Books by Maria Grazia Rossi
Doubt is a double-edge sword. On the one hand, uncertainty is essential for epistemic progress, a... more Doubt is a double-edge sword. On the one hand, uncertainty is essential for epistemic progress, and yet, doubt can also make us vulnerable to deception, confused to the point of no longer knowing what is true. What distinguishes a doubt that is epistemologically beneficial from one which is deceptive, or even manufactured in the context of a conspiracy theory? In this chapter, we explore doubt, its role, and the way it is being handled in the context of the public controversy about the COVID-19 vaccine. We approach conspiracy theories as argumentative discourses and reconstruct the generic structure of a conspiracy theory macro argument. Through the structure, we look into the discourse of the twelve prominent anti-vaxxers known as the "Disinformation Dozen", focusing on the argumentative potential that doubt can have in the public controversy about the COVID-19 vaccine. We suggest to distinguish ambivalence from scepticism and denialism as three argumentative potentials that a motivated doubt can have. We argue that ambivalent doubt ought to be acknowledged, addressed and incorporated into the public health narrative, in order to avoid that an unnecessarily broad interpretation of conspiracy theory dominates the public debate and leaves an uncertain public a prey to it.
Gli esseri umani sono primariamente animali morali che riconoscono, valutano, scelgono e agiscono... more Gli esseri umani sono primariamente animali morali che riconoscono, valutano, scelgono e agiscono in situazioni rilevanti da un punto di vista morale. Ma qual è la natura della scelta morale? La tesi sviluppata in questo libro è che il riferimento alle emozioni sia determinante per rispondere a questa domanda. «La moralità – così ha scritto David Hume – è più propriamente sentita che giudicata». Utilizzando indicazioni e dati provenienti dalla psicologia e dalle neuroscienze della morale, l’obiettivo di questo libro è spiegare in che modo e perché i dispositivi emotivi possano essere chiamati in causa per dar conto di questa tesi.
Papers by Maria Grazia Rossi
The paper focuses on the kind of expertise required by doctors in health communication and argues... more The paper focuses on the kind of expertise required by doctors in health communication and argues that such an expertise is twofold: both epistemological and communicative competences are necessary to achieve compliance with the patient. Firstly, we introduce the specific epistemic competences that deal with diagnosis and its problems. Secondly, we focus on the communicative competences and argue that an inappropriate strategy in communicating the reasons of diagnosis and therapy can make patient compliance unworkable. Finally, we focus on the case of diabetes metaphor and propose the deliberate use of metaphors in health communication as an educational tool. On the one hand, metaphors might help doctors in explaining the disease in simpler terms and framing the experience of illness according to patient’s specific needs. On the other hand, metaphors might encourage a change in patient’s beliefs on their own experience of illness, and enable them to reach a shared decision making with doctors.
The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Pragmatics
Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, 2018
The up-to-date treatment of diabetes often includes the adoption of technology (eHealth) to suppo... more The up-to-date treatment of diabetes often includes the adoption of technology (eHealth) to support patients’ self-management. This contribution features first data on patients’ usage of ActiveAgeing, a mobile app supporting daily self-management. Over 6 months, 15 elderly patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D) and 11 young women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) received daily reminders to perform treatment activities, registered capillary glucose within the app, and added personal notes to explain abnormal values. While no differences emerged between the groups’ glucose registrations, T2D patients were more likely to add notes. Sentiment analysis with the software Watson on T2D patients’ notes and some selected notes are reported. Discussion highlights that notes may be used not only to explain abnormal data, but also to express emotions and confide personal information. eHealth presents opportunities not only for self-management, but also to empower and enrich trust between patients and health providers.
