1. A Case of Unreconciled Dissensus
Book V of Milton’s Paradise Lost presents a striking dissensus between Satan and the Archangel Abdiel over the nature of the Deity. Each presents an argument for his view which – not unsurprisingly – the other rejects. Milton sets the scene – The Almighty before a convocation of all angels has decreed his Son their Lord and has mandated that “to him shall bow/All knees in Heav’n, and shall confess him Lord” (V, 607-608) This decree Satan cannot abide. He resolves to rebel, never bending the knee, nor, if he can persuade them, will any of the angels under his command. Paraphrasing to bring out the underlying argument, Satan first proposes
(1) Prior to this decree, all Natives of Heaven (including the Almighty and his Son) have been equally free.
(2) No one has a right to assume monarchy over one’s equals in freedom. Hence
(3) The Almighty has no right to proclaim this decree.

Although Satan offers two further arguments, Abdiel turns his critical questions exclusively to Satan’s first. Again paraphrasing, his argument can be laid out quite straightforwardly:
(1) The Almighty created you and indeed all the spirits of heaven, and endowed all with their glory. Therefore
(2) Neither you nor all angels taken together are equal to the Almighty. Therefore
(3) Justice gives you  no right to enter with God in determining what are the laws or principles governing your relation. Therefore
(4) The Decree of the Almighty is just.

Satan replies first by questioning Abdiel’s first premise. What evidence is there for this creation, he asks. Who observed it? Do your remember your own making? Satan then continues
We know no time when we were not as now;
Know none before us, self-begot, self-rais’d
By our own quickening power….
(V, 859-861)

These observations bear on his assertion that “Our puissance is our own,” i.e. we are not creatures of or subordinate or inferior to the Almighty. Satan ends his discourse by ordering Abdiel quickly to report his sentiments to the King. The dialectic thus ends at this confrontation stage.

With passions running as high as Milton portrays them, one wonders whether the argument could be advanced to a further stage. However, even assuming dispassionate interlocutors, the literary critic and legal scholar Stanley Fish has argued that it could never proceed to a rational resolution. Since his argument presents a challenge to the whole enterprise of argumentation, it deserves the attention of argumentation theorists.

2. Fish’s Challenge to Argumentation
In arguing that rational resolution of their dispute is impossible, Fish focuses on Satan’s asking Abdiel to show that we are created beings and construes the passage, already quoted,
We know no time when we were not as now;
Know none before us, self-begot, self-rais’d

as an argument, our self-creation being inferred from our lack of knowledge of a time when we were other than as now. Fish asks us to contrast this argument with that of the newly created Adam, aware for the first time both of his surrounding world and its beauty and of his body with its powers:
But who I was, or where, or from what cause
Knew not, …
… how came I thus, how here?
Not of myself; by some great Maker then,
In goodness and in power preëminent;
(VIII, 270-271, 277-279)

Fish sees Adam arguing from the premise that he does not know how he came into being to the conclusion that he owes his being to a Maker first in goodness and power. In the context of his argument that all the angels are creatures of the Almighty, Abdiel has made a remark whose relevance he might have highlighted should Satan have permitted him to give evidence of that claim:
Yet by experience taught we know how good,
And of our good, and of our dignity
How provident he is, …
(V, 826-828)

Adam and Abdiel’s reasoning share this epistemological point:  Our inferences may pass beyond the realm of experience in finding an explanation of the experienced realm or seeing some significance, e,g, the Deity’s benevolent nature, which it points to.  By contrast, Satan rejects  both inferences a priori.

Fish sees both arguments as incompletely stated, both lacking a first premise. Given recent work on enthymemes,[i] I believe it better to say that both arguments instance substantial, as opposed to formal, inference rules or warrants.

Satan’s warrant:
Given that x is consciously aware of no time when x was other than as now nor of any predecessor or progenitor of x
One may take it that x is self-created

Adam’s warrant:
Given that x knows not how x got to this place of preëminent beauty possessed of a body of preëminent vitality
One may take it that x is the work of a Maker unsurpassed in goodness and power.

Fish now makes a crucial point for his argument that this exchange between Satan and Abdiel cannot go beyond the confrontation stage:
Since the first premise is what is missing, it cannot be derived from anything in the visible scene; it is what must be imported – on no evidentiary basis whatsoever – so
that the visible scene, the things of this world, can acquire the meaning and significance they will now have. (Fish 1996, p. 19, italics in original)

It is a commonplace that corresponding to an argument is a conditional statement, the conjunction of the premises being the antecedent, the conclusion the consequent. As Hitchcock (1985) has shown, arguments which some analyze as first-order enthymemes assume more than this associated conditional, namely some universal generalization of that conditional. As we have argued (2011), this universal generalization must be nomic, supporting subjunctive conditionals, and not merely accidental. It is never a description, an extensional statement whose truth conditions concern just the actual world. In many instances, it is an interpretation,[ii] an intensional statement whose truth-conditions involve considering other possible worlds.[iii] Hence, if to be derived from the visible scene means simply to describe some aspect of one’s surroundings of which one is aware just through sense perception, we agree with Fish that the first premise cannot be derived in this way. We also agree that in the light of interpretive generalizations, certain descriptive features acquire meaning (or their meaning becomes disclosed). This point may be appreciated better in connection with warrants. Consider again Adam’s warrant. Although the premise involves an aesthetic evaluation rather than a mere description, in light of this warrant Adam does not see himself in a randomly beautiful world but in one whose beauty is attributable to conscious agency. But if one has an explanation for some event or condition, that event or condition has meaning, at least in some sense or to some degree. Likewise, Satan’s warrant is interpretive. It associates a meaning, being self-created, with the non-awareness of one’s origination or of any originating progenitor.

Fish elaborates his position that first premises – alternatively warrants – cannot be based on evidence by saying
In the absence of a fixed commitment–of a first premise that cannot be the object of thought because it is the enabling condition of thought–cognitive activity cannot get started. One’s consciousness must be grounded in an originary act of faith – a stipulation of basic value – from which determinations of  right and wrong, relevant and irrelevant, real and unreal, will then follow. (Fish 1996, pp. 19-20)

Following Fish, let us refer to this as the Miltonian position. Hence we understand the position asserting that by virtue of our warrants, we recognize what is relevant to what, that something’s possessing a certain property is evidence that it possesses some further property, but that these warrants as principles of evidence are not themselves defendable through evidence and thus not defendable through argument. They are and must be accepted on faith, the faith constituting at least part of  one’s world view. One might say that warrants used in particular arguments derive in some sense from some fundamental warrant or warrants. But those basic warrants are not based on any evidence, their acceptance being an act of faith.

Continuing within the framework of the Toulmin model, we see another point at the core of the Miltonian position. Recall that non-demonstrative warrants are open to rebuttal. We have already seen that it is part of Satan’s epistemological stance to recognize as real only what is disclosed by descriptive belief-generating mechanisms analogous to perception, memory, introspection. Hence, any warrant permitting us to infer something non-observable from what is observable must be rejected. The principle identifying “experience” with being is a blanket rebuttal of all such warrants. Again, such a rebuttal cannot be defended with evidence, but derives from the basic act of faith which stipulates what is real and unreal. Warrants, then, as constituting principles of evidence, and rebuttals, as ruling out certain inferential moves, are articles of faith, not subject to critical scrutiny or support through argumentation.

Fish sees in this picture of the structure of cognitive activity a challenge to the liberal ideal of open mindedness to all positions, including those incompatible with one’s cherished opinions, an open mindedness including a willingness to revise one’s viewpoints in light of argumentation. As such, the picture challenges much of the argumentation community’s understanding of the practice of argument and its ideal conditions. For example, consider the pragma-dialectical code of conduct for rational discussants. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst require that “the discussants must be able to advance every point of view and must be able to cast doubt on every point of view” (1984, p. 154). If asked, a party advancing a standpoint must defend it with cogent argument. If the defense fails, the proponent must retract the standpoint. If it succeeds, the challenger must retract her doubt. (Compare Rules 2 and 9 in (1992, pp. 208-209).) Clearly, on Fish’s picture if one tried to argue for a claim expressing the propositional content of a warrant one accepts, one would at best be arguing in a circle. Since the warrant determines what is deemed relevant or irrelevant, the very warrants one’s argument would instantiate would ultimately be acts of faith. Any proponent who realizes this realizes that he cannot argue cogently for that claim.[iv]

Even if the proponent failed to realize the futility of his attempted argument, it is hard to see how the discussion could ever proceed to the argumentation stage. This stage presupposes agreement on the rules of discussion. But if proponent and challenger have different, indeed incompatible originating acts of faith concerning their warrants, their very inference rules and rebuttals, grounded in such originating acts of faith, will differ and essentially differ. Remember these originating acts of faith are not subject to rational appraisal. Even if the parties attempted to bypass agreement on rules and proceed to argumentation, I do not see how the proponent could realize that his argument failed, if it did,  or the challenger realize that the proponent’s argument was successful, if it was. If the proponent’s argument depends on an inference rule the challenger does not accept or the proponent would not recognize the force of the challenger’s rebuttal, the discussion could never reach the concluding stage. A critical discussion in the pragma-dialectical sense is impossible on the Miltonian position.

For the Miltonian, the belief expressing the faith of the originating act constitutes what is understood as reasonable by the person making that act of faith. Any viewpoint challenging that originating belief will be dismissed as unreasonable. “A reasonable mind is a mind that refuses to be open” (Fish, 1996, p. 20). Fish sees this Miltonian stance as typifying religious commitment, the shared faith of a religious community. Indeed, we might see it as typifying ideological commitments in general, and more generally as typifying world-view commitments. For the adherents of a religious tradition or an ideology with a core creed, challenges to the tenets of that creed might seem impossible. Again, a challenge to any facet of one’s world-view would seem absurd.

The liberal stance presupposed by argumentation theory’s very understanding of argument as dialectical seems incompatible with the Miltonian stance of commitment. To seek to resolve a difference of opinion through argument, the parties must agree on the principles of evidence certifying the outcome. But especially if the difference concerns some opinion central to the world- view of one of the parties to the discussion, and world-views determine the acts of faith which determine principles of evidence, a dialectical discussion seems impossible. But to what extent are differences of opinion the result of differences over principles of evidence? Perhaps not all differences of opinion involve such differences, and this leaves a door open for the liberal view of argument.

One way for the advocates of argument to deal with this dissensus over world-view commitments would be to rule out argument over those commitments or over opinions essentially deriving from them, and to rule out appealing to any principles of evidence essentially dependent on them in any dialectical exchange, at least in any dialectical exchange in the public sphere. Not only does this accord with a liberal stance, Fish argues that it itself actually expresses a core ideological commitment of liberalism:

Liberalism rests on the substantive judgment that the public sphere must be insulated from viewpoints that owe their allegiance not to its procedure – to the unfettered operation of the market-place of ideas – but to the truths they work to establish. (Fish 1996, p. 22)

Liberalism presupposes that at least some issues of fact and principles of evidence can be disentangled from issues of ideology. That “a stage of perception…exists before interest kicks in” is a “prime tenet of liberal thought” (Fish 1996, p. 25). For liberalism, we might say, a viewpoint not justifiable through principles independent of ideological commitments cannot be taken seriously. It is as unreasonable from the liberal point of view as the viewpoints challenging that view are unreasonable from the viewpoint of those committed to that viewpoint.

If this characterization of liberalism is correct and the argumentation community is committed to the liberal stance, then it would seem that the argumentation community is intolerant of ideological commitment, including religious commitment. Such commitments are beyond the pale of argumentation and attempts to resolve them through argument futile. Such a viewpoint may well have negative social consequences for the argumentation community. It suggests that most of the commitments by which persons see meaning and value fail to be rationally grounded, with all the negative emotive force of that characterization. Those with world-view commitments who might take umbrage over this characterization have a riposte. Liberalism’s commitment to principles of evidence regarded as independent of world-view commitments and rejection of ideologically dependent principles is simply part of its ideological commitment! Liberalism is an ideology on all fours with other ideologies, but involving this distinct paradox: Liberalism’s core principles concerning evidence are originating ideological commitments not subject to justification through evidence and therefore contradictory to those very principles themselves! How may we come to the rescue of argumentation?

3. Is Argumentation Caught in a Dilemma?
Let us say first that Fish’s epistemological view contains a very important insight, one which I believe he shares with Peirce. (See “What is a Leading Principle” in (1955), pp. 129-134.) Peirce analyzes belief as a habit which develops under the stimulation of various experiences and the pathways we find most successful in dealing with these irritations. One type of belief-habit conveys us from one judgment, the premise, to another judgment, the conclusion, i.e. the belief-habit allows us to infer the conclusion from the premise. Clearly, since the experiences of different individuals will be different, we may expect them to develop different habits, including different inferential belief-habits. These differences will affect intuitions of what counts as a reason for what, intuitions of relevance. Hence we find Fish on solid ground when he allows that different persons will recognize evidence differently. To be able to infer a conclusion from a premise is to recognize that the premise or what it expresses has a certain meaning. Different persons then will recognize meaning differently and interpret situations differently. But we cannot agree that the first premise of any argument  is imported or must be imported “on no evidentiary basis whatsoever.” Taking the assumption as a warrant rather than a premise, Fish in effect is claiming that no warrants can be backed, in Toulmin’s sense, more generally that they and their associated nomic universal generalizations are immune to logical or epistemological evaluation. Is this true? Are they simply matters of faith?

By including backing for warrants in the layout of arguments, Toulmin is allowing that warrants are subject to evidentiary support. As is well known, given his notion of argument fields, Toulmin allows distinctly different types of such evidentiary support.[v] But this does not gainsay the fact that warrants can be supported with evidence. Indeed the very considerations showing that Peirce and Fish would agree that different persons reason according to warrants belonging to different classes also shows that they would disagree on warrants not having evidentiary support. The experiences which led to the formation of the belief-habit constitute evidentiary backing for it. Furthermore, as Toulmin has taught us, not only can warrants be backed, they can be rebutted. But this is to bring negative evidentiary considerations to bear on evaluating the reliability of the warrant. Further yet, a challenger may raise the question of whether a rebuttal holds and a proponent may show that it does not, thus giving a further type of evidentiary support to the warrant.

Pace Fish, we can subject both Satan’s and Adam’s warrants to rational scrutiny. Consider the premise of Satan’s warrant:
x is consciously aware of no time when x was other than as now nor of any predecessor or progenitor of x.

Substituting for ‘x’ a referring expression denoting some being with a capacity for memory, the intended domain of this warrant, produces a logically consistent statement. There is nothing self-contradictory in saying
John is consciously aware of no time when John was other than as now nor of any predecessor or progenitor of John.

But consider the conclusion–John created John. Is the notion of a self-created being logically consistent?  Although this, like all substantive philosophical positions, is open to debate, common sense might vote that self-creation is not coherent. But surely a warrant allowing one to pass from a consistent statement to one metaphysically incoherent is totally unreliable, if not invalid. That no being can create itself constitutes a serious rebuttal to Satan’s warrant. By contrast, Adam’s warrant is abductive, passing from a description/evaluation to an explanation. But one can certainly argue for an explanation by arguing that it is superior to its alternatives, which constitute possible or potential rebuttals.  Such an argument, better the evidence included in the premises of the argument, constitute evidence for the warrant. Although Adam may reason according to his warrant without reflection, this in itself does not show that his warrant can only be accepted on faith.

Fish may now object that the critique betrays a superficial understanding of his position. Satan’s warrant derives from his “faith” that the limits of his experience determine the limits of reality This faith is essential to Satan. “The habit of identifying the limits of reality with the limits of his own horizons defines Satan – it makes him what he is” (1996, 19). Since you do not share Satan’s essential commitment, you may judge that Satan’s warrant may be rebutted. But you yourself have essential commitments, or at least commitments to one or more overarching basic or first principles, not open to your consideration because they determine the very structure of your rationality, including your capacity to critique other viewpoints. Fish endorses this position in a striking epistemological statement:
Evidence is never independent in the sense of being immediately perspicuous; evidence comes into view (or doesn’t) in the light of some first premise or “essential axiom” that cannot itself be put to the test because the protocols of testing are established by its pre-assumed authority. (1996, 23)

Is this true? Suppose one’s experience leads to forming an inferential belief-habit expressible as a warrant. Suppose one meets another whose stock of inference habits does not include this warrant. If one presents the evidence or paradigm instances of the evidence which led to the forming of one’s belief habit, why cannot the other appreciate that they constitute positive evident for that warrant, and indeed may even constitute sufficient evidence for acceptance? How is some essential axiom necessary to recognize this evidence as evidence? Again, on what essential axiom does one’s recognition of the incoherence of a self-created being rely? The newly created Adam could have entertained an additional hypothesis in considering how he came to be in the environment in which he found himself with his body having the powers he is aware of. It all just popped into existence by chance. Does Adam need an originating faith to see which hypothesis he is aware of has higher probability? What essential axiom is necessary for him to see that given two rival hypotheses, the one with the greater likelihood is the one better supported by the evidence–the prime principle of confirmation?

Let us return to the confrontation between Satan and Abdiel. Satan believes he is the equal of the Almighty, at least in freedom. Abdiel believes he is a creature of the Almighty, and thus not equal. These “articles of faith” have a bearing on why Satan accepts the warrant
Given that x has declared the son of x Lord over all Y’s
One may take it that x has made a power grab

while Abdiel does not. Satan and Abdiel thus differ radically on the meaning of the event and thus on whether their experience constitutes evidence for their contrary interpretations. Now there is a profound epistemic difference between saying that the Deity made a certain proclamation and saying that by making this proclamation the Deity made a power grab. The first is a simple description of a publically observable event. The second is a claim about the intentions of the Deity, not open to public inspection. That Satan’s and Abdiel’s different views on the intentions of the Deity are due to fundamental differences in their originating commitments over their creaturely status constitutes a plausible explanation for their dissensus. By virtue of their different originating commitments, they interpret experienced features of reality differently. Could one amend the Miltonian claim to allow that accepting principles of evidence for descriptions of observable events may be independent of any originating commitment, together with recognizing when broadly logical concepts hold and making judgments or estimations of probability, but that accepting principles of evidence involving interpretive principles, including evidence for those principles themselves, is consequent upon an originating commitment?

Such an amendment constitutes a significant concession for the Miltonian to liberalism. Some principles of evidence may be disentangled from ideology. But if our examples of experiential backing for warrants, considerations of the incoherence of self-causation, or best explanations for evidence are cogent, we do have some sources of objective evidence and  objective critique of principles of evidence. Hence, although we can agree with Fish that many rules of evidence one person acknowledges may differ from the rules of evidence acknowledged by someone else, and we can also agree that a person’s commitments, especially in connection with value, ideology, and world view, issue in a set of inference habits specifically reflecting those commitments, we do not agree that these need to constitute the entire set of evidence principles and  inference habits a person employs.

