90 found
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  1. Emotive Language in Argumentation.Fabrizio Macagno & Douglas Walton - 2014 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    This book analyzes the uses of emotive language and redefinitions from pragmatic, dialectical, epistemic and rhetorical perspectives, investigating the relationship between emotions, persuasion and meaning, and focusing on the implicit dimension of the use of a word and its dialectical effects. It offers a method for evaluating the persuasive and manipulative uses of emotive language in ordinary and political discourse. Through the analysis of political speeches and legal arguments, the book offers a systematic study of emotive language in argumentation, rhetoric, (...)
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  2. Interpreting Straw Man Argumentation.Fabrizio Macagno & Douglas Walton - 2017 - Amsterdam: Springer.
    This book shows how research in linguistic pragmatics, philosophy of language, and rhetoric can be connected through argumentation to analyze a recognizably common strategy used in political and everyday conversation, namely the distortion of another’s words in an argumentative exchange. Straw man argumentation refers to the modification of a position by misquoting, misreporting or wrenching the original speaker’s statements from their context in order to attack them more easily or more effectively. Through 63 examples taken from different contexts (including political (...)
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  3. Practical Reasoning Arguments: A Modular Approach.Fabrizio Macagno & Douglas Walton - 2018 - Argumentation 32 (4):519-547.
    This paper compares current ways of modeling the inferential structure of practical reasoning arguments, and proposes a new approach in which it is regarded in a modular way. Practical reasoning is not simply seen as reasoning from a goal and a means to an action using the basic argumentation scheme. Instead, it is conceived as a complex structure of classificatory, evaluative, and practical inferences, which is formalized as a cluster of three types of distinct and interlocked argumentation schemes. Using two (...)
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  4. Analyzing the pragmatic structure of dialogues.Sarah Bigi & Fabrizio Macagno - 2017 - Discourse Studies 19 (2):148-168.
    In this article, we describe the notion of dialogue move intended as the minimal unit for the analysis of dialogues. We propose an approach to discourse analysis based on the pragmatic idea that the joint dialogical intentions are also co-constructed through the individual moves and the higher-order communicative intentions that the interlocutors pursue. In this view, our goal is to bring to light the pragmatic structure of a dialogue as a complex net of dialogical goals, which represent the communicative purposes (...)
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  5. Assessing relevance.Fabrizio Macagno - 2018 - Lingua 210:42-64.
    This paper advances an approach to relevance grounded on patterns of material inference called argumentation schemes, which can account for the reconstruction and the evaluation of relevance relations. In order to account for relevance in different types of dialogical contexts, pursuing also non-cognitive goals, and measuring the scalar strength of relevance, communicative acts are conceived as dialogue moves, whose coherence with the previous ones or the context is represented as the conclusion of steps of material inferences. Such inferences are described (...)
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  6. Analogical Arguments: Inferential Structures and Defeasibility Conditions.Fabrizio Macagno, Douglas Walton & Christopher Tindale - 2017 - Argumentation 31 (2):221-243.
    The purpose of this paper is to analyze the structure and the defeasibility conditions of argument from analogy, addressing the issues of determining the nature of the comparison underlying the analogy and the types of inferences justifying the conclusion. In the dialectical tradition, different forms of similarity were distinguished and related to the possible inferences that can be drawn from them. The kinds of similarity can be divided into four categories, depending on whether they represent fundamental semantic features of the (...)
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  7. Statutory Interpretation: Pragmatics and Argumentation.Douglas Walton, Fabrizio Macagno & Giovanni Sartor - 2021 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    Statutory interpretation involves the reconstruction of the meaning of a legal statement when it cannot be considered as accepted or granted. This phenomenon needs to be considered not only from the legal and linguistic perspective, but also from the argumentative one - which focuses on the strategies for defending a controversial or doubtful viewpoint. This book draws upon linguistics, legal theory, computing, and dialectics to present an argumentation-based approach to statutory interpretation. By translating and summarizing the existing legal interpretative canons (...)
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  8. The logical and pragmatic structure of arguments from analogy.Fabrizio Macagno - 2017 - Logique Et Analyse 240:465-490.
