ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Argumentation Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis And Corpus Linguistics: A Case Study

• by: Chiara Degano -Università degli Studi di Milano

1. Introduction
This paper is part of a broader project, which explores the possibility of combining the qualitative approach of critical discourse analysis with the quantitative methodology of corpus linguistics. The aim is to propose an integrated model of analysis which benefits both from the interest of CDA for the modalities through which language represents and constructs reality, and from corpus linguistics’ concern for a rigorous description of language, based on a representative sample of data. In particular this paper will give an account of how presuppositions and dissociations were used in the discourse of preparation to the war on Iraq which took shape in the British press[i] from January 2002, when Bush delivered his ”axis-of-evil speech”, to the outbreak of the war itself, through the analysis of a corpus of newspaper articles which has been built for the purpose of this study.
The first hypothesis for the present study is that the integrated model I propose can be applied also to higher structures of discourse, such as argumentative moves, which are not so often addressed by CDA, notwithstanding declarations of intents, and even less by corpus linguistics, due to the fact that the typical tools of such discipline are thought to work at best on the level of words and grammar. The choice of presuppositions and dissociations, among all the possible argumentative aspects, is motivated by the fact that they are signalled by words which act as indicators, and are thus retrievable using the tools of corpus linguistics. The second hypothesis is that the occurrence of presuppositions and dissociations in a corpus might signal controversial areas of discourse, where argumentative strategies are more or less covertly used, and therefore worthy of closer qualitative analysis.

2. Model
The rationale behind the original project results from a double interest: on the one hand there was an epistemological interest for the modalities through which the press represented the debate about the possibility of a war on Iraq, in line with the scope of critical discourse analysis; on the other hand the focus was methodological, and addressed the issue of how corpus linguistics could help to overcome the limits of CDA, which were pointed out in several occasions by different scholars. One first reason of complaint is that the strong political commitment of critical discourse analysts, aimed at unveiling the role of language in maintaining existing power relations to the advantage of dominant groups, has a negative influence in terms of methodological rigorousness (Widdowson 1995). In particular, some interpretations of the texts are seen to rely more on an ideological basis than on a sound linguistic analysis, and apart from that the relation between discourse and grammar is often uncertain. The second reason concerns the way texts are selected, which often translates into the fact that analyses are carried out on small samples of text which are chosen ad hoc, because they allow to demonstrate pre-constituted interpretative views (Philips 1989: 8).
As suggested by seminal studies which advocated an integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches (Hardt-Mautner 1995, Stubbs 1996, Garzone and Santulli 2004), the integration of corpus linguistics and CDA could solve both these problems, starting from criteria for text selection. In the first place, the sample of texts and the range of sources should be wide enough to be representative of a certain discourse type and the same is true for what concerns the range of sources. Second, when it comes to the analysis of the corpus proper, the quantitative approach forces to a closer observation of data, with a view to the frequency with whom a certain characteristic occurs, so that uses which can be identified as recurring are considered as more relevant than isolated examples.

3. Presupposition and dissociations
The two structures which have been selected for analysis present a twofold reason of interest. On the one hand, they add to the propositional content, which is explicitly expressed, an evaluative component, which is not physically coded by language, but which is conveyed thanks to the background knowledge and the beliefs shared by the participants. More specifically, this added evaluative component results from the fact that the speaker implicitly attaches different values to related aspects, one being judged more positive or more relevant than the other. Because it is formulated in such a covert way, this form of evaluation is less likely to raise criticism on the part of the reader, and has therefore a high potential for influencing public opinion. With regard to this Thompson and Hunston (2001: 9) state:
The less obtrusively the evaluation is placed in the clause, the more likely it is to successfully manipulate the reader.

On the same topic, Ducrot (1979: 14), with reference to the presupposition, says:
Every explicit statement becomes, for the very fact of being explicit, an object of possible discussion. All that is stated can be contradicted […].The formulation of an idea is the first and decisive step towards it being put into discussion.