However, excluding argumentation from a significant role in the areas of meaning and value may make its role and the liberalism it expresses seem quite thin. Do most arguments in the public sphere confine themselves just to descriptions and the generalizations they support,  assertions about broadly logical relations, or estimations of probability and their epistemic consequences? Do not the balance of arguments in the public sphere concern meaning and value? The Miltonian can urge: True, you have shown that there are principles of evidence independent of originating commitments. But by contrast with the big existential questions, are not the issues of these arguments superficial? Contrast such concerns with the commitments of Satan and Abdiel. For Satan, the world, as disclosed to us by our experience, is all there is, and this experience, in itself, discloses no being on whom the world is metaphysically dependent. This core commitment determines his refusal to acknowledge any creaturely dependence. Hence any worship of another is“prostration vile” (V, 782). By contrast, at the core of Abdiel’s world view is acknowledgment of creaturely dependence on the Almighty and trust in his providence. Are not these contrasting world views each the product of radially different originating commitments? But if you concede that argumentation cannot deal with dissensus over such world-view issues, you have made a great concession to my Miltonian position.

But why are Satan’s and Abdiel’s contrasting metaphysical beliefs  immune to scrutiny on the basis of commonly recognized epistemic principles of evidence?  Do ideological or metaphysical commitments and what they entail always lie outside what can be subject to critical discussion? Can argumentation play no role in adjudicating such disagreements? We turn to that issue in the next section.

4. Can Argumentation Not Deal With Certain Cases of Dissensus?
As Fish has indicated, these metaphysical commitments constitute “an originary act of faith” from which judgments of meaning and value follow. The propositional content of such an act of faith is some ultimate premise or “essential axiom.” The warrants we apply in the “lower level” arguments we have been considering or the associated universal generalizations of these warrants are consequences of these essential axioms. It is by virtue of subscribing to some essential axiom that we recognize some statement as evidence for some other. In addition to the examples of evidentiary relations we have been considering – particular instances supporting and thus backing generalizations, recognition of broadly logical entailment and related concepts such as coherence or incoherence, recognition of relations of conditional probability – we may add recognition that certain descriptive properties such as having made a promise are relevant to certain evaluative properties, here being morally bound to fulfill it.

As we have seen, our previous considerations here cast real doubt on Fish’s claim that recognizing relevance, i.e. recognizing what constitutes evidence for what, is dependent on originating commitments. We can raise the same issue for Fish over lower level arguments of value. How are originating commitments involved in seeing that my making a promise is a reason why I am bound to keep it, at least a prima facie reason from which my obligation follows ceteris paribus? If someone disagreed about the obligation or just failed to see it, one might invite the person to carry out a thought experiment, imaginatively entering into a situation with the same deontically relevant properties, where that person would admit that the obligation was binding. But where does some essential axiom enter into this argument? The burden of proof, we may urge, is on Fish to show in all these lower-level cases how the recognition of evidential relevance derives from some essential axiom and would be impossible without the recognition of such an axiom. In light of the fact that expecting agreement over relevance in many lower-level cases seems straightforward, Fish has a heavy burden of proof. We shall see the import of this point shortly.

One strategy Fish might use to discharge this burden of proof would be to argue that we are being provincial. We are simply assuming that our recognitions of evidentiary relevance are universal. The fact that we can confidently expect agreement on judgments of relevance only shows that we have confined our circle of acquaintance to those sharing our originating act of faith or some basic principle overlapping with it significantly. That explains our intuitions of relevance and expected consensus. But imagine someone who holds that our making a promise is not much of a reason for saying we are obligated to keep it. Indeed, suppose the person held that our perceiving where  making a promise with no intention to keep it would advance our self-interest in a given situation, we have reason to do just that. Now we are faced with someone with a different essential axiom from which it does not follow that making a promise is relevant to keeping it, or that self-interest always trumps moral regard for others. How would you argue with that person?

This question gains significant poignancy in light of our diverse world. People do disagree on fundamental commitments–for or against democracy as the proper form of government, for or against seeing the human individual as having a value superior to the human collective, for or against seeing facts in the world having a transcendental import. Can argumentation deal with dissensus over such commitments, which we may call world-view commitments? It is here that our considerations on recognizing evidentiary relations independently of world-view commitments come to the fore. We may see world view commitments providing an overall, overarching, or comprehensive explanation, investing events in the world with meaning, or setting limits on the scope of any explanation. We have already seen how Satan’s view of reality as co-extensive with experience and of himself and his angels as self-made led to radically different value commitments from Abdiel’s view of his creaturely status. Given conscious recognition of a world-view, then, one is confronted with two sources for one’s judgments of evidentiary relevance – one’s individual recognition of relevance apart from any world – view commitment and judgments deriving from that commitment. Where such judgments agree, they are mutually reinforcing. Where they do not, adjustment either on the part of the world-view commitment or on the part of certain individual judgments or both is required to maintain consistency. The goal is to reach what Rawls calls reflective equilibrium. The point is that when in reflective equilibrium, there is a mutually reinforcing evidentiary relation between the world-view commitment and the individual judgments of relevance. “From below,” the individual judgments support the “essential axiom” of the world-view commitment. “From above,” that the individual judgments may derive from such an axiom supports such judgments. World-view commitments may then be supported by evidence and it seems we may recognize these support relations independently of the commitment.

We may now address the question of what should be the function of argumentation when dealing with world-view dissensus. Clearly, although complete reflective equilibrium may be an ideal, we expect that in actual cases equilibrium will be a matter of more or less. The more equilibrium, the greater the evidential support, the less the lower. Clearly also, ceteris paribus, reflective equilibrium is a sign of the reasonableness of both the fundamental commitment and the individual judgments, and a system in which there is greater reflective equilibrium is one with greater reasonableness. When persons or cultures with divergent world-views meet, they may be able then, to recognize the reasonableness of each other’s world view commitments through recognizing degree of reflective equilibrium. An argument which prima facie showed why one’s world view commitments functioned as basic principles for one’s judgments of meaning and value would be a case for the prima facie reasonableness of both the world view commitments and the judgments of meaning and value. Surely such an argument could be appreciated as prima facie reasonable by someone not sharing those commitments, and indeed such an appreciation would be an act of respect and deepening respect for those who do hold these commitments. But here is an obvious role for argumentation.

The role of argumentation goes further. Those holding one world view might come to recognize that the basic commitment, essential axiom of those in some other culture may possibly be in better reflective equilibrium or hold promise of better reflective equilibrium with their own individual judgments than their own basic axiom. Greater reflective equilibrium would be possible by either accepting the other culture’s basic axiom or by modifying their own essential axiom to approximate that of the other culture. But this is tantamount to arguing for an essential axiom. That individual judgments are better accommodated constitutes evidence for the basic commitment.

Furthermore, this new essential axiom may account for individual judgments which the old did not. Consider a materialist and a theist with their contrasting world views. Could not both agree that human beings have human rights? Could not both substantially agree on what are those rights? But is it not conceivable that given one’s world view, one might construct a prima facie more reasonable or otherwise better explanation of why humans have rights and justification for respecting those rights than one might be able to construct given a contrasting world view? Might this not move an adherent of the other world view, at least in some way, to reconsider her world view commitments? That is, has the dialogue not taken a step toward the resolution of the disagreement through argument? Again, we are speaking quite generally here, surely could not a prima facie acceptable explanation of human equality in one culture on the basis of its world view commitments influence the ongoing argumentation in another culture whose world view commitments may not provide an equally prima facie  adequate explanation of human equality? Could not such ongoing argumentation lead to an increased convergence of points of view between the two cultures? At the least, entering such a dialogue may lead to a deeper understanding of one’s world view and a more mature commitment to it.

Surely, it is plausible that dialogues involving cross-cultural argumentation might lead to such an outcome. But such dialogues have a necessary condition – the participants must be genuinely open to valuing reasonableness. But need this always be the case? Our considerations here have not shown any reason to refuse to invite those with divergent world view commitments or indeed with any difference in viewpoint over significant, existential issues into a critical discussion. The question, of course, is whether they will accept the invitation. Satan certainly would not. If one’s world view denies that there can be evidence of a certain type, or that certain values are not genuinely positive but rather perverse, or claims that certain explanations which in open court might be judged best explanations are not viable at all, there may simply be nothing to say to that person in a critical discussion aimed at showing the reasonableness of one’s world view. Argumentation is limited by the willingness to enter into such dialectical exchanges. But for those who do accept the invitation, critical discussion offers a way of at least appreciating the reasonableness of others’ world views, and quite possibly of deeper understanding and refinement of one’s own. Issues of fundamental commitments, essential axioms, world-views are not then beyond the realm of argumentation. These claims are subject to support through argumentation where the recognitions of evidentiary relevance are independent of originating acts of faith. We see Fish’s skepticism of argumentation not justified on any level.

What then is the place of argumentation (and thus the importance of argumentation theory) for the present time with its deep cultural differences, which militants may seek to exploit, even violently. Such militants may be closed to entering a critical discussion. But this is not because their world view commitments and those whom they oppose are based on originating commitments which for all parties are arbitrary and immune to rational evaluation. Their refusal in no way shows that the invitation to inquiry was conceptually incoherent or critical discussion an impossibility. By contrast, if critical discussion is a genuine possibility, then there is at least one place in this pluralistic but currently increasingly polarized world where divergent cultures may meet to critically examine their differences in peace, where argumentation provides the framework for such meetings.

NOTES
[i] For our analysis of enthymemes and references to related literature, see our (2011), Chapter 7.
[ii] For our definition of interpretation as a type of statement and our distinction of the basic types of statements, see our (2005a, Chapter 5.2, especially p. 105).
[iii] The types of associated conditionals assumed parallels the types of warrants an argument may involve. For a discussion of these types, see our (2005b).
[iv] He realizes this unless, of course, his originating act sanctions circular inference.
[v]  Some argumentation theorists have found Toulmin’s notion of field problematic. In (2005b), we argue for replacing this notion with an epistermic classification. The points are still the same. Warrants can be backed, albeit in different ways, and different persons may develop different bodies of warrants.

REFERENCES
Eemeren, Frans H. van and Rob Grootendorst. (1984). Speech Acts in Argumentative Discussions. Dordrecht-Holland/Cinnaminson-U.S.A.: Foris Publications.
Eemeren, Frans H. van and Rob Grootendorst. (1992). Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.
Fish, Stanley. (1996). “Why We Can’t All Just Get Along.” First Things 60, 18-26.
Freeman, James B. (2005a). Acceptable Premises: An Epistemic Approach to an Informal Logic Problem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Freeman, James B. (2005b). “Systematizing Toulmin’s Warrants.”  Argumentation 19 (2005), 331-346.
Freeman, James B. (2011). Argument Structure: Representation and Theory. Dordrecht: Springer.
Hitchcock, David (1985). “Enthymematic Arguments.” Informal Logic 7, 83-97.
Milton, John. (1962). Paradise Lost: A Poem in Twelve Books. Merritt Y. Hughes, ed.. New York: The Odyssey Press.
Peirce, Charles S. (1955). Philosophical Writings of Peirce.  Justus Buchler, ed. New York: Dover Publications.
Rawls, John. (1971). A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

1. Introduction
“Controversies are indispensable for the formation, evolution and evaluation of (scientific) theories, because it is through them that the essential role of criticism […] of scientific theories is performed” (Dascal 1998, p. 147). Of the many questions related to this claim, which we accept, we should like to focus on the question how present-day interactive digital media can be used as vehicles of public controversy in the sciences.

Historically, new media have often played a decisive role in facilitating public controversy. A case in point is the revolution in scientific communication caused by the introduction of scientific journals like the “Journal des Sçavans” or the “Acta Eruditorum” in the second half of the 17^th century. These journals appeared at relatively short intervals and provided the opportunity to report on one’s own research or, by writing reviews, to report and criticize the work of others, for scientists all over Europe to read and to respond to. These new media changed three important factors of scientific communication:
1. the spread of scientific information,
2. the speed of publication,
3. the amount of interactivity between scholars.

Maybe the most remarkable result of these changes was the opportunity provided for a multitude of lively public controversies in the Republic of Letters, which contributed to the confrontation and development of theoretical views and empirical research and thereby helped advance science in an amazing way.

Recent developments in digital technology have initiated changes in the practice of scientific communication which, arguably, are comparable to the 17^th century revolution in scientific communication.[i] What is remarkable is that factors similar to those three hundred years ago play a significant role in the use of recent new media, i.e. wide distribution, speed of publication, and a high degree of interactivity.

As observers of scientific communication today we are in the happy position to be able to follow the progress of evolving digital media and genres of communication in our own present time. This is what we are doing in a project on “Scientific information, critique and controversy in digital media”, which is being conducted at the University of Gießen (Germany) and which is funded by the VW Foundation.[ii] Our paper presents work done in the context of this project, focussing mainly on controversies in interactive digital formats like mailinglists, blogs, and open-review journals. As for our theoretical approach, we build on our earlier work in the pragmatics of controversies and on communication in the digital media (cf. Fritz 2008; 2010; forthcoming a; Gloning 1999; 2005).

2. On the attractivity and some problems of scientific controversies in interactive digital media
If controversies are considered an efficient motor of scientific progress, then it could be a measure of the success of the new digital science media, if these media encourage fruitful controversies. There is, however, so far no simple answer to the question if this is the case.

Generally speaking, there is an interesting tension between the fact that many scholars are quite reluctant to participate in controversies on the internet and the fact that we do find many attractive and worthwhile controversies in these formats. As for the reasons for this reluctance, scholars we asked mentioned the following, among others:
– Controversies are too time-consuming.
– Controversies can be harmful to your reputation.
– Collaborative efforts like the participation in controversies don’t pay out in terms of the academic reward system.
– Theoretical controversies are less useful than the collection and analysis of empirical data.

These and similar reasons seem to be obstacles to active participation in scientific controversies. Obviously, what is considered an obstacle differs according to subject or discipline. For example, open peer review has been practised in Physics and other sciences for about 20 years now, whereas Arts subjects still tend to stick to traditional reviewing of papers. This is an interesting point which we shall, however, not discuss in this paper.

In spite of these obstacles, many interesting controversies are conducted in digital formats. From what we have seen in our research so far, there are especially two types of contexts where lively controversies tend to arise. The first is topics and domains where scientific research and public interest meet, e.g. climate controversies or controversies on creationism and similar topics. The second context is reviews of scientific writings and reactions to such reviews. We shall briefly mention an example of the former type and then go on to summarize two case studies on controversies sparked off by reviews.

Discussions on topics on the borderline between science and politics and ideology are often quite animated and informative, there is, however, a tendency for ideological dogmatists and other destructive participants (so-called “trolls”) to intrude on and even to dominate such discussions, which makes them less attractive for “genuine” scientists. We should like to give an example of this kind of thread in the medium of blogs.

On July 30^th, 2008 a paper with the title “Dinosaurian Soft Tissues Interpreted as Bacterial Biofilms“ by T. G. Kaye and his collaborators appeared in PLoS ONE, an interactive open-access journal for the communication of peer-reviewed scientific and medical research.[iii] This paper was a critical reaction to earlier studies, which had claimed to have identified and isolated soft tissues from a 68 million year old fossil bone. On the day of its publication in PloS ONE, Tara C. Smith, an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology, summarized the article by Kaye and part of the earlier controversy on her own blog Aetiology and explained its main point to non-specialists.[iv]

This blog was commented upon in 20 postings within two days. Two of the postings are particularly interesting from our point of view, because they show part of the process which contributes to the wide distribution of contributions on the internet. The first is by Tom Kaye, one of the authors of the paper

Hello All,
Tom Kaye here from the paper. Since this seems to be the blog with the most activity, I will offer to answer any questions for the group.
Tom
Posted by: Tom Kaye | July 30, 2008 5:11 PM

The second one is by the owner of the blog, Tara C. Smith, who directly addresses Tom Kaye and mentions another blog, where there is a lively discussion on the same topic going on:
Hi Tom –
Thanks for stopping by! There’s also a good discussion over at Panda’s Thumb, where I cross-posted this. If you can ignore the trolls (the creationists etc.) there are some good
questions you may be able to respond to over there also.
Posted by: Tara C. Smith | July 30, 2008 5:56 PM

The relevant discussion on Panda’s Thumb, a scientific weblog on questions of evolution, comprises 122 comments within a fortnight.[v] Among these postings there are quite a number of serious, scientifically-informed contributions, to which the author answers in longish replies. But there is also at least one obvious anti-evolutionist, who introduces a fairly polemical tone. To this the author of the paper remarks: “I see there is the usual ID (i.e. Intelligent Design, GF) spam going on but if we can work around that I am willing to answer any reasonable questions”. So what we get on this blog is a mixed bag of serious discussion and facile polemics. And much of this is happening on the very day the Kaye et al. paper was published. So, whatever the merits of this discussion in terms of scientific progress, the author of the paper certainly received a remarkable amount of “attention space” (cf. Collins 2000, p. 38f.) for his research within a short period of time.

3. Reviews and replies
Now to the question of controversies sparked off by reviews. We shall give two examples from case studies from our project, one taken from a mailinglist and one from an open peer review journal.

3.1 A review and an ensuing controversy on a mailinglist
The first example consists of material from the Linguist List section on “book discussion” which we shall briefly present and analyse. The Linguist List is the biggest website for academic linguists, providing mailing lists for various sub-disciplines.[vi] The purpose of the book discussion section is presented as follows: “We strongly encourage discussion (including book authors if they so desire and their response is appropriate) of reviews. We do this because we feel the electronic medium allows us to provide a service that print sources cannot” (posting by the moderator in charge of reviews). A later notice by the moderator sounded even more inviting to authors: “What follows is a review or discussion note contributed to our Book Discussion Forum. We expect discussions to be informal and interactive; and the author of the book discussed is cordially invited to join in” (Andrew Carnie, in a posting of Oct. 3^rd, 2000).

This is the exact opposite of the principle that an author should not reply to his reviewer, which is still well established in scientific journals today, although historically, this is by no means necessary, as the early history of reviewing in the 17^th and 18^th centuries shows.[vii] So, in this respect, we are back to the exciting days of the late 17^th century!

We shall now give a short analytical summary of a controversy which took place few years ago, and which nicely shows the potential of the mailinglist format for this kind of exchange.[viii]

On July 3rd, 2002 Joybrato Mukherjee published on this list a review of the “Cambridge Grammar of the English Language” by Rodney Huddleston and Geoffrey K. Pullum, published in 2002 by Cambridge University Press. The following controversy consisted of three further contributions, a response to this review by Pullum, posted on July 15^th, a reply to this response by Mukherjee on July 20^th, and a final reply by Pullum on July 22^nd. Looking at these dates, we already notice one characteristic feature of this kind of exchange, namely, the relative speed of reaction in the interactive process.

The content of the review can be described as follows: Mukherjee starts off by praising the “admirable achievement and the monumental quality of this volume“ and then goes on to give a survey of the content of the chapters of the grammar. After these largely descriptive passages, Mukherjee turns to a critical evaluation. His main points of criticism concern the presumed fact that this grammar is mainly based on one grammatical model, i.e. Generative Grammar, and that it is not “a genuinely corpus-based description of English”. There are also some minor objections, which we shall not mention here.

