This volume focuses on dialogue and argumentation in contexts which are marked by truculence and discord. The contributors include well known argumentation scholars who discuss the issues this raises from the point of view of a variety of disciplines and points of view. The authors seek to address theoretically challenging issues in a way that is relevant to both the theory and the practice of argument. The collection brings together selected essays from the 2006 11th Wake Forest University Biennial Argumentation (...) Conference held at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida and the 2012 14th Wake Forest University Biennial Argumentation Conference held at Casa Artom in Venice, Italy. (shrink)

The present study examines how the build-up to the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003 was metaphorically constructed in pro- and anti-war newspaper opinion/editorial discourse. Drawing on methodological insights from critical discourse analysis and pragma-dialectical argumentation theory, the fallacious discussion used in the pro-war op/eds to build up a ‘moral/legal case’ for war on Iraq, based on adversarial argumentation, is problematised. An investigation of how the US official perspective about the ‘legitimacy’ of attacking Iraq has managed forcefully to creep (...) into the US–British mainstream newspaper op/ed argumentation through the manipulative use of metaphor is explored here. This fallacious derailment of the discussion is countered by the anti-war op/ed metaphorical argumentation. The op/ed articles analysed here thematise key controversial issues regarding the alleged Iraqi possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Saddam's links to Al-Qaeda and the legitimacy of the US ‘preemptive’ war without the authorisation of the UN Security Council. The political debate of the US run-up to Iraq War was a contest between metaphors and a battle over imagery. This article illustrates how the deployment of metaphors with high public resonance is a useful rhetorical tool to fallaciously advance contentious claims. (shrink)

In order for confrontational strategic manoeuvring, aimed at defining in a reasonable way the difference of opinion to one’s own advantage, to be sound, arguers’ attempt to arrive at a particular definition must not prevent other definitions from coming about. This paper discusses the ad hominem fallacy as an obstruction of the procedure of critical testing as a result of failure to meet this particular soundness conditions.

ABSTRACTModern executive politics is characterised by blame games – offensive and defensive symbolic performances by various individual or collective social actors. In this article, I propose a discursive approach to analysing opposition–government blame games where top politicians try to persuade mass audiences to side with them in disputes over government's culpability by using carefully crafted written texts. Drawing insights and concepts from the tradition of discourse-historical studies into political communication as well as the recent literature on blame avoidance in government, (...) I analyse conflicting opinion pieces published by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in the UK in the wake of the global financial crisis that developed since 2007. I present a basic functional argument model of attributing and avoiding blame, reconstruct the competing argumentation schemes that help us interpret public debates over the crisis, and show how blame is attached or deflected using various persuasive discursive devices, such as metaphors, lexical cohesion, and ways of framing and positioning, that underlie particular attacks, justifications, or excuses. In conclusion, I emphasise the importance of looking beyond the formal structure of the arguments to identify the more subtle emotional appeals used in government-related blame games. (shrink)