What is the love of truth?To date, scholarship on "post-truth" concentrates on truth's status as a philosophical concept and as a touchstone of political culture in the twenty-first century. In this scholarship, post-truth has become a way of synthesizing the antecedents of President Donald J. Trump's election and a banner under which public reason stages its dramatic last stand. Writing for Philosophy & Rhetoric in the immediate aftermath of Trump's election, for instance, Elizabeth S. Goodstein observes "a sea change is (...) under way in how we understand and value truth". Similarly, Steve Fuller retroactively characterizes both Plato and the Sophists as "post-truth thinkers, concerned more with the mix of... (shrink)

Iran's nuclear program has garnered a great deal of media attention for nearly a decade, yet critical discourse scholars have been relatively silent on the matter. To spur more scholarship on the nuclear controversy, this study examines the language of nine interviews with former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Analyzing the opening questions of topic shifts, the relationship of scope and topic, and Secretary Rice's portrayal of the US and Iran, I argue that Rice used her media access as (...) a platform to encourage audiences to see Iran's nuclear program as a nuclear weapons program, often with the complicity of her interviewers and always without evidence. In the wake of the unilateralist American invasion of Iraq, Secretary Rice also worked to rebuild a positive image of the White House as she presented the US as a proponent of multilateral diplomacy as opposed to her portrayal of the Islamic Republic as a rogue state. (shrink)

Traditionally, kairos has been seen as a “timely” concept, and so invention is said to emerge fromthe timeliness of a cultural and historical situation. But what if invention was thought of as thepotential to shift historical courses through the injection of something new or alien into a situation?This essay argues that kairos has not been able to free itself from its historical constraints becauseit has been bound to a human sense of temporality. By evolving along patterns different from print,the apparatus (...) of the cinema developed in a way where it was not bound to illustrating movement ortimeas it occurs in human-centered experience. Following the work of Gilles Deleuze on cinema,this article argues that the outside of a human sense of time is an untapped source of invention,already present yet dormant within kairos. (shrink)

How do Dutch people let each other know that they disagree? What do they say when they want to resolve their difference of opinion by way of an argumentative discussion? In what way do they convey that they are convinced by each other’s argumentation? How do they criticize each other’s argumentative moves? Which words and expressions do they use in these endeavors? By answering these questions this short essay provides a brief inventory of the language of argumentation in Dutch.

In the last quarter-century, the emergence of argumentation theory has spurred the development of an extensive literature on the study of argument. It encompasses empirical and theoretical investigations that often have their roots in the different traditions that have studied argument since ancient times – most notably, logic, rhetoric, and dialectics. Against this background, I advocate a “thick” theory of argument that merges traditional theories, weaving together their sometimes discordant approaches to provide an overarching framework for the assessment of arguments (...) in a broad range of contexts. In sketching such a theory, I propose six steps that can “thicken” traditional approaches to argument in the interests of a comprehensive theory. (shrink)

It furthers the dialectic when the opponent is clear about what motivates and underlies her critical stance, even if she does not adopt an opposite standpoint, but merely doubts the proponent’s opinion. Thus, there is some kind of burden of criticism. In some situations, there should an obligation for the opponent to offer explanatory counterconsiderations, if requested, whereas in others, there is no real dialectical obligation, but a mere responsibility for the opponent to cooperate by providing her motivations for being (...) critical. In this paper, it will be shown how a set of dialogue rules may encourage an opponent, in this latter type of situation, to provide her counterconsiderations, and to do so at an appropriate level of specificity. Special attention will be paid to the desired level of specificity. For example, the critic may challenge a thesis by saying “Why? Says who?,” without conveying whether she could be convinced by an argument from expert opinion, or from position to know, or from popular opinion. What are fair dialogue rules for dealing with less than fully specific criticism? (shrink)

This paper is concerned with argumentation in legal proceedings, namely in criminal cases. My interest is to explore how in the legal realm different argumentation fields interact, the juridical field being just one of them. The paper lays out an approach of studying argumentation in the legal realm in the framework of an ethnographic methodology by identifying the “topical rules” the participants in criminal trials adhere to. Suggesting the notion of field-dependence as a good starting point for the analysis of (...) legal argumentation, I will give several examples of different fields of argumentation interacting in criminal proceedings. The examination of what counts as a good reason and how arguments are employed, negotiated, and evaluated within a criminal proceeding might shed light on the practice of constructing facts and arriving at decisions in court. It can furthermore point at the constitution of legal rationality and how it is produced in criminal trials. I argue that rationality in criminal proceedings is interactively accomplished by negotiating different standards of validity. (shrink)