In his response to this review, Pullum starts by mentioning Mukherjee’s two main objections: “He criticizes [the grammar] for not being corpus-based, and for adopting analyses on grounds of dogma rather than evidence.” He then criticizes Mukherjee for failing “to show respect for textual evidence”, the latter remark being a classic tit-for-tat move. He then asserts that “all his negative criticisms of [the grammar] rest on false claims” and decides to “offer a brief response to half a dozen especially egregious ones”. He now numbers his objections from 1 to 6 and deals with each one in detail. (This practice of numbering objections is a classic procedure, which goes back at least to the 16^th century.)

In his rejoinder, Mukherjee first accuses Pullum of presenting his reviewer as “someone who lacks even basic reading skills” and announces his intention to correct this picture. He then takes up all Pullum’s objections and deals with them point by point in the order presented by his opponent. This procedure is again a traditional pattern of topic management in scientific controversies. Mukherjee’s rejoinder, which amounts to 3698 words, includes the discussion of conceptual problems, theoretical arguments against Pullum’s position, and the giving of counterexamples and references. So this contribution to the controversy is very much in the tradition of scientific writing as we find it in books and articles, but not normally in a defence of a review.

In the final contribution to the controversy, Pullum uses a very interesting strategy, which consists in claiming that “despite the trappings of squabble and a charge of “strangely offensive tone”, much agreement emerges on matters of fact”. He then goes on to enumerate 10 points of agreement, which he briefly deals with in the course of his posting. Looking at these points closely, one realizes that his presentation of “agreement” mainly serves to assert his own position in the controversy. At one point, he admits that in the discussion he “took the liberty of a little ad hominem dig in the ribs against Mukherjee”. And finally, he acknowledges that “Mukherjee’s review made numerous positive statements and generous remarks”. So, in spite of a polemical note here and there, politeness and a factual tone prevail.

Now, how do we evaluate the quality and the usefulness of this controversy?  One would probably agree that this exchange of arguments came up to the standards expected of scientific discussions and that it contributed to the clarification of the positions involved. For the opponents, the discussion provided an opportunity to broadcast their views, and for novice grammarians and non-specialist linguists it provided an introduction to a major conflict in present-day grammar writing between theory-based and corpus-based conceptions. Considering in addition the comparative speed of publication and its wide distribution, this type of review-cum-discussion on mailing lists or blogs can certainly be considered a useful addition to the formats of scientific dialogue. One of the most interesting features of this interactive procedure is that it causes changes in the roles of reviewer and author, as both have to envisage a course of events in which they might become participants in a serious controversy.

3.2. Public peer review
A different type of communication between reviewers, authors and the scientific public can be found in open peer review journals, which aim to make the reviewing process for research papers more transparent and, in some cases, publicly accessible. Among the new open access journals we find different versions of the reviewing process, which vary as to the amount of interactivity and transparency in the different phases of the reviewing and publication process.

A fully developed interactive reviewing process was introduced in 2001 by Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), “an international scientific journal dedicated to the publication and public discussion of high quality studies investigating the Earth’s atmosphere and the underlying chemical and physical processes”.[ix] “Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics has an innovative two-stage publication process involving the scientific discussion forum Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions (ACPD). […] In the first stage, papers that pass a rapid access peer-review are immediately published on the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions (ACPD) website. They are then subject to Interactive Public Discussion, during which the referees’ comments (anonymous or attributed), additional short comments by other members of the scientific community (attributed) and the authors’ replies are also published in ACPD. In the second stage, the peer-review process is completed and, if accepted, the final revised papers are published in ACP.”[x]

I shall now sketch some observations on one of the most lively controversies conducted on the ACPD discussion forum, the discussion on a paper by A. M. Makarieva and two collaborators “On the validity of representing hurricanes as Carnot heat engines” (Atmos. Chem. Phys. Discuss., 8, 17423-17437, 2008). After the preliminary reviewing process, the paper was published as a “discussion paper” on Sept. 19^th, 2008. As they state in their abstract, the authors “argue, on the basis of a detailed critique of published literature, that the existing thermodynamic theory of hurricanes, where it is assumed that the hurricane power is formed due to heat input from the ocean, is not physically consistent, as it comes in conflict with the first and second laws of thermodynamics.” They claim, in fact, that this theory makes a hurricane a perpetuum mobile. In the second part of their paper they outline an alternative explanation based on the description of an “atmospheric process occurring at the expense of condensation of water vapour that creates a drop of local air pressure”. It is interesting to see that in the following discussion the main point of attack is the challenge presented by the authors to the widely accepted “standard theory” of hurricane formation.

For reasons of space, we cannot here go into details of this controversy, which consists of 35 postings, taken all together.[xi] We should, however, like to comment on a few aspects of the external structure of the controversy, which can be seen in the following survey given in the ACPD archive:[xii]

AC: Author comment  RC: Referee comment  SC: Short comment  EC: Editor comment

AC S7325: ‘Response to preliminary criticisms’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 20 Sep 2008
RC S7915: ‘Review ‘, Anonymous Referee #1, 03 Oct 2008
AC S7947: ‘Response to Review of Referee 1’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 04 Oct 2008
RC S8170: ‘Follow-up’, Anonymous Referee #1, 12 Oct 2008
AC S8193: ‘Response to Follow-Up by Referee 1’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 13 Oct 2008
AC S9182: ‘Final Response: Heat Release to Space’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 16 Nov 2008
SC S7609: ‘Latent work’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 29 Sep 2008
SC S8318: ‘Motion from condensation’, Semen Sherman, 17 Oct 2008
AC S8340: ‘Latent work: Convective potential energy’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 18 Oct 2008
SC S8164: ‘The novel hurricane physics’, Andrei Nefiodov, 11 Oct 2008
RC S8531: ‘Review ‘, Anonymous Referee #2, 25 Oct 2008
AC S8904: ‘Condensation as Air Circulation Driver’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 10 Nov 2008 RC S9081: ‘Extraordinary novel atmosphere physics’, Anonymous Referee #2, 13 Nov 2008
SC S11826: ‘Considerations of turbulent friction’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 22 Mar 2009
RC S8627: ‘This paper is incoherent’, Anonymous Referee #3, 29 Oct 2008
AC S8635: ‘Response to Referee #3’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 30 Oct 2008
SC S8669: ‘The Sun does not orbit around the Earth.’, Paulo Nobre, 30 Oct 2008
SC S8916: ‘paper contains bad physics’, Antoon Meesters, 10 Nov 2008
AC S8923: ‘Bad physics: Latent heat does not warm’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 10 Nov 2008
SC S8979: ‘latent heat in the atmosphere’, Antoon Meesters, 11 Nov 2008
AC S8998: ‘Latent heat is irrelevant’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 12 Nov 2008
AC S8931: ‘On carelessness and responsibility’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 10 Nov 2008
SC S9060: ‘dissipative engine etc.’, Antoon Meesters, 12 Nov 2008
SC S8953: ‘The “subtle” issue of perpetuum mobile’, Semen Sherman, 11 Nov 2008
AC S11647: ‘Comment on the dissipative heat engine’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 15 Mar 2009
AC S9342: ‘Final Response to Dr. Meesters’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 20 Nov 2008
AC S11254: ‘Final Response: List of Revisions’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 14 Feb 2009
AC S11260: ‘Revised manuscript, part I’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 14 Feb 2009
AC S11275: ‘Revised manuscript, part II’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 14 Feb 2009
AC S12153: ‘Appeal to the ACP executive committee’, Anastassia M. Makarieva, 02 May 2009
EC S12168: ‘Editor Report’, Peter Haynes, 04 May 2009
EC S12406: ‘Final Editor Comment (ACP Exec. Editors)’, Ulrich Pöschl, 14 Oct 2009

Apart from the authors and three reviewers, there are four more participants in this controversy. Three fellow scientists post short comments in which they support the views of Makarieva et al. A fourth scientist, a Dutch physicist and meteorologist, posts a longish comment, in which he puts forward a number of objections against Makarieva’s paper and gives arguments in favour of the standard theory. This posting is answered in detail by Makarieva, which leads to a mini-discussion within the total controversy. It is this thread of postings which shows to advantage the potential of the ACPD system for involving specialists outside the circle of reviewers in the open reviewing process.

Of the many interesting aspects of this controversy we shall now pick out one point of conflict which highlights some problems and principles of open peer review. On Oct. 29^th, the third reviewer posts his first public comment and asserts that he finds “this paper to be incoherent at the least” and that it “is not worthy of publication in any respectable journal”. He furthermore states that the strong criticism of the classical theory was not well-founded and claims that much of the Makarieva paper was incomprehensible and what he did understand was wrong. He concludes by repeating his harsh judgement.

By this highly polemical posting, the third reviewer creates a rather difficult position for Makarieva and colleagues, who still count on having their paper published. In their reply of Oct. 30^th they use a double strategy of attempting to convince the reviewers of the well-foundedness of their criticism and of reflecting on the course of the discussion itself. They start out with a polite move, appreciating the call for serious justification of their criticism. They then go on to point out their arguments and where they are given in detail and also expand on some of these arguments. We will skip this bit, which contains a lot of technical detail, and go to the last part of their reply, which is particularly interesting, as it concerns the style of the controversy and fundamental principles of open peer review:
“Finally, we would like to note that, in our view, the open discussion platform of the EGU journal sets up a new and high ethical and cultural standard of the peer review process. In this context, statements like “this paper is not worthy of publication in any respectable journals” should perhaps be viewed as atavisms of the background private communication between the editor and referee during conventional close review process. When such statements are made in open public discussion potentially read by hundreds of people, especially in the view that the referee cannot follow “much of the argument here”, they can be classified as a public assault to both the authors as well as to all those discussion participants who sign their names under very different opinions as well as to the ACPD journal itself (who did publish the paper).

Moreover, in our view, the above statement of referee 3 goes against the journal’s interest not only in its form, but also in its essence. We believe that the main target of this discussion is to reveal the scientific truth. The discussion paper is citable, covered in Scopus and available for analysis. Indeed, we come up with a rare claim that a framework published in high-profile journals is based on the concept of a perpetual motion machine and is fundamentally incorrect. Our arguments are all here. In our view, if our paper were published in ACP, then the responsibility to respond to our critique would go to the author of the criticized framework, as the normal practice in scientific literature goes. If, on the other hand, the ACP declined our paper for publication in the second stage, as recommended by Referee 3, future readers of this discussion would ultimately decide whether or not the journal actually signed its official name (while Referee 3 remaining anonymous) among the defendants of perpetuum mobile and against a new approach to hurricane physics. In any case, however, we believe that this discussion has a very substantial value. We are very grateful to the journal for letting us express our views on its pages.”

This is a remarkable document, touching on various basic aspects of open peer review, e.g. politeness and fairness principles, the responsibilities of the participants, the anonymity of reviewers, the burden of proof in scientific argument, and the question of who is “judge of controversies” in science.[xiii] It shows that many of the fundamental principles of scientific discourse acquire particular relevance and salience in public peer review and public digital controversy in general. This is especially true of principles guarding against face-threatening acts.

It is worthy of note that in the end the paper was not accepted for publication, as the objections formulated by two of the three referees appeared so fundamental to the managing editor that, on close reflection, he did not believe that the paper in its present form reached the standards required for publication and that he did not see “a straightforward route to changing it to make it publishable” (editor’s report). However, the chief executive editor considered this case exceptional enough to decide to re-assess the judgement of the referees and the managing editor some months later, bringing in two additional referees, and to give a final statement on the procedure and its results. In this final statement, he writes: “I am not a specialist in atmospheric dynamics and meteorology, and I found the exchange of arguments between authors and referees interesting and challenging. In this regard, I would like to express my appreciation for the clear formulation and mathematical precision of the line of arguments and comments of Dr. Makarieva and co-authors. – After all, however, I have come to share the specialist referees’ concerns that crucial assumptions underlying the arguments, comments and manuscript of Makarieva et al. appear not to be justified.” Obviously still feeling some misgivings about the outcome of the reviewing process, he finally reflects on the principles of open peer review, which, whatever the outcome of the reviewing process, are meant to secure a high degree of transparency. One of his final remarks is as follows: “In the present case, free speech and public documentation have already been achieved by publication of the discussion paper in ACPD, and Makarieva et al. have also taken the opportunity of publishing a revised version of their manuscript in the form of interactive comments in ACPD. As mentioned above and detailed on the ACP web pages, the discussion paper as well as the interactive comments will remain permanently archived, accessible and citable.”

Generally speaking, this kind of exchange shows the potential and scope for fruitful public scientific discussion in this type of reviewing process. As for the different participants, this type of interaction provides new opportunities, but it also poses new communicative tasks. Reviewers have to keep in mind that their reviews will be publicly available for criticism not only by the authors, but also by the relevant scientific community at large. This calls for a high level of rational argumentation and commits the reviewers to principles of politeness and objectivity. So, in a way, reviewing is harder in this kind of framework. And, of course, having to answer objections to your review can be hard work. This might be one of the reasons why finding a sufficient number of qualified reviewers is one of the major problems of open peer review. Authors have the opportunity to have their work closely scrutinized before it is finally put in print and they have the chance to receive attention – once their paper has cleared the hurdle of access review –, whether their paper is finally accepted or not. On the other hand, they have the obligation to answer objections in public within reasonably short time, which can be quite a challenge and possibly a problem for their reputation. For authors of short comments this option provides the chance to take part in a public scientific discussion without having to produce a paper of one’s own, and for the lookers-on it provides the opportunity to recognize conflicting views and to observe the arguments for these views being presented in actual performance.

So, to sum up, these forms of interactive reviewing seem to present a healthy challenge to the participants in the reviewing process. As yet it is mainly in the field of natural science that open peer review has been adopted. We shall see if in the future the arts and humanities will follow suitable.

4. Conclusion
We should like to conclude with some reflections concerning the potential of digital formats for fruitful scientific controversy and the conditions under which digital-format controversies will be productive.

Generally speaking, speed of publication and the wide distribution of postings, which are both characteristic properties of communication in digital formats, seem to be ambivalent factors that can be either favourable or unfavourable to high-quality scientific controversies. Speed of publication, including speed of reaction, often creates a certain “flow” of interaction, which may stimulate a lively discussion. On the other hand, rash replies increase the risk of injury that is always present in controversies. Therefore, members of lists or commenters on blogs are sometimes advised to count to ten, before they hit the reply key. Wide distribution and open access may be helpful in attracting qualified disputants, but it may also attract unqualified and disruptive participants. So balancing these factors seems to be an important task of the respective communities.

From what we know today, the following three conditions play an important role in generating productive controversies:
1. Prospects for useful controversies seem to be particularly good in fairly close-knit scientific communities with a reasonable number of active participants. It is in such specialist communities that the motivation to actively contribute to discussions and the ability to deal rationally with conflicting views appear to be highest. This observation seems to be in conflict with the view that open access for a wide scientific public is a strong point of digital formats. But in practice, it is often a small group of persons who dominate the actual interaction, quite independent of the large number of “lurkers” that may passively participate.
2. A second condition of good controversy is close attention to topic management. Initiating relevant and attractive topics and keeping a discussion on track without restricting creative developments is an important task of the contributors. In many cases this is accomplished naturally and without an extra effort by participants, but rambling or disruptive postings are always a risk to be aware of. The observation that it is often reviews which spark off good discussions is probably connected to the fact that both authors and reviewers are genuinely motivated to defend their point of view and to the fact that the book or article under review provides a natural topic focus.
3. Finally, it is often the moderators of mailinglists or the owners of blogs who contribute to the development of good controversies on their lists or blogs by suggesting salient topics, by organizing round tables or blog carnivals, and by generally trying to sustain a well-organized procedure by which the “vices of confused disputes” (Leibniz 2006: 1-6) can be avoided. So being organized by an active and responsible moderator or owner can be a decisive factor for the success of a digital format in facilitating fruitful controversy.

Certainly, these or similar conditions are not exclusively relevant to digital formats, but may also play a role in any format of scientific communication. However, under the specific conditions of digital scientific communication, which we mentioned above, they acquire particular salience.

Trying to weigh up the potential and the risks of digital scientific controversy, we seem to face a similar situation as the 17^th-century pioneers of research journals we mentioned at the beginning of our paper. It remains to be seen, if, in the long run, the members of the scientific community will avail themselves of the potential of the new formats with the same enthusiasm as their 17^th-century forebears did.

NOTES
[i]  Some authors have emphasized the influence of these new media on recent developments of science by using the expression “cyberscience” (e.g. Nentwich 2003).
[ii]  More details on the project can be found on the project website: Website: http://www.zmi.uni-giessen.de/projekte/zmi-isteilbereich4.html
[iii]  URL: http://www.plosone.org/home.action (25.02.2010)
[iv] URL: http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/ (25.02.2010)
[v] URL: http://pandasthumb.org (25.02.2010)
[vi]  URL: http://linguistlist.org/ (25.02.2010)
[vii]  For the history of critical reviews and replies to reviews („anti-critique“) in early scientific journals, cf. Habel (2007).
[viii]  The review and the responses are available on the Linguist List Review Archives (issue numbers: 13.1853, 13.1932, 13.1952, 13.2005) (10.07.2010).
[ix]  For some of the ideas behind the introduction of public peer review, cf. Pöschl (2010), an article by the chief executive editor of ACP.
[x]  URL: http://www.atmospheric-chemistry-and-physics.net/home.html (25.02.2010)
[xi] A detailed analysis of this controversy is presented in Fritz (forthcoming b).
[xii] URL: http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/8/17423/2008/acpd-8-17423-2008-discussion.html (05.07.2010). The dates of the individual postings show, among other things, how quickly the authors reacted to the various queries and objections.
[xiii] For some early reflections on “the judge of controversies”, cf. Leibniz (2008), Ch. 8.

