In this paper we introduce a theoretical framework and a logical application for analysing the semantics and pragmatics of contrastive conjunctions in natural language. It is shown how expressions like although, nevertheless, yet, and but are semantically definable as connectives using an operator for implication in natural language and how similar pragmatic principles affect the behaviour of both contrastive conjunctions and indicative conditionals. Following previous proposals, conditions on contrast in a conjunction are analysed as presuppositions of die conjunction. Further linguistic (...) evidence leads to a distinction between restrictive and non-restrictive connectives of contrast, and consequently between direct and indirect contrast, which are given a precise definition. A general interface for a theory of contrast using possible world semantics for implication is then presented. As a test case, we show how this interface is applicable to the semantics for conditionals that was introduced by Veltman in his article 'Data semantics and the pragmatics of indicative conditionals' (1986). This application yields an extension of Veltman's Data Logic, called Contrastive Data Logic Once appropriate modifications are added to Veltman's pragmatic considerations, we show that contrastive data logic provides an adequate tool for the analysis of substantial linguistic data concerning contrast and implication in natural language. (shrink)

Previous accounts of hedges assume that they cause language to become vague or fuzzy (Lakoff 1973); however, hedges can actually sharpen numerical concepts by giving explicit information about approximation, especially where bare numbers appear misleadingly round or precise. They can also tell hearers about the direction of approximation (greater or less than). This article provides a first empirical account of interactions between hedging and rounding in numerical expressions. We demonstrate that hedges occur more commonly with round numbers than with non-round (...) ones. However, we also provide evidence from user studies that in the absence of hedges, readers interpret round numbers as approximations and non-round ones as precise; and that placing a hedge before a round number has no effect on its interpretation, whereas placing it before a non-round number shifts people’s interpretations from precise towards approximate. We attempt to explain this conundrum. (shrink)

At the center of Gauker's book stands two inter-connected theses: First, that concepts are dependent on language; second, that this requires rejecting the traditional idea that linguistic communication involves a transmission of thoughts. I argue that we cannot afford to reject the traditional conception of communication and that Gauker's alternative ‘cooperative' conception is unsatisfactory. However, I also argue that Gauker is wrong to suggest that the language dependency thesis of concepts is incompatible with the traditional view of communication.

Grice (1957) drew a distinction between natural(N) and non–natural(NN) meaning, and showed how the latter might be characterised in terms of intentions and the recognition of intentions. Focussing on the role of natural signs and natural behaviours in communication, this paper makes two main points. First, verbal communication often involves a mixture of natural and non–natural meaning and there is a continuum of cases between showing and meaningNN. This suggests that pragmatics is best seen as a theory of intentional verbal (...) communication rather than a theory of meaningNN. Second, some natural behaviours have a signalling function: they are, in effect, natural codes. Such behaviours do not fit easily into Grice's distinction between natural and non–natural meaning, which suggests it is not exhaustive. (shrink)

While corpus studies have shown that discourse connectives that convey the same coherence relation can display subtle differences, research on online discourse processing has only focused on a rather limited set of connectives. Yet, different connectives – for example, rare or polyfunctional ones – might elicit different reading patterns. In order to explore this assumption, we test the robustness of discourse processing for French native speakers by measuring the way they process causal and concessive sentences that are conveyed by either (...) an appropriate or inappropriate connective. Throughout three experiments, we change important characteristics of the connectives: we first test frequently used connectives, secondly less frequent ones, and finally less frequent connectives that are polyfunctional and for which different functions clearly compete. Our results show that the processing for incoherent items was affected for all connectives, however readers showed altered reading fluency when infrequent connectives were used. We conclude that discourse processing is quite robust and that readers are able to insert meaning conveyed by rare connectives while still showing the highest reading ease with frequent connectives. (shrink)

