ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Cinematic Arguments: The Efficacy Of The Day After Tomorrow In Public Arguments On Global Warming

• by: Ron Von Burg - Christopher Newport University

1. Introduction: Science Fictions and Public Understandings of Science
The proposition that science fiction films play a role in shaping public discussions and understandings of science receives limited academic attention (Frank, 2003; Kirby, 2000, 2003a, 2003b; Vieth, 2001). Although science fiction films do succeed as texts that open intellectual space to consider the philosophical, cultural, and ethical dimensions of scientific and technological advancements (Aldridge, 1983; Kuhn, 1999, 2000; Stork, 1997; Suvin, 1979, 1988), popular science fiction films rarely are embraced by the scientific community for advancing a particular scientific argument. More often, scientists identify fictional films as irresponsible and inaccurate depictions of science that frustrate efforts to educate lay publics on the value of “real” scientific knowledge and, in an effort to stem the risk of public confusion, occupy the role of epistemic gatekeepers who parse out the science fact from the science fiction (Corbett & Durfee, 2004; Lewenstein, 1995; Nelkin, 1987; Silverstone, 1991; Wynne, 1995).
The scientific commentary on the global warming disaster film, The Day After Tomorrow, however, marks a departure from the rhetorical practice of just isolating science fact from science fiction as a way to promote proper scientific knowledge. Instead, scientific interlocutors commenting on the film craft a rhetorical space where obscuring the distinctions between “real” global warming science and its fictional representations functions as an argumentative commonplace to endorse a specific scientific argument. Despite substantial evidentiary support, the scientific arguments for combating global warming that circulate in public spheres often lose persuasive force when juxtaposed against skeptical arguments that identify shortcomings in global warming science and the potential economic risks associated with efforts to address global warming. Consequently, scientists and advocates spreading the word about climate change encounter a number of rhetorical difficulties, including how to communicate the dangers of global warming in ways that are both scientifically valid and effectively dramatic.
I argue that the public scientific discourse surrounding The Day After Tomorrow highlights a paradoxical rhetorical practice that mobilizes a patently fictional film as a topos for promoting a scientifically grounded argument in an effort to elucidate the dangers of global warming. I argue this rhetorical move functions as a form of oppositional argumentation that challenges the norms of public scientific discourse. In addition to using the blockbuster as an opportunity to focus public attention on global warming, scientific interlocutors employ the film’s visual potency and pointed political commentary to buttress scientific arguments that illustrate the dangers of global warming. This paper illustrates how the scientific discourse on The Day After Tomorrow blurs the distinctions between fact and fiction to bolster arguments on global warming by first, examining the rhetorical difficulties inherent in public debates on climate change, and second, exploring the potential for oppositional arguments to alter the norms of public discussions of global warming.

2. The Day After Tomorrow and the Public Debate on Global Warming
In the weeks prior to its 2004 Memorial Day weekend release, The Day After Tomorrow became enveloped in a sustained public scientific discourse on global warming where scientific interlocutors capitalized on the opportunity to educate publics on the “reality” of global warming (Bridges, 2004; Coren, 2004). In addition to numerous newspaper articles and television specials, the National Resource Defense Council, Greenpeace, the Environmental Literacy Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists, National Snow and Ice Data Center, the Energy Future Coalition, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution all created websites to answer questions about the science in the film and the reality of global warming. Each website employed a variety of images and quotes from the film throughout its website, highlighting the various dangers of global warming (Griscom, 2004). On the days leading up to the film’s release, many major newspapers featured stories on the global warming debate that used The Day After Tomorrow as a qualified attention-getting device designed to spur informed public debate on global warming (Bowles, 2004; Hager, 2004; Munoz, 2004; Sennott, 2004; Vancheri, 2004). Gretchen Cook-Anderson, a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) spokeswoman, notes “Whether its premise is valid or not, or possible or not, the very fact it’s about climate change could help to spur debate and dialogue” (qtd. in Barollier, 2004). Likewise, Geochemist Michael Molitor suggests that the movie “is going to do more for the issue of climate change than anything I’ve done in my whole life” (qtd in. Booth, 2004). Wallace Broecker, the earth scientist who first identified the link between ocean currents and abrupt climate shifts, believes the film is “wolf-crying science,” but he concedes that no researcher will turn down “an opening to get our message out” (qtd. in Dayton, 2004). Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Reading Direct-To-Consumer Advertising Of Prescription Medicine. A Qualitative Study From Argumentation Theory On Its Dialectical And Rhetorical Features