REFERENCES
Collins, R. (1998). The sociology of philosophies. A global theory of intellectual change. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Dascal, M. (1998). The study of controversies and the theory and history of science. Science in Context, 11, 147-154.
Fritz, G. (2008). Communication principles for controversies: A historical perspective. In: F. H. van Eemeren, B. Garssen (eds.) Controversy and Confrontation: Relating Controversy Analysis with Argumentation Theory. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 109-124.
Fritz, G. (2010). Controversies. In: A. H. Jucker, I. Taavitsainen (eds.) Historical  Pragmatics. Handbook of Pragmatics, Vol. 8. (pp. 451-481). Berlin/New York: de Gruyter.
Fritz, G. (forthcoming a): Scientific dialogue in digital interactive media. To appear in: S. Cantarini, F. Hundsnurscher (eds.). Dialogue: Studies in memory of Sorin Stati. Bologna: Patron. (Manuscript download: http://www.zmi.uni-giessen.de/projekte/zmi-isteilbereich4.html)
Fritz, G. (forthcoming b): Wirbelstürme im digitalen Open-Peer-Review-Verfahren. Die Makarieva-Kontroverse in “Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics” (2008/09) – eine Fallstudie. In: T. Gloning, G. Fritz (eds.): Kommunikationsformate und ihre Dynamik in der digitalen Wissenschaftskommunikation. Reihe “Linguistische Untersuchungen”. Gießen: Gießener Elektronische Bibliothek.
Gloning, T. (1999). The pragmatic form of religious controversies around 1600: A case study in the Osiander vs. Scherer & Rosenbusch controversy. In: A. H. Jucker, G. Fritz & F. Lebsanft (eds.). Historical Dialogue Analysis (pp. 81–110). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Gloning, T. (2005). Early Modern controversies and theories of controversy: The rules of the game and the role of the persons. In: P. Barrotta, M. Dascal (eds.): Controversies and Subjectivity. (pp. 263–281). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Habel, T. (2007): Gelehrte Journale und Zeitungen der Aufklärung. Bremen: Edition lumière.
Leibniz, G. W. (2008): The art of controversies. Translated and edited, with an introductory essay and notes by M. Dascal with Q. Racionero and A. Cardoso. Dordrecht: Springer.
Nentwich, M. (2003): Cyberscience. Research in the age of the internet. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press.
Pöschl, U. (2010): Interactive open access publishing and public peer review: The effectiveness of transparency and self-regulation in scientific quality assurance. International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, 36 (1) 40–46.

1. Introduction
The concept of framing – and the underlying theoretical mindset – is familiar to a number of scholarly fields and discussions. Although the notion of framing has its roots in sociological thinking, it has made its way into many other fields. Thus, framing is applied to management studies (Hodgkinson et al., 1999; Conger, 1991; Smircich & Morgan, 1982), rhetorical studies (Kuypers, 2009; 2006; Cappella & Jamieson, 1997), media studies (de Vreese & Elenbaas, 2008; Scheufele, 1999; Entman, 1993; Iyengar, 1991), and linguistics (Tannen (Ed.), 1993) – to name but a few of the most relevant fields. Framing, then, has undergone quite an expansion from being conceived as a tool for micro-analysis of social interaction to its current broad interpretation and diversified application.

When taking this development into account it is not surprising that framing is also to be found within the field of argumentation and that it is used in various ways within this field. An overview of argumentation studies shows that use of the concept is distributed along a continuum from intuitive and implicit to theoretical and explicit. At one end of the spectrum we find a commonsensical use of framing that is often neither expanded nor explained (see inter alia Bertea, 2004; Freeman, 2001; Garrett, 1997). At the other end of the spectrum we find contributions that take their starting point in framing (and the literature on the concept) and bring it to bear on discussions that are of relevance to the theory of argumentation. Be it in the understanding of ‘playful argumentation’ (Hample, Han & Payne, 2009), in the development of ‘interpersonal arguments’ (Hample, Warner & Young, 2008) or in the conceptualization of ‘non-deductive argumentation’ (Wohlrapp, 1998) – again, only highlighting a few relevant examples.

Framing is used to define a number of processes and functions that oftentimes do not exist on the same plane of theoretical reasoning or level of empirical analysis. As we will unfold in the following, framing is sometimes thought of as cognitive processes of understanding while it is seen as communicative tools in other contexts. The notion of framing is, in other words, not a simple, clear cut one; a point which is often stressed in the literature. Robert Entman, for instance, begins from the assumption that “despite its omnipresence across the social sciences and humanities, nowhere is there a general statement of framing theory that shows exactly how frames become embedded within and make themselves manifest in a text, or how framing influences thinking” (1993, p. 51). Michael Hoffman laments that “…in spite of its prominence in scientific discourses, the concept of ’framing’ and its derivatives are used in very different ways. Obviously, there is no shared understanding of what ‘framing’ exactly means, and what kind of activities can count as ‘framing’ and which cannot” (2006, p. 2). And Kirk Hallahan sums up both the potentials and the problems: “although a theoretically rich and useful concept, framing suffers from a lack of coherent definition” (2008, p. 209). The question is, therefore, what we actually gain from introducing framing into various subjects and fields? If framing is not a clear concept, the subject it is intended to illuminate will not become clearer.

In an attempt to solve these issues in the context of argumentation and show how the notion of framing may become more useful to argumentation scholars we will reverse the typical order of application. Rather than applying the notion of framing to one or the other aspect of argumentation we will try to explain and clarify framing by starting from the field of argumentation. It is possible to draw parallels between classical argumentative concepts and the concept of framing (Pontoppidan, Gabrielsen & Jønch-Clausen 2010; Just & Gabrielsen 2008), and it is this line of thinking that we will build upon in the following. What may we learn about the types of argumentative moves that may be typified as framing by viewing them through the lens of classical theories of argumentation?

In order to answer this question we introduce the classical rhetorical theory of stasis, the teaching about how to locate the disputed point in a debate, as a means of clarifying and ordering what is meant by framing. There are four stases dealing with 1) fact (status conjecturalis), 2) definition (status definitivus), 3) quality (status qualitatis), and 4) jurisdiction or transcendence (status translativus), and we argue that when filtered through the stases framing refers to at least two different argumentative moves or patterns. One is an internal definition or categorization of the concepts in question; the other is an external shift or transcendence in the context of the case. As an example of the internal definition/categorization one can, for instance, argue that the recent fall in the prices of real estate that has affected most of the Western hemisphere was not a bursting bubble, but a natural correction, thus redefining the matter and reframing the issue. And as an example of the external shift/transcendence of context one can argue that a house should not be bought as an investment, but because it is the house of one’s dreams, thus changing the context of the argumentation and shifting the issue from an economic to an emotional frame.

In making the link between framing and the theory of stasis, we do not claim to offer a comprehensive analysis of the argumentative forms involved in framing – we only claim that the theory of stasis exposes that the notion of framing contains (at least) two different types of moves. Both definition and transcendence are argumentative forms of framing, but they point to two quite different ways in which a matter may be framed. Furthermore, we indicate that while framing is not just one argumentative move, it is nevertheless a particular type of argumentation which does not seem to include the issues of fact and quality as these are defined in the theory of the stasis. Thus, applying the stases to the field of framing both allows us to point to what argumentative frames are and what they are not.
The issue of how the stases may relate to and help clarify the notion of framing is primarily a theoretical one, but we will illustrate the notion that the stases point to basic argumentative forms of framing by means of generic examples constructed on the basis of the Danish public debate on the value of real estate – as we have already done in the initial example of how the stases of definition and transcendence may be linked to framing.
Before we begin our exploration of framing from the viewpoint of the stases, we unfold our initial claim; namely, that the concept of framing is a pluralistic one. Different scholars have stressed different aspects of the concept and developed it in different directions, and we will present a few highlights from the discussion of what framing is and how it should be studied. Following the introduction to the concept of framing as such we will delimit our notion of framing as a form of argumentation from the broader understandings of framing and thereby offer a definition of what is meant by framing in this particular study of the concept. Then we will briefly introduce the theory of stasis and go on to discuss how the stases may explain and typify what framing is.

2. Framing: A pluralistic concept
Since Erving Goffman introduced the concept of framing, it has not only been developed and diversified, but also repeatedly challenged. Much of the subsequent debate derives from the great explanatory potential, but also the great vagueness of the concept as Goffman defined it. Frames, to Goffman, are the “…principles of organization which govern events – at least social ones – and our subjective involvement in them” (1974, p. 10-11). More specifically, frames are the “schemata of interpretation” that allow people to partake in social interaction; frames are means of locating, perceiving, identifying and labeling experiences that provide the interpreter with an understanding of what is going on and how he/she should react to it (1974, p. 21). In Goffman’s microsociological conception, then, frames help individuals structure and interpret their surroundings, but this does not mean that frames are purely cognitive phenomena. Rather, Goffman suggests that frames do not just exist in our heads, but may be read out of – or perhaps into – the social interaction (1981, p. 62). Here, crucial questions arise: Are frames cognitive or communicative phenomena? And if they are both, how may they be studied as such?
Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky provide one possible answer to these questions. Kahneman and Tversky set up experiments testing peoples’ reactions to a text in which specific words were changed. Thus, they have shown that people choose different courses of action according to the positive or negative framing of a matter; whether an event is framed in terms of ‘saving’ or ‘dying’ is literally a matter of life and death (Kahneman & Tversky 1984). Whereas this psychological take on the issue includes the communicated dimension of framing as the independent variable (the factor that is changed in order to measure people’s reactions to the change), it is the cognitive dimension that is at the heart of the research.

A more explicit focus on the communicative dimension of framing is found in the work of cognitive linguists such as George Lakoff. Although maintaining the cognitive importance of frames, Lakoff focuses more on what causes the cognition than on the cognitive process as such; that is, his focus is on language. Lakoff coins the term surface frames for the communicative dimension of framing, and he studies how specific changes in the surface frames may alter our perception of the phenomena in question (Lakoff, 2004; 1999). His prime examples stem from political debate in the US, and he argues that the Democratic Party has overtaken frames that are to the advantage of the Republican Party instead of establishing their own alternative frames. For instance, framing the discussion on whether or not to lower the taxes in terms of ‘tax relief’ means that taxation is basically seen as a burden, and this gives the Republicans the upper hand (Lakoff, 2004, p. 24-26). Although Lakoff is concerned with the effects of framing, he does not conduct experimental research, but focuses on the ways in which topics are framed in communication and what frames come to dominate public debates (and other communicative processes).
Within media studies a combination of the foci on communication and cognition is seen in several influential investigations. For instance, Shanto Iyengar and Donald R. Kinder (1987) and Joseph Cappella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson (1997) have conducted major studies that both identify dominant news frames and people’s reactions to such frames. In this context the notion of framing is linked to that of agenda setting; what is presented in the news, how is it presented, and what are the consequences? (Dainton & Zelley, 2005, p. 199-200). Hence, there is a movement from the institutionalized forms of communication of the news media to the perception of the news that takes place in the minds of individual recipients.

The movement from media to recipients that characterizes studies of the communication and reception of news frames points to another crucial ambiguity in Goffman’s conception of frames: are they individual or are they social? Goffman himself emphasized the primacy of the social, but nevertheless studied frames in their individual manifestations (1974, p. 13). The application of frames in media studies seems to begin from the social level and move to the individual level. In focusing on social movements Robert Benford and David Snow (1988; 2000) have performed a similar move. Furthermore, they emphasize how frames may provide the backdrop of not only individual, but also social action. Thus, the locus of framing is placed at the level of “situated social interaction,” and quoting Mikhail Bakhtin Snow and Benford define framing as a dialogical phenomenon that exists “not within us, but between us” (2005, p. 205).
Addressing the issue of the individual or social character of framing, then, implicitly tackles the issue of their cognitive or communicated status as well. If frames are social, they are also communicated, existing as forms and patterns of dialogue and debate before they come to organize and define the individual’s interpretation of social actions and events. This does not mean that studying cognitive reactions to or applications of frames becomes uninteresting, but it means that analysis of the communicated – or surface – frames is the place to start.

3. Argumentative frames
As our short review of the field shows, framing is a rather broad and slippery concept. Goffman’s introduction of the concept laid the ground for this ambiguity, and two issues have been particularly central to the subsequent discussions on the definition and use of framing: are frames cognitive or communicative processes? And are they individual or social phenomena? As indicated above, different schools, fields, and perspectives have placed the emphasis differently, wherefore there are today both theories that view frames as pertaining to the level of individual cognition and theories that highlight the social and communicative aspect of framing. In other words: one concept, many interpretations.
In the following we will adopt a narrow focus, and instead of seeking direct answers to the traditional issues of framing – cognitive or communicative, individual or social – we will look at framing as argumentation and ask: which argumentative forms does framing represent? Should one particular form of argumentation or several different forms be linked with framing? In other words, what argumentative moves are performed when one argues by framing?

Before answering these specific questions, however, it seems necessary to consider what we generally mean by framing in an argumentative context. We must make an initial distinction between the types of argumentative moves that may be linked to framing and the types that may not. What we are looking for is a tentative and pragmatic definition and delimitation of the phenomenon of argumentative framing. The following considerations, then, are meant as a means of pointing at the type(s) of argumentation that will be analyzed and discussed in the following, not as an exhaustive list of argumentative frames, let alone a definition of framing as such.

For our specific purposes Jim Kuypers’ rhetorical approach to framing offers a useful starting point. According to Kuypers “framing is a process whereby communicators, consciously or unconsciously, act to construct a point of view that encourages the facts of a given situation to be interpreted by others in a particular manner…” (2006: p. 8). Several keywords of this quote point to our understanding of what is at stake in argumentation that hinges on framing. First, the word ‘construct’ shows that we are dealing with argumentation that orders or forms the object of the argumentation – as opposed to argumentation that works by inferring or deducing the relevant conclusions. Second, the word ‘interpreted’ suggests that argumentation based on framing is meant to make the audience view the object in a certain way – again, in contrast to making the audience infer particular conclusions. Finally, framing-based argumentation is characterized by its starting point in ‘a given situation’, not a given set of premises.
It is the move from the case to its premises that is at stake in framing-based argumentation – not the move from premises to conclusion which is the point of other argumentative forms. The argumentative forms of framing begin from a given situation and work by constructing a certain perspective that makes the audience interpret the case in a specific manner. Thus, framing is set apart from argumentative forms as such; the notion comes to encompass a certain set of moves within argumentation – a certain way of arguing. The type of argumentation which relates to framing and which we will seek to unpack by means of the theory of stasis, then, is argumentation aimed at changing and/or deciding what is to count as the premises of a case.

4. The teaching of stasis
The coupling of framing with argumentation aimed at changing and/or deciding what is to count as the premises of a case narrows in the argumentative field to which the concept holds relevance. However, it is not necessarily a singular definition pointing to one and just one argumentative form. Even when starting from a given situation, there are several possible means of constructing a perspective that will make the audience interpret the case in a certain way. In the following we will explore different possibilities; that is, specific argumentative forms of framing. Taking our starting point in the theory of stasis we will show that framing-based argumentation can be divided into (at least) two groups and that these groups refer to quite different modes of reasoning. In order to do so we will first present the rationale behind the classical theory and introduce the four stases that form the centerpiece of it. Then we will argue that two of the four stases – status definitivus and status translativus – represent two distinct forms of framing-based argumentation, whereas the other two stases – status conjecturalis and status qualitatis – should not be seen as framing devices. In unpacking the argumentative forms of framing that may be associated with status definitivus and status translativus we hope to establish a distinction that may help clarify what argumentative framing actually is and what it can be used for.

As is the case with other classical rhetorical concepts and systems, the origin of the theory of stasis is somewhat disputed – just as discussion on the right interpretation of this theory prevails. In a work that is now lost Hermagoras supposedly was the first to present the theory of stasis as we know it today; that is to say, as a theory the purpose of which is to determine the central issue of dispute in a given case (Hohmann, 2001, p. 741; Braet, 1987, p. 79). The central question, then, is: at what level should discussion be conducted? There is some dispute as to how many levels the answer to this question should result in: three or four? (Hohmann, 1989). In the Greek tradition as introduced by Hermagoras and elaborated by Hermoganes four distinct stases were applied (Nadeau, 1964), but in the Roman tradition as primarily represented by Cicero and Quintilian only three stases were employed (Cicero De Oratore II, p. 113; Orator, p. 45; Quintilian Institutio Oratoria, book VII; for an exception to this rule see Cicero De Inventione I, p. 10). The reason for only mentioning three stases was a desire to present a system that could be applied to rhetoric broadly, and the fourth status was said to relate only to the forensic genre (Hohmann, 2001, p. 742-743). As we will explain below, we tackle the issue of the fourth status differently and, therefore, propose to include all four in broader conceptualizations of the teaching of the stasis and not only in the version of the theory that pertains narrowly to legal disputes.

The theory of stasis, then, lists four possible levels of dispute – four different stases: status conjecturalis, status definitivus, status qualitatis, and status translativus. In the following table we present the four stases, the level at which each status operates, a classical example, and examples from the debate on the real estate market so as to begin the coupling of our modern example of choice and our theoretical focal point.

All four stases make for interesting forms of argumentation, but status definitivus and status translativus are of particular importance to the present investigation. These two stases may be identified as argumentative forms of framing: argumentation based on categorization and definition as well as argumentation based on displacements of the employed criteria of evaluation basically function to make the case appear in a certain manner, to make the audience interpret the various elements of the case in one way rather than the other – the central issue of our definition of framing. In other words, we claim that both status definitivus and status translativus are movements from the case to the premises; it is the understanding of the case as such that is at stake in these two forms of argumentation. In this sense, the two stases resemble Kuypers’ observation that framing is about content as well as context (2009, p. 188), a point which we will explore in further detail below, but first let us consider the other two stases in order to explain why we do not think they are argumentative forms of framing.

Status conjecturalis and status qualitatis are classical enthymematic arguments in which the conclusion follows from the premises and, therefore, do not appear to be argumentative forms of framing. Two explications of the warrants that are often implicit in practical use of the stases may illustrate this: if the experts say there is no fall in prices, there is no fall in prices (conjecturalis); if the prices are falling, first-time buyers will benefit (qualitatis). In both cases the arguments follow inferential patterns rather than performing the establishment or shift in the premises of interpretation that is characteristic of framing. This is not to say that it would be impossible to reinterpret status conjecturalis and status qualitatis as argumentative forms of framing. We only argue that status definitivus and status translativus take up a special position since they are immediately compatible with the notion of framing. Status definitivus and status translativus also immediately point to two distinct forms of framing and this is what makes it particularly interesting to unfold them here.

The interpretation of status definitivus as an argumentative form of framing follows more or less directly from the usual definitions of definitivus on the one hand and framing on the other. First and foremost the term ‘definition’ is an explicit part of many definitions of framing (most notably Entman 1993, p. 52). A definition of the disputed issue – or case in question – is central to the audience’s reading and interpretation of it. By placing a matter in one category, other categories are rejected. Moreover, definitions usually work at the level of specific words or concepts at which attempts at framing is arguably most clearly visible (cf. Lakoff’s notion of surface frames that is tied to a choice of words).

The discussion on how to categorize developments on the real estate market clearly illustrates how framing through definition works at the level of words and concepts: is an apparent fall in prices a bubble bursting, a soft landing or a natural correction? Each definition becomes possible by highlighting some elements of the case rather than others, and, in turn, functions to make the audience highlight the same elements when interpreting the matter. The choice of definition – or frame – actualizes one set of premises rather than other possible starting points of argumentation and alters the interpretation of the case that audiences are invited to make.
At its most basic, the strategy of definition can be described by the formula A is B wherefore this argumentative form of framing is internal to the case. As illustrated above, a definition is based on weighing the different elements of the case against each other: is the fall in prices accelerating (a sign of a bursting bubble), is it a slow movement (closer to the notion of the soft landing), was it long expected (a natural correction)? And how may the use of definitions induce audiences to interpret the case as either a fast, a slow, or an expected development?