This paper examines whether biblical descriptions of the intermediate state imply dualism of the sort that rules out physicalism. Certain passages in the Bible seem to describe persons or souls existing without their bodies in an intermediate state between death and resurrection. For this reason, these passages appear to imply a form of dualism. Some Christian physicalists have countered that the passages in question are in fact compatible with physicalism. For it is compatible with physicalism that, although we are necessarily (...) constituted by physical bodies, we can continue to exist without our current bodies in the intermediate state by being constituted by replacement bodies. I argue that broadly Gricean considerations significantly weaken this response. In its place, I propose a new, linguistic objection to the biblical argument for dualism. The linguistic objection says that biblical descriptions of an intermediate state cannot imply dualism in the sense that contradicts physicalism because physicalism is defined by a concept of the physical derived from modern physics, and no term in the biblical languages expresses that concept. I argue that the linguistic objection is less vulnerable to Gricean considerations than the constitution objection. On the other hand the linguistic objection also makes concessions to dualism that some Christian physicalists will find unacceptable. And it may be possible to reinforce the biblical argument for dualism by appeal to recent research on ‘common-sense dualism’. The upshot for Christian physicalists who wish to remain open to the biblical case for an intermediate state is therefore partly good, partly bad. The prospects for a Biblical argument for dualism in the sense that contradicts physicalism are limited but remain open. (shrink)

Simulation and Similarity: Using Models to Understand the World is an account of modeling in contemporary science. Modeling is a form of surrogate reasoning where target systems in the natural world are studied using models, which are similar to these targets. My book develops an account of the nature of models, the practice of modeling, and the similarity relation that holds between models and their targets. I also analyze the conceptual tools that allow theorists to identify the trustworthy aspects of (...) models. Taken as a whole, I try to account for the ways that modeling is actually practiced by theorists, while abstracting sufficiently to understand the similarities and differences among examples of concrete, mathematical, and computational modeling.I am grateful to Wendy Parker, Jay Odenbaugh, and Bill Wimsatt for their careful and interesting reading of my book, as well as their constructive criticisms. Although I naturally disagree with some of their critiques, I have learned much .. (shrink)

This article explores the discursive behaviour of Chinese local officials in press conferences handling the recent 2015 crisis of Tianjin blasts. Drawing upon the previous analyses on relations of trust and discourse, and on the crucial aspects of trustworthiness, it examines how the officials struggled for trustworthiness discursively, and how their ‘doing’ trustworthiness varied in two phases of crisis communication. The analysis reveals markedly different approaches to the officials’ ‘doing’ trustworthiness in two phases. In the ‘unsatisfactory’ phase, the officials mainly (...) constructed the aspect of expertise, with few expressions conveying integrity and none conveying care; while in the ‘well-handled’ phase, the officials constructed all three aspects. In addition, their discursive strategies of constructing expertise changed from extensively using ‘techs’ to combining ‘techs’ and vernacular language, and those of constructing integrity changed from not saying ‘what lacks evidence’ to providing information with adequate evidence. Effects of different aspects and discursive strategies on trust are also discussed. (shrink)

The importance of speech acts for analyzing and evaluating argumentation in cases where it is suspected that the ad baculum fallacy has been committed is demonstrated in this paper by using a typical textbook example of this fallacy. It is shown how the argument in the example can be analyzed and evaluated using the devices of Gricean implicature and indirect speech acts. It is shown how these two devices can be applied to extrapolate the evidence furnished by the text and (...) dialectical context of the example. (shrink)

This paper makes a case for a refined look at the so- called ‘fallacy of hasty generalization’ by arguing that this expression is an umbrella term for two fallacies already distinguished by Aristotle. One is the fallacy of generalizing in an inappropriate way from a particular instance to a universal generalization containing a ‘for all x’ quantification. The other is the secundum quid (‘in a certain respect’) fallacy of moving to a conclusion that is supposed to be a universal generalization (...) containing a ‘for all x‘ quantification while overlooking qualifications that have to be added to the more limited kind of generalization expressed in the premise. It is shown that these two fallacies relate to two different kinds of generalization. (shrink)