On the other hand both presuppositions and dissociations can be retrieved electronically within a corpus of large amount of texts, because they are associated with specific indicators. Of course, the correspondence between indicator and structure is not automatic, but the output of a query can be scrolled manually, in order to retain only the relevant occurrences. The discussion will now move on to deal with each of the two structures. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Why There Is No Argumentum Ad Hominem Fallacy

• by: David Hitchcock - McMaster University

Contemporary introductions to logic (e.g. Hurley 2003: 118-121, Copi & Cohen 2002: 143-145) typically treat the argumentum ad hominem as a fallacy of relevance. It is said to consist generically in a response to someone’s statement or argument by an attack on that person. The abusive ad hominem is pure abuse; it points out some fault of character or intellect in the opponent. The circumstantial ad hominem is tied more specifically to the content of the opponent’s discourse; it alleges some self-interested motive or dogmatic bias as the source of the opponent’s position. The tu quoque responds to a criticism of behaviour by pointing out that the critic has previously engaged in that very behaviour. All three types of personal attack, the textbooks typically say, are irrelevant to the merits of the opponent’s position. Thus all three are fallacies. To show that someone’s statement or argument is inadequate, one must point out substantively what is wrong with it. Personal attack is logically otiose.

On the contrary, I shall argue, there is no such thing as an ad hominem fallacy.
What is a fallacy? Trudy Govier nicely sums up the standard conception of a fallacy in the western logical tradition, as follows: “By definition, a fallacy is a mistake in reasoning, a mistake which occurs with some frequency in real arguments and which is characteristically deceptive.” (Govier 1995: 172) If there is an ad hominem fallacy, as opposed to an argumentum ad hominem which is sometimes legitimate and sometimes not, it should according to this definition be a move in argument or reasoning. Further, it should be always mistaken; a move that is sometimes legitimate and sometimes mistaken is not a fallacy. Further, it should occur with some frequency in real arguments. A mistake in an unrealistic invention of a logic textbook writer, designed to fit the textbook’s theory, does not amount to a fallacy, for a mistake is not a fallacy unless people actually make it. To support a claim that a certain mistake is a fallacy, one therefore needs to point to actual examples, and one’s analysis of these examples as committing the mistake needs to be defensible, i.e. accurate and fair. Further, one needs to show that people are taken in by this mistake; thus, sophisms that would fool nobody are not fallacies.
Contrapositively, to show that a certain move is not a fallacy, one needs to show only that one of the necessary conditions for fallaciousness is lacking. Perhaps the move is not even a way of reasoning or arguing. Perhaps it is not a mistake, or not always a mistake. Perhaps people do not actually make this move in real arguments, at least not with enough frequency to deserve the invention of a label and a listing in the pantheon of logical fallacies. Or, if the move does occur with some frequency, perhaps it is so patently absurd that it would not fool anybody with even a minimum of logical acuity. Any of these four possibilities would be enough to show that the move in question is not a fallacy.
The reasons for the non-fallaciousness of the argumentum ad hominem vary from one species to another. I shall therefore consider each species separately, in each case giving some historical background.

1. The Traditional Sense of the Ad Hominem
In western thought, to argue ad hominem (Greek pros ton anthrÇpon) originally meant to use the concessions of an interlocutor as a basis for drawing a conclusion, thus forcing the interlocutor either to accept the conclusion or to retract a concession or to challenge the inference. Aristotle in his discussion of the principle of non-contradiction distinguishes “absolute proof” (haplÇs apodeixis) from “proof relative to this person” (pros tonde apodeixis, Metaphysics XI.5.1062a3). In his influential 13th century commentary on this work (Lectio V. n. 2213, 2219, 2222; cited in Nuchelmans [1993: 40, n. 9]), Thomas Aquinas uses the corresponding Latin phrase demonstratio ad hominem for relative proofs of first principles. By the 17th century, logic textbooks were using the phrases “argumentum ad hominem” and “argumentatio ad hominem” quite generally for arguing about any subject-matter at all from the concessions of one’s interlocutor, a usage attested as a scholastic commonplace (Nuchelmans 1993: 41); in the same century, Galileo uses the expression “ad hominem” for an argument whose author derives a conclusion not acceptable to an opponent from premisses accepted or acceptable by the opponent but not the arguer (Finocchiaro 1973-74). John Locke is referring to this background when he reports in his essay Concerning Human Understanding, first published in1689, that “to press a man with consequences drawn from his own principles or concessions … is already known under the name of argumentum ad hominem” (Locke 1959/1689: 278; IV.XVII.21).

