Argumentation as the public exchange of reasons is widely thought to enhance deliberative interac... more Argumentation as the public exchange of reasons is widely thought to enhance deliberative interactions that generate and justify reasonable public policies. Adopting an argumentation-theoretic perspective, we survey the norms that should govern public argumentation and address some of the complexities that scholarly treatments have identified. Our focus is on norms associated with the ideals of correctness and participation as sources of a politically legitimate deliberative outcome. In principle, both ideals are mutually coherent. If the information needed for a correct deliberative outcome is distributed among agents, then maximising participation increases information diversity. But both ideals can also be in tension. If participants lack competence or are prone to biases, a correct deliberative outcome requires limiting participation. The central question for public argumentation, therefore, is how to strike a balance between both ideals. Rather than advocating a preferred norma...
The ability to focus on relevant information is central to human cognition. It is therefore hardl... more The ability to focus on relevant information is central to human cognition. It is therefore hardly unsurprising that the notion of relevance appears across a range of different disciplines. As well as its central role in relevance-theoretic pragmatics, for example, relevance is also a core concept in affective science, where there is consensus that for a particular object or event to elicit an emotional state, that object or event needs to be relevant to the person in whom that state is elicited. Despite this, although some affective scientists have carefully considered what emotional relevance might mean, surprisingly little research has been dedicated to providing a definition. Since, by contrast, the relevance-theoretic notion of relevance is carefully defined, our primary aim is to compare relevance as it exists in affective science and in relevance theory, A further aim is to redress what we perceive to be an imbalance: Affective scientists have made great strides in understanding the processes of emotion elicitation/responses etc., but despite the fact that among humans the communication of information about emotional states is ubiquitous, pragmatists have tended to ignore it. We conclude, therefore, that affective science and relevance theory have much to learn from each other.
It can be argued that linguistic aspects of argumentation have attracted scholarly attention ever... more It can be argued that linguistic aspects of argumentation have attracted scholarly attention ever since the foundation of rhetoric, which originally developed as the study of means of persuasion, and thus, to a fair extent, that linguistics plays an important role in the study of argumentation at large [...]
1970). On peut évidemment enseigner les arguments fallacieux et comment les contrer-encore que ce... more 1970). On peut évidemment enseigner les arguments fallacieux et comment les contrer-encore que cela pose quelques problèmes: comment distinguer le fallacieux du maladroit, l'abus de l'approximation, la rigueur argumentative de la liberté rhétorique prise avec elle? Mais les classiques mouvements réputés fallacieux comme l'ad hominem (Johnstone 1978, Walton 1998), l'ad populum (Maillat, ce volume) et l'ad verecundiam (Herman, ce volume) sont souvent réinterprétés comme moins sophistiques qu'il n'y paraît lorsqu'ils ne sont pas considérés comme une façon courante d'argumenter: «le paralogisme n'est pas l'exception, il est la règle» (Angenot 2008: 92). L'enjeu de ce son article un des aspects de la question cruciale de l'efficacité discursive. Cette quête éternelle de la technè rhétorique pour les procédés les plus efficaces dans la construction du discours-inventio, dispositio et elocutiotrouve ici, du côté de la réception et des effets cognitifs du destinataire, une hypothèse explicative sur l'efficacité de certains procédés trompeurs. Cette proposition illustre du même coup le potentiel dialogue entre rhétorique et cognition que nous souhaitions mettre en place dans cet ouvrage et le colloque dont il est issu. La contribution de Vasco Correia traite frontalement de la problématique du lien entre biais cognitifs et arguments fallacieux dans une perspective non de réception, mais de production d'arguments. Il défend en particulier l'idée que le raisonnement soutenu par une motivation biaisée est responsable des erreurs argumentatives non intentionnelles que les sujets parlants peuvent Herman & Oswald rationalité, Danblon propose de penser la persuasion hors de la question limitée des