This investigation uses the technique of the profile of dialogue as a tool for the evaluation of arguments from ignorance (also called lack-of-evidence arguments, negative evidence, ad ignorantiam arguments and ex silentio arguments). Such arguments have traditionally been classified as fallacies by the logic textbooks, but recent research has shown that in many cases they can be used reasonably. A profile of dialogue is a connected sequence of moves and countermoves in a conversational exchange of a type that is goal-directed (...) and can be represented in a normative model of dialogue. Selected case studies are used to probe special features of using the profile technique as applied to arguments from ignorance of a kind that occur frequently in everyday conversational exchanges. One of these special features is the use of Gricean implicature. Another is the need to use negative profiles of argument. (shrink)

This paper takes an argumentation approach to find the place of trust in a method for evaluating arguments from expert opinion. The method uses the argumentation scheme for argument from expert opinion along with its matching set of critical questions. It shows how to use this scheme in three formal computational argumentation models that provide tools to analyse and evaluate instances of argument from expert opinion. The paper uses several examples to illustrate the use of these tools. A conclusion of (...) the paper is that from an argumentation point of view, it is better to critically question arguments from expert opinion than to accept or reject them based solely on trust. (shrink)

A set often rules is proposed for dealing with problems of ambiguity when interpreting a text of argumentative discourse. The rules are based on Grice's pragmatic rules for a collaborative conversation and on principles and maxims used to deal with ambiguity in interpreting legal and religious writings. The rules are meant to be applied to a given argument used in a given case, and to resolve (or at least deal with) an ambiguity in the argument (or affecting the argument) by (...) using evidence derived from the text and context of dialogue surrounding the argument in the case. (shrink)

In this paper, a solution to the problem of analyzing burden of proof in argumentation is developed by building on the pioneering work of Erik C. W. Krabbe on metadialogues. Three classic cases of burden of proof disputes are analyzed, showing how metadialogue theory can solve the problems they pose. The solution is based on five dialectical requirements: (1) global burden of proof needs to be set at the confrontation stage of a dialogue, (2) there need to be special mechanisms (...) for resolving disputes about burden of proof at all four stages of the dialogue, (3) they are especially significant during the argumentation stage, where burden of proof often shifts back and forth at each move, (4) such local shifts need to be partly regulated by the global burden of proof already set, and (5) the connection between burden of proof and the speech act of making a presumption in a dialogue needs to be clarified. (shrink)

This paper has three dimensions, historical, theoretical and social. The historical dimension is to show how the Ciceronian system of dialectical argumentation served as a precursor to computational models of argumentation schemes such as Araucaria and Carneades. The theoretical dimension is to show concretely how these argumentation schemes reveal the interdependency of rhetoric and logic, and so the interdependency of the normative with the empirical. It does this by identifying points of disagreement in a dialectical format through using argumentation schemes (...) and critical questions. The social dimension is to show how the Ciceronian dialectical viewpoint integrates with the use of computational tools that can be used to support the principle of reason-based deliberation and facilitate deliberative democracy. (shrink)

The notions of burden of proof and presumption are central to law, but as noted in McCormick on Evidence, they are also the slipperiest of any of the family of legal terms employed in legal reasoning. However, recent studies of burden of proof and presumption (Prakken et al. 2005; Prakken and Sartor 2006). Gordon et al. (2007) offer formal models that can render them into precise tools useful for legal reasoning. In this paper, the various theories and formal models are (...) comparatively evaluated with the aim of working out a more comprehensive theory that can integrate the components of the argumentation structure on which they are based. It is shown that the notion of presumption has both a logical component and a dialectical component, and the new theory of presumption developed in the paper, called the dialogical theory, combines these two components. (shrink)

This paper reports on an approach to model generalized implicatures using nonmonotonic logics. The approach, called compositional, is based on the idea of compositional semantics, where the implicatures carried by a sentence are constructed from the implicatures carried by its constituents, but it also includes some aspects nonmonotonic logics in order to model the defeasibility of generalized implicatures.