    The reasoning process of analogy is characterized by a strict interdependence between a process of abstraction of a common feature and the transfer of an attribute of the Analogue to the Primary Subject. The first reasoning step is regarded as an abstraction of a generic characteristic that is relevant for the attribution of the predicate. The abstracted feature can be considered from a logic-semantic perspective as a functional genus, in the sense that it is contextually essential for the attribution of (...)
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  9. Argumentation Schemes. History, Classifications, and Computational Applications.Fabrizio Macagno, Douglas Walton & Chris Reed - 2017 - IfCoLog Journal of Logics and Their Applications 8 (4):2493-2556.
    Argumentation schemes can be described as abstract structures representing the most generic types of argument, constituting the building blocks of the ones used in everyday reasoning. This paper investigates the structure, classification, and uses of such schemes. Three goals are pursued: 1) to describe the schemes, showing how they evolved and how they have been classified in the traditional and the modern theories; 2) to propose a method for classifying them based on ancient and modern developments; and 3) to outline (...)
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  10. Argument from Analogy in Law, the Classical Tradition, and Recent Theories.Fabrizio Macagno & Douglas Walton - 2009 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 42 (2):154-182.
    Argument from analogy is a common and formidable form of reasoning in law and in everyday conversation. Although there is substantial literature on the subject, according to a recent survey ( Juthe 2005) there is little fundamental agreement on what form the argument should take, or on how it should be evaluated. Th e lack of conformity, no doubt, stems from the complexity and multiplicity of forms taken by arguments that fall under the umbrella of analogical reasoning in argumentation, dialectical (...)
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  11. Pragmatic Maxims and Presumptions in Legal Interpretation.Fabrizio Macagno, Douglas Walton & Giovanni Sartor - 2018 - Law and Philosophy 37 (1):69-115.
    The fields of linguistic pragmatics and legal interpretation are deeply interrelated. The purpose of this paper is to show how pragmatics and the developments in argumentation theory can contribute to the debate on legal interpretation. The relation between the pragmatic maxims and the presumptions underlying the legal canons are brought to light, unveiling the principles that underlie the types of argument usually used to justify a construction. The Gricean maxims and the arguments of legal interpretation are regarded as presumptions subject (...)
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  12. Classifying the Patterns of Natural Arguments.Fabrizio Macagno & Douglas Walton - 2015 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 48 (1):26-53.
    The representation and classification of the structure of natural arguments has been one of the most important aspects of Aristotelian and medieval dialectical and rhetorical theories. This traditional approach is represented nowadays in models of argumentation schemes. The purpose of this article is to show how arguments are characterized by a complex combination of two levels of abstraction, namely, semantic relations and types of reasoning, and to provide an effective and comprehensive classification system for this matrix of semantic and quasilogical (...)
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  13. A means-end classification of argumentation schemes.Fabrizio Macagno - 2015 - In Frans Hendrik van Eemeren & Bart Garssen (eds.), Reflections on Theoretical Issues in Argumentation Theory. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. pp. 183-201.
    One of the crucial problems of argumentation schemes as illustrated in (Walton, Reed & Macagno 2008) is their practical use for the purpose of analyzing texts and producing arguments. The high number and the lack of a classification criterion make this instrument extremely difficult to apply practically. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the structure of argumentation schemes and outline a possible criterion of classification based on alternative and mutually-exclusive possibilities. Such a criterion is based not on what (...)
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  14. Implicatures as Forms of Argument.Fabrizio Macagno & Douglas Walton - 2013 - In Alessandro Capone, Franco Lo Piparo & Marco Carapezza (eds.), Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy. Cham: Springer. pp. 203-224.
    In this paper, we use concepts, structure and tools from argumentation theory to show how conversational implicatures are triggered by conflicts of presumptions. Presumptive implicatures are shown to be based on defeasible forms of inference used in conditions of lack of knowledge, including analogical reasoning, inference to the best explanation, practical reasoning, appeal to pity, and argument from cause. Such inferences are modelled as communicative strategies to knowledge gaps that shift the burden of providing the missing contrary evidence to the (...)
