well as implicit or, on the contrary, manifest topoi. This approach reaches conclusions about the presumption of coherence in the process of interpretation of meaning, which is divided into several stages, namely: calculation of the communication function, including not only understanding of the meaning of utterances, that is, a semantic focus, but also understanding of utterances as actions, that is, a pragmatic focus, and the deployment of prior knowledge and the production of inferences.

One of the most valuable contributions to the understanding of utterances as actions is, in my opinion, that of Labov (1975). From the sociolinguistic standpoint, there are clearly rules of interpretation that are used to establish an inference not only from what is said, but from what is said in the light of what is done given that actions are realised by means of utterances. If we think about it, it will quickly strike us that most of our communicative exchanges are coherent only if we assume a strongly shared hypothesis, namely: that the structure of linguistic interaction is not fragmented or dissolved by the fact that utterances are unconnected; discursive continuity is already a reason for assuming a logic-discursive connection. In this sense, one may say that one of the fundamental problems for every argumentation theory is that of inference, since it is through inferential processes that validity is conferred on an assumption and, in general, on an argument.

In this respect, relevance theory holds that the numerous inferential processes are a consequence of the ostensive dimension of communication, and that they are therefore usually a means for manifesting something. And the intention behind trying to manifest something makes inference an auxiliary process of the ostensive dimension of communication. Sperber and Wilson’s theory of relevance turns, precisely, on the problem of assumptions in the light of inferential processes because, depending on the degree of force of an assumption and/or several assumptions, in general these will produce more or less appropriate inferences. Here we start from the fact that heuristic reasoning is not completely falsifiable or verifiable and that, nevertheless, it is this type of reasoning that we use to construct a hypothesis with which to discern, in the most productive and pertinent way possible, the communicative intentions of the transmitter (using the term ‘transmitter’ in a loose sense here). The notion of relevance refers, in short, to the production of contextual effects.

The generation of relevant contextual effects has a close relation with inductive reasoning in its abductive modality. In this modality, induction and interpretation offer aspects which are characteristic of each and also common to both without distinction. We should consider the problem of relevance together with strong and weak implicatures: two of the most suggestive aspects of Sperber and Wilson’s theory of relevance. In short, a theory that emerges in opposition to the code model based, according to Tusón (1984, p. 28) on the idea that
a transmitter, in accordance with a determinate code, transmits a sign whose referent lies outside the communication process (an event, a mood, a scientific truth, etc.). The transmitted signs travel through a channel and reach the receiver who will, if in possession of the relevant code, carry out decoding[iv].

In his introductory study to writings on Nietzschean rhetoric, Santiago Guervós (2000, p. 22) wrote: ‘As epistemology operates – like philosophy – by means of language, and language is essentially rhetorical – in other words, persuasive -, all questions referred to language and philosophy are rhetorical questions’. So, paraphrasing Guervós, we hold that since epistemology operates – to some extent the same as philosophy – by means of reasoning (and language is essentially reasoning, that is, persuasive expression), all questions referred to philosophy and epistemology are rhetorical, dialectic and argumentational questions.

However, this approach would not be enough in itself, as it presents problems which are difficult to deal with without assuming the standpoint of linguistic ontology, which emphatically insists that language is not an instrument of representation but rather pre-forms our horizon of comprehension, being conditioned by our experience of the world. Consequently, the speculative dimension that gives it life also inclines it to the ceaseless production of utterances with a suasive or dissuasive function.

For our part, we maintain here that what leads us inevitably to the problem of argumentation and interpretation is the linguistic medium, which is therefore, one of the most important criteria for examining the philosophical legacy of both traditions. As I see it, the different theories of argumentation constitute a strand (among others) of continuity within the historical time line.

The research of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1989) on the new rhetoric was classified by the authors themselves within the discipline of logic. In a way, this research may be divided into two fundamental problems: on the one hand, the value of arguments; on the other, their structure. The second question stems from the analytic tradition of philosophy and leads to a careful and meticulous examination of argumentational techniques.

In the context of continental philosophy, analysis of the kinds of argumentation and of its structure have also been conceived from the standpoint of the tradition of transcendental philosophy, resulting in avenues of inquiry such as that of Apel (1984, p. 656), which might be described as a transcendental reconstruction of the linguistic-pragmatic conditions of possibility and validity implicit in all argumentation[v].

There is an innate contradiction in this application of the linguistic turn to the tradition of transcendental philosophy: viewing the rhetorical tradition and theories of argumentation in the light of the Kantian problem of an ultimate foundation of objective knowledge on the basis of the philosophy of consciousness.

The contradiction arises from the fact that the concept of consciousness has definitively lost the status whereby it guaranteed objective knowledge precisely in this area of problems, because the validity conditions of argumentation refer to fundamental inter-subjective frameworks, whose status as guarantors of the objective validity of any knowledge obtained depends on public argumentational processes. In these processes, neither the structure of arguments nor their value (epistemic, moral, legal, aesthetic, etc.) may be conceived along the metaphysical lines of Kantian transcendental philosophy, as long as rational conviction (once objectively sufficient) and persuasion (once rooted in the particular kind of subject and, therefore, objectively sufficient) are analysed as two interdependent phenomena in line with the rehabilitation of Aristotle and Plato effected in the 1950s by the new rhetoric and the rise of argumentation theory.

Our position may be observed, for example, in the defence mounted by the new rhetoric of the so-called principle of inertia, which postulates that something accepted up until now may not be rejected without a rational reason. To some extent, it may be said that the principle of inertia is a defence of the important place occupied by the topic in argumentational processes, since argumentation cannot begin without assuming something. Gadamer’s defence of the notion of prejudice rests upon the very same reason.

Gadamer emphatically rejected the view that intersubjective agreements based on a quasi-transcendental idea of argumentational logic could give rise to an idea of agreement guaranteed by an unimpeachable normativity that would stamp the structure of argumentation upon the controversial or polemical processes, remarking that there cannot be universal criteria for establishing argumentational validity. Both arguments and interpretations are historically located. The generalisation of universal validity of a rule cannot be guaranteed rationally by the fact that, in a universal audience, everybody could agree with it.

The Gadamerian defence of the concept of universality is, as we saw, confined to the universality of a medium, the linguistic medium. In this we see that what governs is the principle of the speculative dimension of language – a principle that we find expressed in the famous Gadamerian formula that asserts: ‘the being that can be understood is language’.

The universal validity of any rule or norm arising from general assent can only be derived from the nature of the linguistic medium, even if this were to be conceived – hypothetically and, nevertheless, definitively – as a result of the universal validity of the rule’s content.

For this reason, it should be stated that prejudices or the principle of inertia modulate and orient the argumentational processes, leading them towards forms of consensus in which the modality of validity cannot any longer be established in relation to the universality of the semantic content expressed in the proposition, but rather on the basis of criteria regarding the value of arguments. These criteria do not deal with the contingent character of arguments, that is, their interpretative dimension, with which they increase the number of principles of inertia available to an epoch for reflecting on arguments in general – one of the most important tasks being to distinguish between eristic reasoning (based on apparently accepted premises) and reasoning in which there is, at least, a dialectic dimension (based on accepted premises, and with which possible contradictions are explored).

When we examine his philosophical conception of hermeneutics, it becomes clear that the degree of contingency Gadamer attributes to the validity of all argumentation is greater than that estimated by, for example, Apel. I refer to the fact that he does not seem to allow that argumentational premises concerning what is real (divided by Perelman into facts and truths as opposed to argumentational premises that are assumptions) can attain universal validity in a hypothetically universal audience. Gadamer does not allow this because he does not conceive the argumentational validity of the premises of argumentation to be separate from the topoi and the characteristic principles of linguistic ontology which we referred to above.

Therefore, in relation to the problem of the structure and validity of arguments, I maintain here that philosophical hermeneutics implicitly proposes once again a notion of argumentation in which propositions appearing in arguments cannot be dissociated from the structure of the latter because, as laid down in the classical hermeneutical tradition, they belong to the text as a whole or, as expressed by Toulmin’s organicist metaphor[vi], they are greater than the sum of their parts (Toulmin 1958, p. 29).

The ‘whole’ (mentioned a few lines above) is formed linguistically, that is, in a universal medium, but it cannot provide a universal condition of validity thanks to transcendental instances reformulated within a logic-linguistic paradigm, above all if we accept that all propositions can be conceived as actions and cannot be extracted from the pragmatic contexts in which they are uttered and by virtue of which they signify and connote. This is why Gadamer often understands it to be a characteristic of hermeneutic philosophy to give fuel to the dissolution of the modern dichotomy between philosophy and rhetoric or new rhetoric, within which he would situate the developments of argumentation theories.

So the connotations of an expression do not obscure their comprehensibility (as they do not univocally designate their reference), but rather increase it insofar as the nexus to which they refer becomes more comprehensible as a whole. It is the whole that is constructed here with words [arguments, interpretations, etc.], and it is only given in them.

Gadamer has a Platonic standpoint when he states that dialectics is a more suitable medium than rhetoric because it offers the possibility of counter-argument.
The dialectic model of counter-argumentation cannot be compared to rhetoric if we take the latter to be a medium for showing that the orator’s skill may turn his position both towards defence and attack of what has already been stated, that is, when we have a concept of argumentation in which it has no specific function and, therefore, can be used to defend a tendentiously unlimited variety of theoretical viewpoints, or even a no less limited variety of intentions and goals in action.

This is not the case with the argumentational model that prevails in the interpretative processes based on the dialectic method of questioning, in which the dialectic is presented as a medium for pragmatically and speculatively resolving and explaining the thesis before us[vii]. This method is probative rather than demonstrative; nor is it a method comparable to the persuasive processes as such, because it is not strictly aimed at persuasion, and it may only be applied, according to Aristotle, to those philosophical issues whose obviousness one wishes to reveal.

On the basis of these first distinctions between dialectic, rhetoric and topic one may state that philosophical hermeneutics, while it does not analyse the concepts of argumentational validity and structure (although it did address the validity and structure of interpretation in the classical period), provides the model of a linguistic ontology in which theories of argumentation are held.

If we adopt a prescriptivist, descriptivist or instrumentalist standpoint to clarify whether a normative theory of argumentation is possible, that is, if we can conceive, and in what terms, the legitimacy of the rules that govern the action of arguing (in respect of the structure of arguments and the argumentational value of reasoning), there remains a prior question, namely: the question of linguistic ontology after the linguistic turn.

For example, it could be maintained that the semantic content of the concept of argumentational normativity is the product of conventions or, on the contrary, that it is not, sensu stricto, a product of conventions. But if we accept the assumptions of a linguistic ontology, we may still take an adjacent position. Given that the concept of argumentational normativity refers to argumentational value in the most general way, the hypothetical conventions on which the norm or the rules for arguing would have to be based – according to the conventional position – would become resolvable. In spite of that, at a certain point these conventions would not be negotiable, because their argumentational value would be closely linked to the epistemic condition of being an act of showing an argument by means of one or several propositions.
The convention of the rule – even if we hold a conventional conception regarding the foundation of logical laws – would end up acquiring a normative dimension because it forms part of the argumentational activity.
Therefore, by virtue of an exploration that is not so much ‘reproductive’ as ‘constructive’ in order to bring Gadamerian thought up to date, we maintain here that linguistic ontology is the implicit model in the development of argumentation theory for two reasons. Firstly, because language is where the action of arguing is carried out; and secondly, because it is by virtue of language that a complex allocation of the historical logos is achieved. In Gadamer’s thinking, this formula combines the Greek concept of natural rationality and the Hegelian concept of reason in history – ultimately, it is neither the one nor the other, because the general formulation of the historical logos is expressed in principles.

Consequently, as it is a modality of rationality inconceivable outside of the historical time line(s), it does not provide models of normativity compelling enough to elevate itself into even an instant of historical time nor, strictly speaking, into the concept of a Hegelian absolute spirit, but rather perhaps into models whose normativity depends on (the being of) language as a form of mediation between:
(1) the shared consciousness of an epoch,
(2) the development of reasoning characteristic of what Gadamer called the social consciousness (which is why there is a modality of shared virtue rhetoric in every epoch or, at least, a logic, or a civil rhetoric, as well as a psychology and a sociology of reasoning),
(3) experience of the verisimilar,
(4) experience of normative value (logical, ethical and legal) of world interpretations – construing ‘world’ not only in the sense of ‘world view’, but rather as a group of codes, theories, traditions, etc., which constitute a knowing; these interpretations could give rise to, or even in some cases, form or pre-form argumentational values.

The definition of argumentation and interpretation has semantic boundaries that are both subtly and eloquently permeable, taking into account the fact that in the final analysis all forms of knowledge cannot but approach and construct their object or topic by means of argumentational and interpretative processes. This accounts for why the latter may be characterised as the new koine of our time (Navarro 2009).

REFERENCES

Anscombre, J.C., &  Ducrot, O. (1988). L’Argumenation Dans La Langue. Paris: Pierre Mardaga Éditeur.
Apel, K.-O. (1994). Semiótica filosófica. Buenos Aires: Almagesto.
Brown, G. ,& Yule G. (1983). Discourse análisis. Cambridge: Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics.
Corcoran, J. (1989). Argumentation and Logic. Argumentation 3, 17-43.
Eemeren, F. H. van, & Grootendorst, R. (2004). A Systematic Theory of Argumentation. The Pragma-Dialectical Approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gadamer, H.-G. (1976). Hermeneutik I: Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1985 [1960].
Guervós, L. (2000). Escritos sobre retórica. Madrid: Editorial Trotta.
Labov, W. (1975). What is a linguistic fact? Lisse: The Peter de Ridder Press.
Marafioti, R. (1997). Temas de argumentación. Buenos Aires: Ed. Biblos.
Navarro, M. (2009). Interpretar y Argumentar. Madrid/México: CSIC/ Plaza y Valdés.
Perelman, Ch., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1989). Traité De L’Argumentation. La Nouvelle Rhétorique. Bruxelles: Éditions de L’Université de Bruxelles.
Russell, S., & Norvig, P. (2003). Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
Schnädelbach, H. (2000). Tipos de racionalidad. Éndoxa 12, 397-422.
Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance. Comunication and Cognition. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Toulmin, S. (1958). The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tusón Valls, A. (1984). Lingüística. Barcelona: Editorial Barcanova.
Vega, L. (1993). Tà Éndoxa: argumentación y plausibilidad. Éndoxa 1, 5-19.




ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The Enthymeme Between Persuasion And Argumentation

1. Persuasion
Currently, in the field of argumentation, distinct and even conflicting conceptions abound, one of the most widely debated of which is persuasion. For the epistemic tendency (Siegel and Biro 2008), persuasion and argumentation remain quite distinct for, even if it is allowed that persuasion may sometimes be the aim of argumentation, proponents of this point of view nevertheless consider that the validity of an argument must be evaluated on epistemic criteria alone. Basing himself on a different analysis, Marc Angenot arrived at the same conclusion in his latest book (Dialogue de sourds, 2008, p. 93-96): for him, argumentation rarely leads to persuasion, hence the two should be radically separated.

Argumentation has been distinguished from persuasion by pointing to the orator’s purpose: if the specific purpose is to obtain adherence from the addressee by all possible means, usually understood as including non-reasonable ones, then what is taking place is not argumentation but persuasion. The objective of obtaining adherence is also closely related to pathos and ethos, which are emotional elements seen, in this perspective, as being opposed to rational ones. According to this conception, persuasion, which is mainly identified with rhetoric, is a type of discourse whose priority is obtaining the addressee’s adherence: this activity is considered as being opposed to argumentation (unlike Perelman’s conception insofar as he considers adherence as the purpose of argumentation); for proponents of this tendency, which I seek to counter, persuasion is therefore considered as roughly equivalent to manipulation. I will come back to their distinction later since persuasion has been opposed to argumentation because it is frequently confused with manipulation.

Let us now examine in more detail which features of persuasion should always be present for us to be able to speak of the latter. If persuasion is based on rhetorical techniques aiming at producing a desired effect on the audience, it might be worthwhile to start by asking if an effect obtained by just any means should count as persuasion. For example, could we say that anybody has been persuaded when the persuader is playing on fear?

There are at least two types of things we fear: apart from the physical threats, there are all the disagreeable consequences that an orator can put forward in order to obtain the desired result from the addressee. Clearly we could not say that somebody has been persuaded when acting under threat of her life. But what about a warning to the hearer of the probable occurrence of bad consequences? In that case a distinction between a warning and a threat might be useful: if fulfilment of the bad consequences depends on arbitrary will and hence is under the control of the orator, we should speak of threat. But when these negative consequences are not due to the arbitrary will of the orator, we could sensibly say that the hearer has been persuaded by a warning of bad consequences. Furthermore, it would seem that it is acceptable to talk about persuasion, but only if the addressee comes to envisage as probable the realisation of these consequences.

Up to now the main elements of persuasion that have been underlined are: that the bad consequences presented as a means of persuading do not depend on the arbitrary will of the persuader, and that the addressee understands what the probabilities are that bad consequences would occur. But there is another important element that is required in order to obtain persuasion, i.e. a certain space for free will. Indeed, free will is a central element for distinguishing persuasion from manipulation. Some authors (Plantin forthcoming; Breton 2000, p. 66) hold that concealment of the speaker’s aim is the main element of manipulation. Nevertheless, the effect of such concealment is related to the obstruction of free will.

In this brief account of persuasion, manipulation is relevant only when considered as a borderline case of persuasion. In order to look more closely at the distinction between persuasion and manipulation, it might be useful to ask whether we should speak of persuasion or of manipulation when information is conveyed, for the conveying of information is purported to be objective. Emotional elements can, however, be present in objective discourse in which information is simply being conveyed.

For example, suppose that during a parents’ meeting the director of a school informs her audience about the consequences of smoking for lung cancer, adding as evidence a report on the distribution of the probabilities of getting lung cancer showing that the probability increases with the number of years of smoking and the number of cigarettes consumed. Is she engaging in a rational argumentation giving her audience true and reasonable elements? Yes. Could we say that she is trying to persuade the parents so as to induce them to stop smoking? Yes. Could we say that she is threatening her audience? No. If she further adds to this information a different sort of data about the performance of children who have suffered a traumatic experience when their parents were seriously sick during their childhood or adolescence, she is admittedly playing on their emotions so as to induce them to seriously consider the desirability of stopping smoking, and consequently to take the decision to do so. Could the director of the school be accused of manipulating the hearers? No. These two cases show that the degree of emotionality is not the crucial element in distinguishing argumentation from persuasion, or persuasion from manipulation. In both cases the orator is conveying a message containing good reasons for reaching a certain conclusion: firstly, smoking is a hazardous practice and bad for our health and secondly, falling sick may endanger our children’s future. Both could have been interpreted as acting on the subjectivity of the hearer by presenting the probable actualization of undesirable events. But there is no manipulation since the realization of those bad consequences is not under the control of the orator’s will, and the expected effect, the parents stopping smoking, does not represent a hidden benefit sought by the orator as her sole aim. All these features are important when considering the boundaries between persuasion and manipulation.

2. The path to persuasion
Now that I have tried to dissociate persuasion from manipulation, I will attempt to show in this section that, far from being opposed, persuasion and argumentation have much in common. In order to do so, it might be useful to bear in mind the elements required for the achievement of persuasion, which I would call the ‘path to persuasion’. To be persuaded the addressee needs to go through different steps that grosso modo imply a degree of consciousness. Firstly, a cognitive process is required, indeed the addressee must attain a minimum degree of understanding of the message/information the orator is conveying; secondly, she must also grasp what is at stake in order to be able, at a third stage, to assess and accept the claim whose outcome is a change in or reinforcement of current beliefs, opinions, attitudes or values. According to the conception of persuasion I am proposing, argumentation and persuasion share the same steps up to this point. But persuasion requires something else: fourthly, a change in the addressee’s disposition regarding an action or putting an end to a course of action. In other words, acceptance of the orator’s claim is only a necessary condition, for persuasion also requires a change of disposition not attainable by just any means.

According to O’Keefe persuasion is “a successful intentional effort at influencing another’s mental state through communication in a circumstance in which the persuadee has some measure of freedom.” (O’Keefe 2002, p.5). However in my view, influencing another’s mental state is too vague an outcome to consider that persuasion has been achieved. For as we saw in the example of the school director, it would not be sufficiently clear whether persuasion had been attained, even if the information was added with some kind of explanation as to what this information implied and the cognitive process was thereby brought about; in this case, the parents understand, consider and even fear the consequences, hence there is an influence on their mental state, but it is a changed disposition to act (or abstain) that, in my view, characterizes persuasive discourse. In other words, persuasion would be obtained only if the parents were in consequence disposed to stop smoking.

3. The Enthymeme
Let us now turn to the enthymeme and look at the role it plays for our understanding of the link between argumentation and persuasion. We shall briefly recall some earlier conceptions of the enthymeme which might be of interest in identifying those characteristics that were already present before Aristotle’s Rhetoric and are relevant to capturing the meaning and the role it plays in the present discussion.

In his “The Old Rhetoric” [L’Ancienne Rhétorique], Barthes introduces the enthymeme as one kind of argumenta, which, as opposed to inductive exempla, are modes of deduction. He says that originally the term argumenta, refers to the subject or argument of a play, seen as an articulated set of actions (Barthes 1970, p. 201). This is an interesting characteristic of great relevance to our concerns; for, as with the argument of a play, an argument is also articulated, and could not be conceived of as a simple set of ideas, since what makes of a set of ideas an argument is their articulation; it is only because of the type of relation between them that they constitute an argument of a particular kind.

Among argumenta, the enthymeme has a central place in rhetoric, as it is the proof (pistis) par excellence. But the term “enthymeme” belonged to the rhetoricians’ vocabulary long before Aristotle wrote his Rhetoric. Aristotle inherited from other rhetoricians, particularly Isocrates and Anaximenes, different but not contradictory concepts of the enthymeme that, as J. Walker suggests, must have contributed to inform that contained in his Rhetoric (Walker 1994, p.53). Isocrates, for example, emphasizes the search for arguments that are appropriate for the context (kairos), i.e. what is opportune for the argumentative situation, and also underlines the need to be aware of the importance of good style. For his part, Anaximenes in the Rhetoric to Alexander[i] underlines the adversarial character of enthymematic reasoning by recommending that enthymemes are to be invented through the analysis of the opponent’s discourse and emphasises the pertinence of brevity. The conception of the enthymeme presented in Aristotle’s Rhetoric comprises all these elements, as do today’s conceptions.

In the Aristotelian realm, rhetoric is the method of finding the means of persuasion; the enthymeme and the example are, as mentioned above, the two pisteis or proofs of the art through discourse.

Let me list the main features of enthymemes[ii]:
– they are deductive syllogisms, a form of reasoning in specific contexts;
– they are syllogisms founded not on true but on probable premises;
– their purpose is to state likelihood (eikos) and not necessary conclusions or outcomes;
– they admit of exceptions, counterexamples, counterarguments: roughly speaking, opposition; hence they are not final demonstrations;
– they start from endoxa or beliefs, attitudes and opinions generally accepted by the audience in order to reach, by inferences or deductions, a conclusion that follows on from the former;
– they are brief;
– they may lack a premise or conclusion.

Now the virtues of enthymematic reasoning are economy, efficiency, efficacy, its  pragmatic character; this is so because:
– being short it can easily be followed by the audience; for this reason Aristotle recommends not starting the chain of arguments from a very distant point;
– starting from what is known and already taken for granted is important, because the addressee will in consequence be well-disposed towards what is said;
– the omission of a premise is also justified by reasons of economy, for if something  is well known, says Aristotle, it is unnecessary to repeat it;
– the omission of the conclusion has advantages in terms of economy, but might also  be beneficial to efficiency because if the audience comes to the conclusion by itself, its acceptance is more easily acquired;
– allowing members of the audience to come to a conclusion by themselves might be more respectful toward them.

I will come back later to the question of how these characteristics and virtues contribute to the link between argumentation and persuasion. Before that, it will be helpful to distinguish the two main fields of rational reasoning: demonstration and argumentation, for my aim is limited to showing the link between argumentation and persuasion. Therefore, I will very briefly recall the difference between demonstrative and argumentative enterprises.

4. The realm of rational reasoning: demonstration and argumentation
In the realm of rational reasoning, pride of place is given to demonstration as a path to a conclusion, proceeding step by step from a series of true premises using rules of inference, and thus forming a continuous chain of reasoning that should inevitably arrive at a conclusion. At the end of a demonstration we are obliged to accept the conclusion unless we can show the existence of a flaw. In the context of a formal logic demonstration, for example, it would not be acceptable to reject a step of the reasoning according to a certain rule, just because we have a hunch that it is not correct; we proceed by assuming that all the axioms and rules of the system are accepted and if we cannot prove an error it would be irrational to reject the conclusion (Plantin 1990, p. 160). Things are different, however, when we are in an argumentative context.

Conversely, argumentation is also a rational enterprise but its premises are not necessarily true: they are mainly probable and so is the conclusion. This is why argumentation is not about falsehood or truth, but about more or less fully convincing the addressee; it could be said that the core of argumentation is opposition between claims, and its aim is to advance reasons in favour of or against a claim, and not necessarily the resolution of the opposing thesis.

Now, to start focusing on the convergence of argumentation and rhetoric and especially to underline that the context, and therefore, also the audience are important for both the former, I would like to address an issue that might shed some light in our concerns.
Should we describe as argumentation a discourse that gives reasons for a conclusion which everybody in the audience agrees on?
If the core of argumentation is opposition between claims, it would seem out of place to ask this question. Nevertheless, in my view, it will be useful to do so, for it sheds light on an important issue concerning the role of enthymemes. So “yes”, I would describe a discourse that gives reasons for a conclusion as argumentation in at least two cases when everybody agrees: a) if we want to reinforce the degree of conviction, and b) if we want to be ready to face a further confrontation. Reflection on these two cases brings us to a crucial consideration: argumentation is always context-sensitive; the strict dialogical character of argumentation, requiring the exchange of two actually opposing theses, is a working hypothesis that, when qualified, may allow that an arguer is faced with other real or virtually present positions in a particular society (Bakhtin 1977, p. 105). It is, therefore, the context in a broad sense that makes it reasonable to label as argumentation a discourse that puts forward reasons leading to a conclusion which everybody in the audience agrees with, hence a discourse which, while not directly oppositional, nevertheless takes into account other opposing positions that are part of the social background. All these features of argumentative discourse will turn out to be central for the purpose of understanding the link between argumentation and persuasion.

5. The Hinging Role of Enthymemes
How, then, do enthymemes perform their hinging role between argumentation and persuasion? One of the most salient features of the enthymeme is that it is an incomplete syllogism. As we recalled earlier, it can lack either a premise or a conclusion. Let us analyze both possibilities in order to see, firstly, given the need to articulate the elements of an argument, whether these omissions compromise the idea of considering the enthymeme as an argument, and secondly, how they at the same time play a persuasive role.

Concerning the absence of a premise, Aristotle rightly says that it is not necessary to repeat what everybody knows. This could be interpreted solely as a criterion of economy, since we can save time and effort by omitting what it is not necessary to say. But it also has another related connection with the role enthymemes play in persuasion, namely the importance of taking the audience into account.

To be sure, when the orator fails to make explicit a premise in an enthymeme, he is not simply leaving a blank, since he does so basing himself on the audience’s knowledge, on its members’ opinions, attitudes, beliefs, values, etc., i.e. the endoxa. It is only because the omission is grounded on this knowledge, on the set of, in Sperber’s terms, public representations (Sperber 1996, p. 108), that it makes sense to omit the premise; it is not, therefore, a real omission. Thus the premise is, so to say, present. This pragmatic feature of enthymematic reasoning, namely the importance given to the audience, has at least three significant outcomes that link argumentation to persuasion. Firstly, of course, there is one of an utilitarian nature, namely efficiency, i.e. the fact of easily producing an effect on the audience; secondly, efficacy is also certainly a consequence, since the desired objective is obtained: persuasion. The third outcome of the absence of a premise in enthymematic reasoning is also linked to the role that endoxa plays. As I have already suggested, the elements of the latter are not only a set of ideas, they are interrelated and thus form different systems (Nettel 2009, p. 4) that the orator must take into account as a necessary condition for argumentation to take place, for it is a principle of reasonableness that the arguments advanced should be relevant to the hearer. This is so because argumentation in general needs a space of understanding: if the endoxa are not considered, it would be like talking to the wind. This is why the omission of a premise, instead of being a strategy of audience manipulation, is quite the contrary: a way of arguing in a perfectly acceptable manner. Seen in this light, the omission of a premise is not a hiatus, a lack of articulation among the ideas that form the enthymematic argument. For, I repeat, if the premise is not stated, it is nevertheless in a way present as part of the reservoir of a community’s public representations. The central role given by Aristotle to the importance of having the endoxa as a starting point when the goal is persuasion is confirmed by recent experiments that show that: “we seek to confirm it if we agree with it in the first place, and to disconfirm it if we don’t. This can hardly be sanctioned by a normative theory and is all the more disquieting in that it seems to be extremely widespread: ‘smart’ people do it (Stanovich and West 2007); open-minded people do it (Stanovich and West 2007); and physicians, judges and scientists do it (see Fugelsang and Dunbar 2005; Nickerson 1998; and references within)” (Mercier and Sperber forthcoming, p. 163). Is this a bias as some cognitivists suggest? Not to my way of thinking. It is simply a general tendency to coherence that might be inscribed in a genetically defined module!