The implicit dimension of enthymemes is investigated from a pragmatic perspective to show why a premise can be left unexpressed, and how it can be used strategically. The relationship between the implicit act of taking for granted and the pattern of presumptive reasoning is shown to be the cornerstone of kairos and the fallacy of straw man. By taking a proposition for granted, the speaker shifts the burden of proving its un-acceptability onto the hearer. The resemblance of the tacit premise (...) with what is commonly acceptable or has been actually stated can be used as a rhetorical strategy. (shrink)

Defining “criticism” is a simple—but bedeviling—task. No less a critic and theorist than Edwin Black begins with the simple statement that “criticism is what critics do.” While he admits that this seems like an empty definition, Black does note that it has one redeeming feature—“It compels us to focus on the critic” (1978, 4). Criticism and those who engage in it are integrally connected, and any account of critical activity must deal with both the activity and its actor. In this (...) way, it is much like art—one could easily utter that “art is what artists do.” Criticism is often tied to art and its products, so this appears to be a fair way to proceed in an investigation of criticism. Yet I would argue .. (shrink)

The pragmatic theory of explanation is an attempt to see explanation as a linguistic response to a cognitive problem where the content of the response depends on the context of the scientific inquiry. The present paper draws on the rhetorical situation, as it is defined by Loyld Bitzer, in order to understand how the context may influence the content as well as the acceptability of the response.

The “balancing exercise” engaged in by judges in cases involving conflicts of rights can be analysed in rhetorical terms as a process for resolving rhetorical antinomies, where an antinomy is understood as a contradiction between two equally justifiable conclusions drawn from two or more equally applicable rules or principles. By investigating the possible responses to antinomies and identifying their types, we can better understand the process of judicial decision‐making and the ways which international and national courts justify their decisions.

A World of Muscle, Bone & Organs: Research and Scholarship in Dance is an e-book exploring contemporary ideas and themes in the research and practice of dance. It contains 23 chapters written by researchers at the Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE), Coventry University, and is divided into six sections: Spaces of Practice, Philosophy, Communities, Politics, Data and Thinking, and Epistemology.

Bodily rhetoric is a burgeoning field, with scholars investing attention to the ways in which non-verbal communication mediates change between individuals and groups in complex scenarios, including political settings. Scenarios in which individuals move together – whether in completely extemporaneous situations or in existing forms such as Contact Improvisation, Argentinian Tango, or Classical Pas de Deux – pose a similarly complex communicative problem. Drawing on the work of Lloyd Bitzer, I demonstrate how rhetorical theory provides methodological insight by which we (...) can better understand the dynamic practice that is always already happening in situations where individuals move together. (shrink)

Bodily rhetoric is a burgeoning field, with scholars investing attention to the ways in which non-verbal communication mediates change between individuals and groups in complex scenarios, including political settings. Scenarios in which individuals move together – whether in completely extemporaneous situations or in existing forms such as Contact Improvisation, Argentinian Tango, or Classical Pas de Deux – pose a similarly complex communicative problem. Drawing on the work of Lloyd Bitzer, I demonstrate how rhetorical theory provides methodological insight by which we (...) can better understand the dynamic practice that is always already happening in situations where individuals move together. (shrink)

This book contains 20 essays tracing the work of David Zarefsky, a leading North American scholar of argumentation from a rhetorical perspective. The essays cohere around 4 general themes: objectives for studying argumentation rhetorically, approaches to rhetorical study of argumentation, patterns and schemes of rhetorical argumentation, and case studies illustrating the potential of studying argumentation rhetorically. These articles are drawn from across Zarefsky’s 45-year career. Many of these articles originally appeared in publications that are difficult to access today, and this (...) collection brings the reader up to date on the topic. Zarefsky’s scholarship focuses on the role of language in political argumentation, the ways in which argumentation creates public knowledge and belief, the influence of framing and context on what is said and understood, the deployment of particular patterns and schemes of argumentation in public reasoning, and the influence of debate on politics and governance. All these topics are addressed in this book. Each of the conceptual essays includes brief application to specific cases, and five extended case studies are also presented in this volume. The case studies cover different themes: two explore famous political debates, the third focuses on presidential rhetoric across the course of United States history, the fourth on the arguments for liberalism at a time of political polarization, and the fifth on the contemporary effort to engage the United States with the Muslim world. This book is of interest to scholars in the fields of philosophy, logic, law, philosophy of law, and legal history. The range of topics and concepts addressed, the interplay of concepts and cases and the unifying perspective of rhetorical argumentation make this book a valuable read for students of argumentative practice, whether rhetorically or otherwise. (shrink)