To conclude the discussion of status definitivus, it is by considering, selecting, and labeling the available information that the case may be defined. When framing through definition, then, focus is directed inwards at the different elements of the case and the various categories that it is possible to apply to these elements. The form of framing that is exposed through consideration of status definitivus is about the conceptualization and categorization of the case. Thus, the interpretation of the case is steered or given direction by accentuating some elements of the case and ignoring others.

The interpretation of status translativus as a form of framing is, perhaps, less obvious. Classically understood, this status is a movement of the physical setting of a case: for instance, from the High Court to the Supreme Court or from a court of justice to ‘the court of the people’. However, we believe that translativus may also be understood as a change of scenes in a broader, metaphorical sense (Just & Gabrielsen 2008). Here, we follow the line of thinking that suggests this fourth status must be redefined in order to be applied to a broad range of contemporary issues rather than just the juridical genre of classical times (Gross 2004; Kramer & Olson 2002). Instead of delimiting translativus to being about deciding who should judge, we see it as being more broadly about deciding the criteria for judgment.

Thereby, status translativus becomes a general strategy that may be used outside of the narrowly forensic context. Moreover, this widening of the strategy makes the interpretation of translativus as an argumentative form of framing more apparent: changing the criteria used in judging a case is a basic way of influencing how the audience interprets the case. When understood metaphorically, changing the scene is akin to framing; it is a strategy that changes the premises of the case.
When this status is used by the participants in the debate on real estate several possible shifts are employed and discussed: should the developments on the real estate market by evaluated in the short or the long term? Should economic or emotional criteria be used as the basis of evaluation? And who should perform the evaluation – sellers, buyers, real estate agents, economists, or some other party? Depending on which frame is used – and which becomes dominant in the debate – the criteria for interpreting and evaluating the case change.

When reinterpreted in this manner status translativus can be described by the formula A should be evaluated on the basis of B, making it an argumentative form of framing that is external to the case. In opposition to definitivus which functions as an internal conceptualization of the case translativus works as an external contextualization. Rather than weighing the elements of the case and including/excluding them in the definition, the strategy of translativus works by setting up the factors or criteria which the case is held up against. As exemplified above the real estate market may be held up to the standard of making profit which is a frame of private economy, but it may also be reinterpreted as a matter of national economy or the economic frame may be swapped for an emotional one: buy with your heart rather than your wallet.
In sum, framing by means of status translativus directs attention outwards at the various factors with which the case should be associated and/or the criteria with which the case should be evaluated. The form of framing that is exposed through consideration of translativus is focused on the contextualization of the case. The interpretation of the case is influenced through a change of the external criteria on which interpretation and evaluation should be based.

As the examples of how status definitivus and status translativus may be applied to the real estate market indicate the basic formulas of the two stases are rather similar at the formal level. This becomes most apparent when considering the type of definition that may be labeled dissociative (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, p. 444): A is not B, but C; we are not witnessing a recession, but a deceleration. Almost the same extension may be used in the case of the basic formula of translativus: A should not be judged in terms of B, but C; you should not buy a house as speculation, but because you need a place to stay. The similarity in the two stases shows that they are both argumentative forms of framing, but the examples also illustrate the difference of the two stases as frames: one frames the case in terms of its internal concepts, the other frames it in terms of its external context.

5. Conclusion
We have drawn attention to the ways in which status definitivus and status translativus function as argumentative forms of framing. The levels of dispute that they represent are both about how to interpret the case – and about what should be the premises of the case – and it is in this sense that they may be understood as framing. However, the two stases do not represent the same form of framing; rather, internal definition and external transcendence are quite different moves. Thus, we have identified two distinct argumentative forms of framing that may clarify what framing is.
Such clarification is important because the notion of framing has been an export success. From its origin in the microsociological work of Erving Goffman it has, as we have briefly sketched out, been applied within a wide variety of fields. The concept of framing has proved to contain a large explanatory potential, but it has also become a diffuse and contested concept, and scholars have repeatedly called for a clarification of it.

By reversing the direction of import-export and applying the teaching of stasis – a center-piece of classical argumentation theory – to the notion of framing we hope to have contributed to the clarification of framing in the context of argumentation. Furthermore, we hope that this movement from argumentation theory to framing may be followed up by taking the revised and refined notion of framing back to the field of argumentation, that it will now prove to be both more readily applicable to studies of practical argumentation, and that such applications may be more rewarding.

In discussing framing in terms of the stases we have both pointed out that not all forms of argumentation are framing and that there is more than one argumentative form of framing. Thus, we do not believe status conjecturalis and status qualitatis to be argumentative frames, whereas we believe status definitivus and status translativus to represent distinct argumentative frames. We are by no means certain that there are only two argumentative forms of framing, but the internal framing of concepts that emerges from the consideration of status definitivus and the external framing of contexts that is pointed out through the reconceptualization of status translativus are in our opinion very basic and important argumentative forms of framing. The identification of these two forms may form the starting point for both applications of the concept of framing in studies of practical argumentation and further refinements of the concept in terms of argumentation theory.

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1. Introduction
This analysis is part of a larger research project[i] which investigates the argumentative potential of reports within the theoretical background of pragma-dialectics enlarged with rhetorical insights, as it has been developed by van Eemeren & Houtlosser (1999, 2000, 2002). We are more specifically interested in exploring the possibilities for strategic manoeuvring with anonymous reports, i. e. reports that provide no specific reference to the information source, but vaguely place it under the responsibility of the community as it is the case with utterances such as People say that, The word goes that, Rumour has it that, etc. This analysis is confined to the investigation of the dialectical and rhetorical goals that might be served in using the specific presentational device of anonymous reports in the argumentation stage. In doing it, we shall first provide a pragmatic description of this type of assertives in order to point to the effects of their use in discourse. In general terms, in using anonymous reports, the speaker has the possibility to advance information for whose truthfulness he cannot be apparently held responsible. Given this peculiarity of presentation in adducing arguments, we shall examine how the dialectical aim of the argumentation stage is fulfilled, while, in point of rhetorical goal, we shall describe to what extent the use of this presentational device makes the speaker’s arguments stronger and more efficient.

2. Anonymous reports: pragmatic description
Anonymous reports such as People say that, The word goes that, Rumour has it that, etc. may be defined as an instance of indirect reported speech characterized by the occultation of the identity of the information source. They belong to the large category of hearsay evidentiality which opposes, according to Gâță (2009, p. 490), two main subcategories, quotative vs. non-quotative and reporting one’s assertions vs. reporting the other’s words. According to this classification, anonymous reports are non-quotative and they are used to report the other’s words.

Reporting amounts to the accomplishment of a polyphonic communicative act where boundaries may be set between the constitutive voices, i. e. the original speaker and the reporting one. Given the existence of the two instances, the question of commitment to content rises: Who commits to which content? Since reporting represents the linguistic process meant to entirely or only partially display or render an original utterance, in terms of commitment and responsibility taken, in the indirect reported speech, the speaker is generally supposed to vouch for the previous performance of a speech act where he was either the addressee or a witness. In reporting it, he makes himself responsible for the interpretation of this initial speech act and engages upon rendering both its content and the form under which the content was initially uttered. Coulmas (1986, p. 2) speaks about a change in perspective when referring to indirect reported speech: unlike the direct style where the reporter quotes the reportee’s speech and reports it from the latter’s perspective, in the indirect reported speech, the reporter interprets the reportee’s discourse and reports it with his own words. An accurate reporting depends on several conditions: the reporting speaker’s access to the context where the initial speech act was performed, his capacity to correctly decode the communicative effect aimed at by the original speaker and, not in the least, his real intention to provide a faithful report. Since the insertion of reports in the host discourse is meant to achieve certain purposes, speakers may resort to deliberate omissions, emphases, adaptations or alterations of the original speech act in a way that best suits their interests. Moreover, Bakhtin (1981, p. 340) states that “the speech of another, once enclosed in a context, is – no matter how accurately transmitted – always subject to certain semantic changes”.

In reporting another’s speech, speakers signal the degree of correspondence between the reported content and the original one through the type of reportive prefix used. In English, there is a wide range of phrases that can be used in making anonymous reports, their selection depending on what the reporting speaker can or is willing to disclose about the author’s identity of the original speech act or, more generally, about the context of performance of the initial speech act. The type of reportive prefixes we focus this analysis on puts forward the community as the author of the original speech act. This doxa voice may be directly designated by the hyperonim people or the indefinite they combined with a speech verb (say, tell, rumour, report, etc.) or metonymically by speech nouns such as word, rumour, report, story, etc. In the latter case, the nouns may be combined with a movement verb lexicalizing the indefinite trajectory in spreading the report and may optionally take a locative, resulting into utterances such as The word / story / report goes that, There is some talk that, There is a rumour abroad / afloat / in the air that, There is a report going, Some gossip is flying round, etc. We also include in this category of reportive prefixes the idiomatic phrases Rumour / Report has it which feature speech nouns as well as the passivised structures It is said / reported / rumoured that, etc.

In using this type of reportive phrases, the reporting speaker holds himself responsible for reporting information which circulates within a community, without being able to specify the identity of the original speaker and to certify whether the reported content is the exact representation of the original one. In spite of this information implicitly communicated to the hearer, when using anonymous reports in an argumentative context, the speaker is expected to have a certain position to the content. Therefore, be it less overtly, the speaker commits himself to the truth of the propositional content reported, and, moreover, as anonymous reports represent a subclass of assertives, he is expected to be able to present evidence to account for it if requested (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992, p. 38).

In point of discourse effects, the speaker benefits from the apparent attitude of reserve implied by the use of anonymous reportive prefixes which put forward the community as lying behind the creation and circulation of the report. Resembling at this point the popular opinion type of utterances by seemingly invoking commonly accepted presumptions and opinions, anonymous reports enable the speaker to bring some information to the hearer’s attention. This form may be favoured against the plain assertion because the opacity of an anonymous report allows him to do more than he claims to be doing: while only pretending to ensure the further transmission of the content, he hides behind the public voice with a view to getting across some information and to using it in the argumentation.

3. Arguing with anonymous reports
As an instance of assertives, anonymous reports may be used in a critical discussion at the confrontation stage where they can express the standpoint at issue; at the argumentation stage, as arguments adduced in defence of that standpoint or in the concluding stage to express the outcome of the discussion (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992, p. 38). According to the model of critical discussion, “the argumentation stage corresponds with the phase in which one party adduces arguments in order to overcome the other party’s doubts about the standpoint, and the other party reacts to those arguments” (van Eemeren, Grootendorst & Snoeck Henkemans 1996, p. 282).

In the argumentation stage, the arguers proceed to justify or refute the standpoint at issue, resorting to argumentation schemes which enable them to create specific relationships between the arguments adduced and the standpoint in case. According to the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, there are three main types of justifying relationships argumentation is based on, i.e. argumentation by comparison, instrumental argumentation, and symptomatic argumentation (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992, pp. 96-102). When making use of a particular argumentation scheme, the speaker takes the first step in a dialectical testing procedure that verifies whether the argumentation is resistant to specific forms of criticism. As a protective measure in ensuring the success of the justification process, the speaker may respond in advance to the anticipated criticism raised by the opposition by providing responses to possible objections.

Dialectically, anonymous reports are vulnerable because of the speaker’s impossibility to produce evidence for the truthfulness or correctness of the content reported since he acknowledges having had access to the information via hearsay. That is why advancing anonymous reports as arguments is excluded in argumentation in institutionalized contexts such as legal, political, academic discourse since practicing argumentation in these contexts is necessarily evidence-based. Nevertheless, in less constraining types of discourse, resorting to anonymous reports to support a standpoint is current when disclosing unconfirmed information, as it is the case with journalistic discourse where there is a protection policy of information sources. However, even in this context, choosing anonymous reports as arguments does not comply with the dialectical standards of reasonableness. This particular way of presenting an argument implies the speaker’s impossibility to have access to the context where the initial speech act was performed, therefore to the initial assertive act, and to prove the truth of the propositional content. But this is exactly what the speaker wants to elude: he deliberately prefers to build his plea based on arguments whose accuracy is difficult to check and thus more difficult to refute.

For instance, when arguing that
(1) During recession some rich people become richer. People say that the billionaire Bill Jones has seen his fortune doubled since last November.
the speaker uses an anonymous report as an argument from example, a subtype of symptomatic argument, to support the standpoint that during recession some rich people become richer. The dialectical profile established by van Eemeren, Houtlosser and Snoeck Henkemans (2007, pp. 154-155) for the symptomatic argumentation describes the type of relationship the speaker creates between the argument and the standpoint at issue as “a property, class membership, distinctive characteristic, or essence of a particular thing, person, or situation” that is mentioned, implying “that this thing, person or situation also has the characteristic property that is ascribed to it in the standpoint”. In advancing this argument from example, the speaker builds his argumentation by pointing out to the existence of a relation of concomitance between what is stated in the argument and what is stated in the standpoint. In (1), the billionaire Bill Jones’s financial growth since last November counts, in the arguer’s point of view, as an illustration of the generalising statement claimed in the standpoint which is typical for the argumentation of example where “separate facts are represented as special cases of something general” (Garssen in van Eemeren, Houtlosser & Snoeck Henkemans 2007, p. 155). There are several elements of concomitance that the speaker bases his argumentation from example on: the lapse of time referred to (since last November) coincides with the recession period, the billionaire Bill Jones’s present financial state accounts for his belonging to the class of the rich, and, not in the least, what counts in (1) as the unexpressed premise the arguer can be held responsible for, having one’s fortune doubled is a sign of getting richer. In the case of argumentation from example, the weight of the example ensures the transfer of acceptability from the argument to the standpoint and, in advancing one, the arguer is bound to wonder whether the particular case invoked is really representative for what is claimed in the standpoint. However, unless the speaker can produce evidence to account for the truth of the reported news concerning Bill Jones’s financial growth, the argumentation scheme he uses cannot resist the exam of dialectical reasonableness. This is also proved in (2) where the speaker uses coordinative argumentation in order to supplement the potency of the example expressed through an anonymous report with an additional argument from example:
(2) Much daunting stories and myths about the beige spider often give people the creeps: the word goes that this species can eat out flesh portions after injecting a form of anesthetic in the victim’s body, not to reveal that its dimensions are justly impressive.[ii] (http://www.articlealley.com/article_784314_54.html)

The characteristic of devouring victims is reinforced by the impressive dimensions of the arachnid, which results into picturing a savage description of the beige spider. These features are thought to be relevant for considering the spider a fearful species that makes daunting stories circulate on its account. In this case, the argument from example appears as more resistant to attacks since it provides factual data that can be verified with respect to their accuracy. The fact that this content is presented as the object of an anonymous report, a common opinion that is widely spread around, is meant to substantiate its truth value. Nevertheless, this strategic choice is bound to fail provided that evidence cannot be produced to prove the information right.

In the following excerpt, the anonymous report functions as a causal argument:
(3) I am considering buying a house on the outskirts. The word goes their price will rocket in the following years.

Argumentation based on a causal relationship is defined by van Eemeren, Houtlosser, Snoeck Henkemans (2007, p. 164) as representing the cause of the standpoint, or, the other way round, the standpoint as the cause of the argument. In (3), the argument features the cause of the result presented in the standpoint, namely that the predicted boom in the price of outskirts houses is the cause for considering buying one. In using this argumentation scheme, the speaker holds himself responsible for considering that prognosticated rising prices of houses leads to wanting to buy one at a lower price. The speaker presents the content of the anonymous report as sufficient cause leading to making the decision referred to in the standpoint. The causal relationship proposed by the speaker is supported by the fact that the realization of the state of affairs described in the causal argument is very likely to happen and matches people’s beliefs and representations of life: continuous rise in prices is not excluded in the context of unstable financial market. Nonetheless, as it was the case with (1) and (2), (3) may be reasonably accepted as long as proofs can be adduced to support the truth of the propositional content.

Irrespective of the type of argumentation scheme where anonymous report arguments may be included, in using them, the speaker advances contents whose truthfulness he commits to, even though he presents them as belonging to and emanating from the community. Being unable to vouch for the truth of the content, the speaker presents this information as widely circulating around with a view to conferring it argumentative tenability. In fact, the arguer is well aware of the fact that, psychologically, people are bound to accept as true what many others have accepted as such since one condition in ensuring the survival and perpetuation of rumours – to which anonymous reports are similar – is that they should match people’s beliefs or representations of life. Anonymous reports appear therefore as making part of a strategic schema used by the speaker in order to make a standpoint seem valid based on what people say and which should consequently be granted credibility.

4. Strategic manoeuvring with anonymous reports
Van Eemeren and Houtlosser (1999, 2000, 2002) enlarged the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation by incorporating a rhetorical component in the framework, starting from the prerequisite that, in argumentative discourse, arguers conduct the discussion based on reasonable standards in a way that is most favourable to them. Along the resolution process deployed within a critical discussion, arguers strategically manoeuvre with a view to reduce “the potential tension between pursuing at the same time a ‘dialectical’ as well as a ‘rhetorical’ aim” (Van Eemeren & Houtlosser 2002, p. 135). For each of the stages of a critical discussion, there is a dialectical aim corresponding to the allowable moves specified in the dialectical profile balanced by a rhetorical aim consisting in making the moves in the most efficient and convenient manner that serves the arguers’ interests. According to Van Eemeren and Houtlosser, “strategic manoeuvring can take place in making an expedient choice from the options constituting the ‘topical potential’ associated with a particular discussion stage, in selecting a responsive adaptation to ‘audience demand’, and in exploiting the appropriate ‘presentational devices’ ” (2002, p. 139). Our approach focuses on the analysis of anonymous reports as presentational device in an attempt to describe them as achieving the dialectical and rhetorical aims in the argumentation stage.

The dialectical objective in the argumentation stage is to test the tenability of the standpoints that have shaped the difference of opinion in the confrontation stage, starting from the point of departure established in the opening stage (van Eemeren & Houtlosser 2002, p. 139). The rhetorical aim is for the arguers to make the strongest case and to launch the most effective attack. In order to achieve it, they will adduce arguments in favour or against the standpoint in the most efficient way possible. In using anonymous reports as arguments, the speaker takes benefits from the credibility of Everybody thinks so type of utterance on whose pattern People say / The word goes that / Rumour has it that, etc. utterances are shaped. Practically, in building their case, speakers act as if the contents prefixed by these reportive phrases were widely acknowledged truths on which basis acceptability is transferred to the standpoint they are meant to support. In point of strategic manoeuvring, awarding a content a wider scope of circulation than it might be the case reveals the arguers’ attempt to present the argument in a way that makes them stronger. It is more difficult to attack the voice of the community and besides, within a cause – effect reading (there is no smoke without fire), people are bound to grant credibility to rumours or assumptions presented as commonly shared within a community. When considering the anonymous report argument, one cannot refrain from wondering whether the content reported might not be the speaker’s opinion which he presents as emanating from the community. In choosing this presentational device, the speaker counts on stirring the hearer’s attention and curiosity since, according to psychologists (DiFonzo & Bordia 2007), rumours, to which anonymous reports are similar, feed on emotions, incite people and may result into changing their attitudes and behaviour. Consequently, people do not remain impassible to rumours, but in judging them, they are more likely to consider first the consequences or implications of what is rumoured and secondly consider their accuracy.