What then of the omission of a conclusion? Given that the latter is the outcome of the articulation of the premises, the addressee might still reach by herself the orator’s anticipated conclusion, even if it is omitted. On the one hand this absence could certainly have a strategic purpose. But could this omission, then, be seen as a way of deceiving the addressee? Not necessarily. Rather it could be seen as the sign of a desire to avoid the responsibility of having to state a conclusion and, by the same token, of a desire to transfer this responsibility to the addressee. On the other hand, the lack of a conclusion could also be seen as a sign of respect for the audience’s autonomy, signalling a democratic attitude. Nevertheless, in both scenarios efficiency and efficacy are present, for it is easier to promote conviction on the part of the addressee if the latter reaches the conclusion by herself, and at the same time it is certainly efficacious in obtaining persuasion because working out a conclusion by our own means gives us the feeling that it is ours instead of the orator’s.

The conception of rhetoric as a discourse whose sole concern is to have an effect on the hearer is the fruit of a decontextualized interpretation of Aristotle’s definition, whereas he refers to rhetoric as the method of finding every possible means to persuade the hearer. However, “every possible means” must not be interpreted as signifying just any means, for the aim of persuading by the techné rhetoriké requires, as dialectic, a demonstration or pistis through the articulation of premises and the opposition of theses. In his Topics, Aristotle says that the rhetorical invention of enthymematic arguments starts by analyzing the pairs of oppositions that are opportune for the question at issue, given the situation and the occasion (kairos). As we recalled above, this is a central trait of dialectical argumentation, and the fact that a rhetorical discourse is often not an actual exchange between two opposite standpoints within a dialogue is not an obstacle; for even if the orator is the only person producing discourse, it is nevertheless opposing positions that are being discussed.

Argumentation is about finding convincing reasons for a claim and evaluating them (Mercier 2009, p. 9). Besides the steps that it shares with argumentation, persuasion also requires the achievement of a desired change of disposition on the part of the addressee; this change must nevertheless be based on the acceptance of a claim founded on the reasons advanced. Persuasion initially requires the conscious evaluation of these reasons and then acceptance of the claim that follows, i.e. what Mercier and Sperber call a “reflective inference” (Mercier and Sperber forthcoming); thus acceptance of the claim is only a necessary condition for the realization of persuasion. The enthymeme is an argument that, by virtue of its specific features, given a reasoned acceptance of a claim, also facilitates a change in the addressee’s disposition to act. This is why a mere mental influence on the addressee through subliminal information, for example, would not be enough for it to be considered that persuasion has been achieved: this would only be manipulation.

Argumentation and persuasion are intrinsically related because one cannot be persuaded of something that one does not consider fair, just, right, correct, true or plausible. In the above, I have tried to show not only that the enthymeme is a device that hinges between the reasonableness of argumentative reasoning and the persuasiveness of rhetorical reasoning, but also that it is called upon to play a technical, ethical, epistemological and ideological role in the theory and practice of human social discourse.

NOTES
[i] Apparently there is no agreement as to whether it was written before or after Aristotle’s Rhetoric.
[ii] Most of the features contained in the following list are contested in Burnyeat 1994 and 1996. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss in detail Burnyeat’s position. If Aristotle’s Rhetoric is a response to Plato’s criticism of rhetoric, as has been considered (see Furley and Nehamas 1994, p. xii), then contrary to Burnyeat’s opinion it is likely that the terms “syllogism,” “enthymeme,” etc. in Aristotle’s Rhetoric were used in their technical meaning, i. e. as was the case in his previous works and not, as Burnyeat claims, in the sense they had in common language.
For the discussion of Aristotle’s conception of enthymeme as syllogism in its technical meaning, I lean on Grimaldi 1972, p. 87-91. See also Racionero’s notes in his Spanish translation of Rhetoric, about passages where Aristotle defines the enthymeme as syllogism or rhetorical syllogism: see Aristotle 1994, n. 16 p. 167-168 on Rhetoric 1355a 9; n. 54 p. 183-184 on  Rhetoric 1357a 17; and n. 280 p. 417 on Rhetoric 1395b 24-26. See also Rubinelli 2003, p. 241, who maintains the syllogistic nature of enthymeme pace Burnyeat.

REFERENCES
Angenot, M. (2008). Dialogue de sourds: Traité de rhétorique antilogique. Paris: Fayard.
Aristotle (1994). Retórica  Q. Racionero (Ed.). Madrid: Gredos.
Bakhtin, M. (1977). Le Marxisme et la philosophie du langage. Paris: Minuit.
Barthes, R. (1970 ). L’ancienne rhétorique: Aide-mémoire. Communications 16, 172-229.
Breton, Ph. (2000). La parole manipulée. Paris: La Découverte.
Burnyeat, M. F. (1994). Enthymeme: Aristotle’s on the Logic of Persuasion. In Furley D. J. and Nehamas A. (Eds.), Aristotle’s Rhetoric (pp. 3-55), Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Burnyeat, M.F. (1996). Enthymeme. Aristotle on the Rationality of Rhetoric. In A. Oksenberg Rorty (Ed.), Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric (pp. 88-115). Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Furley D. J. and Nehamas A. (Eds.) (1994), Aristotle’s Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Grimaldi W. M. H. (1972). Studies in the Philosophy of Aristotle´s Rhetoric. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Mercier, H. (2009). La Théorie argumentative du raisonnement. PhD dissertation. Paris: EHESS.
Mercier, H. and Sperber, D. (forthcoming) Intuitive and Reflective Inferences. In Evans J. S. B. T. & Frankish K. (Eds.), Two Minds (pp. 149-170, Ch. 7). New York: Oxford University Press.
Nettel, A. L. (2009). Arguing for Principles in Different Legal Cultures. In J. Ritola (Ed.), Argument Cultures: Proceedings of OSSA 09, CD-ROM (pp. 1-9), Windsor, ON: OSSA.
O’Keefe, D. J.  (2002). Persuasion: Theory and Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Plantin, Ch. (1990). Essais sur l’argumentation: Introduction à l’étude linguistique de la parole argumentative. Paris: Éditions Kimé.
Plantin, Ch. (forthcoming). Dictionnaire critique de l’argumentation.
Siegel, H. and Biro, J. (2008). Rationality, Reasonableness, and Critical Rationalism: Problems with the Pragma-dialectical View. Argumentation 22, 191-203.
Rubinelli S. (2003). Topoi e Idia nella Retorica di Aristotele. Phronesis, XLVIII, 238-247.
Sperber, D. (1996).  La contagion des idées. Paris: Editions Odile Jacob.
Walker, J. (1994) The Body of Persuasion: A Theory of Enthymeme. College English, 56-1, 46-65.
Wolff, F. (1995). Trois techniques de vérité dans la Grèce Classique. Hermès 15, 41-71.




ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Employing The Toulmin’s Model In Rhetorical Education

1. Introduction
Rhetoric is the art of audience directed public speaking (Škarić 2003). There have been numerous definitions of rhetoric throughout history, but in either case all involve speaking in front of the audience. These two key concepts determine all other aspects of rhetorical theory, pedagogy and finally practice. This paper [i] explores the connection between rhetorical theory, developed both by ancient Greek scholars and modern authors, and rhetorical pedagogy. The paper also validates the connection of theory and pedagogy on examples from rhetorical practice. This is also an attempt to combine Aristotle’s notion of enthymeme and Toulmin’s argumentation model by emphasizing their similarities while proposing Toulmin’s model as a teaching and learning device, as well as an evaluation instrument for public speaking instructors. The analyzed speech examples belong to two groups; the first group includes speeches delivered at final presentation at School of Rhetoric in Croatia and the second those delivered in the Croatian Parliament.

In Classical Greece, the general belief was that rhetoric was the skill requiring special education and training. It was the integral part of classical education and remained part of the European educational heritage. Five Rhetorical Canons (Inventio, Dispositio, Elocutio, Memoria and Actio) provided guidelines both for rhetorical pedagogy and practice. Modern authors put emphasis on rhetorical practice by saying that the abilities of the good rhetorician cannot be developed merely by being talked about; they must be actively undertaken in practice (Jost and Olmsted 2004, p. xv). This paper attempts to follow that principle in teaching practice at The School of Rhetoric ‘Ivo Škarić’[ii] by including not only lectures, but also active participation in terms of classical mentoring during the process of creating a persuasive speech.

The aim of persuasive speech is to change attitudes, beliefs and opinions of the audience. It is believed that this is the most challenging type of public speaking since the speaker has to support and deliver his/her speech so to provoke an adequate reaction – acceptance by the audience. Persuasive speech reaches its goal through various means – the claim has to be supported by evidence, the speech needs to have a proper outline and polished delivery, and the speaker needs to believe that the topic of the speech will be accepted.

It was Aristotle who defined rhetoric within persuasive framework by saying that the function of rhetoric is to see the available means of persuasion in each case (On Rhetoric, 1.1, 1355b). It was again Aristotle who listed the means of persuasion by saying:  All people are persuaded either because as judges they  themselves are affected in some way or because they suppose the speakers have certain qualities or because something has been logically demonstrated (On Rhetoric, 3.1, 1403b).

The trichotomy of pathos, ethos and logos determined in classical Greece is still employed today. It is not uncommon to come across contemporary literature on public speaking and persuasion that explores the appeal to emotion, and even finding authors claiming that when persuasion is the end, passion also must be engaged (Lucas 2001). Ethics is an inevitable element in public (rhetorical) speaking. Again, Aristotle emphasized this point by saying: for it is not the case, as some of the handbook writers propose in their treatment of the art, that fair-mindedness [epieikeia] on the part of the speaker makes no contribution to persuasiveness;rather, character is almost, so to speak, the most authoritative form of persuasion (On Rhetoric, 1.2, 1356a).

One should not underestimate the importance of the relation between the two appeals. It is not unethical, as one may think, to use supporting material that appeals to emotions or emotionally tinted language in persuasive speech, especially when topics of persuasive speeches tend to address rather emotional issues. However, since unethical use of emotion in public speaking tends to arise quite often, emotions and ethics have started to be perceived as opposites. When searching for a speech enriched by pathos, the speech delivered by Hitler should not be the first example, but rather the ones delivered by Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King or Mother Theresa.

The third appeal is the appeal to logic, which means giving evidence and constructing argument through the principal processes of reasoning in order to support the claims of persuasive speeches. Types of evidence, their organization and relations can generally be called the argumentation of persuasive speeches. The term argumentation is a term often used in various contexts sharing certain common points, but not always belonging to the same category. This paper considers argumentation a process in which, to a particular audience, the proposition rationally becomes very probable truth. Arguments are elements of argumentation that support the claim and are milestones in the argumentation process. Rhetoric employs the process of reasoning that, either explicitly or implicitly, connects non-technical arguments with the proposition in order to confirm and persuade the matters perceived by the audience as disputable. This is why rhetorical argumentation is a special branch of argumentation. The importance of the argument layout for both educational and evaluation purposes will be further discussed later in this paper.

2. Aristotle’s Persuasive Enthymeme
Enthymeme as a form naturally belongs to rhetoric just as syllogism belongs to logic or to be more precise to dialectics. Once again Aristotle’s definitions and clarifications will be employed in order to determine the field of rhetorical argumentation so to explore contemporary argumentation schemes in more detail.

In his attempt to define the scope and field of rhetoric, Aristotle stated his opinion about preceding works: these writers say nothing about enthymemes, which is the “body” of persuasion (On Rhetoric, 1.1, 1354a) pointing out the importance of enthymeme for rhetorical persuasion or, in the terms explored in this paper, rhetorical argumentation. He draws a line between rhetoric and dialectics by claiming they are counterparts, implicitly pointing out the diferentia specifica of the two philosophical disciplines: [it is clear] that it is a function of one and the same art to see both the persuasive and the apparently persuasive, just as [it is the function] in dialectic [to recognize] both a syllogism and an apparent syllogism (On Rhetoric, 1.1, 1355b). He further continues to explicate the difference between syllogism utilized in dialectics as opposed to rhetorical enthymeme, but first makes an important remark about reasoning in general describing it as a cognitive ability of every human being. Cognitive processes we call reasoning are a universal human ability employed regardless of the degree of certainty. For it belongs to the same capacity both to see the true and what resembles the true, and at the same time humans have a natural disposition for the true and to a large extent hit on the truth; thus an ability to aim at commonly held opinions [endoxa] is a characteristic of one who also has a similar ability in regard to the truth (On Rhetoric, 1.1, 1355a).

It is not important whether the premises are true or probably true, the conclusions are made in a similar way. That is why rhetoric ‘needs’ dialectics to learn, adapt or even imitate the processes today usually ascribed to logic. Still, different start positions, as noted in Aristotle, should not be ignored: to show on the basis of many similar instances that something is so is in dialectic induction, in rhetoric paradigm; but to show that if some premises are true, something else [the conclusion] beyond them results from these because they are true, either universally or for the most part, in dialectic is called syllogism and in rhetoric enthymeme (On Rhetoric, 1.2, 1356b).

He further defines the enthymeme, calling it a rhetorical syllogism, and once again emphasizing its use as means of persuasion. And all [speakers] produce logical persuasion by means of paradigms or enthymemes and by nothing other than these. (On Rhetoric, 1.2, 1356b)

So, when focusing on enthymeme as a rhetorician’s instrument in persuasion, it should be noted that it cannot have the same validating strength of the syllogism. However, enthymeme is much more effective for the speech delivery (Actio) when addressing a crowd (due to brevity) (Olmsted 2006). Other advantages of enthymeme, since there are no certainties, is its ability to offer insight into both sides of a dispute and develop critical thinking; another important dimension of education.