• by: Sara Rubinelli - Peter J. Schulz, Health Care Communication Laboratory, University of Lugano, CH & Kent Nakamoto - Department of Marketing, Virginia Tech, USA

1. Introduction
The expression Direct-to-Consumer Advertising (thereafter DTCA) refers to “any promotional effort by a pharmaceutical company to present prescription drug information to the general public in the lay media” (Huh et al. 2004, p. 569). Currently, DTCA is allowed only in the United States and New Zealand. Yet, its introduction in the early 1980’s has inflamed a debate that today seems to have assumed a seemingly chronic non-conclusive orientation both at an academic and institutional level (Areni 2002; Tanne 1999; Raven 2004).
The core of the debate on DTCA essentially concerns the identification of DTCA either as a beneficial procedure to be promoted or as a damaging procedure to be abolished and consequently not introduced in other countries. Promoters of DTCA present several arguments supporting its positive educational influence on people’s health literacy. DTCA is here seen as a way to provide people with adequate information for them to have a safe use of medication, as well as a way to create effective knowledge for evaluating the benefits and risks of drug products, and generally managing health autonomously and appropriately. For promoters of DTCA, pharmaceutical companies can provide more accurate, balanced and scientifically based information than any other sources. Opponents of DTCA emphasise the financial gains of the pharmaceutical industries and the fact that DTCA enhances medicalization of normal human experience. In this last perspective, DTCA is depicted as being devoid of any effective educational value insofar as it does not give adequate information on side effects and non-pharmacological options for treatment and prevention. To cut a long story short, prescription drug advertising generally contains some information about diseases or treatment options, but according to a conspicuous part of the literature, its primary aim is to create name and brand recognition with a view to enhancing the use of the products advertised (Murray et al. 2004; Bonaccorso & Sturchio 2003; Lexchin & Mintzes 2002; Calfee 2002).

The literature on DTCA suggests that the debate over DTCA is getting bogged down in chains of arguments pro and con, yet the issue per se is surely of crucial social importance, especially because there is strenuous lobbying in many countries to relax national restrictions on DTCA (Raven 2004). In addition, de facto DTCA in the form of unbranded advertising about specific diseases and conditions increasingly occurs outside the United States and New Zealand (Raven 2004). As some scholars have pointed out, not a lot is known about the effect of DTCA of prescription drugs (Calfee 2003; Areni 2002; Jones & Garlick 2003). Consumer surveys, in particular those by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has regulatory responsibility for DTCA in the United States, and Prevention magazine (Calfee 2002) show that consumers are generally aware of DTCA and that they find it useful. Nevertheless, such surveys are limited in that they do not permit a definitive determination of the impact of DTCA on people’s health (GAO-03-177 (2002).
Recently, a few studies have addressed the issue of how to improve the regulations of the Food and Drug Administration. These studies focus mainly on the comprehension level of the information delivered by the adverts, on the need for a ‘fair-balanced disclosure’ between information on risks and benefits and for less superficial information (Kaphingst et al. 2005; Spence et al. 2005; Maubach & Hoek 2005; Huh & Cude 2004; Chao 2005). Although these factors are important for promoting a positive impact on consumers’ health literacy, they do not seem to get to the core of the communication problem involved in DTCA, namely that these adverts are not simply informative as claimed by the pharmaceutical industry (Bonaccorso & Sturchio 2003), but they present information framed in potentially misleading argumentative structures (Rubinelli 2006).
Drawing on argumentation theory, we claim that DTCA can lead readers to make wrong inferences and misunderstand the drugs’ characteristics as a result of its interplay between dialectical and rhetorical features. In what follows, the nature of this interplay will be explored in detail, with the perspective of investigating the potential tension between practical persuasive success and normative directives about argumentative conduct.