Why is language unique? How did language come about? When did this happen? These questions, although quite emblematic of the Western intellectual tradition since its ancient beginnings, so far have not found satisfying answers. Indeed, many still question the very possibility of addressing these basic problems of the origins of language with proper scientific rigor. However, an emerging consensus is that current research in the field of language evolution is in fact bearing fruit, making it at least possible to judge (...) in an informed manner which of these competing scenarios are far more or less probable. In what follows, I guide the reader through some of this research and some of these scenarios; for more details, I refer the reader to a recent book, which is the first monograph that presents this developing field of language evolution research to the Polish reader. (shrink)

We critically address current theories of figurative language, focusing on the role of literal or compositional meaning in the interpretation of non-literal expressions, including idioms and metaphors. Specifically, we formulate and discuss the processing hypothesis that compositional meaning may either facilitate or impede the recovery or construction of the intended figurative meaning depending on multiple factors, and in particular, on the expression’s decomposability and on the “strength” of semantic relations between the compositional and figurative meanings. As a case study, we (...) consider research on processing and acquisition of figurative expressions in highly verbal individuals with autism spectrum disorder in comparison to neuro-typical individuals, and examine the factors that may account for the observed comprehension deficits in the ASD group. Based on this evidence, we discuss some of the strategies employed by language users in processing non-compositional or non-literal expressions, and we highlight implications for research on natural language comprehension and processing systems in the domain of figurative meaning. (shrink)

This paper proposes a social account for the origin of the truth value and the emergence of the first declarative sentence. Such a proposal is based on two assumptions. The first is known as the social intelligence hypothesis: that the cognitive evolution of humans is first and foremost an adaptation to social demands. The second is the function-first approach to explaining the evolution of traits: before a prototype of a new trait develops and the adaptation process begins, something already existing (...) is used for a new purpose. Applied to the emergence of declarative sentences (statements), this suggests something already existing––natural signs (such as indexical objects)––was used for the declarative function and thereby integrated into communication. I show that index display (such as the display of hunting trophies) can imply a conceptual structure similar to that informing the syntax of sentences. The view developed in this paper is broadly consistent with the argumentative theory of Mercier and Sperber, which suggests that reasoning is less adapted to decision making than to social purposes such as winning disputes. In this paper I extend this view to the evaluation of propositions expressed in declarative sentences. According to my proposal, the first declarative sentence emerged as the negation of the (implicit) negation of an implicit statement. Thereby, I suggest that the binary structure of the truth value underlying any declarative sentence is founded on disagreements based on conflicts of interests. (shrink)

The strongest objection to (15) is that speaker's meaning is defined in terms of commitment, a notion which is itself something of a challenge and for which no definition has been given. This would be a strong reason to prefer a definition in terms of some more tractable concept, all things being equal; but it does not lessen the probability that commitment or some similar notion is indispensable to the definition of speaker's meaning.The philosophical writings discussed in this paper all (...) proceed something like this: Particular cases are discussed and a description is given of the mechanisms by which communication takes place. An attempt is made to say something that applies to all instances of speaker's meaning. Words like ‘analysis’, ‘account’ ‘explanation’, ‘explication’, and ‘theory’ are used here, the suggestion being that the objective is to provide for all cases at once what has already been provided for particular cases-an explanation of how meaning works. What is produced, however, looks like adefinition of speaker's meaning, a statement of necessary and sufficient conditions. This definition is then evaluated largely in terms of what counterexamples it does or does not allow.It seems that there is some tendency to conflate two quite distinct objectives: (i) a theory of speaker's meaning-a general description of how it is that speakers are able to communicate; and (ii) a statement of necessary and sufficient conditions for speaker's meaning. Objective (i) might plausibly be regarded as the goal of the study of communication. Objective (ii) is the definition of a certain intuitive, pretheoretical concept of meaning, which might or might not prove to be an important concept with respect to objective (i). The Gricean mechanism and the notion of conventional meaning, on the other hand, are indispensable to (i)-few instances of speaker's meaning could be adequately described without recourse to at least one of these notions. Thus nothing in this paper should be construed as trying to downgrade the importance of the Gricean mechanism for the theory of communication. If objective (ii) and the Gricean mechanism are not as closely associated as has been claimed, this is, if anything, a reason to doubt the importance of (ii) for the theory of communication. (shrink)