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  15. An arugmentation framework for contested cases of statutory interpertation.Douglas Walton, Giovanni Sartor & Fabrizio Macagno - 2016 - Artificial Intelligence and Law 24 (1):51-91.
    This paper proposes an argumentation-based procedure for legal interpretation, by reinterpreting the traditional canons of textual interpretation in terms of argumentation schemes, which are then classified, formalized, and represented through argument visualization and evaluation tools. The problem of statutory interpretation is framed as one of weighing contested interpretations as pro and con arguments. The paper builds an interpretation procedure by formulating a set of argumentation schemes that can be used to comparatively evaluate the types of arguments used in cases of (...)
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  16. Presupposition as Argumentative Reasoning.Fabrizio Macagno - 2015 - In Alessandro Capone & Jacob L. Mey (eds.), Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society. Cham: Springer. pp. 465-487.
    Presuppositions are pragmatically considered as the conditions of the felicity of a speech act, or discourse move; however, the decision of setting the conditions of a move, which the hearer needs to accept in order to continue the dialogue, can be thought of as a speech act of a kind. The act of presupposing depends on specific conditions and in particular on the possibility of the hearer to reconstruct and accept the propositional content. These pragmatic conditions lead to epistemic considerations: (...)
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  17. A dialectical approach to presupposition.Fabrizio Macagno - 2018 - Intercultural Pragmatics 15 (2):291-313.
    This paper advances an approach to presupposition rooted in the concept of commitment, a dialectical notion weaker than truth and belief. It investigates ancient medieval dialectical theories and develops the insights thereof for analyzing how presuppositions are evaluated and why a proposition is presupposed. In particular, at a pragmatic level, presuppositions are reconstructed as the conclusions of implicit arguments from presumptive reasoning, grounded on presumptions of different type and nature. A false (or rather unaccepted) presupposition can be thus represented as (...)
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  18. Reconstructing Metaphorical Meaning.Fabrizio Macagno & Benedetta Zavatta - 2014 - Argumentation 28 (4):453-488.
    Metaphorical meaning can be analyzed as triggered by an apparent communicative breach, an incongruity that leads to a default of the presumptive interpretation of a vehicle. This breach can be solved through contextual renegotiations of meaning guided by the communicative intention, or rather the presumed purpose of the metaphorical utterance. This paper addresses the problem of analyzing the complex process of reasoning underlying the reconstruction of metaphorical meaning. This process will be described as a type of abductive argument, aimed at (...)
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  19. Argumentation profiles and the manipulation of common ground. The arguments of populist leaders on Twitter.Fabrizio Macagno - 2022 - Journal of Pragmatics 191:67-82.
    The detection of hate speech and fake news in political discourse is at the same time a crucial necessity for democratic societies and a challenge for several areas of study. However, most of the studies have focused on what is explicitly stated: false article information, language that expresses hatred, derogatory expressions. This paper argues that the explicit dimension of manipulation is only one – and the least problematic – of the risks of political discourse. The language of the unsaid is (...)
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  20. Profiles of Dialogue for Relevance.Douglas Walton & Fabrizio Macagno - 2016 - Informal Logic 36 (4):523-562.
    This paper uses argument diagrams, argumentation schemes, and some tools from formal argumentation systems developed in artificial intelligence to build a graph-theoretic model of relevance shown to be applicable as a practical method for helping a third party judge issues of relevance or irrelevance of an argument in real examples. Examples used to illustrate how the method works are drawn from disputes about relevance in natural language discourse, including a criminal trial and a parliamentary debate.
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  21. Presumptive Reasoning in Interpretation. Implicatures and Conflicts of Presumptions.Fabrizio Macagno - 2012 - Argumentation 26 (2):233-265.
    This paper shows how reasoning from best explanation combines with linguistic and factual presumptions during the process of retrieving a speaker’s intention. It is shown how differences between presumptions need to be used to pick the best explanation of a pragmatic manifestation of a dialogical intention. It is shown why we cannot simply jump to an interpretative conclusion based on what we presume to be the most common purpose of a speech act, and why, in cases of indirect speech acts, (...)
