What can make storytelling “evil” in the sense that the storytelling leads to accepting a view for no good reason, thus allowing ill-reasoned action? I mean the storytelling can be argumentatively evil, not trivially that (e.g.) the overt speeches of characters can include bad arguments. The storytelling can be argumentatively evil in that it purveys false premises, or purveys reasoning that is formally or informally fallacious. My main thesis is that as a rule, the shorter the fictional narrative, the greater (...) the potential for argumentative evil. Here, the notion of length is to be understood such that it is generally a proxy for more abstract features such as how complex and nuanced the piece is. In other argumentative contexts, length generally appears to make no comparable difference. This feature would put fictional narrative arguments in a special class beyond what is determined by obvious features, such as the definitional fact that they in some way(s) collapse two of the four traditional types of discourse: exposition, description, narration, and argument. The nonobvious features that distinguish this class have been a source of puzzlement and inquiry. (shrink)

This paper’s main thesis is that in virtue of being believable, a believable novel makes an indirect transcendental argument telling us something about the real world of human psychology, action, and society. Three related objections are addressed. First, the Stroud-type objection would be that from believability, the only conclusion that could be licensed concerns how we must think or conceive of the real world. Second, Currie holds that such notions are probably false: the empirical evidence “is all against this idea…that (...) readers’ emotional responses track the real causal relations between things.” Third, responding with a full range of emotions to a novel surely requires that it be believable. Yet since we know the novel is fiction, we do not believe it. So in what does its believability consist? (shrink)

In this paper I explore the possibilities of acknowledging the argumentative character of narration. Two basic models will be revised: 1) primary narratives, regarding issues and facts under discussion, which may work as implicit arguments about the coincidence between discourse and reality via their own internal plausibility and 2) secondary narratives, imaginatively inserted in discourse, and serving as evidence for diverse lines of analogical or exemplary argumentation.

TED Talks are still an unexplored genre of argumentation in which narrative arguments are often used in TED speakers’ strategic maneuvering to support a standpoint. In the present study, I combine the constructs of narrative positioning (NP) and strategic maneuvering (SM) to offer a conceptualization of how narrative is used in pragmatic argumentation as well as provide an exemplary analysis of a specific case of narrative arguments that were used in Winch’s (How to practice emotional first aid. https://www.ted.com/talks/guy_winch_the_case_for_emotional_hygiene.2014, 2014) TED (...) Talk. The proposed integration aims to provide a theoretical framework and empirical tools for reconstructing narrative arguments through connecting the underlying formal structure of narrative with aspects of TED speakers’ strategic maneuvering. Drawing on NP and SM constructs, the critical analysis explores how Winch’s narratives or “small stories” were strategically manipulated to support his stance with regard to the importance of mental health and to examine whether or not the use of narrative arguments as argumentation moves helped to enhance the dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness of Winch’s argument. The analysis shows that the macro context and the knowledge gap between TED speakers and the audience makes the use of narrative arguments extremely effective. Although narrative arguments often receive criticism about their validity in providing sufficient evidence for a standpoint, their dialectical power lies in the flexibility of describing events in different fashions to draw pragmatic inferences that support the speaker’s stance. The study fills an important gap in the literature as it integrates recent approaches in narrative theory in the reconstruction and evaluation of narrative arguments in TED Talks. (shrink)

Most dialectical models view argumentation as a process of critically testing a standpoint. Further, they assume that what we critically test can be analytically reduced to individual and bi-polar standpoints. I argue that these two assumptions lead to the dominant view of dialectics as a bi-partisan argumentative discussion in which the yes-side argues against the doubter or the no-side. I scrutinise this binary orientation in understanding argumentation by drawing on the main tenets of normative pragmatic and pragma-dialectical theories of argumentation. (...) I develop my argument by showing how argumentative practice challenges these assumptions. I then lay out theoretical reasons for this challenge. This paves the way for an enhanced conceptualisation of dialectical models and their standards of rationality in terms of multi-party discussions, or argumentative polylogues. (shrink)

Building on a view of both narration and argumentation as dynamic concepts, this paper considers ways of assessing the credibility of narrative arguments constructed in empirical examples of conversational discourse. I argue that the key in any such exercise is to pay close attention to both structural and pragmatic details, particularly how conversational storytelling gets embedded in the surrounding discourse and how the way this is discursively accomplished vis-à-vis the narrators’ multilayered audience may be reflective of their argumentative goals.

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)