effets, mais dans un cadre technique au sens propre de tekhnè, à savoir l'artisanat. Dans ce cadre, la praxis, fait de règles, mais aussi d'expériences, d'intuition, le tout au sein de cadres sociaux, permet la production rhétorique, ou poiésis, visant l'efficacité pour atteindre une visée, poiésis rendue possible par, et qui rend possible, des dispositions citoyennes à persuader comme à être persuadé en retour, l'hèxis. Danblon inscrit dès lors sa réflexion dans un cadre naturaliste sans se cantonner à une «dimension purement cognitive de la raison»; le cadre social, concrètement pragmatique et citoyen de la persuasion autorise le développement d'une forme d'agilité artisanale qu'est l'exercice de la rhétorique, en dehors de toute considération d'ordre moral. Evgenia Paparouni discute du rôle joué par les émotions dans l'analyse de l'argumentation, en particulier depuis un point de vue rhétorique. Le problème principal discuté est le suivant: si d'une part l'émotion est traditionnellement considérée comme un obstacle à la discussion raisonnée, et si d'autre part l'émotion, en rhétorique, est toutefois considérée comme un moyen de conviction/persuasion au même titre que l'ethos et le logos, comment envisager l'émotion dans un cadre rhétorique de recherche cohérent (c'est-à-dire qui puisse évacuer le problème du caractère fallacieux traditionnellement imputé aux émotions tout en posant des limites à leur utilisation)? Cette contribution examine les apports des sciences cognitives dans le domaine de l'émotion ainsi que ceux de la philosophie de l'esprit, pour montrer que le dualisme cartésien n'est plus de mise dans le domaine et relever que cela permet dès lors de réfléchir sur la compatibilité entre une approche rhétorique et une approche cognitive. La question à laquelle la pratique rhétorique peut aider à répondre n'est donc plus celle de savoir si les émotions sont responsables des dérives de l'argumentation (en tant qu'elles seraient instrumentales à la manipulation), mais plutôt celle de savoir comment la pratique de la rhétorique-avec sa composante émotive-peut constituer un moyen responsable d'éviter une telle dérive. Thierry Herman propose pour sa part de revenir sur une autre ressource rhétorique fréquemment considérée comme fallacieuse: l'appel à l'autorité. Ancrée dans une dimension linguistique et rhétorique, sa réflexion intègre une dimension cognitive dans la mesure où il enquête sur les effets du lien entre l'assertion sur le plan langagier et l'autorité sur le plan rhétorique. Il mis en lumière. Il s'inscrit dans la ligne directrice de cet ouvrage: les effets cognitifs de stratégies linguistiques dans des contextes rhétoriques de tentatives de persuasion. Avec la contribution de Louis de Saussure, la réflexion sur l'importance de la présupposition dans les mouvements persuasifs est prolongée. Examinant les questions d'accommodation des présuppositions, Saussure considère le phénomène de présupposition de manière large en ce que des contenus inférés peuvent aussi être considérés comme des présuppositions. Herman & Oswald sur laquelle il repose indétectable, soit, en termes cognitifs, non pertinente (difficilement accessible et épistémiquement faible). Au final, même si certaines contributions diffèrent profondément, nous avons voulu un livre traversé d'une part par l'interdisciplinarité nécessaire entre sciences du langage, sciences cognitives et sciences sociales qu'exige la rhétorique et, d'autre part, par l'examen de multiples schèmes argumentatifs, fallacieux ou non, dans leurs formes, leurs effets et, pour certaines contributions, dans le cadre de pratiques discursives délimitées. Adoptant une posture descriptive et explicative visant à comprendre la mécanique de ces schèmes, les contributeurs de ce volume montrent, explicitement ou non, l'avantage de reconsidérer la rhétorique sous l'angle cognitif, avantage qui nous semblait assez peu mis en valeur dans les publications récentes révélant, elles, toute la vivacité et l'actualité de la rhétorique. Plusieurs propositions originales ou hypothèses stimulantes émaillent cet ouvrage: on espère qu'elles inspireront tant les chercheurs spécialisés en rhétorique et sciences du langage à aller voir du côté de la psychologie cognitive que les spécialistes de ce domaine à mettre en évidence la rhétoricité de leurs recherches. Herman & Oswald 18 component of definitions and designations, but also of their emotional component, as he recalls how the Obama administration at one point switched from using the expression "war on terror" to privileging "Overseas Contingency Operation". Through the study of the various fundamental logics giving their structure to arguments from classification, which cater more for the