ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Bourdieuian Criticism Of The Narrative Paradigm: The Case Of Historical Texts

• by: Junya Morooka - University of Pittsburgh

“How might all this be told or explained (since history is both a narrative and a quest for intelligibility)?”
(Pierre Vidal-Naquet, 1987/1992, p. 104)

1. Introduction
The present paper [i] fashions a critical analysis of Walter R. Fisher’s narrative paradigm by applying it to the interpretation and assessment of historical texts. My primary purpose is to show that the paradigm, although useful in thinking about rhetorical aspects of communication, cannot serve as a moral standard for judging its validity. To this end, the paper begins with a review of Fisher’s works on the narrative paradigm from the beginning to the present. Since he first proposed the paradigm in 1984, Fisher has taken enormous pains to defend, clarify, and elaborate it. An extensive review of his prolific writings is worth undertaking in its own right, considering that “the presence of contradictory claims and equivocal statements in Fisher’s initial presentation of the paradigm are likely to cause difficulties for those who seek to apply it to the critical assessment of texts” (Warnick, 1987, 172). The paper then explores the usefulness and limitations of the narrative paradigm. In particular, it takes issue with Fisher’s conception of narration as moral action. Contrary to his belief, coherent and consistent stories can be used as means of social control as well. Fisher lacks adequate sensitivity to power and symbolic violence that operate in most, if not all, discourse. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu, the paper argues that the manipulative function of narration can be uncovered only by means of critical and methodical research, not through one’s habitual act of testing its probability and fidelity. Lastly, the paper looks into a revisionist’s historical text as a litmus test of the paradigm’s utility. The case study aims to demonstrate that historical writing cannot be assessed by reducing it to the author’s narrative strategies. Instead, the appraisal of historical work demands careful consideration of various elements – notably, fair treatments of other studies, respect for the complexity of a historical event, and self-reflexivity) that could render its narrative less compelling.

2. The Narrative Paradigm, Then and Now
“If the narrative paradigm celebrates anything, it celebrates human beings, and it does this by reaffirming their nature as storytellers.” (Walter R. Fisher, 1989, 56)

In his 1984 essay “Narration as a Human Communication Paradigm” Fisher proposes a new paradigm of communication based on the notion of humans as homo narrans. According to Fisher (1984), the narrative paradigm has five presuppositions:
1. humans are essentially storytellers;
2. the paradigmatic modes of human action and decision are “good reasons” which vary in form among situations, genres, and media of communication;
3. the logic of good reason is ruled by matters of history, culture, and character along with the specific temporal and spatial constraints of presentation;
4. rationality is grounded in the nature of persons as narrative beings; and
5. the world as we live in is a set of stories which must be chosen among to live a good life in a process of continual interaction (7-8). These theoretical assumptions remain largely unchanged to date. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – When Governments Collide: The Rhetoric Of Competing National Arguments And Public Space

• by: Peter N. Goggin - Arizona State University

As the Cold War (as we know it) drew to a close in the 1980’s, the United States Department of Defense found itself deciding what to do with more than 55 hundred military bases, supply depots, and other facilities that it operated all over the United States and around the world (Wegman, 1994, p.866). This included 370 major and over a thousand minor bases located overseas. By the late 1980s, the Pentagon and Congress began investigating and determining the bases it no longer deemed necessary to national defense, and ultimately began implementing rounds of closures of both its domestic and overseas facilities. The estimated savings to the defense budget – $5.5 billion dollars per year once the rounds of closures were complete (Wegman, p. 867).
On the domestic side, the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense determined and acknowledged that through years of environmental myopia, mismanagement, and, in some cases, flagrant disregard for environmental laws that not only were hundreds of these sites contaminated by hazardous and toxic wastes, but many were so badly contaminated that they could only be written off and abandoned(i). In 1999, in a special investigative series on federal government pollution, the Boston Globe reported:
An estimated 50 million acres of land in the United States have been used as bombing and target ranges by the military. Cleaning up just five percent of the land would cost $15 billion, according to the Defense Science Board, a Pentagon advisory group…. Currently, the military is spending $51 million a year to clean up training ranges. The total Pentagon environmental budget is $3.5 billion per year (Armstrong, More costly).
The report goes on to state that the overall cost of cleaning up the worst polluted sites was expected to exceed $300 billion. Clearly, even the United States government with its access to vast resources is unable to allocate the necessary funds to completely clean up the environmental mess it has created in its own country.
Even when funding is made available, environmental remediation is often hampered by the very requirements of the funding sources. Under CERCLA (the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act – better known as the environmental Superfund), for example, states have imposed more substantial remediation standards on the cleanup of former military facilities than the federal government. As a result, cleanup action has been bogged down by legal disputes over the level of remediation and definitions of risk assessment of what constitutes hazardous waste. Should an area earmarked for an industrial park, for example, be cleaned to the point where the soil is edible? Should private industries that develop former military baselands be held liable for unknown or as yet undiscovered environmental hazards? Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Reasons