In this whole tradition, which continued in logic textbooks of the 18th and 19th century (Nuchelmans 1993), there is not a hint that an argumentum ad hominem is a personal attack. It is not an argument against the opponent, but an argument to the opponent, i.e. to the commitments already made by the opponent, whether by unprompted assertion or by concession in response to a question. It is a perfectly legitimate way for a proponent to get the opponent to accept the consequences of those commitments, even if the proponent does not share them. It is not in itself mistaken, merely of limited probative value.
One would make a mistake in reasoning if one represented such an argument ad hominem as an absolute proof of its conclusion. And in fact this misrepresentation is how Richard Whately (1827/1826) defines the ad hominem fallacy – apparently the first time in a logical tradition going back more than 23 centuries that arguing ad hominem was stigmatized as fallacious. A fallacy is committed, Whately claims, if (and apparently only if) an argumentum ad hominem is presented as having established the conclusion absolutely, rather than merely as one that the individual referred to is bound to admit. But it is confusing to describe this mistake as an ad hominem fallacy while at the same time maintaining that the argumentum ad hominem on which it is based is non-fallacious. Parry and Hacker (1991) have coined the phrase illicit metabasis for the mistake of claiming on the basis of an argumentum ad hominem to have proved the conclusion to someone other than the opponent. The mistake here is in the misrepresentation of a legitimate argumentum ad hominem. It may of course be doubted whether the mistake occurs often enough, and is deceptive enough, to be dignified with the label of a fallacy. Certainly most contemporary logic textbooks do not mention this error in their list of fallacies. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Memorializing In A Time Of Terror: A Case Study Of Public Argument

• by: Barbara A. Biesecker - University of Iowa

In “Punctuations: The Time of a Thesis” Jacques Derrida offers a remembrance that goes back to 1966. After delivering a paper at a colloquium in the United States, he recalls Jean Hyppolite’s remark: “I really do not see where you are going.” Derrida replied to him, more or less, in the following way: “If I clearly saw ahead of time where I was going, I really don’t believe that I would take another step to get there.” He then offers a brief meditation on his own response: “Perhaps I then thought that knowing where one is going may no doubt help in orienting one’s thinking, but that it has never made anyone take a single step, quite the opposite in fact. What is the good of going where one knows oneself to be going and where one knows that one is destined to arrive” (Derrida 2004, p. 115)? Now I want to say something today about the relationship between knowing and doing and, even more specifically, about the relationship between reason and argument. And I want, by risking a step beyond the habits and habitus of my own thought (I have no formal training in the theory and practice of argument), to suggest, with all due respect to the experts amongst us, that we need desperately a new ethics of argument. So, knowing and doing, reason and argument, risk and ethics. But I am getting ahead of myself; this is not yet the time of my thesis. First, a retracing of my steps and a warning in advance that I will not be delivering the essay that is promised in the program. Instead, a bit of a mis-step that I hope will lead us in the direction of something completely other. The completely or radically other, whom one can never anticipate but whose arrival must nonetheless be prepared for in advance, will be yet another of my motifs.