Topical Themes in Argumentation Theory brings together twenty exploratory studies on important subjects of research in contemporary argumentation theory. The essays are based on papers that were presented at the 7th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation in Amsterdam in June 2010. They give an impression of the nature and the variety of the kind of research that has recently been carried out in the study of argumentation. The volume starts with three essays that provide stimulating (...) theoretical perspectives on argumentation. Subsequently, some views are explained on the intriguing topics of ‘dissensus’ and ‘deep disagreement’. After a discussion of three different approaches to the treatment of types of argumentation some classical themes from antique argumentation theory are revisited. The new research area of visual argumentation is explored in the next part. The volume concludes with three reports of experimental studies concerning argumentative discourse. The volume starts with three essays that provide stimulating theoretical perspectives on argumentation. Subsequently, some views are explained on the intriguing topics of ‘dissensus’ and ‘deep disagreement’. After a discussion of three different approaches to the treatment of types of argumentation some classical themes from antique argumentation theory are revisited. The new research area of visual argumentation is explored in the next part. The volume concludes with three reports of experimental studies concerning argumentative discourse. The volume starts with three essays that provide stimulating theoretical perspectives on argumentation. Subsequently, some views are explained on the intriguing topics of ‘dissensus’ and ‘deep disagreement’. After a discussion of three different approaches to the treatment of types of argumentation some classical themes from antique argumentation theory are revisited. The new research area of visual argumentation is explored in the next part. The volume concludes with three reports of experimental studies concerning argumentative discourse. (shrink)

This paper argues that journalists’ discursive actions in an outbreak context manifest in identifiable rhetorical motifs, which in turn influence the delivery of biomedical information by the media in such a context. Via a critical approach grounded in rhetorical theory, I identified three distinct rhetorical motifs influencing the reportage of health information in the early days of the H1N1 outbreak. A public-health motif was exhibited in texts featuring a particular health official and offering the statements of such an official as (...) a mechanism of reassurance. A concealment-of-information motif was exhibited in texts emphasizing the importance of the transparency of health officials, and in texts demonstrating ambivalence about information provided by socially-sanctioned sources. Finally, in texts mythologizing the outbreak to the exclusion of other functions of the text, I identified a pandemic motif. Each motif differs in the conclusions it offers to audiences seeking to gauge relative levels of risk, and to receive information about protective behaviours. I suggest that one means of interpreting the manifestation of distinct rhetorical motifs in the context of a high-risk health threat is the certainty that this context alters moral responsibilities, consequently influencing the manifestation of narrative role. (shrink)

Walter Fisher's narrative paradigm has sparked intense debate about the role of narratives in rhetorical scholarship. The theory has subsequently been followed up by numerous criticisms and revisions. This article argues that especially the latter can benefit from a complementary phenomenological perspective that Fisher himself placed within the original paradigm. Through the Heideggerian concepts of building and dwelling, rhetoric within the narrative paradigm may be seen as a primary means for engaging with both individual and communal goals and exigencies, providing (...) a more nuanced account for how people care for and act on the narratives in their lives. (shrink)

Christian Kock’s essays show the essential interconnectedness of practical reasoning, rhetoric and deliberative democracy. They constitute a unique contribution to argumentation theory that draws on – and criticizes – the work of philosophers, rhetoricians, political scientists and other argumentation theorists. It puts rhetoric in the service of modern democracies by drawing attention to the obligations of politicians to articulate arguments and objections that citizens can weigh against each other in their deliberations about possible courses of action.