descriptive than the emotional component of designation, Macagno works his way in the framework of schemes relating to values, which are likely to prompt for action. From a more general viewpoint, he shows how redefined words-an example of which is Obama's decision not to talk about "hostilities" in Libya as long as no troops are fighting on the field-can cause action and reminds us of the importance of linguistic presupposition, which he puts on a par with reasoning from presumption. The persuasive and deceptive power of presupposed and a priori unshared, rather than exposed, redefinitions is brought to the fore. His contribution is thus particularly relevant to this volume, as it tackles the cognitive effects of linguistic strategies in the rhetorical context of persuasive attempts. With Saussure's chapter, the reflection on the importance of presupposition in persuasive movements is given additional attention. As he examines issues of presupposition accommodation, Saussure considers the type of inferred contents covered by the notion. Somewhere in-between semantic presupposition and implicature, Saussure postulates the existence of discursive presuppositions, which also need to be inferred to make sense of speaker intention. Processing an utterance such as "Firearms are prohibited in this sector" triggers the inference of additional contents such as "Firearms can be authorised in other sectors", which are neither presupposed nor conversationally implicated. They often belong to the conversational background, but this need not be the case: in this sense, they can also be accommodated and pass for old information. To take an example, the Swiss vote against the construction of minarets that took place in 2009 had to discursively presuppose some sort of danger or threat in order for voters to be able to make sense of initiative. Such a discursive presupposition is highly relevant despite being backgrounded: Saussure thus speaks of background relevance. This contribution resonates with many others in the volume by addressing persuasive effects beyond explicit argumentative structures, which limit or circumvent our epistemic vigilance filters to favour some vision of the world. Herman & Oswald 20 hypotheses emerge throughout this volume: we hope that these will inspire researchers in the language sciences who specialise in rhetoric to take on board cognitive scientific insights and also researchers in cognitive science to engage with the rhetoricity of their own research.
This position paper of Working Group 2 of the European Network for Argumentation and Public Polic... more This position paper of Working Group 2 of the European Network for Argumentation and Public Policy Analysis (COST Action CA17132; https://publicpolicyargument.eu) reviews goals and functions of public argumentation. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, the paper introduces basic distinctions and charts out options. It is meant to guide reflection on the conceptual basis for the Action’s subsequent research regarding the analysis, evaluation, and design of public argumentation.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
In the spirit of the pragmatic account of quotation and reporting offered by Macagno and Walton (... more In the spirit of the pragmatic account of quotation and reporting offered by Macagno and Walton (2017), we outline a systematic pragmatic account of rephrasing. For this purpose, we combine two interrelated methods of inquiry into the variety of uses of rephrase as a persuasive device: (i) the annotation of rephrase types to identify locutionary and illocutionary aspects of rephrase, (ii) the crowd–sourced examination of rephrase types to investigate their perlocutionary effects. As it draws on Waltonian insights and on empirical and experimental research on the (mis)use of rephrase, our approach allows us to ground a novel theoretically–informed and data–driven pragmatic account of rephrase.
In this chapter, we address verbal communication in non-cooperative contexts, especially deceptiv... more In this chapter, we address verbal communication in non-cooperative contexts, especially deceptive, ideological and fallacious communication. We first review the main traditions that have studied this issue: ancient Rhetoric, contemporary Argumentation Theory, Communication Science, Critical Discourse Analysis, and Pragmatics, from Grice to Cognitive linguistics. We dedicate particular attention to contemporary post-Gricean Pragmatics and to its links with research in Psychology on cognitive heuristics. The notion of epistemic vigilance is addressed in the section dedicated to applications, where the social aspects of deceptive verbal communication are also developed.
