ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Evaluating Pragmatic Argumentation: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective

• by: Constanza Ihnen Jory - University of Amsterdam

1. Introduction
Pragmatic argumentation – also referred to as ‘instrumental argumentation,’ ‘means-end argumentation,’ ‘argumentation from consequences’– is generally defined as argumentation that seeks to support a recommendation (not) to carry out an action by highlighting its (un)desirable consequences (see, e.g., Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969; Schellens 1987; van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992; Walton, Reed & Macagno, 2008). Pragmatic arguments are fairly common in everyday discourse and particularly in discussions over public policy. Cases can be identified in the print media on a regular basis. For example, by the end of June 2010, the U.K.’s Chancellor George Osborne was defending the Lib-Con budget as a means to “boost confidence in the economy” (“Budget: Osborne Defends ‘Decisive’ Plan on Tax and Cuts”, 2010); Israel’s defence minister, Edhud Barak, was attacking the timing of plans to demolish 22 Palestinians homes in East Jerusalem as being “prejudicial to hopes for continuing peace talks” (“Ehud Barak Attacks Timing of Plans to Demolish 22 Palestinian Homes”, 2010); and major oil companies were attacking the US government’s ban on deepwater drilling as a policy that was “destroying an entire ecosystem of businesses” and “resulting in tens of thousands of job losses” (“US Gulf Oil Drilling Ban Is Destroying ‘Ecosystem of Businesses’”, 2010). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Gendering The Rhetoric Of Emotions In Interviews: Argumentation And Counter-Argumentation

• by: Cornelia Ilie - Malmö University

1. Introduction
Media interviews carried out during election campaigns provide an important resource for documenting the communication styles and strategies of political candidates. These interviews are important communication tools consisting of a question-answer based dialogue in which the interviewer is acting as a mediator between the interviewee and the audience. Political journalists and reporters are assuming an increasingly influential role through the impact their rhetorical strategies have on both the politicians’ careers and on the choices made by electors. In interviews they often resort to rhetorically manipulative tactics that exert decisive influence on the politicians’ performance and image, as well as on the audience’s perception and emotions.

As more women are entering the political arena, a number of gender-related aspects are becoming apparent in the rhetorical style and argumentative strategies used in both mixed-gender and same-gender interviews. According to common stereotypes, women tend to express their emotions more often, experience their emotions more intensely and show greater emotional awareness. As visual prompts (pictures, ads, streaming video) are increasingly used in framing an interviewee’s personality and roles, mainstream media coverage of women politicians still emphasises their traditional roles as wives and mothers and focuses on their appearance, dressing styles, and personal lives. The depth and quality of media coverage of women is still inadequate in that it exhibits pervasive stereotypical thinking that leads to gender-specific expectations and evaluations. Thus, while rationality and assertive attitude are highlighted as positively-valued masculine traits, soft emotions are most frequently associated with socially desirable traits in women. Women’s emotional manifestations are often assumed to involve the expression of tender feelings and empathy for the feelings of others. Gender biases disseminated by the media are significant because they can have electoral consequences. At a time when politics is thoroughly mediatised, voters respond to candidates largely in accordance with information (and entertainment) received from mass media. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Analyzing Repetition In Argumentation

• by: Beth Innocenti - University of Kansas

1. Introduction
I submit that repetition is a strategy that skilled arguers may use to openly incur responsibility for the veracity of their claims and propriety of their argumentative conduct; and that a normative pragmatic perspective accounts for how it does so. To support this claim, I explain how a normative pragmatic perspective approaches analysis of repetition in argumentation, and illustrate claims about what aims repetition in argumentation may be designed to achieve and why it may be reasonably expected to achieve them using Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 “Cooper Union” speech as a case study. By doing so I add to scholarship discussing repetition in argumentation that makes claims about what repetition is designed to do but does not provide a rationale for why arguers may reasonably expect it to work for a situated audience.