Astonishment that the things we are experiencing are "still" possible in the twentieth century is not philosophical. It is not the beginning of any insight, unless it is that the idea of history from which it comes is untenable.And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty?In 1940 the exiled German critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin warned that fidelity to a vision of history as (...) progress risked normalizing the remy-thologization of politics.1 Recent events have underlined the urgency, both for thought and for action, of rejecting the same unphilosophical astonishment in our own time. In the face of political... (shrink)

This volume presents a selection of papers reflecting key theoretical issues in argumentation theory. Its six sections are devoted to specific themes, including the analysis and evaluation of argumentation, argument schemes and the contextual embedding of argumentation. The section on general perspectives on argumentation discusses the trends of empiricalization, contextualization and formalization, offers descriptions of the analytical and evaluative tools of informal logic, and highlights selected principles that argumentation theorists do and do not agree upon. In turn, the section on (...) linguistic approaches to argumentation focuses on the problem of distinguishing between explanation and argument, while also elaborating on the role of verbal indicators of argument schemes. All essays included in this volume point out notable recent developments in the study of argumentation. (shrink)

Conceptualization should not be founded on a theory of the object—the conceptualized object is not the single criterion of a good conceptualization. We have to know the historical conditions which motivate our conceptualization. We need a historical awareness of our present circumstance.The materialist doctrine focusing upon transformation in circumstances and thus in education forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that the educator must himself be educated. (translation modified)If we take Raymie McKerrow’s seminal essay “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis” (...) (1989) as the locus classicus of the attempt to establish a selfconsciously critical standpoint for rhetoric, it would be fair to say that this .. (shrink)

The shocking statement made by Robert Fogelin over 20 years ago when he claimed that discourses that are in deep disagreement cannot be resolved rationally, is still causing many problems to argumentation theorists. In this paper, however, I argue that discourses that are in deep disagreement, at least some of them, can be rationally resolved by introducing the concept of “third party” to those particular discourses.

This article examines the anti-fascist rhetoric of the self-proclaimed `revolutionary liberal', Piero Gobetti, in Italy in the early 1920s. Gobetti is interesting from a rhetorical perspective for two reasons: first, for his efforts to redefine liberalism as an emancipatory ethic of struggle that extended to the revolutionary worker's movement; and second, for his rejection of fascism as essentially continuous with the anti-conflictual tendencies of the liberal parliamentary regime. An exemplary `ideological innovator', Gobetti's `paradiastolic' redescription of liberalism and his metaphorical reading (...) of fascism underscored a commitment to the value of rhetorical disputation over the meaning and form of liberty. This contrasts with contemporary approaches to fascism — and purportedly similar ideologies — which demonize or objectify in a way that forestalls such a debate. Yet, paradoxically, the cost of Gobetti's innovations was an inability to secure what Perelman calls the `universal audience', a task that preoccupied Gobetti's Marxist friend, Gramsci. (shrink)

Whether argumentation competencies are associated with the kind of influence opportunities children have in their lives is the focus of this study. The hypothesis is that when children have the opportunity to initiate and evaluate arguments, hear others make and examine arguments, and participate equally in resolving disputes, children are able to develop their argument skills. Four argumentation competencies associated with critical discussions of proposals are identified: creating consensus about problematic situations, advocating proposals, facilitating behavioral commitment, and integrating identities. Second, (...) fourth, and sixth grade children completed tasks that assessed their influence opportunities and argument competencies. Children who perceived themselves to have many collaborative influence opportunities, that is, opportunities in which they could engage in mutual influence, had more highly developed argument competencies than children who did not have such opportunities. As predicted, this relationship occurred with the argument competencies of problem conception, proposal advocacy and facilitating commitment. Measures of non-collaborative influence opportunities were not associated with argument competencies. Together, the results suggest that discussions in which children are given the opportunity to influence and be influenced with arguments may provide the best context for children to develop their argument skills. (shrink)

Selection explanations explain some non-accidental generalizations in virtue of a selection process. Such explanations are not particulaizable - they do not transfer as explanations of the instances of such generalizations. This is unlike many explanations in the physical sciences, where the explanation of the general fact also provides an explanation of its instances (i.e. standard D-N explanations). Are selection explanations (e.g. in biology) therefore a different kind of explanation? I argue that to understand this issue, we need to see that (...) a standard D-N explanation of some non-accidental generalization (al Fs are Gs) may also ipso facto explain its contrapositive (all non-Gs are non-Fs), but the explanation is particularizable with respect to the former but not to the latter. This can be seen by noting that the Raven Paradox counterexample to the H-D model of confirmation also generates a counterexample to the D-N model of explanation (all ravens are black does not explain why the non-black shoe is a non-raven). In such cases it is natural to take the generalization with the positive predicates to have a particularizable explanation. However, this need not be the case, and in selection explanations it is the generalization with the positive predicates whose explanation is no particularizable. Thus there is no need to suppose that selection explanations are fundamentally different. (shrink)