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  22. Understanding misunderstandings. Presuppositions and presumptions in doctor-patient chronic care consultations.Fabrizio Macagno & Sarah Bigi - 2017 - Intercultural Pragmatics 1 (14):49–75.
    Pragmatic presupposition is analyzed in this paper as grounded on an implicit reasoning process based on a set of presumptions, which can define cultural differences. The basic condition for making a presupposition can be represented as a reasoning criterion, namely reasonableness. Presuppositions, on this view, need to be reasonable, namely as the conclusion of an underlying presumptive reasoning that does not or may not contain contradictions with other presumptions, including the ordering of the hierarchy of presumptions. Presumptions are in turn (...)
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  23. What Students' Arguments Can Tell Us: Using Argumentation Schemes in Science Education.Fabrizio Macagno & Aikaterini Konstantinidou - 2013 - Argumentation 27 (3):225-243.
    The relationship between teaching and argumentation is becoming a crucial issue in the field of education and, in particular, science education. Teaching has been analyzed as a dialogue aimed at persuading the interlocutors, introducing a conceptual change that needs to be grounded on the audience’s background knowledge. This paper addresses this issue from a perspective of argumentation studies. Our claim is that argumentation schemes, namely abstract patterns of argument, can be an instrument for reconstructing the tacit premises in students’ argumentative (...)
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  24. Developing argumentation strategies in electronic dialogs: Is modeling effective?Fabrizio Macagno, Elizabeth Mayweg-Paus & Deanna Kuhn - 2015 - Discourse Processes 53 (4):280-297.
    The study presented here examines how interacting with a more capable interlocutor influences use of argumentation strategies in electronic discourse. To address this question, 54 young adolescents participating in an intervention centered on electronic peer dialogs were randomly assigned to either an experimental or control condition. In both conditions, pairs who held the same position on a social issue engaged in a series of electronic dialogs with pairs who held an opposing position. In the experimental condition, in some dialogs, unbeknownst (...)
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  25. The Dialogical Force of Implicit Premises. Presumptions in Enthymemes.Fabrizio Macagno & Giovanni Damele - 2013 - Informal Logic 33 (3):361-389.
    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 (...)
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  26. Interpretative Disputes, Explicatures, and Argumentative Reasoning.Fabrizio Macagno & Alessandro Capone - 2016 - Argumentation 30 (4):399-422.
    The problem of establishing the best interpretation of a speech act is of fundamental importance in argumentation and communication in general. A party in a dialogue can interpret another’s or his own speech acts in the most convenient ways to achieve his dialogical goals. In defamation law this phenomenon becomes particularly important, as the dialogical effects of a communicative move may result in legal consequences. The purpose of this paper is to combine the instruments provided by argumentation theory with the (...)
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  27. Questions as Dialogue Games. The Pragmatic Dimensions of “Authentic” Questions.Fabrizio Macagno - 2023 - Studies in Philosophy and Education 42 (5):519-539.
    Questions, and more specifically authentic questions, are at the core of dialogue-based learning and teaching. However, what is a question, and how can it be authentic? This paper addresses this problem by analyzing the distinct dimensions of questions, showing how their pragmatic nature is interwoven with the syntactic and semantic one, and how it can be grasped only by considering their dialogical functions. Questions are maintained to be proposals of different dialogue games (or types), pursuing specific interactional purposes, and potentially (...)
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  28. How Dialogic Settings Influence Evidence Use in Adolescent Students.Fabrizio Macagno & Elizabeth Mayweg-Paus - 2016 - Zeitschrift Für Padagogische Psychologie 30:121-132.
    This study examines how evidence is used differently in argumentative discourse compared to individual arguments. Applying a 1×2 crossover study design, 37 secondary school students were asked either to discuss a social issue with their partner before individually writing an essay outlining their opinion or, vice versa, first to discuss and then to write. As background information, they were provided with pieces of evidence with different levels of quality. Dialogs and essays were analyzed regarding (a) the type of evidence and (...)
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  29. Defaults and inferences in interpretation.Fabrizio Macagno - 2017 - Journal of Pragmatics 117:280-290.
