ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Adversarial Principle And Argumentation: An Outline Of Italian Criminal Trial

• by: Serena Tomasi - University of Trento

1. Introduction
The object of this paper is to develop some critical considerations on the implementation of the principle of the judicial due process, restricting the survey to the Italian criminal trial. This will lead to further observations on the nature and structure of judicial argumentation.
This study is divided into three parts:

1. Firstly, I will define the scope of my research, proposing an examination of the principle of due process as principle of the trial;
2. Secondly, I will focus on the Italian judicial experience, examining the implementation of the principle of due process in criminal law. Clearly, it is by no means possible to analyse it in detail as we should examine the entire structure of today’s Italian criminal trial system. To contextualize the principle, it will suffice to recall its clearest legal application (and therefore judicial praxis): i.e. the institution of the cross-examination of witnesses;
3. Finally, it will be possible to represent a model that allows to accomplish the judicial due process, drawing upon the classical thought of Plato, Aristotle and Cicero. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Everyday Argument Strategies In Appellate Court ArgumentA Same-Sex Marriage

• by: Karen Tracy - University of Colorado

1. Introduction
(1) Exchange between Plaintiff Attorney (A-SM) and two Supreme Court Justices In re Marriage Cases, California, 03/04/08, Line 2653
A-SM: Your honors, with regards to the question to of uh possible adverse consequences, you know with- with apologies to Shakespeare, same-sex couples have come here today to praise marriage, not to bury it. Petitioners deeply value the tradition of marriage and wish to participate in it with all of the joy and responsibility that that brings. There’s absolutely no evidence uh in the record here or elsewhere that permitting same-sex couples to marry elsewhere has in [any-
CJ: [I thought when you invoked Shakespeare, you were gonna invoke the line, “what’s in a name?”
((laughter))
A-SM: Also would have been very appropriate.
J-M: Also with apologies to Shakespeare, I thought you were gonna say, “a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.”
((laughter))
A-SM: Names are very important, your honor um-

In 2008 and 2009 California’s Supreme Court issued two opinions regarding the legality of the state restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples. In the first case, In Re Marriage, the Court overturned the state’s existing marriage laws, ruling that denying same-sex couples the right to participate in state-sanctioned ceremonies that labeled unions “marriage” was denying the couples a “fundamental interest in liberty and personal autonomy” ( p. 7). In the second case, Strauss v. Horton, the Court upheld the legality of a constitutional amendment, Proposition 8, which was a ballot initiative that restricted marriage to one man and one woman that California voters approved in the months after the Court ruling in the Marriage Cases. In justifying its opinion, the Court argued that giving a different name to the legally-recognized relationships of same-sex couples was not a significant enough change to count as a constitutional revision, and hence Proposition 8 was a legal amendment. In both cases – as the above moment of levity suggests – the constitutional issues revolved around the significance of a term. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Towards An Empirically Plausible Classification Of Argumentative Markers

• by: Assimakis Tseronis - CNRS, Laboratoire Communication et Politique, Paris

 1. Introduction
Despite the varying theoretical perspectives that argumentation scholars take when studying argumentative discourse and despite their different research goals, almost all have shown, in one way or another, interest in the linguistic realisation of argumentative moves and of other argumentative aspects that fall under their object of study. Such an interest may be seen as satisfying at least two goals. The first is a purely utilitarian one. Argumentation scholars are interested in those linguistic elements that can help them identify the units that they are studying and subsequently help them to justify their proposed analyses on some linguistic grounds. The second goal that one may have is to reach a better understanding of what language users do when they argue by studying the way they use language. These two goals are not necessarily self excluding.

In this paper[i], I present some preliminary thoughts on the subject of argumentative markers that result from an ongoing study of a large corpus of texts (in French) on the controversies surrounding the application and development of nanotechnology[ii]. Given the large number of texts and the different sources from where these texts come, a software is used that allows a semi-automatic treatment of the data. To this endeavour, linguistic elements appearing on the surface of texts that can point to the argumentative aspects of discourse in which we are interested can be highly useful. At the same time, this endeavour gives the opportunity for a theoretical discussion concerning argumentative markers, as a preliminary step to the identification, description and classification of various linguistic elements that may represent one or another type of marker. It is to this latter point, that is the theoretical preliminaries, that I focus on in this paper. Working towards refining the categories and the tools used by a software for the analysis of text corpora is a unique opportunity to ponder over the theoretical categories and concepts that one needs to have recourse to when analysing argumentative discourse.
In sections 2 and 3, I briefly present the project within which the interest in argumentative markers has arisen, and the software that is used for the analysis. In section 4, I discuss three main approaches in argumentation studies that can provide useful insights to the study of markers. In the final section, I present a working definition of argumentative markers and discuss its main elements with the use of examples taken from a part of the corpus. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Argumentation In The Context Of Mediation Activity

• by: Alena L. Vasilyeva - Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

This paper examines interaction in the course of dispute mediation to explore argumentation in the context of mediation activity. The mediation sessions involve divorced or divorcing couples attempting to create or repair a plan for child custody arrangements. A practical problem participants face when attempting to deliberate is that out of all the possible ways the interaction could go they must create this activity out of their conflicted circumstances. The empirical aspect of this project provides material for reflecting on mediation activity and understanding argumentation.