This paper argues that some words are so highly charged with meaning by a community that they may prevent a discussion during which each participant is on an equal footing. These words are indeed either unanimously accepted or rejected. The presence of these adjectival groups pushes the antagonist to find rhetorical strategies to circumvent them. The main idea we want to develop is that some propositions are not easily debatable in context because of some specific value-bearing words, and one of (...) the goals of this paper is to build a methodological tool for finding and classifying these VBWs. Our study echoes the importance of “cultural keywords” in argument, but is rather based on a German approach developed by,, and about “Miranda” and “Anti-Miranda” words that is expanded and refined here. In particular, our study tries to understand why some statements, fueled by appreciative or evaluative adjectives, have such rhetorical effects on a pragmatic level in the particular context of a vote on the Swiss popular initiative called “for more affordable housing”. This context is fruitful since two parties offer reasons for two opposing policy claims: namely, to accept or to reject an initiative. When one party uses arguments containing such universally unassailable adjectival groups to defend a “yes” vote, the opposing party cannot use a symmetrical antonym while pleading for the “no” vote. The methodological tool that is proposed here could shed light on the use of certain rhetorical and referential strategies in conflicting policy proposition contexts. (shrink)

“Place” as an argumentative domain, which has been taken for granted and treated by theorists of argumentation simply as a physical notion designating the occasion where an argumentation takes place, carries far more complex meanings beyond its traditionally assumed domain in the following three dimensions: as a geographical locale; as a concept, an idea, a history or a notion with its own disputable narratives and presumptions; and as an imaginative geography. Similarly, an image or a character projected through argumentative discourse (...) should be among the central concerns for argumentation studies, however, limited attention has nevertheless been paid to this traditional face of argument in general and the collective face in particular. We argue that image is a site of discursive production, a symbolic field or a discursively disputable space. The discursive interplay among “place,” “image,” “argument” and “time” offer a new way of thinking about ethotic argument and its key role in the establishment of discursive credibility. (shrink)

As scholars have recently suggested, rhetoric has long been remiss when it comes to nondiscursive concerns beyond its traditional purview. While many have sought to broaden rhetoric's scope, no one has yet undertaken a nondiscursive rhetorical investigation of social change in an effort to reconcile the tension between a critique of agency and the perception of human responsibility. This article undertakes such a critique through Alain Badiou's concept of the event, a concept that, I contend, offers the discipline a means (...) of rethinking the opposition between relativism and flat ontology. Analyzing the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi through the frame of the event, I regard Bouazizi's act as an ontic occurrence exerting influence over protestors across the Arab world while demanding collective recognition to emerge as an event. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Caught Between History and ImaginationVico's Ingenium for a Rhetorical Renovation of CitizenshipAlessandra Beasley Von BurgCitizenship is usually thought of as synonymous with nationality and the rights and duties associated with the people who live, work, and participate politically, socially, and economically within the borders of their nation-state. In this conception, the main criterion used to decide who is and who is not a citizen is nationality. As the nature (...) of nation-state governance evolves and the acceleration of citizen mobility hastens interdependence, pressures for new definitions and paradigms of citizenship build. As Joseph Weiler argues, this pressure produces cognitive dissonance because "the traditional, classical vocabulary of citizenship is the vocabulary of the State, the Nation and Peoplehood" (qtd. in La Torre 1998, 1).1 The classical association of citizenship with nationality blocks our ability to grasp new, nonstatist conceptions of citizenship, even as postnational political visions take shape in institutions like the European Union (EU).2 In 1992, EU citizenship was established in the Treaty of Maastricht, which granted some additional rights to citizens of the member states in the same way that single nation-states grant their inhabitants special status as nationals, rights that are not nullified when citizens leave their home country to live and work in other member states.3 [End Page 26]The relationship between nationality and citizenship in the EU context is complicated by the fact that although Maastricht guidelines set postnational membership criteria for EU citizens, they also limit the scope of EU citizenship. In trying to reach beyond the nation while anchoring its very essence to the nation, EU citizenship remains limited as it relies on the traditional language of national membership to found its postnational concept of equality and inclusion for noncitizens. The contradictory elements of EU citizenship are exemplified in its current definition, which includes all member states' citizens and excludes millions who are living in Europe as third-country nationals (TCNs), defined as "any person who is not a citizen of one of the member states" of the EU but permanently and legally resides in one.4 The current debate over the status of legal, long-term TCNs challenges the relationship between citizenship and nationality, as advocates from EU institutions, national governments, nongovernmental organizations and academia argue that TCNs should be granted EU citizenship rather than be naturalized in the member states and push for a new, postnational mode of citizenship based on residency. Advocates for the inclusion of TCNs as EU citizens have to work with the limited vocabulary of national citizenship yet articulate a case for a new kind of citizenship divorced from nationality. They suggest that the EU should be viewed as a deliberative community, in which all long-term residents like TCNs are given an equal opportunity to practice citizenship. The deliberative community rationale is based on an idea of citizenship as performance with residents enacting citizenship by living together and deliberating with each other about common interests and concerns.5This reordering of the concept of community arising out of political practice calls for a full philosophical and rhetorical reimagining of the meaning of citizenship. The act of reimagining citizenship creates a new practice of citizenship and grounds citizenship in a philosophical context as well as a practical one. There is no better philosophical and rhetorical tradition to turn to for this purpose than that of Giambattista Vico. Vico, and to a larger extent the entire tradition of Italian humanism, has been overlooked in modern Western philosophy. Yet Vico embodies a seamless marriage of philosophy and rhetoric. Vico's philosophically grounded rhetoric provides the means in an investigation of EU citizenship as an innovative rhetorical practice beyond nationality, for understanding how new practices become persuasive through imaginative language, until citizens separate citizenship from nationality and accept residence and deliberative practices as legitimate criteria for citizenship. Vico argues that "every study method [End Page 27] may be said to be made up of three things: instruments, complementary aids, and aim envisaged" and notes that "the instruments presuppose and include a systematic, orderly manner of proceeding" (1990, 6). This essay proceeds in this fashion to reveal how a new vocabulary of citizenship... (shrink)