As I said, I knew what I was doing, was quite sure of where I was going. I set out to support the claim that above all else Ground Zero has always been and would necessarily remain much less a space of memorialization – or, to use Pierre Nora’s terms, site of memory – and much more a landscape of argument (there is a critique of Nora’s thesis barely buried here, one toward which I will gesture again shortly but whose full elaboration will have to wait for another day). Indeed, nearly five years out and, still, the question of what to do with Ground Zero – the sixteen acres in Lower Manhattan on which the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood – is far from settled. As one journalist writing for the New Statesman reported, “argument over what should replace the towers began before the last body part was removed from the smouldering ruins” (Wapshott 2005) and there is little sense that a consensus will emerge in the near future. To the contrary, since the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s jury announced its international competition’s winning design (“Reflecting Absence”) on 14 January 2004, differences of opinion have only intensified.
I meticulously tracked the controversy, step by step. Here I invoke only a sampling from that relatively protracted and deeply invaginated public debate. A near immediate reaction to “Reflecting Absence” was the formation of the Twin Towers II Memorial Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation in the State of New York whose aim is to “provide a vehicle for the American public, New Yorkers and 9-11 family members to voice their opinions by encouraging education about the current proposed site plan for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center” (Shurbet 2006). With the assistance of no less a celebrity than Donald Trump, the Twin Towers II Memorial Foundation countered the LMDC’s proposal with its own “appropriate and family-inspired above-ground memorial at the World Trade Center Site” (Shurbet 2006).
Later, the announced redesign of the Freedom Tower (a response to concerns that the structure was unnecessarily vulnerable to a truck bomb) was met by scathing critique from journalists, laypersons, and architects alike, not the least of whom was Jeff Speck, Design Director at the National Endowment for the Arts, who lambasted the revision: “We must ask ourselves what it says about our nation to produce a ‘Freedom Tower’ hiding behind twenty-stories of solid concrete. Better to build nothing than such an alienating monument to surrender” (Nason 2005, p. 24). Then summer 2005 saw the formation of “Take Back the Memorial,” a coalition of 9-11 family groups and firefighters whose most pressing mission (in addition to a massive overhaul of the memorial’s design) was to have the proposed International Freedom Center “removed” from the 16-acre site (the Drawing Center had already been effectively eliminated from what should perhaps no longer be referred to as The World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex). Prompted by an op-ed piece penned by Debra Burlingame (a 9/11 family member and World Trade Center Memorial Foundation board member) and published in the Wall Street Journal, the coalition adamantly insisted that an international freedom center promised to denigrate the sacred site. As Burlingame put it in terms that unmistakably invoke the partisan culture wars of the eighties and nineties that the tragedy of 9/11 was more than once claimed to have inspired the nation to transcend. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Didactics And Authority: Towards A Pragma-Didactical Approach

• by: M. Dufour - Université, Sorbonne Nouvelle

Didactical arguments are shown to be a kind of argument raising specific problems. I discuss the way they are related to dialectical arguments and to arguments from authority and suggest a new research orientation in argumentation: pragma-didactics.

1. Aristotle on didactical arguments
At the beginning of the On Sophistical Refutations (II, 165 a-b), Aristotle gives a four types classification of arguments that can be involved in a discussion:
Of arguments used in discussion there are four kinds, Didactic, Dialectical, Examination-arguments and Contentious arguments. Didactic arguments are those which reason from the principles appropriate to each branch of learning and not from the opinions of the answerer (for he who is learning must take things on trust). Dialectical arguments are those which starting from generally accepted opinions, reason to establish a contradiction.

First, two remarks. Although dialectical arguments are discussed at length in On Sophistical Refutations and the Topica, Aristotle says hardly anything more about didactical arguments. Thus, scientific arguments are not listed here although they are discussed in some later books, especially the Analytics. This last point can be explained by the fact that scientific arguments are not debatable because of the specific nature of their premises. In Posterior Analytics (I, 2, 71, b, 20), Aristotle writes that scientific premises must be “true, primary, immediate, better known than, prior to, and causative of the conclusion”. Accordingly, neither the premises nor the full scientific argument are open to discussion: this could explain why scientific arguments are missing in On Sophistical Refutations list.
So, when asking whether an argument can be both scientific and didactical, the answer would be “no!” since didactical arguments are debatable when scientific arguments are not. This seems confirmed in Topica (I, 1, 100, a 30) when Aristotle claims that “Things are true and primary which command belief through themselves and not through anything else; for regarding the first principles of science it is unnecessary to ask any further questions as to ask “why”, but each principle should of itself command belief”.
This conclusion about compatibility between didactical and scientic arguments leads to the surprising conclusion that science cannot be a branch of learning.

