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

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Wittgenstein’s Influence On Hamblin’s Concept Of ‘Dialectical’

• by: Ralph H. Johnson - University of Windsor

1. Introduction [i]
While working on the question of what influence Wittgenstein had on the development of informal logic, I faced the question of whether Wittgenstein had any influence on Hamblin. I checked the references to Wittgenstein in Fallacies, and found that there were four, two to the Tractatus and two to works of the later Wittgenstein, one identified by Hamblin as the Preliminary Studies, known to us as the Blue Book and the Brown Book, the other to the Philosophical Investigations. I was particularly struck by the reference on p. 285:
If we want to lay bare the foundations of Dialectic, we should give the dialectical rules themselves a chance to determine what is a statement, what is a question. This general idea is familiar enough from Wittgenstein.
The footnote states that “The best examples of dialectical analysis are in the ‘Brown Book’: Wittgenstein, Preliminary Studies for the ‘Philosophical Investigations.’”

This text strongly supports the idea that Hamblin was influenced by his reading of Wittgenstein. That came as something of a surprise to me, and I found myself puzzling over the above reference to ‘examples of dialectical analysis.’  I also found myself puzzling  over Hamblin’s notion of ‘dialectical’, for it seemed to me that the use of ‘dialectical’ here was quite different from the way it had been used in Chapter 7.[ii]  I hope to out these puzzles to rest in this paper.

In the sections that follow, I proceed to examine Hamblin’s use of the term ‘dialectical’ in Chapters 7, 8 and 9 of Fallacies.[iii] In each case, I start by setting up the context in which his use of the term arises. I then state what I take to be the meaning of ‘dialectical’ in that context. I then take up any issues that occurred to me about that use.  In Section 5, I gather together the assorted meanings together and ask: What is the relationship among them? Can we fashion a coherent account of Hamblin’s use of ‘dialectical’ in these three chapters?  Then, in Section 6, I discuss, rather more briefly, the matter of Wittgenstein’s influence on Hamblin. Section 7 is my conclusion. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Fudging Speech Acts In Political Argumentation

• by: Charlotte Jørgensen - University of Copenhagen

A topos in Danish public debate is former Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag’s notorious remark: “You hold a position until you take another!”[i] Krag said this in 1966 when he formed the Social-Democratic Government, supported by the left wing party SF – the ‘Red Cabinet’ – in spite of his former statements that he would never do so (Wikipedia, retrieved June 22, 2010). Krag’s one-liner is frequently alluded to when politicians go back on their words and make a decision that is considered a breach of promise, in particular when, after the election, they break an election pledge.

The case that I present in this paper concerns such an election pledge and its aftermath. It is known as ‘the Five Thousand Cheap Flats’ and is a case that has caused intense public debate in Denmark. The case relates to the prominent Danish politician Ritt Bjerregaard of the party The Social Democrats. In her election campaign to become Lord Mayor of Copenhagen she made it a top issue to provide housing that ordinary citizens could afford. She was elected and took office as Lord Mayor for the period 2006-2009, but the great construction plan failed. Read more