In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important organizational change, argumentation typically involves multiple audiences, rather than a single and homogenous group, let alone an individual interlocutor. In such cases, an exhaustive and precise characterization of the audience structure is crucial both for the arguer, who needs to design an effective argumentative strategy, and for the external analyst, who aims at reconstructing such a strategic discourse. While the peculiar relevance of multiple audience is (...) often emphasized in the argumentation literature and in rhetorical studies, proposals for modelling multi-audience argumentative situations remain scarce and unsystematic. To address this gap, we propose an analytical framework which integrates three conceptual constructs: Rigotti and Rocci’s notion of communicative activity type, understood as the implementation of an interaction scheme into a piece of institutional reality, named interaction field; the stakeholder concept, originally developed in strategic management and public relations studies to refer to any actor who affects and/or is affected by the organizational actions and who, accordingly, carries an interest in them; the concept of participant role as it emerges from Goffman’s theory of conversation analysis and related linguistic and media studies. From this integration, we derive the notion of text stakeholder for referring to any organizational actor whose interest becomes an argumentative issue which the organizational text must account for in order to effectively achieve its communicative aim. The text stakeholder notion enables a more comprehensive reconstruction and characterization of multiple audience by eliciting the relevant participants staged in a text and identifying, for each of them, the interactional role they have, the peculiar interest they bear and the related argumentative issue they create. Considering as an illustrative case the defense document issued by a corporation against a hostile takeover attempt made by another corporation, we show how this framework can support the analysis of strategic maneuvering by better defining the audience demand and, so, better explaining how real arguers design and adapt their topical and presentational choices. (shrink)

I provide a brief history of pragmatics as it relates to explanation, highlighting the great neglect of pragmatics and pragmatic considerations in regard to explanation during the mid-twentieth century. In order to understand pragmatic considerations regarding explanation, I utilize the work of Bas C. van Fraassen, Peter Achinstein, and Jan Faye. These thinkers provide crucial tools for understanding pragmatics, especially with regard to concepts such as context and exigence. The work of these thinkers provides the platform from which I compose (...) a definition of pragmatic considerations. (shrink)

If arguments are to generate public knowledge, as in the sciences, then they must travel, finding acceptance across a range of local contexts. But not all good arguments travel, whereas some bad arguments do. Under what conditions may we regard the capacity of an argument to travel as a sign of its cogency or public merits? This question is especially interesting for a contextualist approach that wants to remain critically robust: if standards of cogency are bound to local contexts of (...) evaluation, then how may arguments legitimately travel at all? The key to a contextualist conception of cogent travel, I argue, lies in the way local contexts are linked to broader contexts of evaluation by relations of relevance. The burden of the article is to elaborate the different forms these relations can take in the travel of scientific arguments. (shrink)