An existing collection of transcripts from audio recordings of mediation sessions at a mediation center in the western United States serves as a source of interactional data. The transcripts are from sessions held in a public divorce mediation program connected with a court where the judge approves the decision (Donohue 1991). The participants in the mediation sessions are couples going through a divorce or divorced couples (re)negotiating their divorce decrees. The sessions involve one mediator. The mediation sessions are mandatory for participants. If they cannot reach a settlement they can opt to go to court to resolve their dispute. The participants can also choose to have more than one session. The mediation sessions under study took place 2 hours prior to the court hearings. The length of sessions varied but in the majority of cases it was about 2 hours. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – Argumentation In The Appellative Genre

• by: Lev G. Vasilyev - Kaluga State Pedagogical University

A speech genre lies between language and speech – it uses (a) beyond-language units (utterances, not words and sentences); (b) proto-speech units (speech models, not real speech).
The Appellative Genre (AG) is a subtype of the business kind of conventional discourse. Let me first consider the genre characteristics of conventionality in this perspective.
Identification features of business written correspondence are these:
(A) social conditionality; (B) communicative-situational conditionality; (C) speech genre conditionality; (D) linguistic conditionality.

(A) Social conditionality means that business correspondence does not only function under social conditions but also is an important component of socio-practical people’s activities that presuppose the presence of social-significant tasks and situations.
(B) Communicative-situational conditionality provides for these:
(1) business interaction is implemented by means of symbolic systems (language, as a rule);
(2) the symbolic system used is functionally-oriented (i.e. it corresponds to the mode of communication, which is businesslike and written);
(3) the language system used by interlocutors is means of communication;
(4) by means of that system communicants accomplish their interrelations as prescribed by the communicative situation;
(5) interrelations between the communicants are conventional and normative;
(6) communicants’ aims are mapped on their norms and conventions and accomplished by strategies, tactics and techniques of communication;
(7) the communicants have socio-cultural and psychological properties. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2010 – The Appeal To Ethos As A Strategic Maneuvering In Political Discourse

• by: Laura Vincze - Roma Tre University

1. Introduction
The aim of this paper is to analyze the appeal to ethos as a strategic maneuver in political argumentation. In section two I review ethos as an Aristotelian persuasive strategy and its two components according to Poggi (2005), i.e. competence and benevolence; in section three I focus on two of the possible ways in which one could convince the other of being competent and benevolent, i.e. either emphasizing his own qualities or highlighting the differences between himself and the opponent; in the fourth section I introduce the notion of dichotomy (Dascal 2008) and focus on the arguers’ possible tactical aims of presenting a mere opposition or contrast as a dichotomy. In the last two sections I briefly introduce the notion of strategic maneuvering and, while providing an example of a case of strategically maneuvering with ethos, I show how employing dichotomies can be seen as an aspect of the strategic maneuvering.

2. The appeal to ethos as a persuasive strategy in political discourse
According to Aristotle, the orator in persuading makes use of three different strategies, logos, pathos and ethos. If the orator tries to persuade the audience by making use of argumentation, then he is employing logos. If he manipulates instead the audience’s emotions, evoking the possibility for the audience to feel pleasant emotions or to prevent unpleasant ones, he is making use of the strategy of pathos. Finally, if the orator tries to persuade the audience by emphasizing his own moral attributes and competences, then he is making appeal to ethos. The appeal to ethos is, according to Aristotle, the most efficient strategy: ‘the orator’s character represents, so to say, the strongest argumentation’ (Retorica, I, 1356a). Poggi (2005) distinguishes two aspects of ethos: ethos-benevolence (the Persuader’s moral reliability – his being well-disposed towards the Persuadee, the fact that he does not want to hurt, to cheat, or to act in his own interest), and ethos-competence (his intellectual credibility, expertise, and capacity to achieve his goals, including possibly the goals of the Persuadee he wants to take care of). These two aspects are the two necessary components of trust and in order to be persuaded, the Persuadee has to believe that the Persuader possesses these two attributes. Read more