I argue for a version of logical pluralism based on the plurality of legitimate formalizations of the logical vocabulary. In particular, I argue that the apparent rivalry between classical and relevant logic can be resolved, given that both logics capture and formalize normative and legitimate senses of logical consequence: classical logic encodes “follows from” as truth preservation and captures the truth conditions of the logical constants, while relevant logic encodes a notion of “follows from” which, apart from preserving truth, avoids (...) the violation of certain Gricean maxims and captures a different inferential role for the same logical constants, enriching their meaning pragmatically. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to give a general solution to the paradoxes of the material conditional, including the paradoxes generated by embedded conditionals. The solution consists in a pragmatic reinterpretation of the formal languages of classical logic LK and relevant logic LR as presented in Paoli. In particular I argue that the material conditional in the classical logic LK captures the truth conditions of “if...then”, but ignores certain pragmatic enrichments that are associated to it, while relevant logic LR (...) can give a systematic diagnostic of the cases in which a conditional is pragmatically enriched and those cases in which it is not. This diagnostic shows the reason why the paradoxes seem unacceptable and why they are, nevertheless, truth-preserving. This reinterpretation will also cover the solution that Paoli gives to McGee’s paradoxes of the Modus Ponens. (shrink)

In this paper, I use a framework from computational linguistics, the Rational Speech Act framework, to model deceptive probabilistic communication. This account allows agents to discount for the biases they perceive their interlocutors to have. This way, agents can update their credences with the perceived interests of others in mind.

Many recent definitions of lying are based on the notion of what is said. This paper argues that says-based definitions of lying cannot account for lies involving non-literal speech, such as metaphor, hyperbole, loose use or irony. It proposes that lies should instead be defined in terms of assertion, where what is asserted need not coincide with what is said. And it points to possible implications this outcome might have for the ethics of lying.

It is widely held that all lies are assertions: the traditional definition of lying entails that, in order to lie, speakers have to assert something they believe to be false. It is also widely held that assertion contrasts with presupposition and, in particular, that one cannot assert something by presupposing it. Together, these views imply that speakers cannot lie with presuppositions—a view that Andreas Stokke has recently explicitly defended. The aim of this paper is to argue that speakers can lie (...) with presuppositions, and to discuss some of the implications this outcome has for current research on lying, assertion and presupposition. (shrink)

In this paper, we address the larger notion of cooperation in interaction and its underlying dimensions as defined in Conversation Analysis: alignment and affiliation. Focusing on three cases from three different languages we investigate a specific practice, that of anticipatory completions, in a particular context, that of storytelling, and show that the practice of completing another speaker’s turn in an anticipatory manner is not de facto definable as either an aligning or non-aligning action, nor can it be said to be (...) either affiliating or non-affiliating. Through our analyses, we aim to distinguish and illustrate the manifold layers of and perspectives to alignment and affiliation and argue for their relevance for studies of interactional phenomena. We conclude that the notion of cooperation and its implementation through affiliating and/or aligning actions is a multi-layered and complex issue, the intricacies of which are best understood and captured through detailed sequential analyses. (shrink)

Assuming that events form a genuine ontological category, shall we say that a good inventory of the world ought to include “negative” events—failures, omissions, things that didn’t happen—along with positive ones? I argue that we shouldn’t. Talk of non-occurring events is like talk of non-existing objects and should not be taken at face value. We often speak as though there were such things, but deep down we want our words to be interpreted in such a way as to avoid serious (...) ontological commitment. (shrink)