This paper deals with the treatment of figures of speech in Perelman’s and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s Treatise on Argumentation (TA), and, more broadly, with the place of figures in argumentation theory. The contrast between two conceptions (or two domains)\n of rhetoric, “a rhetoric of figures” and “a rhetoric of argument” can be traced back to Ramus, and it has been revived in\n the seventies through the perception of an incommensurability between Perelman’s “New Rhetoric” and the École de Liège’s “General\n Rhetoric”. Modern theories (...) of argumentation, oriented towards the characterization and denunciation of fallacious discourse,\n emphasize the gap between sound argumentative discourse and rhetorical discourse seen as a “powerful instrument of error and\n deceit” (Locke). This concept of argument presupposes a vision of language as ideal/transparent—a revised language that is\n not the language of ordinary argumentation. Figures are not basically “decorative”; they are manifestations of the complex\n process of language structuring in speech. Thus rejecting figures amounts to a negation of discourse as such. The second section\n turns to a somewhat neglected aspect of the TA, its both decisive and somewhat cavalier theory of figures of speech, and its extended use and re-definition of a complex set of figures. We argue that the TA, in its quest for descriptive adequacy, breaks with the traditional and comfortable concept of figures as useless fallacious\n “ornaments” and provides us with the first description of what could be characterized as the semantic level of ordinary argumentative\n discourse. This will be shown on the case of “figures of choice, presence and communion”, and could be extended to the discursive\n construction of objects and participants, including the speaker and her emotions. (shrink)

Occlusion is most commonly presented as an aspect of certain genres: occluded genres. Here, occlusion is proposed as a property of the processes by which genres are taken up. While routine use of genres creates expectations around when the genre’s uptake is commonly occluded, such expected practice can be subverted by deliberate disclosure. Occlusion and disclosure in the process of genre uptake thus become argumentative and powerful moves in communicative interaction. In three case studies, I analyze processes of occlusion in (...) relationship to the genre of the letter to the university president. (shrink)

The paper offers a single-case analysis of newsmaking discourse, considering the source, the writing process and the news product from the vantage point of argumentation. The case study examines how a journalist of the business-finance desk of a generalist newspaper copes with the argumentative and persuasive nature of the corporate press releases on financial results on which he depends for his reporting. The paper contributes to the understanding of journalistic practices in the economy-finance desk showing that even within the constrained (...) genre of hard news reporting and despite the epistemic and practical limitations of newsmaking practices the journalist does not renounce to a critical stance towards the argumentation in the source. This is done without fully and explicitly assuming the argumentative roles of antagonist and protagonist of alternative standpoints but rather by rhetorically framing the reader in these roles. Methodologically, the paper showcases a two-way cross-fertilization between argumentation theory and the ethnography of newsmaking. The newsmaking process joining the press release and the newspaper article is analyzed in vivo thanks to the ethnographic methodology of Progression Analysis. Progression Analysis provides a new kind of evidence for argumentative reconstruction, while argumentative reconstruction provides an explicit framework for comparing source and product texts and for laying down the reasoning behind the journalist’s decision making as elicited by. (shrink)

Henceforth "to transform" should mean "to change the sense of sense."The field of the entity … is structured according to the diverse—genetic and structural—possibilities of the trace.The first article in the first issue of Philosophy and Rhetoric is "The Rhetorical Situation," Lloyd Bitzer's critical exegesis on "the nature of those contexts in which speakers or writers create rhetorical discourse". Bitzer contends that the rhetor produces "the rhetorical text" when a "real" or "natural" —"objective and publicly observable" —situation "calls the discourse (...) into existence". That was 1968. Five volumes later, as you know, Richard E. Vatz flips the causal relation, maintaining instead that... (shrink)

This paper offers a new way to make sense of disagreement expansion from a polylogical perspective by incorporating various places in addition to players and positions into the analysis. The concepts build on prior implicit ideas about disagreement space by suggesting how to more fully account for argumentative context, and its construction, in large-scale complex controversies. As a basis for our polylogical analysis, we use a New York Times news story reporting on an oil train explosion—a significant point in the (...) broader controversy over producing oil and gas via hydraulic fracturing. (shrink)