2. Preliminaries
These preliminary observations introduce theoretical concepts that will be useful for the analysis of DTCA presented in this paper. In particular, we shall deal with the definition of dialectic and rhetoric, and with the main factors which they involve.
Following the evaluation made by Leff (2006), dialectic and rhetoric have been differently assessed by scholars. Weaver (1953) saw a fundamental distinction between the two disciplines; dialectic consists in winning rational assent for abstract matter, while rhetoric deals with ways of proceeding in individual situations. Contrary to the interpretation of Weaver, recent scholarship – including the authors of this paper – perceives a crucial overlapping between dialectic and rhetoric; the same overlapping that, we add, Aristotle saw in the Rhetoric while stressing in the opening lines of the treatise that dialectic is the counterpart (antistrophos) of rhetoric. As Wenzel (1990) claims, dialectic is a way of settling disputes through critical discussion. Rhetoric relates, however, to the persuasive factors of argumentative encounters. The main point stressed by Wenzel is that dialectical and rhetorical perspectives can both appear in concrete arguments.
According to the above perspective, dialectic results in the generation of norms for reasonable conduct. In particular, there are three broad principles – among those representing the asset of a critical discussion as codified by pragma-dialectics – which become relevant for our context: that arguers make clear what overall claim is being advanced, present support for the claim, and defend their views against objections (O’Keefe 2003; 2006). Let us discuss these principles in more detail. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – What Is The KKK: Metonymy And Synecdoche In Arguments About Racism

• by: Michael Janas - Samford University

1. The War on Terror
Debates about whether Afghanistan and Iraq are two faces of the same Global War on Terror (GWOT) or two different wars linked by a common thread mark the contemporary American political scene. Not only do they have to do with the colors used for military decorations, but this question also goes to the heart of the legitimacy of both endeavors. The centerpiece of this distinction lies with whether one is willing to collapse the techniques of terrorism with the individuals who perpetuate terrorist acts. While the Reagan administration had modest success in defining international terrorism as largely “state-sponsored”, opening up the way for acts of terrorism to dovetail with diplomatic considerations, terrorism has more often been treated as individual acts by responsible persons. Therefore, it has been classified as part of the criminal justice system. Only after 9/11 did the American public open to the idea that terrorists and acts of terror were unified and integrated multinational entities. As such, terrorists should be fought as though they were a coherent nation-state. While this argument has faded since the point where 57 percent of the American public thought that Saddam Hussein had aided the 9/11 hijackers, questions whether there is a Global War on Terror persist (Berman, 2003).

Here I am interested in the finite traditions that govern the ways we articulate coincident events. In particular, I am interested in the ways that synecdoche and metonymy open up coincident events to competitive interpretation. As rhetorical tropes, synecdoche and metonymy perform as cultural frames and strategies of argument. Taking discussions surrounding Ku Klux Klan activities at the University of Louisville as a text, I examine the ways that these two argumentative strategies set the stage for cultural antagonism. As synecdoche, the strategy adopted by those who sought to ban the Klan, it stands as an essential representation for a whole range of racist attitudes and behaviors illustrated in a material experience of struggle. As metonymy, the concept of racism reduces to the historical and material action of the Klan as a distinctive object. As such, those who view the issue as a matter of the freedom of speech seem unconcerned about the material threat of the Klan.