In the following excerpt, by employing anonymous reports in his argumentation, the speaker presents his argument in a way that makes it more prominent and grasps the hearer’s attention.
(4) From the middle ages onwards (and probably even earlier) Belgium also has been a prime source for marble, actually it’s not a genuine marble but a dense and hard limestone that shows very appealing ornamental patterns. Especially the red “marble” found around Rochefort and the black “marble” encountered around Yvoir where in high demand and got exported throughout Europe (the word goes that there’s Belgian marble in St Peter’s church in Rome).
(http://www.mindat.org/article.php/563/Belgium,+Calcite+paradise)

In this case, the example is suspended between brackets as an additional and supplementary extra-argument, apparently unnecessary in the economy of the discourse, yet mentioned just to replenish the argumentation process. Despite this facultative appearance of the example, the speaker is well aware of the role it has, namely bringing the particular on the stage in order to exemplify the validity of the claim, i.e. Belgium has been a prime source of marble from the Middle Ages onwards. Another gain is that the hearer will examine the argument from the perspective of the source, the community, which facilitates belief and contributes to lending credibility to the standpoint. However, this might not be the case when the hearer is knowledgeable about the truthfulness of the propositional content put forward in the anonymous report (namely the source of the marble used in building St Peter’s church in Rome) and proceeds to attack the argument and point to its invalidity. Proving the argument wrong is one of the ways to refute anonymous reports. A more rhetorically-oriented means to do it is to undermine the authority of the source used to grant credibility to the anonymously reported information. This can be done by advancing counterarguments emanating from an authority which is superior to the community. In this case, the anonymous report finds itself counterattacked with the same rhetorical device – the use of an authoritative source to prove the content true. This is reflected in the following excerpt where the speaker rejects the truth of what is anonymously reported around by introducing information originating in the Granth Sahib, the Holy Scripture of the Sikhs, a supreme authority in the speaker’s point of view:
(5) But many misconcepts have taken place. For example, people say that sikhs cannot eat beef. This is utterly nonsense. It is not said in the granth sahib that beef cannot be eaten. And either is it said that people cannot eat meat.

The force of anonymous reports when used to put forward argumentation lies in the authority of the information source. In spite of the vague reference to the identity of the source, the speaker counts on the rhetoric use of anonymous reports which are based on popular-opinion like reading and are therefore readily granted credibility. The use of anonymous reports in argumentation appears therefore as an instance when the speaker reveals himself as being prone to persuading the opponent at the expense of remaining within the boundaries of dialectical reasonableness.

5. Conclusion
Anonymous reports represent a particular type of reported speech characterised by the occultation of the information source. In uttering them, the speaker transfers the responsibility for the creation and circulation of the information to the community. In spite of this denial of authorship, when used in an argumentative context, the speaker commits to the truthfulness of the content reported and may use the utterance as an argument, taking benefit from this particular way of putting forward information. Being dialectically vulnerable because of the speaker’s impossibility to account for the truthfulness of the content, anonymous reports represent rhetorical tools strategically manoeuvred by arguers in order to construct the most efficient claim and to attain their persuasive goal. While only pretending to restate what the others rumour round, arguers advance an argument in a way that best suits their interest, namely under the cover of the community voice, an authoritative instance, which makes any attack directed against the validity of the argument more difficult to pursue.

NOTES
[i] The research is financed by the Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sports of Romania, within the PN II –PCE – ID 1209/2007 research project.
[ii] All the examples in this paper are provided with their original spelling.

REFERENCES
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1. Introduction
This study takes as a premise the idea that dissociation (in the sense of Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca’s New Rhetoric) relies on a semantic mechanism and a conceptual one which translate into linguistic and discursive elaboration, and has as a result the creation of a new notion, or concept. The main hypothesis of this study is that the contents of the notion created by dissociation, its structure and its existence over a specific time interval are determined by contextual (situational and co-textual, or discursive) circumstances.[i] This hypothesis is tested on the basis of evidence provided by various instances of discourse which are provided as empirical data borrowed from other studies on the same topic or related topics or identified as such in communicative interactions. Dissociation is seen in this study as one of the mechanisms allowing creation of new representations, notions or concepts on a discursive basis, in an argumentative context.

2. On the Concept of Dissociation
Dissociation is a discourse technique which the authors of the New Rhetoric (NR, Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1958, vol. II, pp. 550-609) introduce to the field of argumentation studies as used by the speaker to suggest rearrangement and restructuring of notional information in a new way. Dissociation allows the speaker – at least for a limited time interval – to remove an incompatibility between propositions or inside a given notion N₀. Through dissociation “a more or less profound change is brought about in the conceptual basis of an argument” (van Rees 2005, p. 53): an existing, given notion N₀, displaying a certain – at least apparent – unity, is rebuilt by the speaker into two notions, one of which looks more or less like N₀, and the other one is felt or introduced as a completely new notion, N, or presumes as new for the audience a specific discourse addresses. In other words, the rational and linguistic dissociative mechanism starts from an existing notion N₀, whose content gives rise to an incompatibility, or to opposed views in the same discussion matter.

For instance, when referring in a particular context to a notional content such as that of the truly needy, the speaker dissociates from the given (old) notion N₀ = (THE) NEEDY[ii], which is thus – explicitly or implicitly – qualified as pure appearance, a new notion N = (THE) TRULY NEEDY, the latter not being necessarily defined or elaborated, but – explicitly or implicitly – qualified as reality. The old notion is also referred to in the NR as the first term of the dissociation (Term I, T I, here N₀), and the new notion as the second term of the dissociation, or the dissociated term (Term II, T II, here N or N’). In Goodwin’s words, “Term I, therefore is aligned with whatever is deemed, for cognitive or social purposes, merely apparent, illusory, insubstantial, irrelevant, erroneous. Term II, on the other hand, corresponds with whatever is considered to be actual, substantial, relevant, coherent, true.” (1991, p. 150) While N₀ is discarded in the argumentative context, N or N’ is valued argumentatively, i.e. N will serve as a new starting point of an argumentation on the same matter in which the use of N₀ proved unsuccessful or led to incompatibilities between the views of the speakers or conflicts or did not appear as stable or adequate enough for one of the parties(’ purposes). The main goal of dissociation is to distinguish and contrast appearances from reality.

Another example of another type is that of the new notion N = SPIRIT OF THE LAW, built by dissociation from LAW = N₀ on the basis of a semantic process of metonymy. In this case, two new notions are created by two distinct dissociations, both based on metonymy, the second being the notion of LETTER OF THE LAW = N’, forming a couple with the former. This notion is dissociated from LAW = N₀ to show, for example, that a particular situation is not covered in practice by the letter of the law, yet it is conceivable – from the legal point of view – through an interpretation of the law, so it is nevertheless in the spirit of the law. (A)[iii] In such cases, when two new notions are created, I suggest that the term ‘double dissociation’ should be used.[iv]

Thus, when a particular ruling in court is debatable or questionable (i.e. is a matter of incompatibility of opinions), an advocate of that ruling may argue for it by contending that it obeys or conforms to the spirit of the law, although it is not present as such in the text of the law. Or, on the contrary, one may argue for an application of the letter of the law, depending on each specific circumstance. N₀, considered as a unitary notion, and accepted as such by the community, is referred to by a specific linguistic expression, or initial term, E₀. By dissociation, the speaker distinguishes and separates between acceptable and unacceptable aspects of N₀ and, by maintaining the former set of (acceptable) aspects, builds up discursively a new content, most often denominated in studies on dissociation a new notion N, by necessarily assigning it a new linguistic denominator E, more or less related or similar to E₀. The new notion N is judged able to serve local particular argumentative objectives or more general ones. (see also van Eemeren et al. 1996, Grootendorst 1999)

Dissociation can thus be used persuasively by the speaker: features of the initial notion appearing as disadvantageous to the argumentative position are qualified as mere ‘appearance’, while advantageous features are (usually tacitly or implicitly) declared as representing ‘reality’. This is why “dissociation trades on a presumed gap between ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’.” (Olson 1996, p.197)

As Warnick and Kline underline, “The Term I (appearance) component of the pair, which is actual, obvious, and immediate, is devalued; the Term II concept, a construction that can only be known indirectly, is valued. The appearance / reality pair reflects other, similar pairs composed from pervasive and culturally bound value orderings: verbal / real (B), means / end (C), subjective / objective (D), opinion / knowledge (E)”[v] (1992, p. 12). In such cases one has to do with (two) dissociations: instead of speaking about an action, one does not speak of an action in itself, but of its means or of its end, or of both, since either seems more appropriate to discuss a particular matter from the speaker’s argumentative perspective. This is also the case of the couple competence / performance (F), either of the terms replacing the term language use. One similar dissociation may be added to those pointed to in the NR: the use of the expressions the spirit and the letter of the divine law (G) at various times in the Scriptures, to which the probably later dissociation between the spirit and the letter of the law is related.

In the previous example (letter / spirit), two new notions have resulted from an old notion, and this seems to be the case in institutional settings, governed by certain rituals and functioning principles. This is also the case of scientific, technical, professional discourse or of various jargons. Many examples provided in the NR are usually of this type as well since the authors deal with well established cognitive domains, such as philosophical systems, in which one is not expected to speak plainly about an event, but make a distinction between the causes and the consequences of an event. In many usual daily situations only one new notion is created, as in the prototypical cases of expressions with the adjectives real, true, and their derivatives, when only one new notion – such as true love or the truly needy (see Zarefsky et al. 1984) – is created and valued.

Dissociation is may give birth to new philosophical systems or scientific perspectives. For instance the notion of QUANTUM PHYSICS is dissociated from the notion of PHYSICS, and a second dissociated notion thus evolves, termed Newtonian physics (H). They are not opposing each other, but the couple is necessary for building a new paradigm, and dealing with physical phenomena and processes in completely different systems of reference. Like in this case, where both notions are maintained, dissociation does not always involve discarding the old notion N₀. In ordinary communication N₀ is temporarily discarded only for the very specific purpose of argumentation. In institutionalized communication (law, meetings of organizations), a particular dissociation may result in adopting a (notional) solution available also in the future (see Gata 2009, comments on sustainable development). This means that in some cases, the particular type of ‘compromise’ reached by dissociation is temporarily adopted and then the solution is forgotten, while in other cases the solution is maintained for future similar cases of incompatibility.

Two main ideas have been stressed upon in this section:
1) Dissociation allows the speaker to build a new notion in a particular discursive context. The creation of this new notional representation has an argumentative goal. In institutional settings two new notions may be created to replace – as a pair – an old notion whose content proves incompatible with the discussion upon a particular matter.
2) The new notion is either temporarily or definitely available – i.e. some new notions created by dissociations are used in common everyday conversations and some other notions are used in institutionalized contexts, re-used, and become established notional representations, giving birth to concepts to be used in theories, developing (scientific) paradigms.

In what follows the hypothesis to be tested is in connection with the second idea listed above, namely that the new notion (the dissociated term) has a shorter or a longer life, depending on the paradigm and the social setting in which it appears, on its interior makeup and dissemination force, on its author’s notoriety, and on the mediating channel. This hypothesis is also to be tested in connection with the first idea listed above, in the sense that the ‘double’ dissociation is characteristic of discourse taking place in institutional settings (see examples A-H above).

3. ‘Life expectancy’ of dissociated terms
The main starting point of this study is that dissociations may occur in more or less conventionalized and institutionalized contexts and its result(s) – namely the concepts or notional representations created – are argumentatively valued in the context.

Three different situations may be distinguished in dealing with dissociation terms as results, or products, of the dissociation mechanism, and the initial hypothesis is thus branched: 1) terms resulting from dissociations taking place in institutional settings (scientific / academic / philosophical discourse) have ‘long life expectancy’ and are maintained subsequently as (technical / scientific / professional) terms in a given socio-historic context – these may be considered concepts proper; 2) terms resulting from dissociations taking place in ordinary communicative activities (everyday conversations on various topics)  have ‘short life expectancy’ and are functional only within the activity or situation in which they evolved; 3) some terms resulting from dissociations taking place in ordinary communication or in institutional settings may have ‘medium life expectancy’ if they are later re-used, evoked, reported, re-built as such owing to their particular suggestive force or persuasive potential.

3.1. The first sub-hypothesis is that terms resulting from dissociations taking place in institutional settings (scientific / academic / philosophical discourse) may have ‘long life expectancy’ and maintained subsequently as (technical / scientific / professional) terms in a given socio-historic context – these may be considered concepts proper. Such a term denotes a notion or a concept endowed with ‘long life expectancy’, i.e. the potential of definitely and clearly outliving the particular discourse activity under which it was proposed to an audience. Among such terms, the following will be discussed below: sustainable development, the letter / spirit of the law, Newtonian / quantum physics, global warming.

3.1.1. Sustainable development
The notion of SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT[vi] is dissociated from the notion of DEVELOPMENT since the latter refers to activities which – as practiced by some human communities – led to negative consequences for the following generations. It is thus alleged that another kind of development is more profitable to mankind, the one that sustains itself or makes itself last (Fr. développement durable), by preserving enough resources for the future generations. This concept was first promoted on a large scale in 1987, on the occasion of the publication of the issues of an international meeting providing a historical report: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development known as the “Report of the Brundtland commission” or Brundtland Report (BR).

Historically, the concept of SUSTAINABILITY is reported to be used first in relation with scarcity of resources: this was related to population growth in the eighteenth century and to coal shortage in the nineteenth century.[vii] In 1980 the term sustainable development was first used with respect to creating an environment apt to ensure conservation of nature and natural resources.

The creation of the concept was supported and justified discursively in the BR not only by various strategies of definition[viii], but also by the contrast established between the (old) notion of PROGRESS, as it was commonly conceived of at the time, and the newly dissociated concept of SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, in favour of the latter; i.e. the latter is positively valued in two ways: firstly, in defining it by opposition to anything that might have been seen as ‘progress’ up to that time and, secondly, in arguing in favour of many types of (strategic) changes which should take place in order to ensure real development. An antithesis highlights the contrast in the following excerpt:
(1) The world must quickly design strategies that will allow nations to move from their present, often destructive, processes of growth and development onto sustainable development paths.” (BR, art. 27) (my italics)

The need for a clear and mutually shared representation of the newly created concept is insisted upon in various documents issued at that time:
(2) Arriving at a commonly accepted definition of ‘sustainable development’ remains a challenge for all the actors in the development process. (Making Common Cause, U.S. Based Development, Environment, Population NGOs, WCED Public Hearing, Ottawa, 26-27 May 1986)

Moreover, authorities are interested in disseminating the concept and its content:
(3) How are individuals in the real world to be persuaded or made to act in the common interest? The answer lies partly in education, institutional development, and law enforcement. (BR, art. 16)

The concept created by dissociation has been largely used ever since: the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development was created in 1992 as a further step forward in applying the principles established by the BR; the United Nations presently guide actions and strategies in the area of sustainable development by its Division for Sustainable Development; as a natural consequence of the use of this concept other concepts have evolved, referred to by terms such as sustainable growth, sustainable management (of resources), sustainable consumption / production (patterns), environmental sustainability. The concept is still widely used at present and the large choice of actions and activities performed by the international organisms previously mentioned, to which add lots of national agencies, support the idea that the dissociated concept of SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT has a long life expectancy.[ix] The adjective sustainable has been associated to many other nouns yielding a profusion of specialized terms: sustainable cities / culture / yield.

In the cases discussed under 3.1.1.-3.1.4., as in other similar cases, I find it adequate to speak about dissociation giving birth to a ‘new notion’ as the following development stage of a ‘dissociated term’. When the linguistic expression corresponding to a dissociated term enters a dictionary – and often in a specialized dictionary, vocabulary or glossary – or whenever there is obvious evidence that it exists in the collective memory, then it can be equated to a ‘new notion’.

3.1.2. The letter and the spirit of the law
While the term sustainable development and its definition can be found in various glossaries or dictionaries, notions such as the letter of the (divine) law or the spirit of the (divine) law are not included in general language dictionaries; yet, they are widely used and understood, or at least acknowledged and appropriated by large communities of people.

In the following excerpt, the article author quotes a Rabbi who justifies what might be called a ‘communitarian theft’ after federal indictments against six members of the Hasidic community of New Square, N.Y. for misuse of government education money[x]:
(4) Without going into the question of whether or not they were obeying the letter of the law, the spirit of the law was always being complied with,” declares Rabbi Mayer Schiller (…) The purpose of the law was to support education, says Schiller, and that’s exactly what the money was used for, even if the studies were not conducted in the formal manner required by the Pell Grant Program. (my italics)
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/1/31/174956.shtml

Although referred to explicitly in the Rabbi’s utterance, the notion of LAW is avoided in the justification, since it does not allow for explaining how the use of the governmental support could be viewed as legal. The two dissociated notions spirit of the law and letter of the law are mentioned and in some way opposed: in a somewhat naïve way – which he might wish for as transparent – the speaker mentions not going into details about the fellows obeying or not obeying the letter of the law, but states that the money obtained from the government was employed for study, which was in the spirit of the law, the adverb always being used to strategically emphasize the truthfulness of the assertion. This is also the case of the couple langue and parole, where two new notions have been dissociated from a unitary notion, LANGUAGE.

3.1.3. Quantum Physics
In a similar way, the notion of QUANTUM PHYSICS was dissociated from PHYSICS, after which a need was felt for renaming the ‘initial’ science of physics, and a new term has been created, Newtonian physics. This situation could be schematized as follows:

N₀ stands for the old notion not necessarily re-configured or re-defined, such as in the couple development / sustainable development, while N₀’ corresponds T I of a double dissociation, being invertible with N as T II, depending on what member of the couple is valued in the argumentation, such as in Newtonian physics / quantum physics.

According to Goodwin (1991, pp. 150-151), an assertion such as This calculation is correct can be supported by establishing a point of reference, a principle whose application may show the assertion as true in quantum physics and false in Newtonian physics: thus, “in the presence of quantum physics, Newtonian physics only appears to be a solid ground for holding the initial claim.” (Goodwin 1991, p. 150) On the contrary, the opponent may give Newtonian physics the status of T II, since the speaker may be interested in its economical character as opposed to the completeness of quantum physics. Or else, this can happen in other discursive circumstances, in a different setting and when a different matter is under discussion.

The result of dissociation can be used outside the particular field of science, as in the following excerpt:
(5) Action learning acknowledges what scientists proved nearly a hundred years ago, namely that Newtonian physics does not and cannot explain reality. Action learning recognizes that the old way of thinking and solving problems does not work, especially in today’s rapidly changing environment. Action learning therefore utilizes quantum physics, chaos theory, and systems thinking. (Marquardt, 2004: 93)[xi] (my italics)

In this context, the two terms are used to distinguish between a possible old approach to action learning and the suggested innovative way of approaching such activities. Although marginal, this looks like a prototypical example of translation of the dissociated concepts to another field or referential area by means of an implicit analogy. It looks like the terms of such dissociation are – like in the case of spirit and letter of the law – powerful enough and well established in the common representation to be easily applied to and used in any situation, their rhetorical potential fully contributing to an argumentative scheme based on analogy.

