ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Pragma-Dialectical Analysis Of The Inquisition

• by: Dale Hample - Western Illinois University

Throughout the High Middle Ages and into the Renaissance, the Inquisition was a continuing feature of the Christian world. To speak of the Inquisition as a singular institution is misleading, since inquisitions were undertaken by various authorities, episcopal or papal, working under varying legal systems and constraints. On its face an effort to ensure religious orthodoxy, it was from time to time overtaken by political concerns, both local and international; nor were purely personal vendettas completely irrelevant. Concerned at first with dualist heresies in southern France, it expanded its interests to cover witchcraft and Judiazing Christians, and later was an important front in the Catholic battle against Protestantism. The Protestants also had their inquisitions, though these were not as famous or institutionally developed as the Catholic ones.
But I will leave to others (e.g., Peters 1988; Lea 1955) the task of differentiating among the inquisitions of different times, places, and objectives. My purpose here is general enough that the more or less continuing features of the inquisitorial mode of jurisprudence will serve as a suitable basis for study. I intend to examine inquisitorial practices in the context of pragma-dialectics (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1984; 1992; van Eemeren, Grootendorst, Jackson, & Jacobs 1993). Though I will say little that is new in detail about the Inquisition, my approach may possibly provide a coherent perspective on how the Inquisition accomplished what it did. My main purpose, however, is to illuminate an under-developed topic in the study of argumentation, disagreement space.

1. Disagreement Space
The idea of disagreement space appears as part of the project of reconstructing arguments (van Eemeren, Grootendorst, Jackson, & Jacobs 1993: esp. 95-102). The general task of reconstruction is to take what people actually say, and to “reconstruct” it, or understand it in an analytical way, for purposes of description and criticism.
People do not say everything they mean, and do not comment on everything they understand. By a close and disciplined examination of actual utterances, and what had to have been understood or meant for the statements to have served the communicative functions they did, analysts can specify the domain of interactive meaning, including all those background assumptions. As an example, three pages of conversation are expanded into about twenty pages of reconstruction, capturing understandings taken for granted, unstated connections among premises, implicit refutations, and so forth (van Eemeren, Grootendorst, Jackson, & Jacobs 1993: ch. 4).
Roughly speaking, disagreement space refers to all that could be argued about, all that needs to be filled in for a full analysis. Here is the defining passage:
Among the materials available to a participant in an argumentative discussion are the discourse itself and the surrounding context of practical activity. From these two components it will always be possible to infer an indefinitely large and complex set of beliefs, wants, and intentions that jointly compose the perspective of one’s partner. Any component of this perspective may be “called out” and made problematic within the discourse, if it has any sort of relevance to the underlying purpose of the exchange. When this occurs, the problematized element functions as a “virtual standpoint” in need of defense. Any reconstructible commitment associated with the performance of a speech act can function as a virtual standpoint when it is in fact reconstructed and challenged by an interlocutor. The entire complex of reconstructible commitments can be considered as a “disagreement space,” a structured set of opportunities for argument (van Eemeren, Grootendorst, Jackson, & Jacobs 1993: 95). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Partial Quotes In Headlines And Subheads In Le Monde. An Exploration In Polyphonic Journalistic Writing And Opinion Forming