Repetition of information has been shown to affect the perceived validity of the items repeated w... more Repetition of information has been shown to affect the perceived validity of the items repeated with these effects carried over to an inferred assumption. We believe this is highlighted in everyday communication and can result in acceptance of fallacious argumentation. We explain this phenomenon via the notion of Context Selection Constraints and discuss the effectiveness of the ad populum fallacy with the help of an experimental design.
Argumentation as the public exchange of reasons is widely thought to enhance deliberative interac... more Argumentation as the public exchange of reasons is widely thought to enhance deliberative interactions that generate and justify reasonable public policies. Adopting an argumentation-theoretic perspective, we survey the norms that should govern public argumentation and address some of the complexities that scholarly treatments have identified. Our focus is on norms associated with the ideals of correctness and participation as sources of a politically legitimate deliberative outcome. In principle, both ideals are mutually coherent. If the information needed for a correct deliberative outcome is distributed among agents, then maximising participation increases information diversity. But both ideals can also be in tension. If participants lack competence or are prone to biases, a correct deliberative outcome requires limiting participation. The central question for public argumentation, therefore, is how to strike a balance between both ideals. Rather than advocating a preferred norma...
The ability to focus on relevant information is central to human cognition. It is therefore hardl... more The ability to focus on relevant information is central to human cognition. It is therefore hardly unsurprising that the notion of relevance appears across a range of different disciplines. As well as its central role in relevance-theoretic pragmatics, for example, relevance is also a core concept in affective science, where there is consensus that for a particular object or event to elicit an emotional state, that object or event needs to be relevant to the person in whom that state is elicited. Despite this, although some affective scientists have carefully considered what emotional relevance might mean, surprisingly little research has been dedicated to providing a definition. Since, by contrast, the relevance-theoretic notion of relevance is carefully defined, our primary aim is to compare relevance as it exists in affective science and in relevance theory, A further aim is to redress what we perceive to be an imbalance: Affective scientists have made great strides in understanding the processes of emotion elicitation/responses etc., but despite the fact that among humans the communication of information about emotional states is ubiquitous, pragmatists have tended to ignore it. We conclude, therefore, that affective science and relevance theory have much to learn from each other.
It can be argued that linguistic aspects of argumentation have attracted scholarly attention ever... more It can be argued that linguistic aspects of argumentation have attracted scholarly attention ever since the foundation of rhetoric, which originally developed as the study of means of persuasion, and thus, to a fair extent, that linguistics plays an important role in the study of argumentation at large [...]
1970). On peut évidemment enseigner les arguments fallacieux et comment les contrer-encore que ce... more 1970). On peut évidemment enseigner les arguments fallacieux et comment les contrer-encore que cela pose quelques problèmes: comment distinguer le fallacieux du maladroit, l'abus de l'approximation, la rigueur argumentative de la liberté rhétorique prise avec elle? Mais les classiques mouvements réputés fallacieux comme l'ad hominem (Johnstone 1978, Walton 1998), l'ad populum (Maillat, ce volume) et l'ad verecundiam (Herman, ce volume) sont souvent réinterprétés comme moins sophistiques qu'il n'y paraît lorsqu'ils ne sont pas considérés comme une façon courante d'argumenter: «le paralogisme n'est pas l'exception, il est la règle» (Angenot 2008: 92). L'enjeu de ce son article un des aspects de la question cruciale de l'efficacité discursive. Cette quête éternelle de la technè rhétorique pour les procédés les plus efficaces dans la construction du discours-inventio, dispositio et elocutiotrouve ici, du côté de la réception et des effets cognitifs du destinataire, une hypothèse explicative sur l'efficacité de certains procédés trompeurs. Cette proposition illustre du même