3. Toulmin’s Model in Rhetorical Pedagogy
When writing The Uses of Argument (1958), Toulmin himself did not have aspirations to expound a theory of rhetoric or argumentation, nor to establish the analytical model that came to be called the Toulmin model (Toulmin 2003, p. vii). Nevertheless, the model’s impact on argumentation theory is immense. The model itself inspired numerous scholars and provoked various debates between the followers of both formal and informal logic.

However, it should be pointed out that the approach to Toulmin’s model rarely left scholarly debates and tackled the lively examples of public speeches (Hitchcock & Verheij 2006). It has often been forgotten that Toulmin’s model offers comprehensive layout for rhetorical argumentation and can be used as a powerful teaching device.

In rhetorical pedagogy, there are three main advantages of Toulmin’s model. The visual character of the model, sometimes called a scheme due to the visual characteristics, is the first advantage noted during the learning process. Since humans are visually oriented, it is clear that such information input facilitates learning, and, what is more, visualization is one of the most frequent strategies for effective listening (Škarić 2003). The five rhetorical canons state that the speaker arranges the material after determining the topic and gathering the material (Inventio). The model facilitates this stage by offering a simple and clear-cut layout used to determine the importance of data (ground) and backings in order to establish modal qualification.

The second advantage is applicable to rhetorical education in particular, while the first one can be used more generally. It is necessary to discern uncontested and contested elements in argumentation or, in other words, the true and the probably true. The true elements, which do not require additional support, are grounds and backings, while the probably true elements are warrant, rebuttal and obviously the claim. The model makes clear distinction of the elements and thus becomes a powerful learning device.

Figure 1 – Toulmin’s model with true and probably true elements

Figure (1) Toulmin’s model with true and probably true elements

Finally, the third advantage of Toulmin’s model is easier recognition of argumentative procedures and fallacies in the argumentation process. This paper supports the assumption that both speaker and listener can benefit from the model. The model has a strong effect on both organization and clarity of the speech. It can help the audience to employ critical and logical thinking, and, if the audience is in fact persuaded, this persuasion will definitely have an important impact.

The relation between the model and the enthymeme is evident if perceived in the upper part of the model as an inference. A warrant can be expressed as a major premise of rhetorical syllogism (enthymeme), meaning that the warrant states a rule, a generalization or can be left implicit – as is the case when enthymeme’s data is the minor premise, an individual case, while the claim is a conclusion in the persuasive enthymeme achieving the speaker’s goal.

When ‘dissected’, the model, due to these enthymemic features, seems to ‘prefer’ deductive reasoning. Surely, it should not be concluded that other types of reasoning are forbidden, but the main inference, connecting the upper part of the model and leading to the claim (proposition), is rhetorical deduction. If rhetorical processes mimic the logical ones then rhetorical deduction must be acknowledged as the counterpart of logical deduction (valid inference from premises). Rhetorical deduction represented by enthymeme follows the validity of inference, but the major premise in enthymeme is certainly probable and not the absolute truth. Therefore, the syllogism consists of a true major premise and a true minor premise leading to a true conclusion. On the other hand, enthymeme includes a (very) probable major premise and a true minor premise which finally give a (very) probable conclusion.

4. Analysis of persuasive speeches within Toulmin’s model
Speech delivery is in fact the interplay of several different factors; speaker’s intention, the delivered text and the content that remains unspoken but implied between the speaker and the audience. In that way, public speeches may be perceived as unique verbal discourses. In the moment of delivery, the speaker does not only address the audience, but this particular audience determines the argumentation in the speech, and, therefore, the speaker adapts. However, it is the speaker’s responsibility, and the integral part of public speaker’s ethos, to examine all the elements of the argumentation during the dispositio phase.

When concentrating on argumentation and logic of a certain speech, the listener, either layman or professional is always involved in the process of translating the delivered speech (Actio) to the text defined during speech preparation (Elocutio). Moving from elocutio and returning to dispositio, apart from recognizing elements of argumentation, the listener must add everything that was implied in the delivery. Toulmin’s model aids this reconstruction due to the above mentioned advantages.

Translation of the delivered text back to the ‘Toulmin’s boxes’ was the method used in the analysis of speeches. The illustrations show argument’s layout in particular speeches and the reconstructed elements are brought in italics.

4.1. Speeches given at the Final Presentation at the School of Rhetoric
In the first example, the transcript is offered to illustrate the applied methodology. In the figures that illustrate argumentation layout, the sentences in italics represent the implied elements which were reconstructed for the analysis.[iii]

Example (1) Speech transcript 1
The Republic of Croatia should stop financing religious institutions. There are two aspects of this problem: political and economic. According to the Constitution, Croatia is a secular state. Article 41 states that all religious institutions and the state are separate. Therefore, issuing such large amounts of budget money is politically inexplicable. Some of you will perhaps remember the Latin proverb: Vox populi, vox Dei. Meaning: the voice of the people is God’s voice. According to the 2001 census 93% of the population is religious, 88% are Catholic. But it’s commonly known that true believers live their faith.

Independent Institute “Ivo Pilar” conducted a survey and it showed that only 12% of Croats attend religious ceremonies.
The speaker states a policy claim that the practice of giving 413 million HRK per year to all religious institutions in Croatia, money allocation depending on the number of believers/practitioners, should be changed. The ground for this claim is the highest legal act – the Constitution; the remaining logical predicate from the claim (financing) and from the ground (secular state) are connected in the warrant which is contested, but also bears a high degree of probability. There is no legal act that would forbid secular states to finance religious institutions, but it is implied as a topos, at least in the opinion of speakers and audience with liberal political views. It is difficult to suggest new piece of evidence to support this warrant other than the examples from other countries. In that way, the mentioned examples become rhetorical evidence (if the example is representative for given audience) which can raise the degree of certainty of the contested claim.

Figure 2 – The upper part of Toulmin’s model – speech example (1)

The topoi warrant which does not hold legal strength but is based on attitudes cannot be refuted with legal evidence. Namely, to break the Constitution would imply the state and religious institutions being a unity – but financing as such is not forbidden. Therefore, an exception is required to refute this general attitude. It is the speaker’s duty to do so since the audience must be informed about the opposing attitudes (Audiatur et altera pars!), and therefore the speaker anticipates possible rebuttal and refutes the rebuttal with another backing.

The rebuttal the speaker offers is in fact the opinion of the other side introduced by Latin proverb Vox populi, vox Dei, i.e. the population’s religious affiliation represents certain political strength in the state. If the population has strong religious affiliation the secularity of that state is definitely limited. In a country where the majority of citizens declare themselves to be atheists, it is not expected of the state to support religious institutions, but, nevertheless, a religious state cannot employ a wide application of the secularity principle.

Figure 3 – Toulmin’s model – speech example (1)

Although the warrant itself is not the absolute truth, it seems that the rebuttal has its weaknesses. Therefore, the speaker, apparently not representing that side, attempts to strengthen the rebuttal with a backing – statistical data – by saying that, according to the Census, Croatian people undoubtedly determined their religious affiliation, especially regarding the Roman Catholic Church.

This backing could also be refuted since it does not support the generalization of the rebuttal but focuses on Croatia, could be rhetorically unnecessary and with a possible  devastating outcome when introducing examples from other countries as the topics is about Croatia in particular. Finally, even if the rebuttal attempts to generalize, Croatia also needs to be included in the rebuttal when attacking the generalization expressed by the warrant. Once again we can see the strength of a rhetorical example.

Figure 4 – Complete Toulmin’s model – speech example (1)

Clearly the elements of Toulmin’s model are easily noted in this speech, meaning that the elocutio (textualisation) did not attempt to considerably mask dispositio. It can be concluded that this speech has a higher degree of rational, or better yet formal, argumentation and does not include a high level of persuasion. Considering the fact that persuasion often hides argumentation patterns by masking them into illustrative elements during elocutio, this can possibly be employed as an instrument for determining the degree of persuasion in the analysis of public speeches.

The model is only ‘stopped’ when expressing the rebuttal and determining modal qualification, but in the delivered speech the rebuttal must not remain ‘hanging’, it has to be refuted and the argumentation needs to be steered back to its initial course, making the claim rationally acceptable to the audience.

The basic reasoning process used in this example is rhetorical deduction, since the speaker used topos to connect the claim and the ground.

Example (2)
The second example shows that persuasive speeches often contain claims of policy since they should encourage an audience to act. Action can be encouraged by rational appeals or more effectively by emotional ones. A good speaker should profile his/her audience and decide on the type of argumentation most suitable for the given audience. One feature of audience profile is the level of emotionality, or whether a certain audience will be more or less susceptible to emotional corroborations. A very informative topic can quite often encourage an audience to act. Revealing less known facts about certain social situations can cause shock and disbelief, and a skilful speaker knows how to develop argumentation further after gaining the trust of an audience. However, the strongest argument should not be brought forward at the beginning. For the given audience, the strongest argument is the one carrying the greatest emotional weight. The speaker decides to commence with rational argumentation in which the process of the emotional action begins:

Figure 5 – Toulmin’s model – speech example (2)

It cannot be disputed that doping is not fair or that it creates differences between athletes, and, after we learn about the influence of progesterone hormone on athletes in their first trimester, we are convinced that the pregnant athletes are doped.

The speaker does not see the need to support the warrant, providing such support would be redundant in this case. Again, there is the warrant of generalization at work: doping should not be present at sports events/athletes have to have equal conditions. So, never present and all have to have.

As shown in the example, the persuasion completely took over the process of explaining the claim since the speaker has no need to state the counter-argument. It can be claimed that the general belief is that all athletes competing in any sport should and are considered equal. However, rational rhetorical argumentation should be able to find that kind of objection, even though the persuasive speech loses its strength if the objections are stated explicitly. When considering the objections, they can be found in existing differences among athletes (e.g. race, weight etc.), but to state that objection in the elocutio phase is rhetorically inefficient. The stated differences are considered inevitable and are minimized in certain sports where they might be crucial for the results (e.g. making ranks or categories).

After the speaker successfully backed her claim from a sporting point of view, she moves on to the one determined as emotional as its very name: child’s point of view.  The speaker offers examples of various athletes who were winning and breaking records while being pregnant and only to have abortions after a competition. The audience is left with an unspoken fact: the pregnancies were planned for one reason only – to achieve greater score. This is when the speaker includes emotional support: she takes over the topos of an unborn child’s right to live. The audience is not allowed to question the truth of that topos, although it is rationally questionable. This is when the counter-argument is stated: why should the athletes who are pregnant but also want to keep their child be banned from competing? Should they be victims of the said pregnancy manipulations? Emotional argumentation is opposed by the rational one, and the speaker is aware that the argument should be refuted rationally. She decides to use the tactics of fine differentiation: physical activity that is beneficial for pregnant women is not related to physical strain which athletes have to undergo even if they want average results. So, physical strain that logically cannot be equal to physical activity acts as a powerful junction of these two argumentation flows. The speaker’s audience is now convinced, both rationally and emotionally, that pregnant athletes should not be allowed to compete.

4.2. Speeches delivered in the Croatian Parliament

The following examples (3), (4), (5), (6) were extracted from the debate about the Bill on Assisted Reproductive Technology (July, 2009). The bill proposer is the Health Minister, the first bill opposer is Chairperson of the Gender Equality Committee and the second bill opposer  is the representative of the Social Democratic Party’s Deputy Club (the largest oposition party).[iv]

Figure 6 – Toulmin’s model – speech example (3) (Bill proposer – Minister of Health)

Bill proposer consciously creates a large fallacy – he overlooks alternatives. It would be rather useful to follow classical rhetorical principle of stating the counter-argument (rebuttal) since the proper refutation intensifies the proposer’s claim.

Health Minister attempts to employ analogically-deductive reasoning within the specific argumentation line. General claim in the parliamentary debate is that the bill should be accepted. First he says that the Law on Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) protects children’s rights. This claim is explicitly a claim of fact and implicitly a claim of value. The law will protect children’s rights by introducing a new regulation that a child can, after turning 18, require information about the donor’s identity.

When drawing analogy with current legal regulation stating the right of adopted children to reveal the identity of their biological parents when they become of full age, he tries to establish a warrant that would appear as a general rule; every child has a right to find information about their biological parents.

The Minister does not state the rebuttal since it is not in his best interest to refute his own claim (why would he give arguments to the Opposition?), but he forgets that parliamentary debate is, from a rhetorical perspective, just another debate in which the counter-argument should be anticipated.

For example, the Minister could have offered an exception to his rule (warrant) by stating that indeed every child has a right to access information about his/her biological parents unless that right will decrease the number of potential donors. This is a strong rebuttal and it is not easy to give such strong argument to the Opposition, especially when you are not certain about the possible refutation.

What he seemed to forget was the fact that reasoning by analogy proven to be quite useful in this kind of argumentation; to find examples of countries with similar regulations about revealing donor’s identity in which the number of potential donors did not decrease. The claim could even be stronger if he stated that Croatian donor practice should also be more advanced and that donors should be aware of both their rights and duties. Surely, the existing Family Law and other laws and regulations implicitly protect the donor so that reproductive donation cannot cause any financial problems. What remains open is the matter of anonymity, but here we witnessed a dispute about values, evidently the field of rhetoric.

Figure 7 – Toulmin’s model – speech example (4) (Bill opposer 1 – Chairperson of the Gender Equality Committee)

The Opposition can play the same game as the Minister, as demonstrated by the president of the Gender Equality Committee (4). If the Minister uses the analogy to connect the rights of adopted children and the rights of children conceived by ART, then the Opposition can use the analogy to point out that the bill discriminates unmarried couples.

The ground for this argumentation was the fact that legislation does overlook the possibility of ART treatments for unmarried couples and the speaker decides to support this analogy rationally, on the existing legal regulations, or specifically by the Anti-Discrimination Act. This support significantly strengthened the warrant, reflecting the speaker’s general attitude that Croatian citizens should not be discriminated according to their marital status.