To avoid this difficulty, a solution is to make a distinction between didactical practice and science acquisition. Note that such a distinction is quite common, at least in folk psychology, when a distinction is made between explanation – an action made by the teacher – and understanding – an action made by the student.
However, as suggested by the previous quotation from the Topica, Aristotle seems to admit that a discussion may begin in a scientific context: suffice the student asks “why?” about a principle. But this should not happen since it would be a sign that the student does not understand the principle as a principle. In any case, following Aristotle, since the scientific knowledge of principles must be immediate it cannot rely on trust paid to a master. Moreover, according to Posterior Analytics where Aristotle sets out his empirical and inductivist epistemology, the principles of knowledge are said neither demonstrable (otherwise they would not be principles) nor undemonstrable. They are acquired by another way: “there is a definite first principle of knowledge by which we recognize ultimate truths” (I, 3, 72, b, 20). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Rationality, Reasonableness, And Critical Rationalism: Problems With The Pragma-Dialectical View

• by: Harvey Siegel - University of Miami & John Biro - University of Florida

A major virtue of the Pragma-Dialectical theory of argumentation[i] is its commitment to reasonableness and rationality as central criteria of argumentative quality. However, the account of these key notions offered by the originators of this theory, Frans van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst, seems to us problematic in several respects. In what follows we criticize that account and offer an alternative that seems to us to be both independently preferable and more in keeping with the epistemic approach to arguments and argumentation we favor.[ii]

1. The Reasonable Rabbi
In their most recent systematic discussion of these matters (2004), van Eemeren and Grootendorst define argumentation as “a verbal, social, and rational activity aimed at convincing a reasonable critic of the acceptability of a standpoint by putting forward a constellation of propositions justifying or refuting the proposition expressed in the standpoint.” (2004, p. 1) On this view, rationality is an essential aspect of argumentation, and by saying that argumentation is “a rational activity,” van Eemeren and Grootendorst mean that it is “a complex speech act aimed at convincing a reasonable critic,” one that is “generally based on intellectual considerations” (2004, p. 2, emphases in original):
When someone advances argumentation, that person makes an implicit appeal to reasonableness: He or she tacitly assumes that the listener or reader will act as a reasonable critic when evaluating the argumentation. Otherwise, there would be no point in advancing argumentation. (ibid.)

As van Eemeren and Grootendorst make clear, the pragma-dialectical view attempts to combine descriptive and normative approaches to the study of argumentation under the heading of ‘normative pragmatics.’ (2004, pp. 9-11) The normative dimension is captured by their accounts of acceptability, which concerns the appropriateness or acceptability (or otherwise) of argumentative moves or claims, and of reasonableness, which concerns the discussion rules in accordance with which judgments of acceptability are ideally made. They invoke the image or model of “an extremely wise man – say, a rabbi,” whose position is “that of a rational critic who judges reasonably.” (2004, p. 12) The rabbi asks himself: “When should I, as a rational critic who judges reasonably, regard an argumentation as acceptable?” (2004, p. 13) And if he adopts “the critical-rationalistic view of reasonableness” (2004, p. 17, emphasis in original) that van Eemeren and Grootendorst favor, he answers that “an argumentation may be regarded as acceptable” just in so far as it “is an effective means of resolving a difference of opinion in accordance with discussion rules acceptable to the parties involved.” (2004, p. 16) So, argumentations (argumentative moves, i.e., particular speech acts) are evaluated in terms of acceptability, which is itself a matter of instrumental efficacy: an argumentation is acceptable if it is “an effective means of resolving a difference of opinion in accordance with discussion rules” and conforms to procedures that the parties accept.[iii] Such rules are in turn deemed reasonable to the extent that they are adequate for resolving the relevant difference of opinion. Thus it is argumentations that are or are not acceptable, and discussion rules (and/or the procedure in which they play a role) that are or are not reasonable:
The extent to which a particular rule is considered reasonable depends on the adequacy of that rule, as part of a procedure for conducting a critical discussion, for solving the problem at hand. (2004, p. 16)

So, “[o]ur rabbi…asks himself which theoretical instruments are, or can be made, available to him to systematically arrive at a solution of his problem regarding the acceptability of argumentation.” (2004, p. 19) To pass judgments about the acceptability of argumentations, the rabbi, if he embraces the pragma-dialectical approach, uses “an ideal model of a critical discussion and a procedure for how speech acts should be presented in order to be constructive moves in such a discussion.” (2004, p. 20) Accordingly, the rabbi’s judgments concerning the acceptability of argumentations will be based on the reasonableness of the discussion rules that license the argumentations in question. The rules are deemed reasonable just in so far as they conduce to the resolution of the relevant difference of opinion. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Mill On Argumentation