coup le potentiel dialogue entre rhétorique et cognition que nous souhaitions mettre en place dans cet ouvrage et le colloque dont il est issu. La contribution de Vasco Correia traite frontalement de la problématique du lien entre biais cognitifs et arguments fallacieux dans une perspective non de réception, mais de production d'arguments. Il défend en particulier l'idée que le raisonnement soutenu par une motivation biaisée est responsable des erreurs argumentatives non intentionnelles que les sujets parlants peuvent Herman & Oswald rationalité, Danblon propose de penser la persuasion hors de la question limitée des effets, mais dans un cadre technique au sens propre de tekhnè, à savoir l'artisanat. Dans ce cadre, la praxis, fait de règles, mais aussi d'expériences, d'intuition, le tout au sein de cadres sociaux, permet la production rhétorique, ou poiésis, visant l'efficacité pour atteindre une visée, poiésis rendue possible par, et qui rend possible, des dispositions citoyennes à persuader comme à être persuadé en retour, l'hèxis. Danblon inscrit dès lors sa réflexion dans un cadre naturaliste sans se cantonner à une «dimension purement cognitive de la raison»; le cadre social, concrètement pragmatique et citoyen de la persuasion autorise le développement d'une forme d'agilité artisanale qu'est l'exercice de la rhétorique, en dehors de toute considération d'ordre moral. Evgenia Paparouni discute du rôle joué par les émotions dans l'analyse de l'argumentation, en particulier depuis un point de vue rhétorique. Le problème principal discuté est le suivant: si d'une part l'émotion est traditionnellement considérée comme un obstacle à la discussion raisonnée, et si d'autre part l'émotion, en rhétorique, est toutefois considérée comme un moyen de conviction/persuasion au même titre que l'ethos et le logos, comment envisager l'émotion dans un cadre rhétorique de recherche cohérent (c'est-à-dire qui puisse évacuer le problème du caractère fallacieux traditionnellement imputé aux émotions tout en posant des limites à leur utilisation)? Cette contribution examine les apports des sciences cognitives dans le domaine de l'émotion ainsi que ceux de la philosophie de l'esprit, pour montrer que le dualisme cartésien n'est plus de mise dans le domaine et relever que cela permet dès lors de réfléchir sur la compatibilité entre une approche rhétorique et une approche cognitive. La question à laquelle la pratique rhétorique peut aider à répondre n'est donc plus celle de savoir si les émotions sont responsables des dérives de l'argumentation (en tant qu'elles seraient instrumentales à la manipulation), mais plutôt celle de savoir comment la pratique de la rhétorique-avec sa composante émotive-peut constituer un moyen responsable d'éviter une telle dérive. Thierry Herman propose pour sa part de revenir sur une autre ressource rhétorique fréquemment considérée comme fallacieuse: l'appel à l'autorité. Ancrée dans une dimension linguistique et rhétorique, sa réflexion intègre une dimension cognitive dans la mesure où il enquête sur les effets du lien entre l'assertion sur le plan langagier et l'autorité sur le plan rhétorique. Il mis en lumière. Il s'inscrit dans la ligne directrice de cet ouvrage: les effets cognitifs de stratégies linguistiques dans des contextes rhétoriques de tentatives de persuasion. Avec la contribution de Louis de Saussure, la réflexion sur l'importance de la présupposition dans les mouvements persuasifs est prolongée. Examinant les questions d'accommodation des présuppositions, Saussure considère le phénomène de présupposition de manière large en ce que des contenus inférés peuvent aussi être considérés comme des présuppositions. Herman & Oswald sur laquelle il repose indétectable, soit, en termes cognitifs, non pertinente (difficilement accessible et épistémiquement faible). Au final, même si certaines contributions diffèrent profondément, nous avons voulu un livre traversé d'une part par l'interdisciplinarité nécessaire entre sciences du langage, sciences cognitives et sciences sociales qu'exige la rhétorique et, d'autre part, par l'examen de multiples schèmes argumentatifs, fallacieux ou non, dans leurs formes, leurs effets et, pour certaines contributions, dans le cadre de pratiques discursives délimitées. Adoptant une posture descriptive et explicative visant à comprendre la mécanique de ces schèmes, les contributeurs de ce volume montrent, explicitement ou non, l'avantage de reconsidérer la rhétorique sous l'angle cognitif, avantage qui nous semblait assez peu mis en valeur dans les publications récentes révélant, elles, toute la vivacité et l'actualité de la rhétorique. Plusieurs