Making arguments makes reasons apparent. Sometimes those reasons may affect audiences’ relationships to claims (e.g., accept, adhere). But an over-emphasis on audience effects encouraged by functionalist theories of argumentation distracts attention from other things that making arguments can accomplish. We advance the normative pragmatic program on argumentation through two case studies of how early advocates for women’s suffrage in the U.S. made reasons apparent in order to show that what they were doing wasn’t ridiculous. While it might be possible to (...) identify this as a new function of argumentation, we encourage instead attention to a more important question: explaining how all the diverse uses of argument have pragmatic force. (shrink)

The question of emotion in argumentation has received considerable attention in recent years. But there is a tension between the traditional normative role of informal logic, and the inclusion of emotion which is viewed as notoriously unstable. Here I argue that that, a] there is always emotion in an argument; b] that the presence of emotion is a good thing; and c] that we can and ought model and teach the use of emotion in Argumentation Theory.

A paradigm case of demanding involves making utterances designed to influence addressees to accede.1 It would be incoherent to say, "I demand that you do x, but I am not saying that you ought to do x," or "I demand that you do x, although I am fully aware that you cannot do x." The extraordinary nature of demanding may be gleaned from anomalous utterances such as "employees may demand time off by notifying scheduling managers at least one month in (...) advance" and "faculty members may demand an extension of the tenure clock in writing to the provost." Demanding is less anomalous in protest rhetoric and in fact an important strategy for marginalized groups who are "criticized for not handling conflicts and controversies... (shrink)

Arguments do not occur against silent backdrops. From the drone of televisions to the music in a retail space to the symphony of combustion engines on the street, we are perpetually immersed in sound. We live in a noisy world. The combined sounds of these environments, or soundscapes, provide the very conditions of social interaction. Charles Hirschkind remarked that soundscapes are as necessary "to politics and public reason as are markets, associations, formal institutions, and information networks". These soundscapes are far (...) from neutral and can be designed to promote desired outcomes: soothing tones as you board an airplane to alleviate fear, a blaring voice over the loudspeaker to compel... (shrink)

This essay explores ways arguers can afford potentially unsympathetic addressees good reason to empathetically entertain exhortative discourse. First, we illuminate the essential structure and underlying constitutive pragmatics of exhortation. Second, we show that the persuasive force of Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address derives from his use of exhortation. By doing so we add to recent scholarship that accounts for the persuasive force of civically significant speech acts.

This essay considers the structure of risk in health campaign formation and design by examining an early 20th century federal campaign to reduce infant mortality. Health campaigns navigate the gap between study and practice, translating quantitative findings into prescriptive responses for individual consumers of the text. By focusing specifically on the visual rhetoric of risk, this campaign serves as a case study to examine how the public was taught to see and understand risk and preventive health at a critical point (...) in the development of public health in the United States. (shrink)

People often have conflicting values, goals, and beliefs, and these present special challenges for those who seek to influence them. Kauffeld and Innocenti suggest that these situations of conflictedness are opportunities for a speaker to “exhort” the audience to resolve the conflict in favor of their highest principle. Exhortation, in their view, has high-mindedness as a constitutive feature. At Cooper Union, Lincoln exhorted Republicans to face their fear of disunion and steadfastly maintain the evil of slavery—a confirming example for the (...) Kauffeld and Innocenti account. But looking at a broader set of examples, it seems clear that exhortations do not always fit the pattern of appeal to higher principles. Exhortation may occur for any conflictedness the speaker imagines the audience as having, including mundane matters of self-interest. A speaker's attributions of belief, goal, motive, or other cognitive state to an addressee is always rhetorically risky, and these attributions may themselves become a space for disagreement. We can learn from speakers who manage this rhetorical risk well, but also from the much greater number of speakers who do it poorly. (shrink)