3.1.4. Global warming
An interesting example of dissociation of this type is provided by the current polemic (lasting for many decades now) on global warming (GW = “rise in temperature on a large temporal scale – more than a decade”). Although the issue is being widely discussed in the media, little is known in the same environment about the actual dilemmas in the field, which are constantly dealt upon by specialists in the field. Four categories of scientists might be identified in GW study[xii]: 1) the skeptics – perhaps the smallest group – those who do not believe there really is any GW; 2) the GW move – the largest group – those who preach that GW is caused by increased concentrations of greenhouse gases (and this because of various human activities; in this paradigm GW has anthropogenic causes); 3) the global change (GC) move[xiii] – a rather small group – those who acknowledge there is a rise in temperature but attribute it to natural causes; their opinion is that the present warming is a natural consequence of what is called “the Earth’s recovery from the little ice age”; 4) a group who acknowledge the rise in temperature but attribute it to a mixture of factors. The second and the third categories are interesting for the present discussion since they oppose each other, and this on the basis of a profound difference of paradigm. Without necessarily identifying one of the two notions – GW and GC – as the ‘initial’ one, one may eventfully detail upon the existing dissociation by means of the following representation:

In order to defend the standpoint that the GTR can be diminished and prevented from now on, the members of the second category above dissociate a new notion N = GTR caused by anthropogenic factors (GW) from the notion including incompatibility between possible causes N₀ = GTR. GTR caused by anthropogenic factors is seen as a consequence of human activity, usually referred to by the phrase global warming, while discarding any other (natural) causes – the theory itself being known as anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW). The evolvement of this paradigm has as a consequence the fact that the programs and actions devised within this framework are meant to fight the causes, while it may well be the case that the anthropogenic factor is not the cause. In the politics realm this theory is supported by liberals and socialists. In order to defend the standpoint that the GTR cannot be fought (and that perhaps money should be invested in predicting various consequences of the GTR and ways to prevent negative ones), the members of the third category above dissociate a new notion from that of N = GTR, N’ = GTR as produced by natural factors, usually referred to by the phrase global change or climate change. The notion of GC, or CLIMATE CHANGE, is more comprehensive than the notion (A)GW since it does not exclude global warming as a change and allows for the idea that global decreases in temperature may also be the case.

3.1.5. Remarks on long life expectancy dissociations
When a dissociated term has a ‘long life’, it is no longer part of the original argumentative context, it becomes part of a cognitive system and a social knowledge representation framework. This is the case of dissociated terms such as letter of the law and spirit of the law. They maintain their argumentative potential and, when integrated to a new context, they may have a flexible representation, which the speaker may infuse with new notional aspects in order to make it stronger. Such a dissociated notion may be frequently inventoried in dictionaries, often pertaining to a specific field of activity.

In this way the audience by which it was initially accepted is enlarged to an audience practically indefinite in point of dimensions, i.e. as large as can be the set of individuals taking contact with that particular field or becoming members of a given community professionally, socially, culturally or historically determined. The most important element to be taken in consideration when establishing whether a dissociated term has become a new notion is its inclusion (and definition) in a dictionary or glossary, and its use within a specialized domain of activity or, at least, its presence in treatises, journal articles, institutional debates. Such terms denoting new concepts or notions are generally used by professionals, specialists in the field, who authorize and validate the term, its definition and its contextual use, which becomes the most important basis for their long life expectancy.

3.2. Dissociation may give birth to a ‘new notion’ improperly named so since endowed with ‘short life expectancy’, when it displays the potential of serving only a local purpose of resolving a difference of opinion. In this case it does not outlive the given local discursive situation and cannot be carried away from the context at all or any such attempt fails to propagate the ‘new notion’ with (exactly) the same meaning and potential.

The second sub-hypothesis is that terms resulting from dissociations taking place in ordinary communication (everyday conversations on various topics) have ‘short life expectancy’ and play an argumentative role only within the activity or situation in which they evolved. Such terms result from distinctions between notional representations which are different or incompatible for the speaker and the audience, the addressee (opponent) or some imaginary interlocutor.

3.2.1. Love of beautiful clothes is not vanity
Relying on examples provided in the literature on the topic, this could be the case with a ‘dissociated term’ such as LOVE OF BEAUTIFUL CLOTHES in the example discussed by van Rees (2009: 8):
(6) She loved beautiful clothes, but was not vain.
Love of beautiful clothes is a term dissociated from VANITY. In this case, the process is reversed, the interpretation process being something like: Real vanity is something else than just love of beautiful clothes or Love of beautiful clothes is only in appearance / looks like vanity but is something else than vanity.

3.2.2. Virtue is political virtue
An interesting example of such a dissociation and also a meta discourse on it is to be found in the introduction (Avertissement) to The Spirit of Laws[xiv] by Montesquieu:
(7) … what I distinguish by the name of virtue, in a republic, is the love of one’s country, that is, the love of equality. It is not a moral, nor a Christian, but a political virtue; and it is the spring which sets the republican government in motion, as honour is the spring which gives motion to monarchy. Hence it is that I have distinguished the love of one’s country, and of equality, by the appellation of political virtue. (Author’s italics.)

The notion of VIRTUE evolved for Montesquieu from more general (1725, Discours sur l’équité) to more precise (1757, The Spirit of Laws)[xv]. In the excerpt above the author is also in search of a name for the new notion he proposes; the one he finds and he points to explicitly – by a meta discursive / linguistic reference – is political virtue, equated with the meaning of “love of one’s country and/or of equality”. Although this notion is rather ambiguous, especially that there are other notional contents which Montesquieu assigns to fr. vertu, the discourse will be consistent with this notion of VIRTUE defined or described by the author. The meta-linguistic comments continue and are probably meant to clearly suggest separation from other possible interpretations and also delineate the author’s position more specifically against criticisms brought to his previously advanced standpoints. The text goes on as follows:
(8) My ideas are new, and therefore I have been obliged to find new words, or to give new acceptations to old terms, in order to convey my meaning. They, who are unacquainted with this particular, have made me say most strange absurdities, such as would be shocking in any part of the world, because in all countries and governments morality is requisite. […] I have set these matters in a clearer light in the present edition, by giving a more precise meaning to my expression: and in most places where I have made use of the word virtue I have taken care to add the term political.

In the two excerpts above, Montesquieu is saying neither Virtue is … since he does not intend to present the generally accepted definition of virtue – nor True virtue is … which would indicate a dissociation in a somewhat clearer and semi-explicit way. In saying what I distinguish by the name of … he could be pointing to a meaning clarification or to a dissociation. In both cases – by applying a strategy of maximally argumentative interpretation and the pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion – this utterance can be considered to belong to the opening stage, where starting points of the discussion are established. Normally, dissociation brings any discussion to its opening stage and, from the moment it is being deployed it allows changing the starting points or creating new ones, and consequently opens a new discussion.

Thus Montesquieu presents a dissociation which he introduced less explicitly on other occasions. This dissociation is now mentioned at the very beginning of the treatise in order to allow consistent use of the new notion POLITICAL VIRTUE throughout the work and also in line with the audience’s expected interpretation. This could also be ranged in the category 3.2.c) above.

3.2.3. Legitimate economic purposes
In the context of discussions about law violation by Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bill Clinton expresses his opinion that Goldman is not guilty since there was no economic purpose in the actions under discussion:
(9) “I don’t think it is self-evident” Goldman Sachs broke the law because investors “had access to the same information” as Paulson, Clinton said at a conference in Washington focusing on the federal government’s financial picture. “What is evident to me is that, whoever wins and loses in that deal, there is no larger purpose for the American economy – nobody really benefits except the person that wins the gamble.” (..) He said “too much of this stuff has no economic purpose,” while also saying he backs farmers’ “fundamentally different” use of derivatives to protect themselves against poor harvests. “Derivatives that serve a legitimate economic purpose ought to be treated differently than those that don’t, and I do not believe that there was any legitimate economic purpose advanced by the derivative at issue in the Goldman case,” Clinton said. (my italics)
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-29/ex-president-clinton-skeptical-goldman-violated-law-update1-.html

The term legitimate economic purpose does not have a clear unambiguous representation and does not correspond to a notion proper. It is however used by the speaker to distinguish the action of Goldman from other actions which may be thought of as having legitimate economic purposes and could be treated as infringements of the law, while in the Goldman Sachs case the beneficiary is thought to be only one person. In the given context, the lack of a more obviously delimited dissociated notion of LEGITIMATE ECONOMIC PURPOSE prevents Clinton from giving his assertion a heavy weight. This is a good example of the lesser (argumentative) impact of dissociated terms which are not provided with a sound definition and clearly delineated notional content. This could be one of the reasons for which Clinton is using the formula I do not believe that there was any legitimate economic purpose…

3.2.4. Remarks on short life expectancy dissociated terms
Such a dissociated term cannot be referred to or revived in the absence of the contextual data of its creation, i.e. it has not any potential of outliving the particular discourse activity under which it was proposed to a given audience. Another characteristic is the fact that the linguistic expression assigned to such a notional content does not have lexicalization features, i.e. the lexical items which make it up occur as a free combination. If at any time this dissociated representation is recalled or re-used, then another linguistic expression may be used and the phrase initially used in the dissociation is not necessarily maintained.  Reviving such a notional content is possible only in the following situations and for:
a) the same speaker rebuilding an argumentative situation on the basis of her past experience and previous use of the dissociated term (i.e. the dissociated term has outlived the initial discursive situation as a ‘new notion’ only for the speaker who has a memory of that particular dissociation); however, in a new setting the dissociation may have a different turnover, and the dissociated term can be used differently;
b) the speaker’s opponent or a member of the audience re-telling (narrating the argumentative situation – a reported dissociation); in this case, the functions of dissociation and of argumentation are not the same as in the initial situation;
c) the speaker’s opponent or a member of the audience re-creating the same argumentative context by rhetorically mimicking for his own purpose the initial argumentative discourse (i.e. the speech situation is re-created in another environment, with this other speaker re-using a past passive experience and re-making it into his own as a current active argumentative action).

This type of dissociation can be more easily identified by means of grammatical and discursive devices, some of the ‘tool-words’ of a language. Such indicators could be: negation (X is not x …), use of adversative or concessive but, and of other concessive adverbials (yet, however), the adjectives true and real and their derivatives, prefixes such as non-, pseudo­-.

3.3. A third possibility, placed somewhere among the two, is that dissociation gives birth to a ‘new notion’ endowed with medium life expectancy, i.e. the potential of being revived occasionally by the same speaker or by various speakers and thus outliving the particular discourse activity under which it was initially proposed to an audience. A prototypical case is that of the dissociated term truly needy or true need used by Reagan in some of his discourses trying to justify austerity measures (example largely discussed in Zarefsky et al. 1984; see also Rosner 1982). In a speech given in 1981, President Reagan said:
(10) “We will continue to fulfill the obligations that spring from our national conscience, […] those who through no fault of their own must depend on the rest of us, the poverty-stricken, the disabled, the elderly, all those with true need can rest assured that the social safety net of programs they depend on are exempt from any cuts”. (quoted by Rosner 1982, p. 381; Rosner’s italics; excerpted from New York Times, March 17^th, 1981)

Some of the features of this type of dissociation are the following: a) it cannot be included in the dictionary; b) it obviously serves a rhetorical purpose – not a dialectical one; c) it addresses large audiences made up of various subgroups; d) it can be easily propagated in space and time through media; e) consequently, it dwells in the public memory and can be easily used in new circumstances with the same initial potential, eventfully with changes of meaning, yet carrying part or all of the initial rhetorical and dialectical potential, especially when used by the same speaker and addressing the same audience. Two structural elements in the example above contribute to specifying the meaning of the expression truly needy:
(a) those who through no fault of their own must depend on us;
(b) the poverty-stricken, the disabled, the elderly.

The phrase (a) is likely to be kept as such in the collective memory, although it is relatively ambiguous: no one has a precise representation of what a fault of one’s own is. To this vague notional content add the meanings corresponding to the elements in the enumeration (b), but it is unclear – since the sentence is syntactically ambiguous – whether the elements of this enumeration are specifications of the phrase (a) and whether the category covered by (a) extends only to these three instances.

Since such expressions appear to display features of both the category of ‘new notions’ referred to under 3.1. and that of ‘dissociated terms’ referred to under 3.2. above, I find it adequate for the moment to name these ‘value-laden notions’ (I am borrowing this phrase from Rosner 1982, p. 355). In dealing with the phrase truly needy, Rosner points to the fact that it can be assigned several definitions: “The variety of definitions of the « truly needy » will be shown to reflect far more the different political and social interests of charity workers, hospital and dispensary trustees, and public spokesmen, than any basic philosophically consistent moral position.” (1982, p. 356) In this case we are in front of a prototypical example of ‘medium life expectancy’ dissociated term. The more so as part of the notional content corresponding to the dissociated term is maintained throughout decades, according to Rosner: “there is a similarity of meaning and analysis in arguments over definitions of the « truly needy » over the proper eligibility criteria for a variety of health programs like Medicaid and Medicare, and for the scope of other social service programs such as food stamps and welfare.” (1982, p. 381)

It is nevertheless important to point out that such dissociated terms are not introduced in dictionaries; their life mainly relies on the propagation strength of the various media and of literature – sometimes also of the hearsay practice, mainly for communities who have less access to school(ing), culture, information. Another factor contributing to the ‘medium life expectancy’ status of such expressions is the notoriety of the speaker introducing the dissociation and the dissociated term.

4. Final Remarks
Assessing the life expectancy of a dissociated term may indicate whether it can give birth to a paradigm or reference system or it will only live throughout the discussion which generated it or allowed for its existence. An interesting point to be further studied is the way in which the linguistic expressions assigned to dissociated terms are infused with emotional meaning, which is their predictable semantic behavior in point of audience interpretation and relationship with other expressions in the vocabulary of the language.

NOTES
[i] This study is funded by the Romanian Ministry of Education, through the National Research Council under Project ID 1209/2007 (Ideas).
[ii] Throughout the text of this article italics stand for a linguistic expression encountered in discourse, such as true humour, while terms in capitals, such as HUMOUR, point to a notion, a conceptual content eventfully corresponding to a linguistic expression in a given language.
[iii] Letters between brackets point to specific cases of dissociation (examples A to H) in which two new notions may be created. The letters point to specific examples borrowed from the literature on dissociation or identified as dissociations in various instances of discourse by the author of the present article.
[iv] The definition I propose is the following: A double dissociation occurs when two new notions are created, both having argumentative potential in contrasting discursive situations; in the case of a double dissociation, the two new notions are expected to be assigned linguistic denominators different from the expression used to refer to the initial notion.
[v] The letters between brackets are mine (A.G.) to indicate, as mentioned above, the two dissociated terms on the basis of two dissociations.
[vi] In this endnote I provide definitions of the concept of SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT which I find most useful in the context of the present article: 1. First (historical) definition of sustainable development: “Development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (1986, UNESCO Commission, Our Common Future); 2. “a concept that has emerged in recent years, based on the premise that development must meet the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Glossary published on the website of the Institute for Sustainable Development); 3. “A development path along which the maximisation of human well-being for today’s generations does not lead to declines in future well-being” (definition taken from the glossary published on the site of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Sustainable Development’s Glossary).
[vii] For a detailed and clear presentation of the concept of SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, see, among others, Baker, Susan (2006). Sustainable Development. Oxon: Routledge.
[viii] The various strategies of definition used in the Brundtland Report are in themselves a very interesting research direction in terms of argumentation study.
[ix] See Baker 2006: 27 ff. for sustainable development as a political concept.
[x] “(…) the indictments allege, among other things, the fraudulent misuse over a 10-year period of $10 million in federal Pell grants that were earmarked for financially needy post-secondary students. The defendants are accused of transmitting the funds through bogus schools of independent study in which no real study took place, in which students did not meet regularly with their mentors as required, and where very few degrees were awarded, even to students who had been registered in the programs for years.” (article introduction, http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/1/31/174956.shtml)
[xi] Marquardt, Michael J. (2004). Optimizing the power of action learning: solving problems and building leaders in real time. Mountain View: Nicholas Brealey Publishing.
[xii] The scientific data and information were provided by Mirela Voiculescu, Assistant Professor and researcher in the field of Atmospheric Physics at Dunărea de Jos University of Galaţi, Romania.
[xiii] The GC towards warming is said to be natural because there are areas where the temperature is either constant or decreases; the last ten years have witnessed a stabilization of the global temperature. There are measurements and data evidential of two major increases in global temperature: the first one in 1910-1950, followed by significant decreases in 1950-1970/5; the next increase since 1975 – up to now has a similar rate. Major reasons for claiming that global warming is a global natural change are the following: α) The first increase cannot be explained by anthropogenic factors since pollution and industry did not have so high rates at the time. β) There is no clear relation or connection between the second increase and the greenhouse gases increase. γ) The main aspect is that no one can identify a unidirectional relationship – either can influence the other.
[xiv] The Spirit of Laws, by Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, translated by Thomas Nugent, revised by J. V. Prichard, based on a public domain edition published in 1914 by G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., London, rendered into HTML and text by Jon Roland of the Constitution Society.
[xv] See also article Vertu, Dictionnaire électronique Montesquieu: http://dictionnaire-montesquieu.ens-lyon.fr/

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Do politicians argue with their bodies? Argumentation deals with attitudes and opinions proposed through claim and ground. It thus appears impossible for a person’s nonverbal communication to make arguments. Neither body nor voice – it seems – can create the verbal two-part structure of an argument. However, if such nonverbal communication can work as a stimulus evoking a receiver’s cognitively generated argument, then also non-verbal communication may function as rhetorical argumentation.

In this article we explore the nonverbal argumentative communication of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in the 2008 televised primary debates for the Democratic Party. Our aim is neither to describe the communication styles of the two contenders, nor to make generalizations about the nonverbal communication they employ in the debates. Instead we primarily use the analysed instances to exemplify that nonverbal communication can have argumentative functions, and to illustrate how such communication works. More specifically, we examine how nonverbal communication performs argumentative functions in acclaiming and defending the debater’s own ethos and in attacking the opponent’s ethos.

1. Our Theoretical and Methodological Starting Points
In our view, argumentation can occur in a host of different forms of expression, including speech, pictures and nonverbal behaviour. With Wayne Brockreide, we believe that arguments are found “not in statements, but in people” (Brockriede 1992). Further, we subscribe to a contextual and cognitive view of argumentation (Hample 1980, 1992, Kjeldsen 2007), where the message – for instance the nonverbal behaviour – performs as “a stimulus for the receiver’s (cognitively generated) argument” (Hample 1992, p. 93; cf. Gronbeck 1995). We consider argumentation as communicative action, which is performed, evoked, and must be understood, in a rhetorical context of opposition (Kjeldsen 2007, 2011).