In this case the Minister did not use a counter-argument for his warrant on universal rights of children to know who their parents are, but the opposing representative also did not state the possible rebuttal, since she considered her warrant an unquestionable truth. However, the Minister replies immediately by pulling an ace out of his sleeve – unmarried and married couples are not absolutely equal in front of the law. He stated the opinion of the Chair for Family Law at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb, which interprets the Family Law in the following manner: married and unmarried couples are equal in terms of rights and property, but not in terms of parenting. Namely, only a child born within a legal marriage automatically has a legal father, i.e. the mother’s husband. However, what remains controversial and what can be debated even further is the question of offering partial rights to couples and not leaving them the possibility to use ART treatment. It may be implicitly concluded that lex specialis (ART Law) amends for the current Government too liberal lex generalis, i.e. the Family Law, which regulates the existence and rights of unmarried couples.

Speech example (5) (Bill proposer –Health Minister)
The dispute about the values concerning the ART is one of the paradigmatic debates between the left and right wing politicians – the question of abortion or moreover the right to abortion seems to emerge. More specifically, there is the problem of cryopreservation within the ART procedure and the side-effect of casting off the embryo surplus.

The ground that the Health Minister uses in his argumentation is the attitude of the centre-right government based on the stipulative definition of an embryo being a human being. The warrant itself becomes obvious, supporting the claim that the procedure of cryopreservation should be abandoned.

It is evident that this argumentation line is neither based on legal nor medical ground. What we see here is the conflict of values, i.e. opinion topoi. The Minister’s attitude is rather clear and firm – freezing the large number of embryos which will later be discarded equals euthanasia. However, the Minister finds exceptions since he believes that this approach will win him the support of general public.

Embryos can be frozen if a patient would benefit from that, i.e. if she is medically unable to be implanted according to the scheduled procedure. The Government’s starting point has always been a child and its rights, but at that moment the Government begins to represent the woman’s rights as well. Nevertheless, the woman is still perceived only as the ‘embryo carrier’ and only because she cannot be implanted at certain moment due to medical problems, the embryos will be frozen. That means that the embryos will be waiting for their ‘carrier’ to recover and their rights will be protected.

It is important to note here that the Opposition did not attempt to offer meaningful refutation, but they used a stratagem ad absurdum. The representative of the Opposition stated the possibility of a woman’s health worsening and the embryos remaining frozen after she passes away, and, in this case, the government would allow the embryos to be ‘killed’. The Minister replies following the same pattern – ‘the atomic bomb is also an option, but it will not be a part of the legislation.’

This all shows that Toulmin’s model can be used for the evaluation of political speeches since it facilitates the recognition of fallacies and confirms that, in parliamentary debates between left and right wing politicians, the argumentation is based on opinion topoi which can be contested, but the expressed topoi will qualify as the absolute truth to the members of a certain group. Serious argumentation should not be based on breaking the topos but finding the weak parts of the argumentation structure that these topoi (warrants) potentially generated.

Figure 8 – Toulmin’s model – speech example (5) (Bill proposer – Minister of Health)

As a response to the Minister’s claim about cryopreservation, the representative of the largest Opposition party, also a doctor provides a completely opposite claim. He states that the cryopreservation procedure should be allowed since based on the fact that the procedure itself is rather modern and has proven extremely successful. He explicates his warrant, which is by all means a general one, that the treatment of all diseases should include the most advanced methods. The backing for that warrant is the attitude of the European Agency, an important authority in the current political context since Croatia is an EU accession country.

However, the ‘quick’ Minister finds the exception to the general warrant through anti-example which affects the entire argumentation stated by the SDP representative. There is nothing controversial about the fact that an illness should be cured with all the available means, but Minister points out that cryopreservation is not a medical procedure that cures infertility. In his witty response he says: A woman who conceives a child by medically assisted reproduction remains infertile and still cannot conceive naturally. The same applies to men.

Figure 9 – Toulmin’s model – speech example (6) (Bill opposer 2 – Representative of Social Democratic Party’s Deputy Club)

General conclusion of the argumentation seen in the Parliamentary debate is that the reasoning in most enthymemes is based on the opinion topos. Right political option, represented in our examples by the Health Minister, uses those topoi representing firm and stable conservative value system shared by right wing politicians and electorate. The problem in their argumentation is that all deductive conclusions are based on such topoi expressed in warrants, and such warrants overlook modern scientific achievements. On the other hand, left wing politicians are mistaken because they overlook the alternatives; the topoi they use do not have a moralizing tone, but are based on the principles of egality and provide equal rights for everyone. Actually, left politicians have one overall topos: all people have maximum rights and are equal among themselves. That general topos generates partial warrants suitable for specific claims stated during the debate. However, most often the warrants are rather weak, because, paradoxically, they are not strong enough to include basic values. That is why the right wing politicians often find strong rebuttals and support their claims efficiently.

5. Conclusion
The advantage that Toulmin’s model offers to learners, listeners and evaluators of persuasive speeches is the support for the layout of argument, insight into fallacies and the origin of a dispute (determining underlying topoi). The model is especially sensitive to recognition of fallacies, i.e. overlooking alternatives, or better yet, ignoring exceptions to the rule (the warrant) which have to be neutralized or refuted. The model also gives an efficient instrument to rationally examine argumentation from both sides, as it was evident in this analysis of the parliamentary debate, thus minimizing the analytics’ bias which would not be possible if only the speech transcript (Elocutio) was analyzed.

NOTES
[i] This work was supported by the Ministry of Science, Education and Sport (grant number 130-1300787-0789). The authors would also like to thank the School of Rhetoric ‘Ivo Škarić’ – students and colleagues who always encouraged inspiring discussions about the famous model, Ana Opačak and Željka Pleše for patience and help with translations, and finally to our professor Ivo Škarić (1933-2009) for making us think differently. As Carnegie said Fear not those who argue, but those who dodge. We try not to…
[ii] The School of Rhetoric was established in 1992 by late professor emeritus Ivo Škarić from the Department of Phonetics, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. The school takes place twice a year for a week. Classes are organized by a workshop principle in small groups guided by a mentor. During one week per term, students (high-school age) learn about public speaking principles and prepare persuasive speech. The best speeches are selected by the expert commission and then delivered at the final presentation where the audience choses the winning speech. The speeches used as examples in this paper are the winning speeches.
[iii] The later examples were not preceded by the transcripts. The first transcript was given to stress out the differences between elocutio and dispositio phase.
[iv] The debate took place in July 2009. The full video of the debate can be found at http://itv.sabor.hr/video/.

REFERENCES
Aristotle (2007). On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. (translated by George A. Kennedy) New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hitchcock, D. & Verheij, B. (Eds.) (2006). Arguing on the Toulmin Model: New Essays in Argument Analysis and Evaluation. Dordrecht: Springer.
Jost, W. & Olmsted, W. (Eds.) (2004). A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Lucas, S. E. (2001). The Art of Public Speaking. Boston: McGraw Hill.
Olmsted, W. (2006). Rhetoric: an historical introduction. Malden: Blackwell Publishing.
Škarić, I. (2003). Temeljci suvremenoga govorništva. Zagreb: Školska knjiga.
Toulmin, S. E. (2003). The Uses of Argument (updated edition). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.




ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The Argumentative Structure Of Some Persuasive Appeal Variations

1. Introduction
Substantial experimental social-scientific research has been conducted concerning the relative persuasiveness of alternative versions of a given message. This research has obvious practical value for informing the design of effective persuasive messages, and it can also contribute to larger theoretical enterprises by establishing dependable general differences in message effectiveness (differences that require explanation).

But this research suffers from two problems. One is the undertheorization of message properties, that is, insufficient analytic attention to the nature of the message variations under examination (for some discussion, see O’Keefe 2003). The second – related – problem is inattention to the conceptual relationships between different lines of research. The consequence of this second problem is that the research landscape consists of isolated pockets of apparently-unrelated research findings, with little exploration of possible underlying connections.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the conceptual relationships among the argument forms embodied in a number of message variations that have figured prominently in persuasion research. The central claim is that one relatively simple argumentative contrast underlies a great many of the – seemingly different – message variations that have been studied by persuasion researchers. This underlying unity has been obscured, however, precisely because persuasion researchers have not been attentive to the fundamental argumentative structures of the messages under investigation.

The persuasion research of central interest for the present paper turns out to involve studies of different kinds of appeals based on consequences or outcomes. This is unsurprising because, as has been widely noted, one of the most basic kinds of argument for supporting a recommended action (policy, behavior, etc.) is a conditional that links the advocated action as the antecedent with some desirable outcome as the consequent. The abstract form is “If the advocated action A is undertaken, then desirable consequence D will occur.” Sometimes the conditional is expressed relatively explicitly (“If you wear sunscreen, you’ll have attractive skin when you’re older”; “if our city creates dedicated bicycle lanes, the number of traffic accidents will be reduced”), sometimes not (“My proposed economic program will increase employment”; “this automobile gets great gas mileage”), but the underlying form of the appeal is the same.

This kind of argument has been recognized as distinctive in various treatments by argumentation scholars. Perelman (1959, p. 18) called this appeal form a “pragmatic argument,” an argument that “consists in estimating an action, or any event, or a rule, or whatever it may be, in terms of its favourable or unfavourable consequences.” Walton (1996, p. 75) labeled it “argument from consequences,” describing it as “a species of practical reasoning where a contemplated policy or course of action is positively supported by citing the good consequences of it. In the negative form, a contemplated action is rejected on the grounds that it will have bad consequences.” And this sort of argument is a recognizably familiar kind of justification. For example, Schellens and de Jong (2004) reported that all 20 of the public information brochures they examined invoked arguments from consequences, whereas (for example) only six used authority-based appeals.

Although not anywhere explicitly acknowledged previously, a good deal of social-scientific persuasion research has addressed the question of the relative persuasiveness of different forms of consequence-based arguments. In particular, considerable research has addressed the differential persuasive effects of variation in the evaluative extremity of the consequences invoked by such arguments. This is not the only sort of variation in consequence-based argument that persuasion researchers have studied, but analyzing other more complex forms will require first having a clear picture of this simpler form.

So this paper focuses on research that examines how variations in the evaluative extremity of depicted consequences influences the persuasiveness of arguments. To describe this work clearly, however, requires distinguishing two forms that such evaluative-extremity variations can take: variation in the desirability of the depicted consequences of adopting the advocated action and variation in the undesirability of the depicted consequences of failing to adopt the advocated action. In what follows, each of these forms is discussed separately; a concluding section links these together and identifies questions for future work.

2. Variation in the desirability of the depicted consequences of adopting the advocated action
One recurring research question in persuasion effects research has – implicitly – been whether in consequence-based arguments, the persuasiveness of the argument is influenced by the desirability of the claimed consequence (or more carefully: whether the persuasiveness of the argument is influenced by the audience’s perception of the desirability of the claimed consequence.) Abstractly put, the experimental contrast here is between arguments of the form “If advocated action A is undertaken, then relatively more desirable consequence D1 will occur” and “If advocated action A is undertaken, then relatively less desirable consequence D2 will occur.”

Now one might think that this question would be too obvious to bother investigating. Of course appeals that invoke more desirable consequences will be more persuasive than those invoking less desirable consequences. However, the overt research question has not been expressed quite this baldly, but instead has been couched in other terms. For example, many studies have examined a question of the form “do people who differ with respect to characteristic X differ in their responsiveness to corresponding kinds of persuasive appeals?” – where characteristic X is actually a proxy for variations in what people value. This section of the paper reviews such research concerning four different personal characteristics: self-monitoring, consideration of future consequences, regulatory focus, and individualism-collectivism.

2.1. Self-monitoring and consumer advertising appeals
Considerable research attention has been given to the role of the personality variable of self-monitoring in influencing the relative persuasiveness of consumer advertising messages that deploy either image-oriented appeals or product-quality-oriented appeals. Self-monitoring refers to the control or regulation (monitoring) of one’s self-presentation (see Gangestad & Snyder 2000, for a useful review paper). High self-monitors are concerned about the image they project to others, and tailor their conduct to fit the situation at hand. Low self-monitors are less concerned about their projected image, and mold their behavior to fit their attitudes and values rather than external circumstances.

Hence in the realm of consumer products, high self-monitors are likely to stress the image-related aspects of products, whereas low self-monitors are more likely to be concerned with whether the product’s intrinsic properties match the person’s criteria for such products. Correspondingly, high and low self-monitors are expected to differ in their reactions to different kinds of consumer advertising, and specifically are expected to differentially react to appeals emphasizing the image of the product or its users and appeals emphasizing the intrinsic quality of the product (see, e.g., Snyder & DeBono 1987).

Consistent with this analysis, across a large number of studies, high self-monitors have been found to react more favorably to image-oriented advertisements than to product-quality-oriented ads, whereas the opposite effect is found for low self-monitors (for a summary of this work, see O’Keefe 2002, pp. 37-40). Parallel differences between high and low self-monitors have been found with related appeal variations outside the realm of consumer-product advertising (e.g., Lavine & Snyder, 1996).

Although these effects are conventionally described as a matter of high and low self-monitors having different “attitude functions” to which messages are adapted (e.g., DeBono, 1987), a more parsimonious account is that these effects reflect differential evaluation of consequences (for a fuller rendition of this argument, see O’Keefe 2002, pp. 46-48). High and low self-monitors do characteristically differ in their evaluations of various outcomes and object attributes; for instance, high self-monitors place a higher value on aspects of self-image presentation. Given this difference in evaluation, it is entirely unsurprising that high self-monitors find image-oriented appeals to be especially persuasive in comparison to appeals emphasizing product attributes that are, in their eyes, not so desirable (e.g., DeBono, 1987; Snyder & DeBono, 1985). That is, product-quality appeals and image-oriented appeals are differentially persuasive to high self-monitors because the appeals invoke differentially desirable consequences. And the same reasoning applies to low self-monitors: they value the sorts of product attributes mentioned in the product-quality-oriented appeals more than they do those mentioned in the image-oriented appeals – and so naturally are more persuaded by the former than by the latter.

So although this research masquerades as a question about the role of a personality variable in attitude function and persuasion, what the research shows is that for a given message recipient, appeals will be more persuasive if they offer the prospect of consequences the recipient finds relatively more desirable than if they offer the prospect of consequences the recipient finds relatively less desirable. Because high and low self-monitors differ in their relative evaluation of image-oriented and product-quality-oriented consequences, appeals that invoke different kinds of consequences correspondingly vary in persuasiveness.

None of this should be taken to denigrate the usefulness of research on self-monitoring and persuasive appeals. It is valuable to know that people systematically differ in their relative evaluations of (specifically) the image-oriented characteristics and the product-quality-oriented characteristics of consumer products, and hence that image-oriented advertising and product-quality-oriented advertising will be differentially persuasive depending on the audience’s level of self-monitoring.