propositions originales ou hypothèses stimulantes émaillent cet ouvrage: on espère qu'elles inspireront tant les chercheurs spécialisés en rhétorique et sciences du langage à aller voir du côté de la psychologie cognitive que les spécialistes de ce domaine à mettre en évidence la rhétoricité de leurs recherches. Herman & Oswald 18 component of definitions and designations, but also of their emotional component, as he recalls how the Obama administration at one point switched from using the expression "war on terror" to privileging "Overseas Contingency Operation". Through the study of the various fundamental logics giving their structure to arguments from classification, which cater more for the descriptive than the emotional component of designation, Macagno works his way in the framework of schemes relating to values, which are likely to prompt for action. From a more general viewpoint, he shows how redefined words-an example of which is Obama's decision not to talk about "hostilities" in Libya as long as no troops are fighting on the field-can cause action and reminds us of the importance of linguistic presupposition, which he puts on a par with reasoning from presumption. The persuasive and deceptive power of presupposed and a priori unshared, rather than exposed, redefinitions is brought to the fore. His contribution is thus particularly relevant to this volume, as it tackles the cognitive effects of linguistic strategies in the rhetorical context of persuasive attempts. With Saussure's chapter, the reflection on the importance of presupposition in persuasive movements is given additional attention. As he examines issues of presupposition accommodation, Saussure considers the type of inferred contents covered by the notion. Somewhere in-between semantic presupposition and implicature, Saussure postulates the existence of discursive presuppositions, which also need to be inferred to make sense of speaker intention. Processing an utterance such as "Firearms are prohibited in this sector" triggers the inference of additional contents such as "Firearms can be authorised in other sectors", which are neither presupposed nor conversationally implicated. They often belong to the conversational background, but this need not be the case: in this sense, they can also be accommodated and pass for old information. To take an example, the Swiss vote against the construction of minarets that took place in 2009 had to discursively presuppose some sort of danger or threat in order for voters to be able to make sense of initiative. Such a discursive presupposition is highly relevant despite being backgrounded: Saussure thus speaks of background relevance. This contribution resonates with many others in the volume by addressing persuasive effects beyond explicit argumentative structures, which limit or circumvent our epistemic vigilance filters to favour some vision of the world. Herman & Oswald 20 hypotheses emerge throughout this volume: we hope that these will inspire researchers in the language sciences who specialise in rhetoric to take on board cognitive scientific insights and also researchers in cognitive science to engage with the rhetoricity of their own research.
This position paper of Working Group 2 of the European Network for Argumentation and Public Polic... more This position paper of Working Group 2 of the European Network for Argumentation and Public Policy Analysis (COST Action CA17132; https://publicpolicyargument.eu) reviews goals and functions of public argumentation. Drawing on a variety of disciplines, the paper introduces basic distinctions and charts out options. It is meant to guide reflection on the conceptual basis for the Action’s subsequent research regarding the analysis, evaluation, and design of public argumentation.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
In the spirit of the pragmatic account of quotation and reporting offered by Macagno and Walton (... more In the spirit of the pragmatic account of quotation and reporting offered by Macagno and Walton (2017), we outline a systematic pragmatic account of rephrasing. For this purpose, we combine two interrelated methods of inquiry into the variety of uses of rephrase as a persuasive device: (i) the annotation of rephrase types to identify locutionary and illocutionary aspects of rephrase, (ii) the crowd–sourced examination of rephrase types to investigate their perlocutionary effects. As it draws on Waltonian insights and on empirical and experimental research on the (mis)use of rephrase, our approach allows us to ground a novel theoretically–informed and data–driven pragmatic account of rephrase.
