ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Argumentation And Contemporary Concerns For Justice: Shifting Focus From The Universal Audience To The Common Good

• by: George Boger - Canisius College

1. Concern for justice underpinning the argumentation movement
The modern argumentation movement, richly combining new rhetoric with currents of informal logic, pragma-dialectics and dialogue logic continues to be inspired by two humanist concerns – to empower human beings by liberating them from the regime of Cartesian rationalism and to promote justice. When we look back to the modern progenitors of our movement, we distinctly hear Perelman, Toulmin, and Hamblin rail against oppressive formalism and to promote the liberating dynamics of democratic deliberation. Perelman writes that “we combat uncompromising and irreducible philosophical oppositions presented by all kinds of absolutism” (Toulmin 1969, p. 510) and that “[argument] strength is appraised by application of the rule of justice: that which was capable of convincing in a specific situation will appear to be convincing in a similar or analogous situation” (Toulmin 1969, p. 464). The new rhetoric “constitutes a break with a concept of reason and reasoning due to Descartes which has set its mark on Western philosophy for the last three centuries” (Toulmin 1969, p. 1). And since no one deliberates and argues what is God-given necessary or self-evident, “all thought becomes human and fallible … knowledge thus ceases to be impersonal because every scientific thought becomes a human one, i.e., fallible, situated in and subjected to controversy” (Toulmin 1982, p. 159). Toulmin’s social history of logic locates an origin of oppressive rationality in the Peace of Westphalia that generated “a poisoned chalice: intellectual dogmatism, political chauvinism, and sectarian religion formed [a single ideological package]” (Toulmin 2001, p. 158). Toulmin also cautioned against any God’s-eye-view (Toulmin 1958, pp. 184-185). Hamblin declared that “what is, above all, necessary is to dethrone deduction from its supposed pre-eminent position as a provider of certainty” (Hamblin 1993, p. 250). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – On The Priority Of Epistemic Rationality

• by: Patrick Bondy - McMaster University

1. Introduction
One influential way to think about arguments is the following: an argument consists of premises asserted in support of an asserted conclusion; the purpose of arguments is to rationally persuade their audience of the truth of their conclusions; good arguments are those that achieve their purpose. On this picture, in order for an argument to achieve rational persuasion, its premises must be rationally acceptable to the participants in the argument, and it must be rational to think that the premises support the conclusion. And, if we take the type of rationality relevant to the assessment of arguments to be epistemic rationality, then the theory of epistemic rationality becomes directly relevant to the theory of argument.

What I want to do in this paper is to try to show that epistemic rationality is not a matter of believing in such a way as to maximize the likelihood of achieving our epistemic goals. If it were, then epistemic rationality would be a species of practical rationality. But it cannot be a species of practical rationality, because it is prior to practical rationality. It follows that epistemic rationality is not a matter of achieving our epistemic goals.
In the context of the theory of argument, it is particularly important to see that epistemic rationality is not a matter of believing so as to achieve our epistemic goals: if it were, then for an agent who does not care about achieving an epistemic goal, nothing would count as epistemically rational or irrational. It would then follow that for a subject who lacked an epistemic goal, no arguments could count as good or bad. An epistemic approach would have nothing to say about arguments in such cases. I take it that that would be the wrong result, and a serious mark against the epistemic approach to argument evaluation, because the goodness or badness of arguments should not depend on whether people have an epistemic goal. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Implicitness Functions In Family Argumentation

• by: Antonio Bova - University of Lugano, Switzerland

1. Introduction
Argumentation is a mode of discourse in which the involved interlocutors are committed to reasonableness, i.e. they accept the challenge of reciprocally founding their positions on the basis of reasons (Rigotti & Greco Morasso 2009). Even though during everyday lives of families argumentation proves to be a very relevant mode of discourse (Arcidiacono & Bova, in press; Arcidiacono et al., 2009), traditionally other contexts have obtained more attention by argumentation theorists: in particular, law (Feteris, 1999, 2005), politics (Cigada, 2008; Zarefsky, 2009), media (Burger & Guylaine, 2005; Walton, 2007), health care (Rubinelli & Schulz, 2006, Schulz & Rubinelli, 2008), and mediation (Jacobs & Aakhus, 2002; Greco Morasso, in press).

This paper focuses on the less investigated phenomenon of argumentative discussions among family members. More specifically, I address the issue of the implicitness and its functions within argumentative discussions in the family context. Drawing on the Pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1984, 2004), the paper describes how the implicitness is a specific argumentative strategy adopted by parents during dinner conversations at home with their children.