2. Repetition from a normative pragmatic perspective
Normative pragmatic theories of argumentation aim to account for strategies arguers actually use – to explain why strategies may be expected to do what they are apparently designed to do (e.g., Goodwin 2001, Innocenti 2006, Jacobs 2000, Kauffeld 1998). Normative pragmatic theories approach repetition differently from other theoretical perspectives in three main ways. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The Argumentum Ad Hominem In A Romanian Parliamentary Debate

• by: Liliana Ionescu –Ruxăndoiu - University of Bucharest

1. Preliminary remarks
This paper [i] is an attempt to apply the extended pragma-dialectical theory of strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse (van Eemeren 2010) to the particular case of the argumentum ad hominem, using the data provided by a debate in the Romanian Parliament (April 19, 2007). The debate had on its agenda the proposal of President Trajan Băsescu’s suspension from office, a proposal initiated by the Social Democratic Party, the main opposition party at that time.

Taking as a starting point the idea of the context-dependency of different communicative practices (van Eemeren 2010, p. 129), we shall focus on those aspects of the debate under consideration which have an impact on the evolution of the argumentative processes. The next step will be the reconstruction of the debate as a critical discussion, keeping in mind the relationship between the four stages of a critical discussion as an ideal model: the confrontation stage, the opening stage, the argumentation stage and the concluding stage, and their empirical counterparts: the initial situation, the starting points, the argumentative means and the outcome of the argumentative discourse (van Van Eemeren 2010, p. 146).

In defining the fallacies in general, we shall make reference to the basic concept of strategic maneuvering; the violation of one (or more) critical discussion rule will be the criterion used to distinguish the main types of fallacious moves. The analytical part proper will discuss and comment the way the three basic variants of the ad hominem arguments are actualized in the considered debate. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – ‘If That Were True, I Would Never Have …’: The Counterfactual Presentation of Arguments that Appeal to Human Behaviour

• by: Henrike Jansen - Leiden University

1. Introduction
In 2008, the Dutch Parliament held a debate on embryo selection. In this debate, the Christian political parties adopted a negative stance towards embryo selection. The newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported the debate citing a few reactions from a 23-year old girl who had watched it from the gallery. The girl countered the claim, made by the Christian Union, that more attention should be paid to the medical treatment of cancer, by saying:
(1)  “If my disease were treatable, I would not have had my breasts amputated.” (NRC Handelsblad, 5/6/08)

The standpoint in this argument is that the hereditary form of aggressive breast cancer from which this girl is suffering is not treatable. This standpoint is supported by assuming that the opposite standpoint is hypothetically true for the moment, and then deducing an implication from it that is falsified by reality. The implication is that the girl would not have had her breasts amputated. This implication is falsified in the implicit argument – that states the implicature of the counterfactual statement – that the girl has had her breasts amputated.[i]  In a schematic reconstruction of this argument based on the pragma-dialectical method, the standpoint has number 1, the explicit argumentation 1.1 and the element that remains implicit 1.1’:

The reason this girl gives as a support for her standpoint is remarkable for several reasons, but I’m interested in the fact that it is formulated with a counterfactual If…then-sentence. I have been studying this way of formulating an argument – or, in other words, this presentation mode of an argument – for some time. Over the years I have gathered a wide collection of arguments presented in the counterfactual mode, examples that I have found in newspapers and sometimes heard on radio or television and examples that my students have found for me. A large part of my collection consists of examples in which an appeal is made to human behaviour, as in the above argument displaying the girl’s opinion about whether breast cancer is a treatable disease. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Interpretation And Evaluation Of Satirical Arguments

• by: Ann Johnson - California State University Long Beach & Esteban del Rio - University of San Diego

Satire and argument are a dangerous mix. What makes satire pleasurable is often how it differs from more rational argument. Satirical texts exaggerate and distort for comic effect resulting in sometimes little more than an ad hominem attack. Satire asks us to laugh first and think second. Further, some critics warn, satire can backfire if presented to audiences who are unable to recognize the author’s “real” message. These concerns about satirical arguments arise, in part, due to the prevalence of satire in U.S. political discourse. Programs such as the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and the Colbert Report employ irony, sarcasm, parody, and satire while serving as a major source of information for many people in the U.S (Baym, 2005; Boler, 2006; Hariman, 2007; Reinsheld, 2006). Some programs best categorized as entertainment offer political arguments in the form of satire, such as Comedy Central’s persistently popular and controversial South Park. Read more