2. Tropes and the Study of Argument
Tropes are important to the study of argument. They are fundamentally enthymematic in that they grant their ground as a consequence of a habit and context of thought. In addition, they direct focus and function to suppress particular elements of argument (Vico, 1996; Birdsell, 1993; Parson, 1994). As tropes, they invite participation by invoking pre-existing habits of interpretation or argumentative frames of reference. This has been widely appreciated in the study of rhetoric, particularly as related to the study of metaphor (Fritch and Leeper, 1993; Moore, 1996; Eubanks and Schaeffer, 2004). However, in addition to their expressive function, they are also important to understanding how people construct their symbolic world. In this way, rhetoric and cognitive linguistics share a common path.
Recent works by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1980) have documented how tropes, particularly metaphors, help to map out the world of thing, words and concepts. Focusing primarily in the area of political discourse, the two have identified how dominant metaphors help identify important features on politics’ symbolic terrain. Lakoff (1996), in particular has argued that metaphors having to do with the proper functioning of a family help to explain seemingly incommensurate arguments that under-gird American conservative and liberal political rhetorics and worldviews.
While metaphors are the most widely studied trope, four master tropes have been recognized since the 16th century when Peter Ramus identified, in addition to metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche and irony. This four-part typology of coincidental relationships was mirrored in the work of Giambisto Vico (1968) in the 18th century who sought to differentiate the stages of consciousness characterizing human progress. More recently, Kenneth Burke (1968) broke with the linguistic theory of the post-war period which tended to reduce linguistic behaviors to either metaphor or metonymy and reconstituted the “master tropes” as four possible styles of thought (pp. 503-517; White, 1975). For Burke, as for modern cognitive linguists, the styles of thought were important because they provided a frame for both interpretation and understanding. As Burke notes, they play a “role in the discovery and description of ‘the truth’”(p. 503).
I am limiting my discussion to two of the four tropes: synecdoche and metonymy. Of the four, the two are the most similar and easily confused and are the most likely to “shade into one another,” This is so much so, that they have often been reduced to one another (p. 503). Burke likens metonymy to reduction and synecdoche to representation. While both deal with issues of contiguous or sign relationships, they do so in subtly different ways. This narrow distinction is an issue of some controversy, but the fundamental difference has to do with the ways that a term is related to the thing that it represents. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Theory And Practice: A Metatheoretical Contribution

• by: Tone Kvernbekk - University of Oslo

1. Introduction
It is well known that all professions have what is generally termed a theory-practice problem. The problem view often takes one of two shapes. The first is the theoreticians’ complaint that practitioners do not use available scientific, research-based knowledge in their work, but rather rely on common sense and old bags of tricks. The second is the practitioners’ complaint that research-based knowledge is too abstract and general to be of any use in practical contexts; not infrequently with the added complaint that research-based theory is not relevant, it simply does not address the issues that practitioners are interested in. Sometimes it is claimed that practice is self-sufficient, it does not need theory.
Even a discipline such as argumentation has a theory-practice problem. As a prelude, let us take a brief look at argumentation theorists say about their theory-practice problem, before we delve into selected aspects in greater detail. Robert Pinto, in reflective hindsight, takes a somewhat skeptical position (Pinto 2001). Once he saw himself as engaged in theory-building, but makes the judgment that while his ideas were both valid and important, they did not “add up to the elaboration of a theory” (p.128); rather they were fragmented and incomplete. More recently his view of the whole enterprise has changed: “ … I now hold that our judgments about arguments and inference are guided by a tradition of critical practice rather than by an over-arching theory” (p.129). And here is where Pinto’s skepticism comes in; he doubts whether it is at all possible to construct a theory that might ground critical practice, but he grants that a theory might illuminate it. So what could the argumentation enterprise be? Pinto applies his views to his own work. He denies that it will yield “a set of propositions about argument inference whose truth is proved and which constitutes a theory of inference or argument”; rather what he settles for is “an altered way of looking at the phenomena this paper discusses – an alteration induced by observations and reminders set forth in them” (p.129).

Ralph Johnson (2005) takes issue with Pinto’s views, especially his skepticism concerning the possibility of a theory for the practice. In fact, Pinto problematizes whether various proposed theories are theories at all. In turn, Johnson problematizes Pinto’s assumptions that a theory would have to be complete and systematic, and that the job of any theory worth the name is to provide a foundation for practice. In Manifest Rationality (2000) Johnson diagnoses the overall problem as a gap between theory and practice, and suggests that “gap can only be bridged by significant alterations to the theory” (p.358). In his 2005 OSSA paper, he suggests that the relationship better be viewed as reciprocal, in a Deweyan fashion.
There are many things here that are worthy of analysis, and regrettably I cannot treat them. I shall organize my discussion along three major lines. First, there is the question about the concept of a theory; of what sort of entities “theory” refers to. This section will introduce a metatheory and a conception of (scientific) theories. Second, what does it mean to say that there is a “gap” between theory and practice, and what may a “bridge” possibly look like? Finally, my third theme is the relation between theory and practice and how to conceive of it. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Arguments Across Symbolic Forms: An Analysis Of Presidential Popularity