• by: Hans Vilhelm Hansen - University of Windsor

Half the wrong conclusions at which mankind arrive are reached by abuse of metaphors. (Lord Palmerston)[ii]

In this essay [i] I want to make an approach to understanding Mill’s view of argumentation, especially as his attitude toward this activity can be extracted from his essay, On Liberty.[iii] I will do this in a round-about way by considering three figures of speech, one of them associated with argumentation in general and the other two specifically attributed to Mill’s thought. These figures of speech have the character of metaphors or perhaps what Stephen Barker has called revelatory definitions. His example is, “architecture is frozen music.” As a definition this statement does not say how ‘architecture’ is used in English, nor does it introduce a new meaning for that term; it rather proposes a new way of looking at architecture. “We must reflect,” writes Barker, “about the extent and validity of this comparison between music and buildings; the [revelatory] definition is a good one if the comparison is illuminating.” (Barker 1965, p. 204) So, in this essay I will consider how apt and illuminating are the metaphors, “argumentation is war”, “the marketplace of ideas” and “society is a debating club”, with regard to Mill’s views on argumentation. Respectively these figures suggest that argumentation is war-like, debate-like, and free trade-like. Having done that I will try to identify what it is that is unique and peculiar about Mill’s view.

1. War
Perhaps the most common metaphor associated with argumentation is that “argument is war.” It may well have its roots in ancient Greek dialectic. One interpretation of Aristotle is that he taught “dialectic as a form of self-defence, organizing techniques and strategies … into the structured discipline of a philosophical martial art” (Hill & Kagan 1995, p. 34). A long time later, in the 1830s, Richard Whately used a military metaphor to explain why it is an advantage to have the presumption on your side when engaging in argumentation: an army defending a fort may well be able to turn back any assault, but should the army go “into the open field to encounter the enemy,” – that is, should the army go on the offensive – rather than wait for the enemy to attack, it might be defeated (Whately 1846, p. 113). Recently Ralph Johnson and Anthony Blair have given their informal logic textbook the title, Logical Self-Defense, intimating that some kind of combat-like attitudes and skills are needed as a safeguard against the “species of illogic” (Johnson and Blair 1983, p. xiv). Most recently the metaphor, “argument is war,” has been the point of departure for Deborah Tannen’s book, The Argument Culture. She speaks of a pervasive tendency – she calls it “agonism” – in our society to engage in argumentative behaviour. “In the argument culture,” she writes, “criticism, attack, or opposition are the predominant if not the only way of responding to people and ideas” (Tannen 2003, p. 7). Daniel Cohen, who worries about the metaphor’s implications for education, has written that,
Despite any ambiguities and subtle nuances of the word “argument,” this metaphor manages to dominate our discourse about arguments and our argumentation practice. We routinely speak, for example, of strong, or even killer, arguments and powerful counterattacks, of defensible positions and winning strategies, and of weak arguments that are easily shot down while strong ones carry a lot of firepower and are right on target (Cohen 2004, p. 36).

Tannen (2003, p. 14) points out that ‘war’ is, however, a key term in many other metaphors as well, such as the war on terror, the war on crime, the war on cancer, the war on poverty; to which I may add my own favourite – the battle of the bulge. Whenever we are involved in a struggle or competition, and the stakes are high, we seem to be ready for a metaphorical war. Cohen’s concern for how easily the language of military conflict can be adapted to that of intellectual engagement is shared by many.

Consider what we might be expected to glean from the argument-is-war metaphor.
1. There are opposing sides in the argumentation.
2. The purpose of engaging in defensive argumentation is to resist the imposition of another’s view.
3. The purpose of engaging in offensive argumentation is to impose your view on another.
4. There are few, if any, rules or standards of argumentation to be followed (trickery may be employed; there is no requirement to respect opponents).
5. Winning is more important than getting at the truth.

These may not be the only insights that purveyors of the metaphor wish to impress upon us. I have ordered the insights 1 to 5 in what seems to me to be an ascending scale of war-like behaviour: if only 1 – 3 are satisfied then there is only slight support for the metaphor but should either of 4 or 5 be satisfied as well, then it may be said that argument is war is a telling metaphor. Read more