• by: Robert C. Pinto - University of Windsor

1. It is a commonplace among philosophers that human actions are to be explained in terms of beliefs and desires, and that such explanations lay out a person’s reasons for acting. Terminology varies slightly from author to author – Fodor (1990, 4) talks about belief/desire explanations, Dennett (1978, especially chapter 1, and 1988) of “intentional explanation,” Davidson (1963, 3-4) of the “primary reason” for an action that consists of a belief and a “pro-attitude(i).” But there is wide agreement that reasons for acting involve both cognitive elements such as beliefs and conative elements such as desires.
On the other hand, when one looks at discussions of reasons for believing, or reasons for accepting a proposition as a premiss, conative elements – desires, hopes, preferences, fears – are seldom counted among the reasons. A casual reading of the literature suggests that when authors talk about the reasons for they are usually referring to the propositions or statements on belief on which people base their beliefs(ii). But if we look at the factors that actually lead people to accept the propositions they do accept, we will discover that conative factors often to play a crucial and legitimate role, even when even when people are basing their beliefs on evidence.

This paper was prompted by puzzlement over whether there is an asymmetry between reasons for acting and reasons for believing, and by the suspicion that it might prove valuable to count certain sorts of conative elements among reasons belief and/or acceptance. Accordingly, the paper proceeds as follows:
a. I review some of the ways in which conative elements appear to be crucial in the processing of arguments and evidence (part I)
b. I offer a framework for discussing the nature and role of conative elements in our cognitive lives (parts II and III)
c. on the basis of that framework, I attempt to formulate what I think the key question ought to be (part III, section 12)
d. finally I sketch a prima facie case for broadening our understanding of the legitimate reasons for belief and acceptance to include conative factors or elements (part IV).

I. Conative factors in the generation of belief and acceptance
2. Let begin with a consideration that emerges from refection on D. J. O’Keefe’s 1994 ISSA keynote address (reprinted as O’Keefe 1996). O’Keefe reviews the communication literature on “dual-process models of persuasion” and advances a couple of theses about the implications of that model for argumentation theory.

The core idea he explores is that two types of processing can occur in response to the presentation of an argument. Viewed in light of my contention that arguments are invitations to inference (Pinto 2001, chapter 4), this amounts to the idea that there are different ways in which an invitation to inference can be taken up. In dual-process models, one type of response is called “issue-relevant thinking” (or “central-route” persuasion); here the recipient of an argument will “attend closely to a presented message, carefully scrutinize the arguments it contains, reflect on other issue-relevant considerations (e.g., other arguments recalled from memory, or arguments they devise), and so on” (O’Keefe 1996, 61). But recipients don’t always undertake much issue-relevant thinking or “elaboration” when presented with an argument. Instead, sometimes (p. 62)
the receiver employs some heuristic principle, some simple decision rule, to evaluate the advocated position. For example, receivers might be guided by whether they like the communicator, or by whether they find the communicator credible. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – The Situation Of Argumentation Studies In France: A New Legitimacy