    The notions of inference and default are used in pragmatics with different meanings, resulting in theoretical disputes that emphasize the differences between the various pragmatic approaches. This paper is aimed at showing how the terminological and theoretical differences concerning the two aforementioned terms result from taking into account inference and default from different points of view and levels of analysis. Such differences risk making a dialogue between the theories extremely difficult. However, at a functional level of analysis the different theories, (...)
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  30. Argument relevance and structure. Assessing and developing students’ uses of evidence.Fabrizio Macagno - 2016 - International Journal of Educational Research 79:180–194.
    The purpose of this paper is to show whether the two crucial dimensions used for assessing the quality of argumentation, argument-as-a-product (argument structure) and argument-as-a-process (relevance), are interrelated, and how they can be used to assess the effect of argumentative mode on students’ arguments. To this purpose, a twofold coding scheme will be developed, aimed at capturing: a) the argumentative function of evidence use and b) the dialogical relevance of evidence use. A study will be described in which students’ use (...)
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  31. The Presumptions of Meaning. Hamblin and Equivocation.Fabrizio Macagno - 2011 - Informal Logic 31 (4):367-393.
    When we use a word, we face a crucial epistemic gap: we ground our move on the fact that our interlocutor knows the meaning of the word we used, and therefore he can interpret our dialogical intention. However, how is it possible to know the other’s mind? Hamblin explained this dialogical problem advancing the idea of dialectical meaning: on his view, the use of a word is based on a set of presumptions. Building on this approach, the use of a (...)
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  32. Dialectical Relevance and Dialogical Context in Walton’s Pragmatic Theory.Fabrizio Macagno - 2008 - Informal Logic 28 (2):102-128.
    The notions of types of dialogue and dialectical relevance are central themes in Walton’s work and the grounds for a dialectical approach to many fallacies. After outlining the dialogue models constituting the background of Walton’s account, this article presents the concepts of dialectical relevance and dialogue shifts in their application to biased argumentation, fallacious moves, and illicit argumentative strategies. Showing the different dialectical proposals Walton advanced in several studies on argumentation as a development of a dialogical system, it has proved (...)
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  33. Reasoning from paradigms and negative evidence.Fabrizio Macagno & Douglas N. Walton - 2011 - Pragmatics and Cognition 19 (1):92-116.
    Reasoning from negative evidence takes place where an expected outcome is tested for, and when it is not found, a conclusion is drawn based on the significance of the failure to find it. By using Gricean maxims and implicatures, we show how a set of alternatives, which we call a paradigm, provides the deep inferential structure on which reasoning from lack of evidence is based. We show that the strength of reasoning from negative evidence depends on how the arguer defines (...)
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  34. Argument Diagramming in Logic, Artificial Intelligence, and Law.Chris Reed, Douglas Walton & Fabrizio Macagno - 2007 - The Knowledge Engineering Review 22 (1):87-109.
    In this paper, we present a survey of the development of the technique of argument diagramming covering not only the fields in which it originated - informal logic, argumentation theory, evidence law and legal reasoning – but also more recent work in applying and developing it in computer science and artificial intelligence. Beginning with a simple example of an everyday argument, we present an analysis of it visualised as an argument diagram constructed using a software tool. In the context of (...)
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  35. uncommon ground.Fabrizio Macagno & Alessandro Capone - 2016 - Intercultural Pragmatics 2 (13):151–180.
    The purpose of this paper is to show how micro-argumentation mechanisms of presumptive reasoning and reasoning from best explanation can be used for explaining some cases of presupposition cancellation. It will be shown how the relationship between presupposition triggers and pragmatic presuppositions can be analyzed in terms of presumptive and non-presumptive polyphonic articulation of an utterance, resulting in different types of commitments for the interlocutors. This approach is grounded on the two interconnected notions of presumptions and commitments. In some complex (...)
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  36. Strategies of Character Attack.Fabrizio Macagno - 2013 - Argumentation 27 (4):1-33.
    Why are personal attacks so powerful? In political debates, speeches, discussions and campaigns, negative character judgments, aggressive charges and charged epithets are used for different purposes. They can block the dialogue, trigger value judgments and influence decisions; they can force the interlocutor to withdraw a viewpoint or undermine his arguments. Personal attacks are not only multifaceted dialogical moves, but also complex argumentative strategies. They can be considered as premises for further arguments based on signs, generalizations or consequences. They involve tactics (...)