• by: Tim Steffensmeier - Kansas State University

Abstract:
This project embraces a visual turn in argumentation studies by analyzing visual arguments alongside their print-based companions. The paper works to understand how images make arguments in the news, specifically focusing on images of President George W. Bush as they relate to public opinion polls. The analysis spans five years of the Bush presidency by examining 125 articles and accompanying images illustrating job approval ratings. The findings suggest that images are performing a variety of argumentative functions especially during a national crisis. However, often images project arguments that are incongruent with the articles they accompany.

Key Words: visual argument, images, opinion polls, crisis

1. Introduction
Sometime between the debut of the USA Today newspaper and the emergence of a commercial internet people begin consuming news laden with visuals. This reading of photographs, charts and caricatures is not a new phenomenon as comics and children’s books, for example, have employed a similar literacy; however, the generic shift from literature to news marks a significant literacy shift. This turn occurs while argumentation scholars are writing about discursive forms of argument, the aestheticians are dedicated to high art, and media scholars are searching for an effect. Yet, journalists are dressing news like collage art. This trend in the making alters notions of literacy and suggests a fusion of the above mentioned experts.
The technological shifts of the 20th Century cast individuals into an age of secondary orality[i] (Ong, 1982). According to many argumentation theorists, our grounds, warrants, enthymemes, and entire claims are packaged in images (Palczewski, 2001; Birdsell & Groarke, 1996). These conclusions challenge the classification of images as being distinctly separate from words. In a Cartesian world, image and word are conceptually dichotomous; the image as argument fails to measure up to the stability, transparency and rationality of the word. Adhering to this typically Modern notion of rationality (and argumentation) is no longer tenable considering the reality of a communicative environment dominated by images (Molwana 1992; Stephens 1998).
This project arises because argumentation, rhetoric and media scholars are beginning to develop the language and methods necessary to critically examine images used in argument (Scott, 1994, 252). An important step in this visual turn is a reexamination of the rigid image/word dichotomy. This split characteristically frames the image as presentational emotive baggage tainting rational discursive claims. In terms of rhetorical appeals, the word is to logos what the image is to pathos. These distinctions are no longer necessary or accurate given the shifting notions of literacy in an era of secondary orality. While challenges to this dichotomy can be traced to 20th century artistic movements[ii], the tension between the presentation of word and image demands further examination by argumentation scholars. In line with art historian Michael Holly, this paper questions “the possibility of ever keeping separate the discursive and the visual” (1996, p. 8).
Embracing a visual turn in argumentation studies assumes that “argument need not be fixed as a category” (Palczewski, 2001, p. 14). Redrawing the lines of argument comes with the burden of rethinking political discourse as it functions in the public sphere. This project builds upon argumentation scholarship that examines the role images play in political arguments (DeLuca, 1999; Lake & Pickering, 1998). In this analysis a significant form of political discourse, opinion polls, are analyzed. Opinion polls are a rich artifact in terms of their symbolic form, as they are commonly presented in both visual and word-based forms, and for their ideological strength – “polls are one of the communicative means by which the collective ‘we’ of democracy maintains and projects itself” (Lipari, 2000, 98). Opinion polls are symbolically diverse and powerful argument structures that project a consensus of seemingly unrelated citizens.

Opinion polls can be used to analyze how traditionally discursive forms of argument compare and contrast with their visual companions. This analysis hopes to demonstrate the role and relationship between words and images in a manner that challenges the modern word/image schism. A ubiquitous polling question in US political discourse is the Presidential job approval rating. President George W. Bush’s job approval ratings are especially telling as major shifts in public support has been reported throughout his five years in office. The shifting approval ratings offer fertile ground to explore the argumentative quality of opinion poll stories. For this paper, images of President Bush are analyzed in relation to the word based descriptions of public opinion poll data.
This paper begins by addressing the theoretical tension between word and image, a tension manifest in secondary orality. It continues by delineating the artifact and method used to analyze news stories. Theory and method are followed by an analysis of images and news articles conveying public opinion data concerning George W. Bush’s popularity. Specifically, the articles and images illustrating public opinion polls are examined to determine if they convey congruent arguments. This analysis generates conclusions regarding the presentation of public opinion polls, distinctions between newspapers and magazines, and the relationship of images to words when used in advancing arguments. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – A Foundational Principle Underlying Philosophy Of Argument