• by: Danièle Torck - Vrije Universiteit

‘Reported speech’ (RS) in journalistic texts has been the object of linguistic investigations in the last decade. It has taken place in the greater frame of studies of speech and thought presentation (Slembrouck, 1992, Waugh, 1995, Semino et al., 1997), or approached from a more (journalistic) discourse point of view (Geiss, 1987, Zelizer, 1989), with a special interest for the speech-act verb introducing the reported speech (Geiss, 1987, Gruber, 1993, May, 1995).
In an often quoted study of French journalistic discourse, Waugh (1995) highlights the presence of what she calls a combined form of ‘indirect-direct’ speech, of high frequency in the French press, and particularly in Le Monde. Example (1), taken from another broadsheet Le Figaro, is illustrative of such a form:
(1)
Il avait demandé au premier ministre <au nom de la transparence>, de lever le secret-défense, et expliqué, évoquant François Mitterrand, que cette <triste histoire> ne correspondait pas <à l’idée> qu’il se faisait <de lui sur ce plan> (Le Figaro, 9 avril 1997, ‘Les écoutes brouillent les socialistes’)
The relative sizes of indirect and direct stretches may vary considerably from case to case; furthermore, this ‘partial quoting’ procedure is not restricted to an indirect speech frame, but is also frequent with forms of NRSA (Narrative Report of Speech Act), as pointed out by Semino et al. (1997) for English reporting. Semino et al. pay special attention to these small stretches of direct quotation, which they call ‘Q-forms of speech presentation’[ii], and stress on the one hand their importance and convenience in journalistic writing, on the other their potential to lead to bias:
‘They allow the reporter to foreground selected parts of the original utterance without having to provide a lengthy quotation. They achieve vividness and precision without sacrificing the need for brevity. Clearly, such forms also lend themselves to partial or slanted representations of other people’s voices, since the original speaker’s words are embedded, both grammatically and semantically, within the reporter’s own discourse.’ (31)
This grammatical and semantical dependency, combined with the limited length of discourse, makes it difficult to refer to these forms as direct speech. I will argue that it also does not do credit to the special function these partial quotes often have. Looking back at example (1), we see that quotations in the French press are marked by low, double quotation marks and  italics.

In headlines, subheadings and introductory paragraphs no italics are used, which leads to a potential ambiguity. The quotation marks could then refer to either a real quote or to a special use or meaning attached or given to the words quoted. In the last case, they would be so-called ‘scare quotes’. This potential ambiguity is essentially present when the quote is limited to one or two words:
(2)
[h23] Soupçonné de <favoritisme>, le maire de Nantes et président du groupe PS à l’Assemblée plaide la <bonne foi>
(3)
(sh26) Le président sud-africain critique le <gendarme du monde> qui <n’a pas de morale>

In (2), only the second fragment of discourse between Q-marks was confirmed as a real quote. In (3) ‘Gendarme du monde’, referring to the United States, is used by the journalist in the text of the article between quotation marks but without italics. It is also used by Nelson Mandela in his declaration (or at least translated as such), so that it could be given both functions. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Legitimacy And Seduction Of War: The Declaración De La Selva Lacandona, Chiapas 1994

• by: Pedro Reygadas - Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia & Université Lumière

l. The communication conditions and the discursive macro-act
In 1994, we awoke on New Year’s day with the news of a modern guerrilla movement in Chiapas, in the south-east of Mexico. Grown beneath the shadows during more than ten years, the National Liberation Zapatista Army (EZLN) was making its public appearance. From the first day, an acute polemic has been surrounding this movement about the origin and number of its members, the villages where they have an influence and their financial support. Nonetheless, if we reconstruct the events with first hand sources and find out who the rebels are, we realise that more than two thousand Zapatistas, mainly Mayan indigenous people, occupied San Cristóbal de las Casas and several villages of La Selva and Los Altos of Chiapas.
After one day of surprise, the Mexican Army put the Zapatista region under intense fire -even rockets- until a peace agreement was proposed by the government and accepted by the Zapatista army on January 12. Along with those twelve days full of military actions and civil movements, we also witnessed a discourse war (Reygadas et al 1994). The Declaración de la Selva Lacandona, that we are going to analyse, was the foundation’s discourse of the Zapatista movement and one of the most important political documents of the recent history of Mexico. The discourse, solemn as it is, was propagated by written and oral means in the New Year of 1994 and marks the first appearance of a collective subject until then practically unknown to the public, that of the EZLN and its General Command that signed the declaration.
The document itself establishes its genre with its tittle and then gives its exact definition, that of a war declaration (§ 6, 51). The discursive subject (the EZLN and its General Command), the discursive object (the war and its legitimacy) and the discursive macro-act (the war declaration) give the Declaración de la Selva Lacandona its character as a written and formal political-military discourse. Argumentation is its dominant macro-operation -the essence of its functioning- although it displays some important narrative and prescriptive paragraphs.
Argumentation is obviously not physical war but we deal here with argumentation as an important component of a war situation. The declaration is an act, which corresponds to the formal beginnings of a war. Such a fundamental macro-act involves at least the subjects who declare war and the one they are going to fight against. The one who declares war must have the means to do it and a program to defend, but above all the legitimacy to launch warfare. The object of this paper is to analyse the construction of this elements. We will reconstruct the rhetoric of discourse, the enunciation functioning and the argumentation that leads to the pretended rational claim of the necessity of war, but first we need to set our theoretical approach.