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  37. Types of Dialogue, Dialectical Relevance and Textual Congruity.Douglas Walton & Fabrizio Macagno - 2007 - Anthropology and Philosophy 8 (1-2):101-120.
    Using tools like argument diagrams and profiles of dialogue, this paper studies a number of examples of everyday conversational argumentation where determination of relevance and irrelevance can be assisted by means of adopting a new dialectical approach. According to the new dialectical theory, dialogue types are normative frameworks with specific goals and rules that can be applied to conversational argumentation. In this paper is shown how such dialectical models of reasonable argumentation can be applied to a determination of whether an (...)
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  38. Wrenching from Context: The Manipulation of Commitments.Douglas Walton & Fabrizio Macagno - 2010 - Argumentation 24 (3):283-317.
    This article analyses the fallacy of wrenching from context, using the dialectical notions of commitment and implicature as tools. The data, a set of key examples, is used to sharpen the conceptual borderlines around the related fallacies of straw man, accent, misquotation, and neglect of qualifications. According to the analysis, the main characteristics of wrenching from context are the manipulation of the meaning of the other’s statement through devices such as the use of misquotations, selective quotations, and quoting out of (...)
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  39. Defeasible Classifications and Inferences from Definitions.Fabrizio Macagno & Douglas Walton - 2010 - Informal Logic 30 (1):34-61.
    We contend that it is possible to argue reasonably for and against arguments from classifications and definitions, provided they are seen as defeasible (subject to exceptions and critical questioning). Arguments from classification of the most common sorts are shown to be based on defeasible reasoning of various kinds represented by patterns of logical reasoning called defeasible argumentation schemes. We show how such schemes can be identified with heuristics, or short-cut solutions to a problem. We examine a variety of arguments of (...)
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  40. Metaphors and problematic understanding in chronic care communication.Fabrizio Macagno & Maria Grazia Rossi - 2019 - Journal of Pragmatics 151:103-117.
    Metaphors can be used as crucial tools for reaching shared understanding, especially where an epistemic imbalance of knowledge is at stake. However, metaphors can also represent a risk in intercultural or cross-cultural interactions, namely in situations characterised by little or deficient common ground between interlocutors. In such cases, the use of metaphors can lead to misunderstandings and cause communicative breakdowns. The conditions defining when metaphors promote, and hinder understanding have not been analyzed in detail, especially in intracultural contexts. This study (...)
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  41. Inferential patterns of emotive meaning.Fabrizio Macagno & Maria Grazia Rossi - 2021 - In Fabrizio Macagno & Alessandro Capone (eds.), Inquiries in Philosophical Pragmatics: Issues in Linguistics. Springer. pp. 83-110.
    This paper investigates the emotive (or expressive) meaning of words commonly referred to as “loaded” or “emotive,” which include slurs, derogative or pejorative words, and ethical terms. We claim that emotive meaning can be reinterpreted from a pragmatic and argumentative perspective, which can account for distinct aspects of ethical terms, including the possibility of being modified and its cancellability. Emotive meaning is explained as a defeasible and automatic or automatized evaluative and intended inference commonly associated with the use of specific (...)
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  42. The Argumentative Structure of Persuasive Definitions.Fabrizio Macagno & Douglas Walton - 2008 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 11 (5):525-549.
    In this paper we present an analysis of persuasive definition based on argumentation schemes. Using the medieval notion of differentia and the traditional approach to topics, we explain the persuasiveness of emotive terms in persuasive definitions by applying the argumentation schemes for argument from classification and argument from values. Persuasive definitions, we hold, are persuasive because their goal is to modify the emotive meaning denotation of a persuasive term in a way that contains an implicit argument from values. However, our (...)
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  43. Reasoning from Classifications and Definitions.Douglas Walton & Fabrizio Macagno - 2009 - Argumentation 23 (1):81-107.