In the first part of the paper I will present a synthetic description of the basic properties of family dinner conversations, here considered a specific communicative activity type[i]. Subsequently, the current landscape of studies on family argumentation and the pragma-dialectical model of critical discussion will be taken into account in order to provide the conceptual and methodological frame through which two case studies are examined. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Stylistic Devices And Argumentative Strategies In Public Discourse

• by: Lilit Brutian - Yerevan State University, Armenia

As the famous discourse analyst Norman Fairclough states, “it is time social theorists and researchers delivered on their promissory notes about the importance of language and discourse in contemporary social life” (Fairclough 2003, p.204).

The aim of the paper is to analyse the use of the major stylistic devices and argumentative strategies in public discourse, in particular, to reveal the frequency of their use in the given genre of speech. The research questions are: a) whether the use of stylistic devices and argumentative strategies is determined by the subject of the speech, b) whether it is determined by gender differences, c) whether there are typical “male” and “female” devices and strategies. As the material for investigation was taken “Contemporary American Speeches” (Johannesen 2000). Following I. Galperin’s idea that “the necessary data can be obtained by means of an objective statistical count based on a large number of texts” (Galperin 1991, p.332), we have used the methods of statistical and corpus-based analyses, as well as the method of comparative analysis.

First, a general statistical and comparative analysis has been made. The total number of speeches is 53, among them 34 speeches belong to males, whereas 19 speeches to females, that is 63 percent of speeches belongs to males vs 37 percent of female speeches. According to the subject of speech, the distribution of the figures is as follows:
concerns of minorities: 9/7m, 2f [i]
military and foreign policy: 8/7m, 1 f
technology and the environment : 8/6m, 2f
economic and social issues: 7/6m, 1f
the political process: 7/4m, 3f
contemporary morals and value: 7/3m, 4f
concerns of women: 7/1m, 6f. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Nobel Diplomacy: The Rhetoric Of The Obama Administration

• by: Ann E. Burnette & Wayne L. Kraemer - Texas State University, San Marcos

1. Introduction
When the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded US President Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2009, it declared that Obama had “created a new climate in international politics” (Norwegian Nobel Committee 2009). In his acceptance speech, Obama said, “my administration has worked to establish a new era of engagement in which all nations must take responsibility for the world we seek” (Obama 2009). This paper analyzes the National Security Strategy (NSS) released by the Obama administration on May 27, 2010, to evaluate the rhetorical constructs, assumptions, and arguments that define this “new era of engagement.”

Since 1986, every US president has been required to present Congress with an annual strategic plan. The NSS issued by Obama in May 2010 is the first strategy statement prepared for Congress during Obama’s presidency. The Obama administration is not unusual in its lax adherence to the law; President George. W. Bush released only two national security strategies (in 2002 and 2006) during his administration. The purpose of the national security strategy is “to set administration priorities inside the government and communicate them to Congress, the American people and the world” (DeYoung 2010). The Obama administration also included an introductory letter authored by the president as part of the NSS.

2. The rhetoric of imperial righteousness
The NSS is a crucial rhetorical text of the Obama administration. In it, the president frames the purposes and strategies of American foreign policy. Therefore, it is important to analyze the rhetoric of the NSS. Because the US president is the most significant rhetorical figure in American political discourse, the language that the president uses to characterize foreign policy strongly influences the terms of the debate on American foreign policy (Tulis 1987; Dow 1989; Stuckey 1995; Cole 1996; Zarefsky 2004; Edwards 2009). Edwards and Valenzano (2007) contend that a president’s foreign policy rhetoric “supplies American foreign policy with a distinct direction in international affairs” (p. 303). As Drinan (1972) notes, “Language is not merely the way we express our foreign policy; language is our foreign policy” (p. 279). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The Argument From Legislative Silence

• by: Damiano Canale & Giovanni Tuzet - Bocconi University, Milan

1. Inferring the Intention
According to the argument from legislative intention, a judicial decision is justified if it is based on the law-maker’s intention. In particular, on the basis of this argument, the interpretation of a statute should express the law that the legislature intended to make. But what if the legislature is silent on a certain matter or case? What can be inferred from the silence of the legislature? Are there any intentions that can be inferred from it? As we will show, the argument from legislative silence is ambiguous and we need to specify the conditions under which its different uses are justified. Before doing this, however, we need to recall some features of the more general argument from legislative intention.

Inferring the legislative intent is considered a reasonable and politically sound requirement on judicial interpretation and decision-making, especially in the systems governed by the principles of separation of powers and legislative supremacy (Goldsworthy 2005; Naffine, Owens & Williams 2001). Politically speaking, it is required by the democratic principle. More in general, it can be derived from the reasons to comply with legal authorities and from the very idea of legislative power (Raz 1996, p. 258; Marmor 2001, p. 90). However, the argument from legislative intention faces several theoretical and practical problems. Read more