In ‘The making of argumentation theory’ van Eemeren and van Haaften describe the contributions made to the five components of a full-fledged research program of argumentation theory by four prominent approaches to the discipline: formal dialectics, rhetoric/pragmalinguistics, informal logic, and pragma-dialectics. Most of these approaches do not contribute to all components, but to some in particular. Starting from the pragma-dialectical view of the relationship between dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness – the crucial issue in argumentation theory – van Eemeren and (...) van Haaften explain the positions taken by representatives from the approaches discussed and indicate where they differ from the pragma-dialectical approach. It transpires that approaches focusing on dialectical reasonableness are, next to pragma-dialectics, formal dialectics and informal logic; approaches focusing on rhetorical effectiveness are, next to pragma-dialectics, rhetoric and pragmalinguistics, and the informal logician Tindale. When it comes to the relationship between dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness, some interest in it is shown in rhetoric and pragmalinguistics, but only in pragma-dialectics and in Tindale’s work is it a real focus. The main difference between Tindale’s view and the pragma-dialectical view is that in pragma-dialectics the decisive role in deciding about reasonableness is assigned to a code of conduct for reasonable argumentative discourse and in Tindale’s approach this role is assigned to Tindale’s interpretation of the Perelmanian universal audience. (shrink)

This article introduces the topic ‘‘Production of Referring Expressions: Bridging the Gap between Computational and Empirical Approaches to Reference’’ of the journal Topics in Cognitive Science. We argue that computational and psycholinguistic approaches to reference production can benefit from closer interaction, and that this is likely to result in the construction of algorithms that differ markedly from the ones currently known in the computational literature. We focus particularly on determinism, the feature of existing algorithms that is perhaps most clearly at (...) odds with psycholinguistic results, discussing how future algorithms might include non-determinism, and how new psycholinguistic experiments could inform the development of such algorithms. (shrink)

The paper deals with credible and relevantinformation flow in dialogs: How useful is it for areceiver to get some information, how useful is it fora sender to give this information, and how much credibleinformation can we expect to flow between sender andreceiver? What is the relation between semantics andpragmatics? These Gricean questions will be addressedfrom a decision and game-theoretical point of view.

In this article, after arguing that present approaches to improving problem-solving discussions for various reasons are not satisfactory, I turn to the pragma-dialectic approach to argumentative discourse to derive a normative framework that can serve as a point of departure to enhance the quality of problem-solving discussions. I then show how this approach can be used as analytical and evaluative instrument that can help the analyst to establish whether participants in actual practice act in a fashion that is in accord (...) with the norms posited. Two real-life problem-solving discussions provide the material for this demonstration. (shrink)

When agents know a protocol, this leads them to have expectations about future observations. Agents can update their knowledge by matching their actual observations with the expected ones. They eliminate states where they do not match. In this paper, we study how agents perceive protocols that are not commonly known, and propose a semantics-driven logical framework to reason about knowledge in such scenarios. In particular, we introduce the notion of epistemic expectation models and a propositional dynamic logic-style epistemic logic for (...) reasoning about knowledge via matching agentsÊ expectations to their observations. It is shown how epistemic expectation models can be obtained from epistemic protocols. Furthermore, a characterization is presented of the effective equivalence of epistemic protocols. We introduce a new logic that incorporates updates of protocols and that can model reasoning about knowledge and observations. Finally, the framework is extended to incorporate fact-changing actions, and a worked-out example is given. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. (shrink)

A substantial amount of recent work in natural language generation has focused on the generation of ‘‘one-shot’’ referring expressions whose only aim is to identify a target referent. Dale and Reiter's Incremental Algorithm (IA) is often thought to be the best algorithm for maximizing the similarity to referring expressions produced by people. We test this hypothesis by eliciting referring expressions from human subjects and computing the similarity between the expressions elicited and the ones generated by algorithms. It turns out that (...) the success of the IA depends substantially on the ‘‘preference order’’ (PO) employed by the IA, particularly in complex domains. While some POs cause the IA to produce referring expressions that are very similar to expressions produced by human subjects, others cause the IA to perform worse than its main competitors; moreover, it turns out to be difficult to predict the success of a PO on the basis of existing psycholinguistic findings or frequencies in corpora. We also examine the computational complexity of the algorithms in question and argue that there are no compelling reasons for preferring the IA over some of its main competitors on these grounds. We conclude that future research on the generation of referring expressions should explore alternatives to the IA, focusing on algorithms, inspired by the Greedy Algorithm, which do not work with a fixed PO. (shrink)