Leading contemporary argumentation theories such as those of Ralph Johnson, van Eemeren and Houtlosser, and Tindale, in their attempt to address rhetoric, tend to define rhetorical argumentation with reference to (a) the rhetorical arguer’s goal (to persuade effectively), and (b) the means he employs to do so. However, a central strand in the rhetorical tradition itself, led by Aristotle, and arguably the dominant view, sees rhetorical argumentation as defined with reference to the domain of issues discussed. On that view, the (...) domain of rhetorical argumentation is centered on choice of action in the civic sphere, and the distinctive nature of issues in this domain is considered crucial. Hence, argumentation theories such as those discussed, insofar as they do not see rhetoric as defined by its distinctive domain, apply an understanding of rhetoric that is historically inadequate. It is further suggested that theories adopting this understanding of rhetoric risk ignoring important distinctive features of argumentation about action. (shrink)

Over the past thirty years or so, theoretical work in such fields as legal semiotics and law and literature has argued that the legal process is profoundly rhetorical. At the same time, a number of communication-based disciplines such as semiotics, sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology have provided, particularly in interdisciplinary combination with law, a wealth of empirical evidence on, and insight into, the micro-contexts of language and communication in the legal process. However, while these invaluable nitty-gritty analyses provide empirical support for (...) a rhetorical thesis, work in these areas has tended to ignore rhetoric as an explanatory principle. This article introduces an overarching rhetorical framework for the discursive construction and management of cases in contemporary Anglo-American legal processes. Taking ‘forensic’ as relating to the conduct of cases and ‘discourse’ as semiosis-in-practice, I argue that the practices within which forensic discourse is embedded are not, as the received legal view would have it, aimed at revealing an impartial truth but are deeply rhetorical practices aimed at persuading decision-makers to provide a remedy for a claimed wrong. By looking across forensic texts and contexts, I identify common elements of forensic discourse that can be found both in classical forensic orations and throughout the modern legal process and consider how these intersect with critical forces of agency and structure and the particularities of semiosis in situated context. An awareness of commonalities across forensic discourse can help sharpen our focus on the critical causes and consequences of individual and structural difference and point to consequential suggestions for reform. (shrink)

Going back as far as the Old Kingdom, ancient Egyptian speculative thinkers had already developed a complex understanding of the relationship between personal agency, power, and the role of magic. What is more, these early philosophers saw that this world and the other operated according to the same principles. The rules by which one secured power were the same whether one was a peasant or a god. Through perception, the heart/mind would design an idea, the mouth would speak it and, (...) as if by magic, the task would be accomplished. Thoughtful, reasoned speech was the mechanism for reestablishing the order that was manifested in the reasoned creation of the. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to apply theEntrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model(EC-Model hereafter; seeSchmid 2014,2015,2016,2017,2018;Schmid & Mantlik 2015) of language knowledge to genre, with the aim of showing how a unified theory of the relation between usage and linguistic knowledge and convention can shed light on the way genre knowledge becomes entrenched in the individual and shared conventional behavior in communities. The EC-Model is a usage-based and emergentist model of language knowledge and convention rooted in cognitive linguistics and usage-based approaches. It sees (...) knowledge as emerging from language usage, and explains the processes underlying the intertwining of social practice and cognition. However, so far, no suggestion has been advanced on how to extend the model to account for entrenchment and conventionalization at the supra-sentential level. In the area of genre studies various attempts have been made by scholars to develop or apply theories belonging to different scientific domains to understand the nature of genre. However, so far, there has been no research that applies a unified model in the attempt to link entrenchment of genres in individuals to their conventionalization at the societal level. I largely focus on the long tradition of rhetorical studies of genre, one among the different approaches that, over time, have regarded genre as their main topic of investigation. I concentrate on this tradition as it opens up the entire field of enquiry that defines contemporary genre research. To these I add by showing how the explanations provided so far can be cognitively clarified and unified under the EC-Model. The paper, then, argues that the EC-Model is theoretically apt to address questions about the nature of genre, capturing in an elegant way the interplay between cognition and social interaction in genre emergence, evolution, stabilization and variation. (shrink)

Organizations are often required to meet contradictory but interrelated objectives. An important response to such paradoxes is transcendence: the ability to view both poles of the paradox as necessary and complementary. Despite the centrality of transcendence to existing frameworks within the paradox literature, we still know little about its practice. We address this gap by surfacing and analysing rhetorical practices across three science organizations. We outline four rhetorical practices that constitute transcendence as well as the underlying features of these practices (...) that explain how they construct a response to paradox. In particular, we show that transcendence entailed balancing the enabling features of focus, time and distance. Finally, we develop a dynamic view of transcendence as a process of oscillation, showing how these practices are bundled together and interrelate to construct moments of transcendence. (shrink)