The persuasive power of metaphor is often seen in opposition to rational procedures in argumentat... more The persuasive power of metaphor is often seen in opposition to rational procedures in argumentation, which should guarantee deliberative democracy in the public sphere. Against this view, referable to the classic theory of argumentation, we adopt the argumentative theory of reasoning (MERCIER, SPERBER 2011) and present the results of an experimental study on the role of metaphors in a specific argumentative fallacy, the quaternio terminorum (ERVAS, LEDDA 2014; ERVAS, GOLA, LEDDA, SERGIOLI 2015). In light of the experimental evidence, we argue that (1) it is no longer possible to evaluate the role of metaphors in argumentation without distinguishing different kinds of metaphors (in the experimental study the distinction between dead and live metaphors is analysed); (2) it is possible to identify different argumentative styles (i.e. argumentative persuasion and reflective argumentation). Connecting different kinds of metaphors with different argumentative styles, we propose an interp...
Frontiers in Psychology, 2021
In argumentation, metaphors are often considered as ambiguous or deceptive uses of language leadi... more In argumentation, metaphors are often considered as ambiguous or deceptive uses of language leading to fallacies of reasoning. However, they can also provide useful insights into creative argumentation, leading to genuinely new knowledge. Metaphors entail a framing effect that implicitly provides a specific perspective to interpret the world, guiding reasoning and evaluation of arguments. In the same vein, emotions could be in sharp contrast with proper reasoning, but they can also be cognitive processes of affective framing, influencing our reasoning and behavior in different meaningful ways. Thus, a double (metaphorical and affective) framing effect might influence argumentation in the case of emotive metaphors, such as “Poverty is a disease” or “Your boss is a dictator,” where specific “emotive words” (disease, dictator) are used as vehicles. We present and discuss the results of two experimental studies designed to explore the role of emotive metaphors in argumentation. The stud...
Many scholars have shown the relevance of communication as an instrument of care by arguing that ... more Many scholars have shown the relevance of communication as an instrument of care by arguing that the quality of the doctor-patient relationship – also based on the quality of verbal communication – affects the engagement and outcomes of patients. This understanding of such therapeutic role of communication paves the way to a re-consideration of ethical questions in clinical contexts: if communication is a therapeutic instrument, then healthcare providers need to be able to properly use it. Our main aim in this contribution is to argue that it is possible and desirable to adopt and manage non-neutral communication strategies to safeguard patients’ freedom and autonomy in making decisions. More specifically, we use a pragmatic-argumentative model of verbal communication to deal with the topic of neutrality. Analyzing a case study from the context of Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), we underline the highly ethical relevance of this medical context and stress the importance of an...
In this contribution, we adopt a theoretical framework that allows to consider mono- and multilin... more In this contribution, we adopt a theoretical framework that allows to consider mono- and multilingual medical settings on a continuum, thus offering analysts of communication homogeneous tools for the analysis of misunderstandings and communicative breakdowns in these contexts. After considering the main issues regarding misunderstandings in mono- and multilingual settings, we propose to consider doctor-patient interactions by using the concept of activity type. Combining this perspective with the socio-cognitive approach (SCA), we show how our description of the clinical interactions allows to produce hypotheses that can be tested empirically. We describe dialogical processes that may allow the parties to build a common ground starting from the salient aspects of two perspectives that are often different and misaligned, yet may still be reconciled.
A view of language, largely attributable to Chomsky, holds that language could not have evolved t... more A view of language, largely attributable to Chomsky, holds that language could not have evolved through natural selection, since it required that an internal linguistic structure (I-language) must have emerged before external language (E-language) could appear. This leads to the view that language evolved in a single step within the past 100,000 years. I argue instead that language adapted to modes of thought that evolved over the past 2 million years, and so evolved gradually rather than in a single step. These modes of thought included theory of mind and the capacity to generate mental scenarios, which included mental time travel and the construction of fictional or imaginary episodes. The properties of these nonlinguistic processes explain at least some of the properties of language. Further, language probably evolved as a system of manual gestures, gradually incorporating vocal sounds, eventually allowing speech to become the dominant mode.