Of course, there is no denying that the semiotic mode of verbal communication allows for more precise and elaborate forms of argumentation than pictures or nonverbal communication. However, we will try to show that this does not prevent nonverbal communication from performing certain types of argumentative acts.

Nonverbal communication concerns facial expressions, hand gestures, movements, postures and the use of voice. When rhetorically performed in public speaking we refer to these nonverbal means as actio. Actio differs from nonverbal communication in general in that actio is performed in a rhetorical situation with the intention to be persuasive.

In order to capture the argumentative workings and functions of the nonverbal communication, we apply a rhetorical, interpretative analysis of four examples from the debates in the 2008 democratic primaries. We have chosen to focus on the interactions between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, because they generally exhibit two dissimilar debating styles, and because their rhetorical exchanges provided a rich source of illustrative material for the exemplification of nonverbal argumentation.

Our interpretation and analysis of the empirical data is grounded in a rhetorical and hermeneutic view (cf. Richards 1956, Foss 1991, Palmer 1977, Ödman, 2005). The interpretive process takes place not only between the part and the whole, but also between object and context and between preconception and understanding of the phenomenon. In this way the interpretations are confirmed by congruence within the material and through comparison with other relevant research.

In order to interpret actio it is important to gain an understanding of the context within which it is performed because the recipients in a rhetorical situation normally interpret a speaker’s actio in accordance with the constraints within the situation. Constraints are one of three aspects which Lloyd F. Bitzer used in the 1960s to define a rhetorical situation. Bitzer’s constraints, which are somewhat similar to Bourdieu’s concept of doxa, refer among other things to the preconceptions and expectations that are present in any given situation (Bitzer 1968, Bourdieu 1990). For instance, one can assume that the preconceptions and expectations regarding actio during a private conversation are different to those in a public debate among politicians. Hence, what is considered credible and valuable actio can differ in various rhetorical situations. For instance, the expressive actio of the orators on the rostrum in ancient Greece and Rome would not be equally persuasive in the television debates of today. In this way, actio is a historically, socially, and culturally situated activity.

Our perspective differs from nonverbal communication research where it is not uncommon to carry out quantitative studies, not least within voice research (Scherer 2010, Martin 2010). We also depart from the kind of contemporary rhetorical research about actio which has as its main aim to find correlations between certain expressions performed by a speaker and the effects this creates among the audience (Mehrabian 1972, Burgoon et al. 1990, to some extent also Jørgensen et al. 1994, 1998).

Our study differs in two ways from such studies, and other common nonverbal types of research (e.g. Kendon 2004, Streeck 1993). Firstly, using a multimodal approach we examine how different human modalities – such as gestures, facial expression, and nuances in voice – interact and work simultaneously. Secondly, we are not only interested in what a speaker does (for instance nodding her head), but also – and in particular – how she is doing it (nodding eagerly or hesitantly).

The importance of the first approach, the multimodal approach, is confirmed in previous research on actio, which found that the recipients of a message in a rhetorical situation create their perception of the speaker through a holistic perspective. In other words: An audience evaluates an orator or speaker based on how they perceive the different modalities of actio interact simultaneously (Gelang 2008, about multimodality see also; Mondada and Lindström 2009). For instance, when an audience was asked to explain why they felt the speaker was committed, they usually commented on several different modalities such as eye contact, gestures, postures, voice management, and how these interacted. For example, feeble or a lack of gestures could be offset by a pleasant voice, and poor eye contact could be compensated for by vibrant and energetic gestures when the recipients described a speaker’s committed actio (Gelang 2008).

In the same way, we believe that knowledge about rhetoric and argumentation in television debates cannot be acquired by looking at the different modalities of nonverbal communication separately, examining them one by one. The communicative – and argumentative – action is created in the way these modalities interact and function together. This even includes the words accompanying the bodily actions. So, even though our main focus in this article is the multimodality of nonverbal communication, our interpretations are also based on the words that follow.

The second approach, examining how a gesture is performed, we refer to as studying actio qualities. The actio qualities are the aspects of actio that create the nuances, and make actio appear with variation (Gelang 2008). The way a gesture is performed is at least as important for its rhetorical impact and argumentative dimensions as the gesture chosen. What we call actio qualities is in many ways similar to the concepts paralinguistics and paracommunication. Paralinguistics (Argyle 1988) describes different qualities in relation to the voice, for example variations of tone, while paracommunication describes qualities in relation to bodily communication, for example how energetically a gesture is carried out (Scheflen 1973, Birdwhistell 1970). Similar aspects are also noted within artistic research, for instance in relation to a dancer’s movements or an actor’s on-stage actions (Laban 1974, Sjöström 2007).

Although these qualities are often mentioned in research on nonverbal communication they are seldom the main topic. Some studies from the early 1970s have given attention to these qualitative aspects of actio, especially regarding the voice. Mehrabian (1972), for instance, showed that a credible and/or convincing speaker conveys a sense of power, energy, activity, and vitality. More recent research has employed concepts such as openness, firmness, precision, relaxation, and energy to describe a successful speaker (Jørgensen et al. 1994, Babad et al. 2004).

In judging the how of actio, we distinguish between the three actio qualities energy, dynamism and tempo/rhythm (Gelang 2008). Some research points to energy as a particularly important factor in nonverbal communication (Mehrabaian 1972, McCroskey 2001, Babad et al. 2004). One study of 37 television debates concludes that the speakers who were considered to be winning the debates were characterized by modulated voice, energetic articulation, intense gaze, energetic posture, eager gesticulations and firm, directive gestures in comparison with their opponents and in relation to the rhetorical situation (Jørgensen et al. 1994, 1998).

Energy concerns flow, intensity and focus. Flow refers to the energy, constant or variable, that exists in the succession of expressions that the speaker produces in a public appearance. Intensity refers to the degree of energy in a particular modality or in the multimodal expression. Focus refers to the way in which energy is concentrated on the most meaningful modalities. The second actio quality is dynamism, which concerns variations. Dynamism is a quality that is related to the variations in actio. The dynamic variations usually occur with the help of other qualities such as energy, rhythm and/or the magnitude of the expressions. The third actio quality, tempo and rhythm, concerns flow, speed and timing. Tempo refers to the basic rate that pervades the entire performance, while rhythm refers to the variations of pace that can occur by means of changes in one or more modalities. Timing concerns the right actio at the right time.

Naturally the actio qualities occur most often in parallel, and it can be about energy and dynamism at the same time. So, in our analysis we have focused on actio as a multimodal activity and the actio qualities as defined above. We believe that it is the degree, strength, and intensity of the actio qualities, working simultaneously and jointly with the number and modes used, that are of importance in the rhetorical situation.

2. Nonverbal Communication as Symptomatic Argumentation
A wide range of studies suggest that nonverbal communication affects the audience in their liking or disliking of different debaters or leaders (Sullivan & Masters 1988, Atkinson 1988, Bucy 2000, 2003, Bucy & Bradley 2004, Jørgensen et al. 1998). One general finding in such research is that non-speaking debaters expressing nonverbal disbelief or disagreement when their opponent is talking, are perceived as deceptive, less likable and less credible, when compared to debaters not exhibiting such background behaviour (Seiter 2001, Seiter et al. 2009, Seiter et al. 2006). We suggest that such evaluation of speakers and debaters contains argumentative dimensions.

In order for any discourse to be argumentative it must address some sort of difference of opinion (cf. van Eemeren, Grootendorst & Snoeck Henkemans 2002, p. 3 ff., van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992). The television debate is a genre that can be described as an institutionalized difference of opinion. It is a constitutive trait in presidential debates – as well as other kinds of debates – that the candidates will argue for their own view and against the view of the opponent, while simultaneously trying to weaken the opponent’s ethos and strengthening their own.

As functional theory proposes, political debaters may acclaim (praise, boast of, tout) their character and policy. They may attack (criticize, condemn) their opponent’s character or policy, and they may defend those accusations (Benoit & Wells 1996, Benoit, Pier & Blaney 1997, Benoit & Harthcock 1999, Benoit & Brazeal 2002).

The audience will interpret both the verbal and the nonverbal discourse of the candidates according to these generic conventions. Thus, nonverbal communication can be taken as signs for spoken or unspoken premises and propositions about the candidates’ or the opponents’ character or policy. This can be executed through singular acts (such as shaking the head) and through the amount of energy put into their nonverbal communication (such as shaking vigorously). When a candidate exhibits an active, energetic actio it may be taken as an argumentative act of acclaiming, attacking or defending. In all three instances, nonverbal communication is used as ground for propositions claiming the praiseworthy ethos of the candidate, the blameworthy ethos of the opponent, or the injustice of the attacks directed at the candidate. We refer to such active manifestations as enacted actio, because the candidate appears to enact an inner mental state, an emotion or opinion.

Enacted actio can function as a symptomatic argument scheme (van Eemeren, Grootendorst & Snoeck Henkemans 2002, p. 96ff., Garssen 2001, p. 91ff). In an argument scheme based on a symptomatic relation “a standpoint is defended by citing in the argument a certain sign, symptom or distinguishing mark of what is claimed in the standpoint. On the grounds of this concomitance, the speaker claims the standpoint should be accepted” (van Eemeren, Grootendorst & Snoeck Henkemans 2002, p. 97). The general symptomatic argument scheme may be expressed like this:

Y is true of X,
because Z is true of X,
and Z is symptomatic of Y.

Nonverbal communication can function as such symptomatic arguments. For instance:

Politician A is an involved and passionate person,
because He exhibits energetic nonverbal communication,
and Energetic nonverbal communication is a sign of an involved and passionate person.

Performing the nonverbal argument that you are involved and passionate is important for establishing the character (arete) and goodwill (eunoia) of the speaker. By the same token, fluent speech may also function as an implied argument about the competence (phronesis) of the speaker. Needless to say, such assessments are always culture specific.

If an orator or a debater uses a nonverbal style of communication that is more expressive and unrestrained compared to what people normally experience in speeches or television debates, he risks appearing exaggerated and out of control (cf. Jørgensen et al. 1994, Streeck 2008). The now famous “Dean Scream” is an example of this: During the US 2004 primaries, Howard Dean (D) spoke at a rally in Iowa, finishing a section of the speech with a screaming “Yeah!!”, supported by huge swing of his arm. This outburst caused the speech – and hence Howard Dean – to be framed as loud, peculiar, and un-presidential. Senator Dean was widely ridiculed, and the “Yeah!” was widely distributed on the web (cf. Warnick 2007: 11)[i]. Such behaviour may be read by the audience as an argument suggesting that a candidate is not fit to be president. It is likely that fear of this kind of gaffe leads to a restrained actio.

Moderate physical movement can in some circumstances be taken as a premise for the claim that a person is suitable as president; because it signals that the speaker is in control, where other people would be steered by their emotions. We refer to this kind of moderate movement, exhibiting a limited degree of expressiveness, as restrained actio. Like the enacted actio, restrained actio may work argumentatively on the basis of a symptomatic argument scheme.
Because a debater in a presidential debate rhetorically must appear to be in control, as well as both involved and passionate, she must display both enacted and restrained actio, and try to balance these.

3. Actio Analyses of the Debates
We will now present a rhetorical actio analysis of four film clips from three different debates. The clips show Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in their contest for the 2008 American Democratic presidential nomination. All of the film clips can be found on www.youtube.com, references to the links can be found in our endnotes.

We have performed an interpretative, multimodal close reading (cf. Leff 1980) of the clips, directed by our understanding of nonverbal multimodality, the actio qualities, and the television debate as a rhetorical situation. More specifically we have studied how the nonverbal communication of the participants may evoke argument schemes in acclaiming and defending a debaters’ own ethos and in attacking the opponents’ ethos.
Let us first give an example of how the debaters acclaim their ethos through nonverbal communication. In a sequence from a debate in Ohio on 26 February 2008[ii], one can see how Hillary Clinton is acclaiming her ethos through her nonverbal communication. Clinton is answering a question about her view on public health care. She comments briefly on this and goes on to explain what she would like to do if she is elected president.

Clinton has an open face with raised eyebrows and a moderate smile, leaning slightly forward while constantly keeping eye contact with the audience. Her use of voice is steady, clear and determined. She is speaking and making gestures with an energy that sets a rapid tempo to her performance and supports her ethos. The qualities in actio, energy and tempo, together with a multimodal activity, face, posture, gesture and voice in simultaneous use, create a dynamic actio that indicates resoluteness and determination. Clinton hereby performs an enacted actio that works as a symptomatic sign – a premise – supporting the claim that she is a committed and passionate person.

Compared to Clinton’s energetic, enacted actio, Obama’s nonverbal communication is often more restrained. He does not express as much energy and emotion in his gestures and facial expression, thus safeguarding him against “Howard Dean-like Yeah-gaffes”. At the same time, such calm and self-controlled actio risks presenting the candidate as reserved and aloof.
However, Obama often exhibits energy and trustworthiness through his deep, pleasant, and commanding voice. His speech has variation in melody and an almost perfect sense of tempo, with excellent timing expressed by pauses and well-placed emphasis.

In a debate in Texas on 21 February 2008[iii], Obama is explaining how he will handle the economy. He performs less facial expression, more restrained gestures, and less body movement than that which can be seen in the Clinton example above. Obama expresses most of his nonverbal energy through the dynamic and varied use of his voice and a few distinct gestures performed with his left hand.

Compared to Clinton, Obama here exhibits less bodily energy and thus appears a little less committed and passionate. Nevertheless, this kind of restrained impression management may be taken as a symptomatic sign of a person in control, and consequently of a person fit to be president. This is not to say that restrained or enacted actio will predict a person’s ability to become a president; there are many skills that are necessary to become a political leader of a country, with debating being just one of them.
A debater can also use nonverbal communication both to attack the opponent’s ethos and defend her own, as the following examples will illustrate. In debates, the nonverbal defending and attacking will often be performed simultaneously. We can see this in a debate in South Carolina on 21 January 2008[iv]. In this sequence of the debate Hillary Clinton is defending her claim that Obama has not been clear about his view on the war in Iraq, while at the same time attacking Obama’s ethos.

Compared to the previous Clinton example, the tempo of her movements and speaking here is much slower, and she takes longer and more frequent pauses. In the first example, her eagerness indicated commitment and passion. In this example, she still exhibits energy, through firm, directive gestures and focused eye contact, but the more restrained, focused and insisting actio is a nonverbal signal telling the audience that Clinton takes the criticism very seriously. Here, Clinton’s actio both helps communicate her argument in a clear way, and functions as a symptomatic premise for the claim that she is a sincere and conscientious candidate who is taking the issue very seriously.

During Clinton’s presentation, Obama is seen lifting his finger, signalling that he would like to comment on Clinton’s allegations that he “agreed with President Bush”, thereby implying that she is wrong. By means of this hand gesture, Obama is attacking Clinton’s ethos, signalling that she is proposing some issue that he must be allowed to address.

In the same debate in South Carolina on 21 January[v], Obama criticizes Clinton and her husband, stating that they incorrectly claim that Obama praises the Republicans, while they are actually the ones praising Reagan and the GOP.
During his attack, Clinton stands motionless, looking at Obama with an expressionless face, avoiding any nonverbal admission. However, when Obama involves her husband and accuses them of playing “political games”, she exclaims, “Now wait a minute, wow, wait a minute!” She lifts her hand, with the palm facing Obama as if to stop his unreasonable words. When he continues nonetheless, she takes a step towards him invading his ‘territory’ in order to better contain his attack. Clinton’s nonverbal reaction, we suggest, presents an implicit argument about Obama’s ethos, which can be rendered like this:

Obama’s behaviour is unreasonable,
because I react strongly to his behaviour,
and when behaviour is unreasonable, people react strongly.

This argument is created both verbally and nonverbally. The nonverbal enacting of the argument is done through a specific gesture (the stopping palm) and a specific movement (stepping forward) – the what of nonverbal communication. But it is also, perhaps particularly, enacted through the use of actio qualities – the how of nonverbal communication. The change of tempo in her performance creates a suddenness in the actio, the use of intense energy and focused gaze together with a varied consequently dynamic and forceful response creates Clinton’s nonverbal argument, and makes it believable.

Because the nonverbal acts must be understood in the rhetorical situation in which they are performed, there are no external, scientific units of measurement for determining the energy, dynamism and tempo that establishes the premise “I react strongly to his behaviour”. It is also not possible to determine singular gestures or movements as premises or arguments in themselves. The rhetorical action of the stopping palm, for instance, does not create an argument in itself. This gesture is ascribed argumentative meaning through its joint interaction with the words “wow, wait a minute”, the verbal assurance that she has not praised Ronald Reagan, and all the other accompanying nonverbal action.

To summarise, in order to fully understand the argumentative dimensions of political television debates, it is not enough to analyse transcriptions of the verbal communication. We also have to examine the multimodality of nonverbal communication, and we should not only look at what debaters do nonverbally, but in particular at how they do it with the help of actio qualities.
When doing so in the examples we have analysed here, two main nonverbal rhetorical argumentative strategies emerge: enacted actio and restrained actio. A restrained actio refers to active manifestations, while an enacted actio refers to moderate movement, exhibiting a limited degree of expressiveness. These two strategies of basic nonverbal communication may take many forms, of course, but they can all be interpreted as premises in variations of a symptomatic argumentation scheme, signalling a political debater’s ethos. As described above, such nonverbal communication can be used by debaters to acclaim and to defend their own ethos and/or to attack the ethos of the opponent.

In accordance with our multimodal and interpretative approach we have examined arguments that are evoked by rhetorical situation, words and nonverbal communication in joint collaboration. Our examples illustrate how nonverbal communication can evoke ethos argumentation that is relatively independent of the words spoken. The way a presidential debater conducts himself or herself through enacted or restrained actio, will affect the audience perception of the debater’s general character, and thus offer an argument for or against the person’s ability to be president. Of course, the more the bodily actions and the words uttered are in accordance and harmony with each other, the more clearly an argument will appear.
Our examples, perhaps especially the last one, also illustrate how nonverbal communication may support and co-create arguments concerning specific contested issues in the debate. In this case arguments that are also (partly) verbally expressed.

We have examined some argumentative dimensions of nonverbal communication in a specific genre and culture: the televised presidential primary debates in the US. We have argued that because of the immanent context of opposition in this rhetorical situation, nonverbal communication can have argumentative dimensions and communicate arguments both about ethos and about specific issues of controversy. In other similar contexts of opposition, we may expect to find similar possibilities of nonverbal argumentation.

NOTES
[i] Cf. Wikipedias article on Howard Dean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dean
[ii] See: “Huge mistake” 5.09-5.45: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JAJ-f4mtMc
[iii] See: “Silly Season” 1.55-2.14: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vO1QjTRaEU
[iv] See: “Tension Flare” 2.34-3.40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD9F1t9GQzA
[v] See: “Tension Flare” 5.25-5.38 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MD9F1t9GQzA

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