2. Argumentative analysis tendencies
Argumentation theories can be grouped schematically in five general fields that emphasise different components of arguments: linguistics, dialectics, logic, rhetoric or the relationship between logic and rhetoric:
I. Linguistics (Ducrot & Anscombre)
II. Dialectics (van Eemeren & Grootendorst)
III. Formal logic (Toulmin)
IV. Natural logic (Grize & Vignaux)
V. Rhetoric (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca) Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – The Institutionalisation Of Argumentation Within Organisational Settings

• by: John A.A.Sillince - University of London

1. Introduction
Very little research has been undertaken which considers the organisational setting of argumentation. The research which does exist tends to emphasise agency at the expense of structure – it either takes the perspective of individual political power and influence (e.g. Jablin et al., 1987; Krackhardt, 1990; McPhee & Tompkins, 1985) or explores the language of micro-contexts using discourse analysis (e.g. Watson, 1995; Barley & Tolbert, 1997; Cooper et al., 1996), or provides a methodology for relating argumentation in organisational interaction to the measurement and representation of managerial cognition (Sillince, 1995). This paper aims at laying the foundation of an organisational theory of argumentation which provides more theoretical links than exist at present to organisational structure and its constraints on individual members’ actions.

2. The setting
The setting comprises prototypical collectivities of individual attributes (goal, role, action and artifact), situational atmosphere (friendliness, relaxedness, time for reflection) and organisational attributes (function, form and stage of change). These define where in the organisation the setting is located and determine whether or not any warrant is appropriate. The setting affects warrant appropriateness in several ways – for example, an organisation’s function affects warrant appropriateness (e.g. trade unions use the fairness warrant), and also an individual’s goal affects warrant appropriateness (e.g. a powerless listener will be more likely to be persuaded by the fairness warrant than a powerful one). The concept of setting is implicit in the question: “what types of arguments occur in what types of organizational social systems, and why this is so” (Willihnganz: 1994: 920). Setting provides one boundary condition constraining the explanatory power of any theory.
Rather similar to setting is the concept of argument field. Argumentation often occurs between individuals who share important interpretations and who occupy social, cultural or organisation spaces called “argument fields” (Willard, 1982; 1983; 1988) or “argument communities” (McKerrow, 1980). Such fields are social or organisational contexts in which particular discourse norms (Grice, 1975), common grounds, and shared values are taken for granted and in which specific premises, warrants, and claims are appropriate. Argument fields constrain behaviour, because people “surrender a measure of their freedom to the entailments of the field’s concepts and traditions” (Willard, 1983: 149). Argument fields within organisations enable specialists to reap the rewards of their expertise, so long as that expertise is organisationally relevant – part of the expert’s argument from authority derives from her role – “… factual claims imply institutionalized credibility: they cannot be made unless the speaker is seen as in some sense speaking for an expert domain” (Willard, 1989a: 73).
Cultural differences in argumentation behaviour have been observed – for example, American negotiators have been found to rely more on argument by induction (e.g. “X and Y occurred in a number of cases and X is true so Y is true”), Soviet negotiators more on argument by deduction (e.g. “X occurred, and X implies Y, so Y is true”), and French and Latin American negotiators rely more on argument by analogy (Glenn et al., 1970), whereas Middle Eastern cultures value the use of hyperbole, dramatic non-verbal cues, and elaborate emotional expressions during argumentation (Gudykunst & Ting-Toomey, 1988). Chinese negotiators tend to ask many more questions and to interrupt one another more frequently than American negotiators (Adler et al., 1992). However, cultural similarities have also been discovered – for example, both Japanese and North Americans prefer positive compliance-gaining strategies, such as using promises over negative ones, such as using threats (Neuliep & Hazelton, 1985). It is in an attempt to transcend such potential sources of conflict that the idea has been introduced of the ‘ideal audience’ which rises above factional interests (Perelman, 1986: 8). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Argument Or Explanation? Propositional Relations As Clues For Distinguishing Arguments From Explanations