But what underlies these findings is a rather more general phenomenon, namely, the greater persuasiveness of arguments that emphasize outcomes deemed especially desirable by the audience. At least when it comes to the consequences invoked by the arguments in these studies’ messages, self-monitoring variations go proxy for value variations – and hence these effects of self-monitoring variations on the persuasiveness of different appeals can be straightforwardly ascribed to the underlying variation in evaluations.

2.2. Consideration of future consequences (CFC) and corresponding appeal variations
An example entirely parallel to that of self-monitoring is provided by research concerning the individual-difference variable known as “consideration of future consequences” (CFC; Strathman, Gleicher, Boninger, & Edwards 1994). As the name suggests, this refers to differences in the degree to which people consider temporally distant (future) as opposed to temporally proximate (immediate) consequences of contemplated behaviors.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, persons differing in CFC respond differently to persuasive messages depending on whether the message’s arguments emphasize immediate consequences (more persuasive for those low in CFC) or long-term consequences (more persuasive for those high in CFC). For example, Orbell and Hagger (2006) presented participants with one of two messages describing both positive and negative consequences of participating in a diabetes screening program. Participants low in CFC were more persuaded when the message described short-term positive consequences and long-term negative consequences; participants high in CFC were more persuaded by the message that described short-term negative consequences and long-term positive consequences. (Similarly, see Orbell & Kyriakaki 2008.)

As with the self-monitoring research, these findings – even if unsurprising – do represent a genuine contribution. If nothing else, such research underscores the importance of persuaders’ thinking about whether the consequences they intend to emphasize are long-term or short-term, and how that connects to their audience’s likely dispositions. That is, one important substantive dimension of variation in consequences is their temporal immediacy, and attending to that dimension can thus be important for successful advocacy.

But, as with self-monitoring, what underlies these findings is the general phenomenon of heightened persuasiveness of arguments-from-consequences that emphasize more desirable consequences of the advocated viewpoint. At least when it comes to the consequences invoked by the arguments in these studies’ messages, CFC variations go proxy for value variations – and hence the effects of CFC variations on the persuasiveness of different appeals can be straightforwardly ascribed to the underlying variation in evaluations.

2.3. Regulatory focus and corresponding appeal variations
Yet another parallel example is provided by research concerning individual differences in “regulatory focus” (Higgins, 1997, 1998). Briefly, regulatory-focus variations reflect broad differences in people’s motivational goals, and specifically a difference between a promotion focus, which emphasizes obtaining desirable outcomes (and hence involves a focus on accomplishments, aspirations, etc.), and a prevention focus, which emphasizes avoiding undesirable outcomes (and hence involves a focus on safety, security, etc.). This individual difference obviously affords a possible basis for adaptation of persuasive messages.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, persons differing in regulatory focus respond differently to persuasive messages depending on whether the message’s arguments emphasize promotion-oriented outcomes or prevention-oriented outcomes. For example, Cesario, Grant, and Higgins (2004, Study 2) presented participants with messages advocating a new after-school program for elementary and high school students, with the supporting arguments expressed either in promotion-oriented ways (“The primary reason for supporting this program is because it will advance children’s education and support more children to succeed”) or in prevention-oriented ways (“The primary reason for supporting this program is because it will secure children’s education and prevent more children from failing”; p. 393). As one might expect, participants tended to be more persuaded by appeals that matched their motivational orientation. (For a general review of such research, see Lee & Higgins 2009.) [Notice that an alternative description of this appeal variation is to say that what varies here is whether the desirable consequences of the advocated action are expressed as the obtaining of some good state (more persuasive for promotion-oriented audiences) or as the avoidance of some bad state (more persuasive for prevention-oriented audiences).]

As with research concerning self-monitoring and CFC, this work identifies another substantive dimension of variation in the consequences associated with the advocated behavior, namely, whether the consequences concern prevention or promotion. This finding is useful, as it can emphasize to persuaders that, depending on the receiver’s regulatory focus, advocates might prefer to emphasize either prevention-related or promotion-related outcomes.

But, as with self-monitoring and CFC, what underlies these findings is the general phenomenon of the greater persuasiveness of arguments-from-consequences that invoke more desirable consequences of the advocated action. At least when it comes to the consequences invoked by the arguments in these studies’ messages, regulatory focus variations go proxy for value variations – and hence the effects of regulatory focus variations on the persuasiveness of different appeals can be straightforwardly ascribed to the underlying variation in evaluations. (For research linking regulatory-focus variations with variations in more abstract personal values, see Leikas, Lonnqvist, Verkasalo, & Lindeman 2009.)

2.4. Individualism-collectivism and corresponding appeal variations
A final parallel example is provided by research on “individualism-collectivism,” which refers to the degree to which individualist values (e.g., independence) are prioritized as opposed to collectivist values (e.g., interdependence). Although there is variation from person to person in individualism-collectivism, this dimension of difference has commonly been studied as one element of larger cultural orientations (see Hofstede 1980, 2001). So, for example, Americans are likely to be relatively individualistic whereas (say) Koreans are more likely to be collectivistic. This variation in cultural values obviously affords a possible basis for adaptation of persuasive messages.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, persons from cultures differing in individualism-collectivism respond differently to persuasive messages depending on whether the message’s appeals emphasize individualistic or collectivistic outcomes (for a review, see Hornikx & O’Keefe 2009). For example, advertisements for consumer goods are more persuasive for American audiences when the ads emphasize individualistic outcomes (“this watch will help you stand out”) rather than collectivistic ones (“this watch will help you fit in”), with the reverse being true for Chinese audiences (e.g., Aaker & Schmitt 2001). This effect plainly reflects underlying value differences – differences in the evaluation of various attributes of consumer products.

Thus, as with self-monitoring, CFC, and regulatory focus, these effects derive from the general phenomenon of the greater persuasiveness of consequence-based arguments that invoke more desirable consequences of the advocated action. At least when it comes to the consequences invoked by the arguments in these studies’ messages, individualism-collectivism variations go proxy for value variations – and hence these effects of individualism-collectivism variations on the persuasiveness of different appeals can be straightforwardly ascribed to the underlying variation in evaluations.

2.5. The argument thus far
To summarize the argument to this point: Consequence-based appeals are more persuasive when they invoke consequences of the advocated view that are (taken by the audience to be) relatively more desirable than when they invoke consequences that the audience doesn’t value so highly. Individuals can vary in their evaluations of consequences of an action, and so matching appeals to the audience’s evaluations is important for persuasive success. Individual variations in the evaluation of particular sorts of consequences can be indexed in a great many different ways – by differences in self-monitoring, or in individualistic-collectivistic orientations, or in regulatory focus, or in consideration of future consequences – but these all reflect underlying variation in the evaluations of consequences.

So what might seem on the surface to be a crazy quilt of isolated research findings – about self-monitoring, regulatory focus, and so forth – in fact represents the repeated confirmation of a fundamental truth about what makes consequence-based arguments persuasive: Arguments-from-consequences are more persuasive to the extent that they emphasize how the advocated view yields outcomes thought by the audience to be relatively more (rather than less) desirable.

2.6. Argument quality variations in elaboration likelihood model research
The four lines of research discussed to this point have all involved differences between people (either individual or cultural differences). The general idea has been that persons differ on some variable (e.g., self-monitoring), and that persuasive appeals matched to the audience’s level of that variable will be more persuasive than mismatched appeals. But these variables all turn out to be associated with systematic underlying variation in the evaluation of the consequences of the advocated action, and what makes a persuasive appeal matched or mismatched turns out to depend on whether the appeal emphasizes relatively more or relatively less desirable consequences (the former representing matched appeals, the latter mismatched).

However, the same basic phenomenon can be detected in an area of persuasion research not involving individual differences, namely the effects of variation in “argument quality.” Argument-quality variations have figured prominently in research on Petty and Cacioppo’s well-known elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (ELM; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

ELM researchers have used variations in (what has been called) argument quality (or argument strength) as a device for assessing the degree to which message recipients closely attended to message contents. For example, Petty, Cacioppo, and Goldman (1981) varied argument quality, source expertise, and the audience’s involvement with the persuasive issue (that is, the personal relevance of the issue). Under conditions of low involvement, the persuasiveness of the message was more influenced by variations in expertise than by variations in argument quality; under conditions of high involvement, the reverse pattern obtained. The implication is that under conditions of higher involvement, audiences were more closely processing the message and so were more attentive to argument quality variations.

In such ELM research, “argument quality” has been defined in terms of persuasive effects. That is, a high-quality argument is one that, in pretesting, is relatively more persuasive (compared to a low-quality argument) under conditions of high elaboration (close message processing). But what makes those high-quality arguments more persuasive?

ELM researchers have not been very interested in identifying exactly what makes their “strong” and “weak” arguments vary in effectiveness. From the perspective of ELM researchers, argument quality variations have been used “primarily as a methodological tool to examine whether some other variable increases or decreases message scrutiny, not to examine the determinants of argument cogency per se” (Petty & Wegener, 1998, p. 352).

But other researchers have naturally been concerned to identify the “active ingredient” in these ELM manipulations. And although the picture is not yet entirely clear, there is good reason to suppose that a – if not the – key ingredient in ELM argument quality variations is precisely variation in the evaluation of the consequences invoked by the arguments. (For some empirical evidence on this matter, see Areni & Lutz 1988; van Enschot-van Dijk, Hustinx, & Hoeken 2003; Hustinx, van Enschot, & Hoeken 2007; see also Johnson, Smith-McLallen, Killeya, & Levin 2004.) That is, it now looks likely that the kinds of “argument quality” variations used in ELM research reflect underlying variations in the desirability of claimed consequences – the “strong argument” messages used consequence-based arguments with highly desirable outcomes, whereas the “weak argument” messages used consequence-based arguments with less desirable outcomes. Small wonder, then, that the strong arguments should turn out to generally be more persuasive than the weak arguments (see Park, Levine, Westermann, Orfgen, & Foregger 2007, p. 94).

To illustrate this point concretely: One much-studied message topic in ELM research has been a proposal to mandate university senior comprehensive examinations as a graduation requirement. In studies with undergraduates as research participants, the “strong argument” messages used arguments such as “with mandatory senior comprehensive exams at our university, graduates would have better employment opportunities and higher starting salaries,” whereas the “weak argument” messages had arguments such as “with mandatory senior comprehensive exams at our university, enrollment would increase” (see Petty & Cacioppo 1986, pp. 54-59, for examples of such arguments). It’s not surprising that, at least under conditions of relatively high elaboration (that is, close attention to message content), the “strong argument” messages would be more persuasive than the “weak argument” messages, because the messages almost certainly varied in the perceived desirability of the claimed outcomes.

So here is yet another empirical confirmation of the general point that consequence-based arguments become more persuasive with greater perceived desirability of the claimed consequences of the advocated view. This argument-quality research offers a slightly different kind of evidentiary support than that represented by the previously-discussed individual-difference research (self-monitoring and so on), because here there likely is relative uniformity across audience members in the comparative evaluations of the consequences under discussion. That is, among the message recipients in the ELM studies, there was presumably general agreement that (for example) enhanced employment opportunities is a more desirable consequence (of the proposed examinations) than is increased university enrollment, whereas the individual-difference studies focused on circumstances in which study participants varied in their evaluations. (Of course, within a given condition – such as among high self-monitors – there would be relative homogeneity of evaluations.)

2.7. Summary: Variation in the desirability of the consequences of the advocated action
The effects observed in a number of distinct lines of persuasion research appear to all be driven by one fundamental underlying phenomenon, namely, that the persuasiveness of consequence-based arguments is influenced by the desirability of the depicted consequences of the advocated view: As the desirability of those consequences increases, the persuasiveness of the arguments is enhanced. This commonality has not been so apparent as it might have been, because persuasion researchers have not been attentive to the argumentative structure of the appeals used in their experimental messages. But once it is seen that these various lines of research all involve arguments based on consequences, and once it is seen that the experimental messages vary with respect to the desirability of the consequences invoked, then it becomes apparent that one basic process gives rise to all these apparently unrelated effects.

Indeed, this may justifiably be thought of as perhaps the single best-supported empirical generalization about persuasion that can be described to date. Findings from a variety of different lines of research – self-monitoring, consideration of future consequences, regulatory focus, individualism-collectivism, argument quality – all buttress the conclusion that consequence-based arguments emphasizing relatively more desirable consequences of the advocated action are likely to be more persuasive than are arguments emphasizing relatively less desirable consequences.

3. Variation in the undesirability of the depicted consequences of not adopting the advocated action
The just-discussed appeal variation involves variations in the consequent of a conditional in which the antecedent was adoption of the communicator’s recommendation (“If advocated action A is undertaken”). But a parallel appeal variation can be identified in which the antecedent is a failure to adopt the recommended action (“If advocated action A is not undertaken”) and the undesirability of the consequence varies. Abstractly put, the contrast here is between arguments of the form “If advocated action A is not undertaken, then slightly undesirable consequence U1 will occur” and “If advocated action A is not undertaken, then very undesirable consequence U2 will occur.” And the research question is: which of these will be more persuasive?

Again, one might think that this question too obvious to merit study. Of course appeals that invoke very undesirable consequences will be more persuasive than those invoking mildly undesirable consequences. Nonetheless, this turns out to have been the object of considerable empirical research – but, as above, the research question has not been stated quite this plainly.

The work of interest here is research on “fear appeals,” which are messages that invoke the specter of undesirable consequences from failing to follow the communicator’s recommendations. Fear appeal research has addressed a number of different questions concerning the invocation of fear-arousing consequences as a means of persuasion, but one substantial line of work in this area has implicitly addressed the appeal variation of interest here. Specifically, considerable research has manipulated fear-arousal messages so as to vary the depicted undesirability of the consequences. In theoretical frameworks such as protection motivation theory (Rogers & Prentice-Dunn 1997), this is represented as variation in “threat severity.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, the general research finding has been that threats perceived as more severe (i.e., more undesirable) make for more effective persuasive appeals than do threats perceived as less severe (less undesirable); see, for example, the meta-analytic reviews of Floyd, Prentice-Dunn, and Rogers (2000) and Witte and Allen (2000).