In this chapter, we address verbal communication in non-cooperative contexts, especially deceptiv... more In this chapter, we address verbal communication in non-cooperative contexts, especially deceptive, ideological and fallacious communication. We first review the main traditions that have studied this issue: ancient Rhetoric, contemporary Argumentation Theory, Communication Science, Critical Discourse Analysis, and Pragmatics, from Grice to Cognitive linguistics. We dedicate particular attention to contemporary post-Gricean Pragmatics and to its links with research in Psychology on cognitive heuristics. The notion of epistemic vigilance is addressed in the section dedicated to applications, where the social aspects of deceptive verbal communication are also developed.
Repetition of information has been shown to affect the perceived validity of the items repeated w... more Repetition of information has been shown to affect the perceived validity of the items repeated with these effects carried over to an inferred assumption. We believe this is highlighted in everyday communication and can result in acceptance of fallacious argumentation. We explain this phenomenon via the notion of Context Selection Constraints and discuss the effectiveness of the ad populum fallacy with the help of an experimental design.
In this paper we discuss the role of verbal prefaces in represented discourse (or thought) with r... more In this paper we discuss the role of verbal prefaces in represented discourse (or thought) with respect to the information they supply about the original speaker's (OS) commitment to the embedded proposition P. Depending on the preface used by the reporting speaker (RS), we assume that commitment of the original speaker can be inferred as a (faithful) report or as an interpretation of OS's original utterance.
This dissertation tackles the issue of uncooperative and manipulative communication from a cognit... more This dissertation tackles the issue of uncooperative and manipulative communication from a cognitive pragmatic perspective and develops and documents the fundamental hypothesis that its success depends on whether the manipulator manages to keep the manipulative intention concealed. Specifically, manipulative communication is conceived here as a twofold process meant to i) mislead the addressee into processing limited sets of contextual information and ii) prevent her/him from processing contextual information that would be detrimental to the success of the manipulative attempt. The dissertation draws on several fields of research in the Humanities and attempts to interface findings from cognitive psychology (mainly research on cognitive biases) and argumentation theory (research on fallacies) into a consistent cognitive pragmatic account of information-processing. To this end, the so-called Contextual Selection Constraint model (CSC) is presented; this model specifies from a theoretical perspective how certain linguistic and argumentative strategies can be used to constrain the comprehension procedure so that targeted assumptions end up partaking in the derivation of meaning and other unwanted assumptions turn out to be disregarded – or unprocessed altogether. These possibilities are conceived as natural potential consequences of our cognitive system’s inherent fallibility.
Le présent ouvrage se présente comme une occasion de faire dialoguer les recherches en linguistiq... more Le présent ouvrage se présente comme une occasion de faire dialoguer les recherches en linguistique d’une part, et les études sur l’argumentation de l’autre. Une telle relation peut sembler aller de soi : l’argumentation n’est-elle pas de toute évidence une pratique langagière ? Toutefois, c’est principalement la philosophie et plus précisément la rhétorique qui ont constitué l’argumentation comme objet d’étude et il a fallu attendre les années 1980 pour qu’émergent, de manière spectaculaire, les premières recherches à proprement parler linguistiques sur l’argumentation. La démarche linguistique a depuis évolué, notamment par son ouverture sur des questions de discours et de cognition, renouvelant ainsi progressivement la réflexion sur les Mots de l’argumentation. Au travers de six études, le présent ouvrage invite à découvrir les questions actuelles qui se posent à partir du moment où on cherche à comprendre en quoi l’argumentation constitue une pratique langagière, reposant sur certaines formes linguistiques et différentes manières de les agencer.