We give derivations of two formal models of Gricean Quantity implicature and strong exhaustivity in bidirectional optimality theory and in a signalling games framework. We show that, under a unifying model based on signalling games, these interpretative strategies are game-theoretic equilibria when the speaker is known to be respectively minimally and maximally expert in the matter at hand. That is, in this framework the optimal strategy for communication depends on the degree of knowledge the speaker is known to have concerning (...) the question she is answering. In addition, and most importantly, we give a game-theoretic characterisation of the interpretation rule Grice (formalising Quantity implicature), showing that under natural conditions this interpretation rule occurs in the unique equilibrium play of the signalling game. (shrink)

In terms of Groenendijk and Stokhofs (1984) formalization of exhaustive interpretation, many conversational implicatures can be accounted for. In this paper we justify and generalize this approach. Our justification proceeds by relating their account via Halpern and Moses (1984) non-monotonic theory of only knowing to the Gricean maxims of Quality and the first sub-maxim of Quantity. The approach of Groenendijk and Stokhof (1984) is generalized such that it can also account for implicatures that are triggered in subclauses not entailed by (...) the whole complex sentence. (shrink)

Van Eemeren and Houtlosser view fallacies as “derailments of strategic maneuvering” that go against a norm for critical reasonableness. What is to happen if such a derailment is perceived to have taken place? Krabbe (2003) and Jacobs (2000) have discussed the possibilities for continuing the argumentative exchange in a constructive way. Starting from their proposals, van Eemeren and Houtlosser argue that the party who observes that something has gone wrong should maneuver in such a way that at the same time (...) the derailment is recognized and a “re-railment” takes place that brings the discussion back on track. This means that then a meta-dialogue or sub-discussion develops in which the alleged fallacy is responded to and readjusted appropriately. Although this solution has something in common with both Krabbe’s proposal and Jacobs’ proposal, it differs from Krabbe’s proposal because it does not result in just retracting or maintaining the alleged fallacy and it differs from Jacobs’ proposal because it does not allow for making a move that has the appearance of a counter-fallacy. (shrink)

This study examines the construction of a positive corporate image in public statements issued by 12 Chilean companies facing a crisis in the period January 2008 to July 2010. Drawing on repair image theory, narrative theory, and argumentation theory, this article aims to investigate which discursive strategies and which linguistic structures have been instrumental in this construction. Three analytical categories were investigated in this study, namely, image repair strategies, construction of ethos, and narratives. In each of these categories, special attention (...) is paid to lexico-grammatical features and socio-pragmatic strategies. The analysis shows that the core image repair strategy is denial, which is accomplished through a highly rhetorical language. It also demonstrates how the public statements create a secondary narrative of the companies’ good sense, good moral character, and goodwill, through the use and abuse of linguistic and pragmatic devices. (shrink)

In the first part of this article, we show that, contrary to the Gricean tradition, inter-clausal and is not semantically equivalent to logical conjunction and, contrary to temporal approaches such as Bar-Levand Palacas 1980, it is not temporallyloaded. We then explore a commonsenseidea – namely that while sentence juxtaposition might be interpreted either as discourse coordination or subordination, and indicates coordination. SDRT already includes notions of coordinating and subordinating discourse relations (cf. Lascarides and Asher 1993, Asher 1993), and the meaning (...) of and is related to this distinction. Similar distinctions that play a crucial role in anaphora resolution have also appeared in AI – cf. Scha and Polanyi 1988, or Webber 1991. However, this discourse-structure-based distinction has not been well defined yet, and our approach provides independent motivation for it. This paper argues that the semantics of and includes a notion of coordination expressed as the requirement of a Coordinated Discourse Topic (CDT).CDT characterizes aclass of discourse relations, among which are Narration and Result.Once the basic semanticcontribution of and is isolated, effects related to its presence such as changes in temporal structure, blocking of a Discourse Relation, or conditional meanings are shown to follow from the defeasiblearchitecture set up by SDRT. (shrink)