This appeal variation – where the consequences of not adopting the advocated action differ in their undesirability – can be housed together with the previously-discussed variations involving different desirability of the claimed consequences of adoption. Abstractly put, these comparisons consider variations in the extremity of evaluation of claimed outcomes (the degree of desirability of the consequences of adoption, or the degree of undesirability of the consequences of nonadoption). Unsurprisingly, consequences that are evaluated more extremely (more desirable consequences of adopting the advocated action, or more undesirable consequences of failing to adopt the advocated action) make for more persuasive appeals than do consequences that are less extremely evaluated.

Thus, as with self-monitoring, CFC, regulatory focus, individualism-collectivism, and argument quality, what produces these fear appeal threat-severity effects is the general phenomenon of the greater persuasiveness of consequence-based arguments that invoke more extremely evaluated consequences. Variations in perceived threat severity plainly represent variations in the evaluative extremity of potential outcomes—and hence these effects of variations in depicted threat severity can be straightforwardly ascribed to the underlying variation in evaluations.

4. Conclusion
Any persuasive circumstance that permits identification of systematic variation across individuals in the extremity of the evaluation of consequences is one that permits corresponding adaptation of persuasive appeals. If people of kind X and people of kind Y generally vary in their evaluation of the outcomes of a given action, then a persuader will want to craft different appeals to type X audiences and to type Y audiences. As discussed above, such systematic value variations are associated with self-monitoring differences, variations in cultural background, variations in “consideration of future consequences,” and variations in regulatory focus – and hence each of these individual-difference variations provides a basis for corresponding appeal adaptation.

Similarly, any persuasive circumstance in which there is relative uniformity (in a given audience) of the evaluation of particular consequences is a circumstance that permits corresponding construction of appeals in ways likely to maximize the chances of persuasive success. When describing the consequences of adoption of the advocated course of action, advocates will naturally want to emphasize those consequences the audience thinks most desirable (as ELM research on argument quality suggests). When describing the consequences of failing to adopt the advocated action, advocates will naturally want to emphasize those consequences the audiences thinks most undesirable (as fear appeal research on threat severity suggests).

But, as will be apparent by now, the underlying phenomenon is exactly the same in all these different lines of research. That may not have been easy to see without closely considering the underlying argumentative structure of these appeals – but once seen, the common thread is obvious: Persuasion researchers have confirmed, over and over again, that the persuasiveness of consequence-based arguments is affected by the evaluative extremity of the depicted consequences.

Now the research to date does add something beyond this broad generalization, because it identifies various substantively different kinds of outcomes whose evaluations might vary. To express this in concrete message-design terms: An advocate can, in addition to thinking abstractly about the audience’s perceived desirability of various consequences, also think concretely about some more specific substantive aspects of the contemplated arguments. For example: Do the contemplated appeals mostly emphasize long-term rather than short-term consequences, and are consequences of that sort likely to appeal to the audience? Do the contemplated appeals mostly emphasize promotion-oriented rather than prevention-oriented consequences, and are consequences of that sort likely to appeal to the audience? And so forth. Still, what makes these substantive variations of interest is precisely that they correspond to underlying systematic differences in evaluation – and the underlying evaluative differences are what’s crucial.

4.1. Questions for future research
The present analysis invites three questions for future exploration: (1) What is the size of the persuasive advantage conferred by invoking evaluatively more extreme consequences? (2) Might consequence-based arguments vary in other ways (besides the evaluative extremity of the consequences) that affect persuasive success? (3) Can this analysis be extended so as to encompass and illuminate other lines of persuasion research?

4.1.1. The size of the persuasive advantage provided by invoking more extremely-evaluated consequences
One question is that of the size of the persuasive advantage conferred by invoking relatively more extremely-evaluated consequences. That is, even though it seems plain that messages invoking evaluatively more extreme consequences are more persuasive, that leaves open the question of just how much more persuasive they are. In a few of the research areas discussed here, some meta-analytic work has been undertaken that speaks to this matter (e.g., Floyd et al. 2000; Hornikx & O’Keefe 2009; Witte & Allen 2000), but additional such work – and comparative assessment that might indicate whether certain sorts of substantive variations are more consequential than others – would be valuable, both for practical reasons (as it would suggest what sorts of variations are worth special attention from advocates) and for larger theoretical reasons (because it will specify phenomena for explanation).

4.1.2. Other features of consequence-based argument variation
A second question to be addressed is whether there are other features of consequence-based argument variation (beyond those previously discussed) that are important for persuasive outcomes. This question has two facets. One is whether there are other identifiable substantive dimensions of variation (other than the previously-discussed ones – long-term versus short-term consequences, image-oriented versus product-quality-oriented, etc.) that can go proxy for evaluative variations. For example, one might wonder whether there is any general difference in persuasiveness between appeals that emphasize consequences for the message recipient as opposed to consequences for others (see, e.g., Kelly 2007; White & Peloza 2009). Similarly, one might consider whether expressing a given consequence of the advocated action as producing a desirable outcome (“if you exercise, you’ll feel energized later”) or as avoiding an undesirable outcome (“if you exercise, you’ll avoid feeling tired later”) – or the parallel of expressing the consequences of failing to engage in the advocated action as a foregone desirable outcome (“if you don’t exercise, you’ll miss out on feeling energized later”) or an obtained undesirable outcome (“if you don’t exercise, you’ll feel tired later”) – makes for any general difference in persuasiveness; it might be that “feeling energized later” and “avoiding feeling tired later” are differentially evaluated, either in general or by certain kinds of people. [This matter is related to the earlier discussion of regulatory focus. In studies of persuasive appeals and regulatory-focus variations, a common message contrast is between appeals emphasizing that the advocated action leads to some desirable outcome (a promotion-focused appeal) and appeals emphasizing that the advocated action leads to the avoidance of some undesirable outcome (a prevention-focused appeal).]

The second facet of this question is whether there are persuasiveness-relevant features of consequence-based argument variation other than the evaluative extremity of consequences. Perhaps most obviously, variations in the depicted likelihood of consequences might be considered as potentially important for persuasion. The variation of interest here might be described as that reflected in the differences among “If the advocated action A is undertaken, then desirable consequence D will certainly occur” and “If the advocated action A is undertaken, then desirable consequence D will probably occur,” “If the advocated action A is undertaken, then desirable consequence D will possibly occur,” and so on. [And there’s the parallel set of variations for arguments focused on the consequences of failing to adopt the advocated view: “If advocated action A is not undertaken, then undesirable consequence U will certainly (or probably or possibly) occur.”]

Consequence-likelihood variation in consequence-based arguments seems to have received rather less empirical attention than consequence-evaluation variation. What relevant work does exist is scattered in separate lines of research, such as fear appeal research concerning effects of variations in depicted threat vulnerability (e.g., Floyd et al. 2000), research on belief strength and likelihood-based appeals (e.g., Hass, Bagley, & Rogers 1975; Smith-McLallen 2005), and so forth. Plainly, systematic and thorough consideration of the effects of such variations would be useful.

4.1.3. Other lines of persuasion research
One final question is whether the present analysis can be extended so as to encompass additional message variations that figure prominently in the persuasion research literature. For example, the contrast between gain-framed and loss-framed appeals (e.g., Meyerowitz & Chaiken 1987) looks to be the difference between two forms of consequence-based argument, namely, a consequences-of-compliance form (“If the advocated action A is undertaken, then desirable consequence D will occur”) and a consequences-of-noncompliance form (“If advocated action A is not undertaken, then undesirable consequence U will occur”).

As another example, fear appeal messages paradigmatically have two components. One is a fear-arousal component, meant to arouse fear or anxiety concerning possible undesirable events, and the other is a recommended-action component, meant to provide a course of action for avoiding those negative outcomes. But this seems to be a combination of two consequence-based arguments, one focused on the undesirable consequences of noncompliance (the fear-arousal element), one focused on the desirable consequences of compliance (the recommended-action element). Thus exemplary fear-appeal messages would seem conceptually to be identical in argumentative structure to what elsewhere have sometimes been termed “mixed-frame” messages, that is, messages involving both gain-framed and loss-framed appeals (e.g., Latimer et al. 2008).

In short, it seems plausible that other areas of persuasion research might be usefully examined with an eye to considering similarities and differences in the underlying argumentative structure of the message variations involved.

4.2. Coda: argumentation studies and persuasion research
One way of describing the current project is to say that it seeks to bring the sensibilities of an argument analyst to bear on some of the message types that have figured prominently in persuasion research. The purpose has been to try to bring some greater clarity to that research, by identifying common argumentative forms (and variations) within seemingly different lines of empirical research. In addition to whatever value this has for illuminating persuasion research, perhaps it might also serve as an illustration that an ongoing dialogue between argumentation studies and persuasion research can continue to bear fruit.

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ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Obama’s Rhetorical Strategy In Presenting “A World Without Nuclear Weapons”

“[T]he peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons” was a vision held out by President Barack Obama in Prague on April 5, 2009.[ii] His vision inspired audiences, helped build momentum, and created a sense of importance and urgency to undertake future actions. He directed listeners toward the small actions they could take immediately to help his cause, which was a shift of U.S. foreign policy from unilateralism to multilateralism. Obama called for a new roadmap to strengthen the international regime on nuclear non-proliferation. By committing the U.S. to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) anti-proliferation rule, Obama brought “a new climate in international politics” (King Jr. & Sonne 2009, p. A1; See also Gibbs 2009, p. A10). What rhetorical methods did Obama use to present U.S. policy actions in the post-September 11 world?

To build rapport and a strong sense of camaraderie, Obama made use of three rhetorical factors. First, Obama framed the circumstances or the situations to which the post-September 11 foreign policy responded (See Stuckey 1995, p. 215). This showed part of his effort to act on his interpretation of the information found in the executive branch. Second, metaphor is used to establish the defiant political reality that reflects Americans’ conceptions of themselves and their global responsibility. Obama attempted to present a combination of egalitarianism and pragmatism to a world that had fundamentally changed. In constructing “reality” based on “orientational metaphor” (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, p. 14), he eschewed Cold War premises of good versus evil. Third, Obama employed a dramatistic perspective (See Hollihan 1986, p. 379). By focusing on a humanitarian mission, he reformulated central premises about the nature of national security. When addressing the risks people face, it helped to clearly identify the necessary goals. These three patterns are fundamental to a rhetorical strategy that tries to define and legitimate U.S. defense and foreign policy.

By focusing on these rhetorical patterns, this paper [i] shows how President Obama shifted foreign policy from Cold War antagonisms to a shared and rational understanding of mutual self-interest. As he personalized his address, his language resonated with the audience. With skillful use of pronouns – the “I,” “you,” and “we” connection, he created a greater sense of closeness and held out the promise of a more peaceful world than his predecessor, George W. Bush, who defined the post-September 11 order through war metaphors (Rasmussen 2006, pp. 171-74). In presenting the nuclear arms race as remnants of the Cold War, Obama referred to the United States complicated relationship to the atomic bomb. In such a rhetorical shift from moral to practical commitment, he sought to redefine what and how U.S. engagement in world affairs should be.

1. The Nation’s Storyteller
Presidential rhetoric in the modern media requires the president to set the political agenda and show strong leadership. To secure popular support for presidential policy initiatives, Obama shaped the national mood through rhetoric and imagery. According to Mary E. Stuckey, the president “tells us stories about ourselves, and in so doing he tells us what sort of people we are, how we are constituted as a community” (1991, p. 1). Consequently, “we, the people of the Untied States” take from President Barack Obama not only the policies and programs he espouses but their own national self-identity. Thus, he must design appeals intended to increase personal support for himself.

In setting the vision of a nuclear-free world, Obama stressed “international cooperation” as a way of relating to his audience. Although the focus on international relations called for U.S. moral and spiritual superiority, he acknowledged the United States “as the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon.” Along with his attitudes toward history, his remarks took on political significance in the recognition that “the United States has a moral responsibility to act” toward “a world without nuclear weapons.” This acknowledgment brought to the United States – the world’s leading nuclear power – the credibility necessary to build an international consensus to prevent proliferation. In self-legitimization, Obama identified a set of values to share a perception of what is right and wrong so as to form the basis for political action. Here the world meant a place of both hope and challenge, of opportunity and danger. Overall, his call to “prudent” actions was viewed as pragmatic with a principled foundation.

By pursuing the implications of nuclear weapons, Obama expressed the awareness that the “world could be erased in a single flash of light.” He presented the past referring to scientific matters like the nuclear arms race, and then reinforced the U.S. moral and political stance. In reference to competition between the United States and Russia over military superiority, Obama associated “nuclear weapons” with such negative words as “catastrophic,” “dangerous,” “threat(s)” (4), “risk(s)” (2), “destruction,” “fatalism,” “deadly,” “adversary” (2), “inevitable” (2), “illegal,” “massive destruction,” and “unsecured.” These words signified that he was concerned about the circumstances the world was facing, remembered the details of those circumstances, and would be responsive to those issues (Leanne 2010, pp. 72-74). In fact, Obama expressed his willingness to talk to “rogue” nuclear-capable states such as North Korea and Iran, thereby marking a turning point in the U.S. diplomacy.

The rhetorical focus on negotiation and compromise led Obama to describe the post-September 11 relationships as “constructive” in world affairs. With a mix of idealism and realpolitik that can change the world, he sought to reach a general consensus, which looks to peaceful cooperation within a given context for breaking the war mentality, in order “to secure benefits for the Untied States while avoiding conflict” (Stuckey 1995, p. 217). In this regard, a European model – balance of power – enabled him to approach the U.S. relationship with Russia in a more “realistic” way (Sarotte 2009, p. A31). Working with Russia along with its nuclear allies, the United Kingdom and France, as well as with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) changed “Cold War thinking” to “a new framework for civil… cooperation.” His remarks on “a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with the Russians” transformed the political competition between the United States and Russia into policy implementation based on “expertise.” Overall, Obama stressed a synthesis of negotiation and compromise over the traditional Cold War dualities underlying previous foreign policy rhetoric.

Obama also took on social knowledge as a persuasive means to constrain public deliberation in the framework of “prevailing conceptions of the public” (Farrell & Goodnight 1981, p. 299). While raising critical consciousness of the nuclear danger, Obama described and defined “nuclear power” as the ultimate modern technology. The shift of his focus from “nuclear weapons” to “nuclear energy,” characterized as “peaceful” (4), “new” (5), “civil,” “rigorous,” “sensitive,” and “durable,” enabled him to support programs in nuclear innovation. The motive of innovation went along with the vocabulary of scientism, embracing the technological developments in nuclear physics. This “power of nuclear energy” was shown to be a way “to combat climate change.” One solution for global warming became a “peace opportunity for all people” to renew nuclear programs. Such rhetorical dissociation from “the risks of proliferation” normalized extraordinary into ordinary technology.