• by: George Boger - Canisius College

1. Introduction
The study of arguments and argumentations – logic – whether undertaken traditionally as a study of formal implication relationships among propositions or undertaken non-traditionally to involve the dialogical pragmatics of human argumentative discourse, is a decidedly metasystematic activity (consider, e.g., Barth & Krabbe 1982 on various uses of ‘form’). This is not obviated by philosophers of argument considering an argument to be a social activity (see, e.g., van Eemeren et al 1996: 5, Johnson 2000: 168, Govier 1988:1, Freeman 1993: 35, Walton 1989: 1, 3, and Tindale 1999: 1). Of course, philosophers of argument distinguish themselves by intentionally broadening their study to include considering the context and situatedness of argumentative discourse as essential to the discipline. In connection with this special approach to studying arguments, philosophers of argument have variously treated epistemic matters, normative matters, pragmatic matters, and a whole host of humanist issues. Indeed, in this latter respect, the philosophy of argument, whatever controversies it might compass, even to include adherents debating whether there is or can be a theory of argument, has sprung from persons motivated by deep humanist convictions to empower ordinary human beings with sufficient critical faculties to become autonomous members of democratic societies.
This discussion aims modestly only to highlight this important humanist underpinning of many contributors to the modern argumentation discussion. We use ‘humanism’ here in a generalized way to range over various humanisms, such as, secular humanism, religious, scientific, or naturalistic humanism and their individual philosophic expressions, all of which might be traced to their renaissance inspiration and all of which have deep moral predilections. We take humanists, then, to affirm the dignity and worth of human beings and to promote human freedom, especially as expressed by the self-determination of individuals and their communities. Besides promoting freedom, humanists promote a spirit of tolerance and peaceful coexistence, affirm human equality, and embrace cosmopolitanism. Humanists especially consider human nature perfectible and share an optimistic outlook on the possibility of genuine progress. Humanists express profound confidence in human reason to understand nature and society without external mediation, and they promote cultivating our moral sensibility and our sense of shared responsibility. Below we review the remarks of some important philosophers of argument to indicate their deep-seated humanism. The upshot of our discussion is to identify a foundational principle underlying philosophy of argument.

2. An initial humanist impulse motivating the modern study of argumentative discourse
Taking Chaim Perelman, Stephen Toulmin, and Charles Hamblin to have inspired a social movement concerned with the dynamics of human argumentative engagement, many contemporary logicians since the 1970s have taken up the cause of their initial inspiration. Perelman, along with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, has remarked at various places that he aimed to “combat uncompromising and irreducible philosophical oppositions presented by all kinds of absolutism” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969:1). Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca were committed to fight absolutism in all its forms and to resist totalitarianism (1969: 510). Perelman has especially addressed the concerns of justice in various essays (see Perelman 1967, 1980). These philosophers had had first-hand experience with the effects of severe anti-democratic and anti-human practices. Toulmin, in much the same vein, has reflected on the social history of logic to locate a split between the reasonable and the rational in the Peace of Westphalia, out of which came absolute sovereignty, established religion, and logical demonstration, all of which share two common features: “[1] all of them operated top-down, and gave power to oligarchies – political, ecclesiastical, or academic – that supported one another … [2] they formed a single [ideological] package” (2001: 156). Toulmin also writes that “[t]he Westphalian Settlement was, then, a poisoned chalice: intellectual dogmatism, political chauvinism, and sectarian religion formed a blend whose influence lasted into the twentieth century” (2001: 158). He is optimistic that in the contemporary world “tolerance and democracy are winning out over elitism in methodology, and over imperialism in the philosophy of science. To that extent, the imbalance in European ideas about Rationality and Reasonableness shows healthy signs of correcting itself” (2001: 167; cf. 205). Read more