• by: Christian Plantin - CNRS, Lyon 2 University

This presentation of the current state of argumentation studies in France will focus on four points.
Firstly, some remarks about a difference of meaning between the basic terms designating our field of research in English and in French, that is (an) argument, (an) argumentation compared with (un) argument, (une) argumentation.
Secondly, a broad historical perspective will be taken. It will help to understand an intellectual and academic background characterized by a strong distrust for rhetoric and argumentation. This situation prevailed until the 1970s.
Thirdly, Grize’s ‘Natural logic’ and Ducrot’s ‘Argumentation within language’ theories will be briefly discussed. These programs, developed since the early 70s, and very well alive, have restored argumentation studies to favor in France, where they certainly still represent the leading traditions of research.
Finally an attempt will be made to summarize the main trends of the present situation, which seems to favor discourse analytic approaches to argumentation.

1. A caveat: Argument versus argument
The French word argumentation is indeed a good counterpart of argumentation, and the field of ‘argumentation studies’ tallies very well with the field of ‘études de l’argumentation’. But things get more difficult as soon as we take the next step, and consider the English noun an argument and the verb to argue. In a systematic set of occurrences, an argument is not un argument, and to argue doesn’t correspond to argumenter.
Following O’Keefe (1977), the Webster Dictionary, and my English informants, two meanings of to argue, that we will call to argue-1 and to argue-2, must be set apart:
to argue-1 means ‘to give reasons’ (Webster); with this meaning, to argue is followed by a that clause, and designates a monological activity.
to argue-2 means ‘to have a disagreement; a quarrel; a dispute’ (Webster); with this meaning, to argue is followed by the preposition about, and refers to a vast domain of interactions ranging from lively discussions to verbal and paraverbal fights. Arguing with someone about something is a dialogical activity.
The noun an argument has the same duality of meaning, being either a dispute or a good reason – and, sometimes, a good reason put forward in a dispute. The monosemic meaning of argumentation might look surprising ; but morphology has its caprices.
In French, argumenter has a single meaning, always equivalent to to argue that -, ‘to give reasons’. This meaning is inherited by all the words belonging to its lexico-semantic field, including argument and argumentation. Un argument is always a reason, never a quarrel. The verb argumenter is an excellent equivalent of to argue that ‘to give reasons’; but a very poor translation of to argue with, which corresponds to ‘discuter (de manière agressive, in an agressive way)’. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Evaluating Unclarity In Judicial Decisions: Violations Of The Usage Rule In Legal Argumentation

• by: H.J. Plug - University of Amsterdam

1. Introduction
In everyday discussions as well as in legal procedures, unclear language can have negative consequences for the resolution of disputes. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992, 2001) state that parties in a discussion making use of unclear or ambiguous language are guilty of the fallacy of unclearness. By using unclear formulations, they violate one of the rules for critical discussions: the usage rule.
This discussion rule, although never referred to as such, seems to play an important role in legal procedures as well. Among other things, the Dutch Supreme Court hears grievances against the motivation of judicial decisions that are based on the ground that the motivation of the decision is obscure. One of the legal parties may, for example, complain about the unclear formulation of the arguments, rendering an adequate reaction impossible. Since these complaints are not always allowed, it is worthwhile to address the question when such a complaint about the formulation of an argument may be successful. Van Eemeren and Grootendorst point out that it might be difficult to answer questions such as these. Therefore it is interesting to take a closer look at judicial decisions in which unclearness and ambiguity are explicitly discussed.
In my contribution I will discuss the way in which the Dutch Supreme Court decides on differences of opinion about the obscurity of the motivation of legal decisions. By analysing (legal) discussions on the formulation of the motivation, I will try to find evaluative criteria that reach beyond the specific case at hand.
First I will briefly discuss how unclarity is treated in literature on fallacies. Then I will indicate what type of complaints concerning the motivation of judicial decisions may be submitted to the (Dutch) Supreme Court. Finally I will discuss a number of exemplary cases of complaints concerning the formulation of the motivation that either have or have not been allowed.