In his call for nuclear disarmament, Obama shifted his focus from “nuclear weapons” to “nuclear materials,” from “threat” to “risk,” and from “global nuclear war” to “nuclear attack.” Along with such rhetorical shift, he employed the bureaucratic words like a “Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty,” “the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty” (CTBT), “the U.N. Security Council,” “the Proliferation Security Initiative,” “the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism,” and “a Global Summit on Nuclear Security” to eliminate nuclear arsenals. In reflecting the same critical question of whether risk is a social construction or a rational response as a post-September 11 president’s rhetorical position on globalization, Obama’s call for nuclear control was more realistic than idealistic, so that it could serve to “build a stronger, global regime.”

In displacing political fears with technological uses of nuclear energy, Obama measured U.S. security issues in terms of the future. He created a distance from the “bear any burden” militancy of Cold War rhetoric by saying that “[w]e cannot succeed in this endeavor alone, but we can lead it, we can start it.” While the principal features of the Cold War “world” faded in the post-September 11 world, yet its “world-view” remained in his reference to Article V of North Atlantic Treaty, “An attack on one is an attack on all.” In a skillful balance of national interest and national power, Obama prioritized a joint effort to establish a new international architecture, which can meet growing demands for nuclear energy while preventing the leaking and proliferation of nuclear technology. In minimizing risk to “America’s commitment,” he also sought to meet a global, open-ended promise supporting “the right of people everywhere to live free from fear in the twenty-first century.”

Obama played down Manichean dualities underlying U.S. unilateralism by recurring use of the adjective “common” – “common history,” “common interests,” “common prosperity,” “common humanity,” “common security” (2), “common cause,” and “common concern.” In integrating American values and interests into common sense, he set up “terministic screens” for “a world without nuclear weapons.” While emphasizing the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play, Obama also extended rhetorical presidency from the national to the global dimension. On the whole, he took the initiative to control what would be understood as “real” and what attitudes towards this “reality” should be taken at home and abroad.

2. Orientational Metaphor
In representing the post-September 11 world as “less divided,” “more interconnected,” Obama made use of an “orientational metaphor,” that constructs “a whole system of concepts with respect to one another” (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, p. 14), to order political reality. Using such spatial orientations as “HAVING CONTROL OR FORCE IS UP,” “FORESEEABLE FUTURE EVENTS ARE UP (and AHEAD),” “VIRTUE IS UP,” and “RATIONAL IS UP” (Lakoff & Johnson 1980, pp. 15-17), he symbolically structured a situation that favors a certain “orientation” over others or a way of coping with a difficult and complex problem. His foreign policy metaphors thus gave rhetorical interpretations of events that put the United States in a leadership role in pursuit of nuclear arms control vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

Since the choice of language is not neutral, but strategic to manage risks, Obama associated military means with political ends. In describing and defining the political and social conditions under which nuclear weapons could be used, he transferred the focus of responsibility from agency to agent. In the association of “terrorists” (4) like “al Qaeda” (2), “North Korea” (2) and “Iran” (7) with nuclear dangers, Obama presented these agents as responsible for “destruction” (2), “adversary” (2) and “[v]iolations.” The scene was framed in the formula – who did what – that terrorists and some countries broke the rules so as to be punished. Exhorting the audience to face such contingencies, he emphasized “a global non-proliferation regime” as the route to “peace and progress.” The emphasis on “a new international effort” entailed reconciliation in which an “UP orientation” led in the direction of moving ahead and/or forward to well-being.

Since “ordinary language is by itself the manifestation of agreements of a community of thought” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, p. 153), Obama made use of everyday language to reconfirm the “friendship” between the U.S. and the Czech people. Following the parallelism “We are here today because…” (5), he repeated the passive voice “We are bound by shared values, shared history” (2) which strengthened the importance of “the fundamental human rights” and “the peaceful protest.” In addressing the inclusive ideals presumed to be shared, he turned “friendship” into “alliance” within the framework of NATO. From an equal standpoint, he projected intimacy, encouraged empathy, and identified the U.S.-Czechoslovakia relationship with “the strongest alliance that the world has ever known.” Here he used the strategy of identification to confirm a close association between the United States and the Czech Republic. Reinforcing “our common security,” he blended realistic assessment of security alliance with expressions of hope to create a new security framework for nuclear deterrence – a mode of Cold War thinking – which resulted in promoting nuclear armament.

Obama’s call for “a world without nuclear weapons” in Prague symbolically transformed the older slogans like “Ban the bomb!” into his presidential campaign slogan “Yes, we can!” With the disappearance of the Cold War 20 years ago, the nuclear danger changed from the spread of “the ultimate tools of destruction” to “[b]lack market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials” – “dangers that recognized no borders.” In the January 2007 Wall Street Journal opinion and editorial page, the vision of a nuclear-free world was articulated by former secretary of State George Shultz, former secretary of Defense William Perry, former secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former chairperson of the Senate Armed Services Committee Sam Nunn. These four public figures argued for the United States to take the lead in halting the production of fissile materials for use in weapons and securing all nuclear materials around the globe (Shultz, Perry, Kissinger, & Nunn 2007, p. A15; See also Shultz, Perry, Kissinger, & Nunn 2008, p. A13). This nuclear-free agenda reminded the U.S. people of a more positive, constructive direction in nuclear disarmament (See Hart 2007, pp. 23-25; Wolfenstein 2007, p. H1). Along with such public consciousness-raising, Obama took into account the status quo in which no state or combination of states except the United States could fill the leadership void in the international arena.

Realistically, foreign policy needs to take into account the historical context and the geographical position of each state in order for them to forgo the very capabilities that they retain as critical to their national security. In pursuit of a world eventually free of nuclear arms, Obama explained and justified organized political action in order to ease international tensions. The effectiveness of a comprehensive nuclear-control regime depends not only on a political commitment, but on a binding legal undertaking. The universal adherence to nonproliferation can only work if the nuclear disarmament obligation is equally applied to all states within a time-bound framework.

To justify U.S. involvement in world affairs, Obama managed to subsume pragmatic national self-interest within the context of nuclear defense strategy. The structure of his argument made it clear that “a world without nuclear weapons” would be the perfection toward which disarmament would “move.” He implied that the United States would no longer take unilateral action or to decide what would be in the best interest of the world. He proposed “a new framework for civil nuclear cooperation” which would make for “true international cooperation.”

The presidential rhetoric based on an orientational metaphor has shaped a sense of who Americans are while broadening the U.S. political community. “Our” sense of national identity has thus evolved across time in expanding and contracting foreign policy. Through his rhetorical and political choices, Obama introduced the language of inclusion in order to project “a world without nuclear weapons” as an accepted vision both at home and abroad. Such rhetorical inclusions enabled him to inspire a diverse set of people to band together, focusing not on their differences but on their commonalities.

3. A Dramatistic Perspective
Taking into account economic, social, political, and moral implications that “war is the ultimate dramatic event” (Hastedt 1997, p. 80), Thomas A. Hollihan argues that “foreign policy dramas situate events by providing credible historical accounts and visions of the future. … To win and sustain support, rhetorical dramas must be consistent and must corroborate people’s beliefs and expectations regarding the fulfillment of dramatic form” (1986, p. 379). In his case study of the public discussion concerning the ratification of Panama Canal Treaties, Hollihan examines three dramas that provide justification for U.S. foreign policy action – the Cold War, the New World Order, and Power Politics.

The Cold War drama of “good versus evil” goes beyond the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Whereas the villain can be any enemy of democracy, the role of hero belongs to the United States. This rhetorical structure characterized by the conflict between good and evil legitimates the superiority of American moral force supported with physical force within a world of black and white. In argumentation, Cold War logic links expediency with moralism. Guided by the defining characterization of a far-off event, its persuasive power is used to guarantee action in a time where little is certain.

Unlike the above Manichean worldview, the New World Order rhetoric takes into account international law and fundamental human rights. By equalizing all international actors in avoiding confrontation, this rhetorical paradigm requires U.S. leaders to recognize other national leaders as potential peers. Instead of the dichotomous choice of good versus evil, it poses a variety of equal policy choices. Stressing commonalities rather than differences, the leaders focus on key aspects such as shared history and values. Such focus on common ground is fraught with difficulty in defining heroes and villains. Hence, the New World Order drama requires the United States to come to terms with its imperial and colonial past.

Distinct from both the Cold War and New World Order, the Power Politics rhetoric does not rely on moral claims. Instead, the rhetoric of “technocratic realism,” derived from technological changes and the post-war emphasis on scientism, is an important element in the Power Politics drama. While calling for a shared and rational understanding of mutual self-interest between the powers, it focuses on pragmatic justifications for action, scientific principles of administration, and the possibilities of negotiation. This dramatistic perspective turns a world of nation-states into a world of self-interested pragmatists, insisting on the urgency and importance of events and political actions.

Among these three rhetorical paradigms, Barack Obama attempted to replace the Cold War drama with the hybrid of the New World Order and the Power Politics dramas. By seeing the United States as one among equals, he portrayed his country with the power and the capacity for multilateral action. In this framework, the incompatible national interests and foreign relations continue to give rise to threats of conflict. In such a state of conflict, President Barack Obama used his position as the first colored president to go beyond the Manichean Cold War worldview by saying “[w]hen I was born, the world was divided, and our nations were faced with very different circumstances. Few people would have predicted that someone like me would one day become the President of the United States.” With balancing the continuity and the changes in national self-understanding, he alluded to a high level of “transcendence” himself. In a sense, the power of ethos moved his audience to go forward.

In the dramatistic perspective, what Kenneth Burke calls “symbolic perfection,” in which individual differences become unified with some cosmic or universal purpose so as to disappear, was useful in explaining how the term “nuclear weapon” functioned as “ultimate terms” that label such fundamental, all-encompassing values as life and death (1962, pp. 130-31 & 262). In shifting his focus from “the threat of global nuclear war” to “the risk of a nuclear attack,” Obama worked first with nuclear disarmament, and then with the spread of nuclear weapons in order to remove the nuclear danger.

One nuclear weapon exploded in one city – be it New York or Moscow, Islamabad or Mumbai, Tokyo or Tel Aviv, Paris or Prague – could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And no matter where it happens, there is no end to what the consequence might be – for our global safety, our security, our society, our economy, to our ultimate survival.

Even while projecting the vision of nuclear apocalypses, Obama saw the fulfillment of abolishing nuclear weapons as a logical progression from “today.” In fact, he reminded the audience that “now is the time for a strong international response” twice.

Obama acknowledged that a nuclear-free vision might not be realized in his lifetime by stressing the need for people to “take patience and persistence.” Yet he offered a historic opportunity for making progress on the nuclear agenda, reassuring the U.S. allies for their protection and encouraging people to think about imaginative ways forward. The steps he outlined guided the world to build the largest possible coalition – to expand nuclear-free zones – in favor of preventing proliferation. This path required a real commitment to turn the logic of zero into a practical reality.

4. Conclusion
The Cold War rhetoric based on dualities structured U.S. thinking about foreign policy for nearly half a century. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the consequent incongruity of the world system has left no widely-shared worldview. Like his post-Cold War predecessors, President Barack Obama was required to explain foreign policy decisions on a case by case basis. In the Prague Speech, he first called for a decrease in the U.S. role internationally, and then justified his rhetorical position in the specifics of a particular case. In doing so, he sought to offer compelling accounts for world events in shaping U.S. foreign policy.

Obama made a shift of U.S. foreign policy from the Manichean rhetoric of the Cold War. In the name of “national security strategy,” he gave a vision of U.S. “moral responsibility to act” that was far beyond a mere instrumental purpose. U.S. involvement in world affairs, on the one hand, entailed an element of mission. On the other hand, he proved that the situation not only involved U.S. interests, but that those interests were vital also to the world. Along with credible historical accounts and visions of the future, strategy as a system of thought leading to action enabled him to justify the U.S. in hosting “a Global Summit on Nuclear Security.” At the nuclear-security summit held on the April 12-13 of 2010, forty-seven countries agreed “nuclear terrorism is one of the most challenging threats to international security” (“Disarmament” 2010, p. 62). Slowly but steadily, the emerging international consensus on global zero was supporting his active role in leading the way to global security without nuclear arms.

Obama combined the pragmatic appeal with a humanitarian perspective to take on the nuclear future. In his address to the people of the Czech Republic, he clearly stated that nuclear disarmament meant to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our [=America’s] national security strategy.” In order to reach that goal, former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev pointed out that the U.S. military superiority “would be an insurmountable obstacle on the path to a world without nuclear weapons.” In his opening speech at the conference in Rome, on 16 April 2009, he also underscored the need to “demilitarize international relations, reduce military budgets” to overcome nuclear dangers (Gorbachev 2009).

Finally, Obama’s acceptance speech in Oslo on 10 December 2009 was thought-provokingly pragmatic. Obama expressed a presidential “doctrine” with an internationalist perspective. He was aware of the conference on nuclear security that was scheduled for April 2010, and that two weeks later the UN would review the NPT. For that purpose, Obama had worked hard to win unanimous political support for remaking the nonproliferation treaty and regulating nuclear trafficking. He thus committed himself to winning Senate ratification of the CTBT and acknowledged the U.S. legal obligation to move toward eliminating its own nuclear arsenals. In this speech, he continued to express the vision for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on 9 October 2009: for his “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” in particular his “audacious” vision of and work for nuclear disarmament (Erlanger 2009, p. 1).

Employing pragmatism and vision, President Obama was able to reset the U.S. dysfunctional relations with the world, present the UN as a new global forum, and turn to world affairs with his status enhanced. The 5 April 2009 speech in Prague set out a new foreign policy that rejected the Manichean view of his predecessor, George W. Bush, who had walked away from Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Kyoto Protocol). With conciliatory pragmatism, Obama set American diplomacy to work for new nuclear-arms reduction, peace between Arabs and Jews, and climate change so as to give birth to the harmony of a multipolar world.

NOTES
[i] Pache Research Subsidy I-A-2 for Academic Year 2010 funded by Nanzan University assisted the research to work on this paper.
[ii] All the quotations from “Remarks by President Barack Obama” at Hradcany Square in Prague, the Czech Republic, on April 5, 2009 are based on the immediate release from the Office of the Press Secretary, the White House.

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