ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The World Schools Debate Championship And Intercultural Argumentation

• by: Allison Hahn - University of Pittsburgh

“It’s only in debates you can express yourself. It’s only in debates you can tell somebody something and the person does not think you are arguing, so it gives you that freedom of speech.” – Mayambala, from Uganda.

Although money is pouring in for international debate training and tournaments, little attention has been paid to the student participants. Even less attention is paid to the students who do not win. This study asked twelve student debaters from Uganda, Mongolia, Estonia, Russia, and Malaysia, countries that are not usually in the final rounds of this tournament, to reflect upon their participation at the 2010 World School Debate Championship (WSDC) in Doha, Qatar.  This investigation addresses the argumentation formats, skills, and linguistic shifts employed by English-language learners. I am interested in students’ motivation to participate in an international tournament where their chances of winning are exceptionally slim.

This essay argues that international debating events explicitly encourage students from non-native English speaking nations to make their arguments utilizing examples and research exclusively from the West. Further, due to their focus on international competition over domestic debates, students emerge from their training with skills to debate on the international circuit but with diminished experience or expertise for debating within their home nations.  Yet, despite these downfalls, students are eager to participate in these debates, facing a plethora of competitors and expressing opinions not commonly voiced in their native countries. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – “Toulmin’s Analytic Arguments”

• by: Benjamin Hamby - McMaster University

1. Introduction
In this paper [i] I explicate and evaluate the concept of “analytic arguments” that Stephen E. Toulmin articulated in his 1958 book, The Uses of Argument. Throughout this paper I will refer to the 2003 Updated Edition, the pagination of which differs from the original, but aside from a new preface and an improved index, the text of which has remained unchanged.

My thesis is that Toulmin’s definition of analytic arguments, and his corresponding distinction between analytic and substantial arguments, is unclear: it is therefore a mistake to employ the analytic-substantial distinction as if it is clearly established. Furthermore, I suggest that the distinction is not a crucially important component of Toulmin’s model of argument layout, contra his claim that it is. I find that the agenda that Toulmin helped to inspire, of rejecting formal and other deductive standards as the paradigm of argument cogency and inference appraisal (cf. Gerristen, in van Eemeren, 2001; and Govier, 1987 and 1993), can safely proceed without trying to redeem Toulmin’s definition of analytic arguments, or the analytic-substantial distinction. We should therefore bracket Toulmin’s concept of analytic arguments, untroubled by the analytic-substantial distinction or its confusing formulation, while continuing to investigate the still contentious, but more valuable aspects of his theory of argument macrostructure, such as the nature of warrants and their field-dependent authorization. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The Costs And Benefits Of Arguing: Predicting The Decision Whether To Engage Or Not

• by: Dale Hample - Department of Communication, University of Maryland, Fabio Paglieri - Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche & Ling Na - Department of Communication, University of Maryland

1. Introduction
Pragma-dialectical theory (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004) explains that a critical discussion has four stages: confrontation, opening, argumentation, and concluding. In the confrontation stage, two people discover that they have a disagreement, and in the opening stage they decide how to pursue it. This study focuses on the transition from the confrontation stage to the opening stage. Not all disagreements are explored or even expressed. When circumstances invite disagreement and then argument, sometimes we move forward and sometimes we move away. This is an investigation of the decision to engage or not. What factors predict engagement and which predict that no argument will be voluntarily forthcoming?

2. A Theory of Engaging in Arguments
Recent work (Paglieri 2009; Paglieri & Castelfranchi 2010; see Hample 2009) has analyzed the circumstances in which face-to-face arguments are most likely to escalate out of control, suggesting that people take these factors into account in deciding whether or not to argue at all. This paper takes that work as a theory of argument engagement. Our most general claim is that people are predicted to engage in an argument when the expected benefits of doing so exceed the expected costs. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The Absence Of Reasons

• by: Kati Hannken-Illjes - Universität Jena, Jena

In 2003 I started my fieldwork in two law firms. As a part of a comparative ethnographic research project, my objective was to follow criminal cases in their preparation and performance. In addition, one of my own research questions was, how argument themes are prepared and tested during this course of preparation. I was looking for the becoming of arguments. The very first case I encountered was one of child killing. A young woman, already mother of two and married, hid her pregnancy, gave birth in a back yard, covered the newborn with leaves and left. The child was found dead three weeks later. This was certainly a case, especially as my first case, that was difficult to deal with for emotionally. But also with respect to my research question, this case was remarkable: What first frustrated and then struck me as quite significant was the lack of reasons given in this case. It is this absence of reasons that I want to explore in this paper.

In legal procedures argumentation is often viewed as the central means to establish rationality and legitimacy. This assumption is important, even if one would take issue with it, as it has meaning in the field, if only counterfactually. The professional participants in the field work on the assumption that the giving of reasons is essential for the legal procedure, especially in criminal cases.This notion that is at work in the field can be explicated by Habermas’ notion of procedural rationality (1998). This procedural rationality in the legal realm incorporates the concept of communicative rationality. Similar to Habermas, Alexy’s work in legal argumentation (1983) and also the work done in the context of Pragma-Dialectics can be conceived of as subscribing to a procedural rationality (see Feteris, 1999, pp 163). Following this notion, legal proceedings can claim to be rational, if they adhere to certain (normatively formulated) rules of communication as in the ideal speech situation or the rules for critical discussions. One of the basic rules is, that interactants have to give reasons when asked for them. It is through reason giving that legal procedures attain legitimacy. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Using Argument Schemes As A Method Of Informal Logic

• by: Hans V. Hansen - University of Windsor

The method of using argument schemes for evaluating natural language arguments (NLA’s) is based on two assumptions [i]. The first assumption is that there are, if not ‘natural’ kinds of NLA’s, at least sortings of arguments into kinds that can be justified on epistemological or pragmatic grounds. The identity conditions of an argument kind can be represented in an abstract structure called an argument scheme. The second assumption is that with each identifiable kind of argument there is an associated standard that good arguments of that kind should meet.  Accordingly, to use the Argument Scheme Method (or AS Method) of evaluating NLA’s one begins by finding out to what kind a given NLA belongs; this can be done by determining which of the schemes it is an instance of. Having done that one proceeds to evaluate the NLA by determining how well it measures up to the standard associated with the kind to which it belongs. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – An Exploratory Study Of Argument In The Public And Private Domains Of Differing Forms Of Societies

• by: Michael David Hazen - Wake Forest University & Thomas J. Hynes - Clayton State University

1.Introduction
In this paper, we focus on the functioning of argument in the public and private domains of communication in different societal forms. By doing so, we address several weaknesses in contemporary argumentation studies.
Why would such a question be of importance to the study of argumentation? First, while an extensive literature exists on argument’s role in democracy and public spheres, there is no corresponding literature regarding non-democratic societies. Such a concern is of importance because, in both ancient and modern times, most societies have not been democratic. While some might contend that democratic argument is paramount, that position fails to consider the daily lives of citizens in non-democratic societies and, in turn, neglects a fuller understanding of argument in all societal forms.
Second, an examination of the recent argumentation literature reveals extensive discussions of public argument. Unfortunately, there have been few attempts to link our understanding of the two bodies of literature.
Finally, many argumentation studies involve other variables such as culture, society, economics and politics. Most studies focus on argument and one other concept and few look at the argument’s relationship to communication, culture, political systems, and cognitive functioning in terms of their systematic variation between societies.
This essay has two goals. First we explore argument’s structure and functions in three prototype models of the relationship between the public and private domains of communication. Second, we illustrate each model with a historical example. Read more