2. Linguistic fallacies
In handbooks on fallacies (e.g., Hamblin, 1970, Woods & Walton, 1982, and Walton, 1995) and in textbooks (e.g., Johnson & Blair, 1994), fallacies are divided into two groups: those dependent on language and those independent of language. When dealing with linguistic fallacies, or fallacies of language and meaning, most authors discuss at least the fallacy of equivocation and the fallacy of amphiboly. The fallacy of equivocation is caused by lexical ambiguity. According to Walton (1995, 61) this fallacy occurs when a word that is essential in an argument is used ambiguously in such a way that it makes the argument appear sound, when in actual fact it is not. The fallacy of amphiboly is caused by syntactic ambiguity. This fallacy occurs when the syntactic interpretation of an ambiguous sentence is changed during the discourse(i). Most authors that deal with linguistic fallacies, however, do not discuss them in great detail(ii). Furthermore, not all examples presented of different kinds of ambiguity provide good examples of fallacies. As Woods and Walton (1982, 169) observe, many of the examples cited are, in fact, not arguments at all. It is obvious that ambiguity and vagueness can lead to problems in communication. But when should they be considered as fallacies? This question is closely connected with the definition of the concept fallacy.
In the pragma-dialectial argumentation theory a fallacy is defined as a speech act which frustrates efforts to resolve a difference of opinion, and the term fallacy is thus systematically connected with the rules for critical discussions. By making use of unclear or ambiguous language, parties to a difference of opinion can make the resolution of a dispute difficult or even impossible. In doing so they violate the usage rule, which runs as follows:
Parties must not use any formulations that are insufficiently clear or confusingly ambiguous, and they must interpret the formulations of the other party as carefully and accurately as possible. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Using An Activity System Model For Analyzing Effective Arguments

• by: Susan Popham - The University of Memphis, USA

This presentation analyzes the arguments of three business managers who worked in privately owned medical practices. Their jobs were to pursue payments for claims that had been billed yet denied by health insurance companies. Their claims for payment were in effect arguments for which they gathered data, offered proof, and stated their claims. I use an activity system model to examine the interrelations between the elements of their workplaces and to highlight their roles as agents of workplaces.

Activity System Theory
Activity systems theory, based heavily on theories by Vygotsky and Leontev, studies groups of people who come together to work for common goals through dialogic, tool-mediated means. According to Beach (1998), activity systems researchers pay close attention to the subjects (the people involved in the activity system) and their (sometimes conflicting) identities, the objective/motive (as Engestrom defines it, “the problem space at which the activity is directed” [Engestrom, 1993, p. 67]), tools (usually genres or texts), rules, community, and division of labor. In simple form, an activity system includes the whole context in which people come together with discursive means to achieve certain outcomes – hence workplaces, classrooms, boardrooms, homes, civic groups, hobbies, even conferences can be theorized as activity systems.
Russell (1997) argues for this model that allows a researcher to understand the relationship between text, context, and writer, and to explore the power, stability, and change in that relationship. He uses activity system theory to combine both genre and community in an “expanded theory of dialectic that embraces objective and motives of collectives and their participants to explain reciprocal interactions among people through texts” (p. 505).
Simply put, Russell proposes a model for systematic, “principled and concrete analysis” (p. 524) of the dynamic, powerful, and complex context of activity systems through the textual practice of agents. His theory offers many benefits: it understands that activity systems have many motives, subjects, and tools; reveals that individual subjects also have many motives and tools; highlights the contradictions and double binds which rise through the various motives and tools; shows activity systems and genres as dynamic in space and time; makes necessary the interrelation between the genres and their contexts; and it underscores the overlapping nature of multiple activity systems and of genre systems.

Russell identifies these tensions as “contradictions” or “double binds;” they are “the dialectical pulls within and among systems” (1997, p. 519). Identifying these areas of “contradictions” can help us understand the ways in which genres can both “stabilize systems… as well as mediate collective change” (Winsor, 1999, p. 202). And this theory gives scholars an avenue for analyzing more fully discourse and contexts. As Winsor theorizes,
Activity theory has the potential to help us stop thinking of context as a container in which text is subsequently produced. Rather, an activity system and the elements making it up (tools, actors, objectives) can be seen as mutually constitutive and always in flux. (p. 201) Read more