This volume focuses on the role language plays at all levels of the argumentation process. It exp... more This volume focuses on the role language plays at all levels of the argumentation process. It explores the effects that specific linguistic choices may have in the production and the reception of arguments and in doing so, it moves beyond the first, necessary, descriptive stance provided by current literature on the topic. Each chapter provides an original take illuminating one or more of the following three issues: the range of linguistic resources language users draw on as they argue; how cognitive processes of meaning construction may influence argumentative practices; and which discursive devices can be used to fulfil a number of argumentative goals. The volume includes theoretical and empirical or applied stances, providing the reader both with state-of-the-art reflections on the relationship between argumentation and language, and with concrete examples of how this relationship plays out in naturally occurring argumentative practices, such as classroom interaction, and political, parliamentary or journalistic discourse.
2021, The Journal of Pragmatics.
Co-authored by: Tim Wharton, Constant Bonard, Daniel Dukes, D... more 2021, The Journal of Pragmatics.
Co-authored by: Tim Wharton, Constant Bonard, Daniel Dukes, David Sander, and Steve Oswald
The ability to focus on relevant information is central to human cognition. It is therefore hardly unsurprising that the notion of relevance appears across a range of different disciplines. As well as its central role in relevance-theoretic pragmatics, for example, relevance is also a core concept in affective science, where there is consensus that for a particular object or event to elicit an emotional state, that object or event needs to be relevant to the person in whom that state is elicited. Despite this, although some affective scientists have carefully considered what emotional relevance might mean, surprisingly little research has been dedicated to providing a definition. Since, by contrast, the relevance-theoretic notion of relevance is carefully defined, our primary aim is to compare relevance as it exists in affective science and in relevance theory, A further aim is to redress what we perceive to be an imbalance: Affective scientists have made great strides in understanding the processes of emotion elicitation/responses etc., but despite the fact that among humans the communication of information about emotional states is ubiquitous, pragmatists have tended to ignore it. We conclude, therefore, that affective science and relevance theory have much to learn from each other.
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Papers by Steve Oswald
The dissertation draws on several fields of research in the Humanities and attempts to interface findings from cognitive psychology (mainly research on cognitive biases) and argumentation theory (research on fallacies) into a consistent cognitive pragmatic account of information-processing. To this end, the so-called Contextual Selection Constraint model (CSC) is presented; this model specifies from a theoretical perspective how certain linguistic and argumentative strategies can be used to constrain the comprehension procedure so that targeted assumptions end up partaking in the derivation of meaning and other unwanted assumptions turn out to be disregarded – or unprocessed altogether. These possibilities are conceived as natural potential consequences of our cognitive system’s inherent fallibility.
renouvelant ainsi progressivement la réflexion sur les Mots de l’argumentation.
Au travers de six études, le présent ouvrage invite à découvrir les questions actuelles qui se posent à partir du moment où on cherche à comprendre en quoi l’argumentation constitue une pratique langagière, reposant sur certaines formes linguistiques et différentes manières de les agencer.
Co-authored by: Tim Wharton, Constant Bonard, Daniel Dukes, David Sander, and Steve Oswald
The ability to focus on relevant information is central to human cognition. It is therefore hardly unsurprising that the notion of relevance appears across a range of different disciplines. As well as its central role in relevance-theoretic pragmatics, for example, relevance is also a core concept in affective science, where there is consensus that for a particular object or event to elicit an emotional state, that object or event needs to be relevant to the person in whom that state is elicited. Despite this, although some affective scientists have carefully considered what emotional relevance might mean, surprisingly little research has been dedicated to providing a definition. Since, by contrast, the relevance-theoretic notion of relevance is carefully defined, our primary aim is to compare relevance as it exists in affective science and in relevance theory, A further aim is to redress what we perceive to be an imbalance: Affective scientists have made great strides in understanding the processes of emotion elicitation/responses etc., but despite the fact that among humans the communication of information about emotional states is ubiquitous, pragmatists have tended to ignore it. We conclude, therefore, that affective science and relevance theory have much to learn from each other.