• by: A.F. Snoeck Henkemans - University of Amsterdam

1. Indicators of argumentative moves
In order to investigate which types of words and expressions can be helpful in analyzing argumentative discourse, we started a research project at the University of Amsterdam that concentrates on verbal indicators provided by the Dutch language of the communicative and interactional functions of argumentative moves. Our project aims at making an inventory of potential indicators, classifying their indicative force in terms of the pragma-dialectical model for critical discussion, and describing the conditions that need to be fulfilled for a certain verbal expression to serve as an indicator of a specific argumentative move. The scope of the project is not restricted to indicators of arguments and standpoints, but extends to indicators of all speech acts that can play a part in resolving a dispute.
In carrying out our research, we make use of pragma-linguistic descriptions of connectives and other linguistic elements that can be indicative of aspects of argumentative discourse that are indispensable for an adequate evaluation. In our attempt to apply linguistic descriptions of markers of various kinds of textual relations in the analysis of argumentative discourse, we have encountered a number of obstacles. A major cause of this is that the most prominent approaches of indicators of textual relations are developed from a metatheoretical perspective that is crucially different from the functionalizing and externalizing approach favoured in pragma-dialectics. In addition, there is usually a difference of purpose: linguists are not particularly interested in analyzing argumentative discourse; their distinctions are therefore not geared to solving our problems of analysis.
In this paper, I shall begin by explaining the starting-points of our own pragma-dialectical approach to argumentative indicators. Next, I shall discuss the main problems we have with the relevant linguistic literature. Finally, I shall attempt to demonstrate the fruitfulness of our approach to the analysis of argumentative discourse. In this endeavour, I shall concentrate on the problem of distinguishing arguments from explanations.

2. A pragma-dialectical perspective on the analysis of argumentation
In the pragma-dialectical research programme, argumentation is approached from four basic meta-theoretical starting-points: the subject matter under investigation is to be ‘externalized’, ‘socialized’, ‘functionalized’, and ‘dialectified’ (Van Eemeren et al. 1996: 276-280). What are the implications of these starting-points when applied to the problem of analysing argumentative discourse?
First, functionalization. When analyzing argumentation, the purpose for which the argumentation is put forward is to be duly taken into account. Functionalization can be realized by making use of theoretical instruments from speech act theory, making the speech act the basic unit of analysis, with the propositional and the illocutionary level as its sublevels. By making use of pragmatic insights, the functions and structures of the speech acts performed in argumentative discourse can be adequately described. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 1998 – Two kinds Of Argument In Editorials Of Women’s Magazines

• by: Viviane M. Heberle - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

1. Introduction
Women’s magazines, understood as a popular feminine genre (Marshment 1993) and a form of self-help (Cameron 1995), aim at instructing and entertaining women (Ballaster et al 1991; McCracken 1993). Women’s world as portrayed in these publications is related to feminine social values, norms, problems, doubts and expectations within a personal, private sphere. These publications became a ‘feminised space’, with contradictions, asymmetry of gender differences and issues of sexuality constantly being re-worked (Beetham 1996).
Among the different genres and types of discourse found in women’s magazines are the editorials, also known as editors’ letters, comments or columns. These texts constitute a significant instance of advertising of the magazines, an example of ‘hybrid information-and-publicity (or ‘selling and telling’) discourse’ (Fairclough 1992:115). They are an amalgam of advertising and editorial material (McCracken 1993), since they provide information about sections of the issue but they do so stressing the wonderfully useful (from a Cosmopolitan editorial) features in the issue.
My investigation is based on principles of critical discourse analysis (CDA) which allow for the study of the bidirectional link between language use and context. Critical discourse analysis as a multidisciplinary field focuses on the complex relations between macro and micro linguistic features and different social issues, especially those concerned with ethnic, socio-economic, political or cultural inequalities. I specifically draw on Fairclough’s (1989; 1992; 1995) social theory of discourse with its three interdependent levels of analysis: text (lexicogrammatical features), discourse practice (analysis of the processes of text production and interpretation); and social practice (institutional, societal issues; power and ideology). Halliday’s (1978; 1985; 1994) systemic-functional grammar is considered an insightful linguistic tool for CDA studies, to analyze textual and contextual features.
An important aspect of discursive practices in contemporary society concerns the conversational, promotional (Wernick 1991) and confessional nature of discourse. Giddens’ (1984) concept of modernity is also useful to perceive globalized discursive practices in contemporary society, with local and global habits and customs, individual and collective aims put together.
As a researcher of a text aimed at women, I also found it necessary to investigate studies on language and gender which have proved insightful for the link between the contextual features and the text analysis. Read more