    In this paper we analyze the uses and misuses of argumentation schemes from verbal classification, and show how argument from definition supports argumentation based on argument from verbal classification. The inquiry has inevitably included the broader study of the concept of definition. The paper presents the schemes for argument from classification and for argument from definition, and shows how the latter type of argument so typically supports the former. The problem of analyzing arguments based on classification is framed in a (...)
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  44. Understanding Students’ Reasoning: Argumentation Schemes as an Interpretation Method in Science Education.Aikaterini Konstantinidou & Fabrizio Macagno - 2013 - Science & Education 22 (5):1069-1087.
    The relationship between teaching and argumentation is becoming a crucial issue in the field of education and, in particular, science education. Teaching has been analyzed as a dialogue aimed at persuading the interlocutors, introducing a conceptual change that needs to be grounded on the audience’s background knowledge. This paper addresses this issue from a perspective of argumentation studies. Our claim is that argumentation schemes, namely abstract patterns of argument, can be an instrument for reconstructing the tacit premises in students’ argumentative (...)
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  45. Secundum Quid and the Pragmatics of Arguments. The Challenges of the Dialectical Tradition.Fabrizio Macagno - 2022 - Argumentation 36 (3):317-343.
    The phrase _secundum quid et simpliciter_ is the Latin expression translating and labelling the sophism described by Aristotle as connected with the use of some particular expression “absolutely or in a certain respect and not in its proper sense.” This paper presents an overview of the analysis of this fallacy in the history of dialectics, reconstructing the different explanations provided in the Aristotelian texts, the Latin and medieval dialectical tradition, and the modern logical approaches. The _secundum quid_ emerges as a (...)
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  46. Analogical Reasoning and Semantic Rules of Inference.Fabrizio Macagno, Douglas Walton & Christopher W. Tindale - 2014 - Revue Internationale de Philosophie 270 (4):419-432.
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  47. Emotive Meaning in Political Argumentation.Fabrizio Macagno & Douglas Walton - 2019 - Informal Logic 39 (3):229-261.
    Donald Trump’s speeches and messages are characterized by terms that are commonly referred to as “thick” or “emotive,” meaning that they are characterized by a tendency to be used to generate emotive reactions. This paper investigates how emotive meaning is related to emotions, and how it is generated or manipulated. Emotive meaning is analyzed as an evaluative conclusion that results from inferences triggered by the use of a term, which can be represented and assessed using argumentation schemes. The evaluative inferences (...)
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  48. The Argumentative “Logic” of Humor.Fabrizio Macagno & Michael Cundall - 2022 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 55 (3):223-251.
    ABSTRACT The logic of humor has been acknowledged as an essential dimension of every joke. However, what is the logic of jokes, exactly? The modern theories of humor maintain that jokes are characterized by their own logic, dubbed “pseudo,” “playful,” or “local,” which has been the object of frequent criticisms. This article intends to address the limitations of the current perspectives on the logic of jokes by proposing a rhetorical approach to humorous texts. Building on the traditional development of Aristotle’s (...)
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  49. Ignoring Qualifications as a Pragmatic Fallacy: Enrichments and Their Use for Manipulating Commitments.Fabrizio Macagno - 2022 - Langages 1 (13).
    The fallacy of ignoring qualifications, or secundum quid et simpliciter, is a deceptive strategy that is pervasive in argumentative dialogues, discourses, and discussions. It consists in misrepresenting an utterance so that its meaning is broadened, narrowed, or simply modified to pursue different goals, such as drawing a specific conclusion, attacking the interlocutor, or generating humorous reactions. The “secundum quid” was described by Aristotle as an interpretative manipulative strategy, based on the contrast between the “proper” sense of a statement and its (...)
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  50. How can metaphors communicate arguments?Fabrizio Macagno - 2020 - Intercultural Pragmatics 3 (17):335-363.
    Metaphors are considered as instruments crucial for persuasion. However, while their emotive, communicative and persuasive effects are the focus of different studies and discussions, the core of their persuasive function, namely their argumentative dimension, is almost neglected. This paper addresses the problem of explaining how metaphors can communicate arguments, and how it is possible to reconstruct and justify them. To this purpose, a distinction is drawn between the arguments that are communicated metaphorically and reconstructed “top down,” namely based on relevance (...)
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