In this work, we describe the key points of a project concerning the philosophical analysis of th... more In this work, we describe the key points of a project concerning the philosophical analysis of the uncanny valley phenomenon. We consider the uncanny effect as a specific case of recognition failure. In particular, we suggest that the emotion of disgust, broadly construed, may have an important role to play in our understanding of the uncanny, highlighting the existence of a link connecting the uncanny to the multifaceted psychological and social phenomenon of Dehumanization
Text & Talk, 2021
This paper proposes a method for analyzing the dialogical functions of metaphors in communicative... more This paper proposes a method for analyzing the dialogical functions of metaphors in communicative interactions, and more specifically in the context of medical interviews. The dialogical goals proposed and pursued by the interlocutors are coded using a coding scheme that captures seven mutually exclusive categories of dialogical moves. The functions of the moves, including metaphors, can be identified and correlated with other variables relevant to the type of communication under analysis. The coding scheme is used to analyze a corpus of 39 interactions between healthcare providers and patients affected by Type 2 diabetes. The exploratory quantitative analysis, for the purpose of determining the different distributions of metaphor uses between patients and providers, is combined with qualitative analysis in which the thematic areas of the metaphors are considered. The findings show how patients and providers use metaphors for pursuing different dialogical goals and meeting distinct ...
Health Communication, 2019
This article proposes a coding scheme for identifying and assessing linguistic evidence of proble... more This article proposes a coding scheme for identifying and assessing linguistic evidence of problematic understanding in health-care provider communication with patients affected by type 2 diabetes mellitus. Drawing on the existing literature in pragmatics and linguistics, the scheme is grounded on the distinctions between the different types of linguistic evidence of the occurrence of a misunderstanding or a problematic understanding, divided into three levels (stronger, acceptable and weak) based on their probative force. The application of the scheme is illustrated through a pilot study, conducted on an Italian corpus of 46 transcripts of videotaped consultations between six health-care providers and 13 patients affected by diabetes mellitus type 2. The most frequent types of linguistic evidence of problematic understanding were the categories of "acceptable" (amounting to 58% of the total) and the "strong" evidence (35%). Patients' problematic understanding was detected to occur significantly more frequently than health-care providers. Providers were also found to be significantly more aware of possible misunderstandings, tending to verify more frequently the correctness of their own interpretations. This pilot study represents a first step in the process of developing a productive evidence-based tool for detecting problematic understanding, which can be used for implementing linguistic strategies for helping prevent the risk of misunderstandings in health-care communication. Our findings show that misunderstandings are widespread between patients and that some linguistic strategies may be more effective than others in preventing the risk of misunderstandings, suggesting possible directions of research for improving health-care providers' communicative skills.
Frontiers in psychology, 2017
Currently we observe a gap between theory and practices of patient engagement. If both scholars a... more Currently we observe a gap between theory and practices of patient engagement. If both scholars and health practitioners do agree on the urgency to realize patient engagement, no shared guidelines exist so far to orient clinical practice. Despite a supportive policy context, progress to achieve greater patient engagement is patchy and slow and often concentrated at the level of policy regulation without dialoguing with practitioners from the clinical field as well as patients and families. Though individual clinicians, care teams and health organizations may be interested and deeply committed to engage patients and family members in the medical course, they may lack clarity about how to achieve this goal. This contributes to a wide "system" inertia-really difficult to be overcome-and put at risk any form of innovation in this filed. As a result, patient engagement risk today to be a buzz words, rather than a real guidance for practice. To make the field clearer, we promote...
The Pandemic of Argumentation, 2022
Doubt is a double-edge sword. On the one hand, uncertainty is essential for epistemic progress, a... more Doubt is a double-edge sword. On the one hand, uncertainty is essential for epistemic progress, and yet, doubt can also make us vulnerable to deception, confused to the point of no longer knowing what is true. What distinguishes a doubt that is epistemologically beneficial from one which is deceptive, or even manufactured in the context of a conspiracy theory? In this chapter, we explore doubt, its role, and the way it is being handled in the context of the public controversy about the COVID-19 vaccine. We approach conspiracy theories as argumentative discourses and reconstruct the generic structure of a conspiracy theory macro argument. Through the structure, we look into the discourse of the twelve prominent anti-vaxxers known as the “Disinformation Dozen”, focusing on the argumentative potential that doubt can have in the public controversy about the COVID-19 vaccine. We suggest to distinguish ambivalence from scepticism and denialism as three argumentative potentials that a moti...
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Books by Maria Grazia Rossi
Papers by Maria Grazia Rossi