Journal of Argumentation in Context - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2022

There is much more to argumentative style than just the well-known presentational (“linguistic”) dimension. Equally important dimensions of the argumentative styles utilised in resolving a difference of opinion are the topical dimension of the selection of the standpoints, starting points, arguments and concluding statements put forward in the discourse and the dimension of the adaptations to the presumed demand of the audience that is to be convinced. In argumentative discourse these three dimensions of argumentative style manifest themselves together in the argumentative moves that are made, the argumentative routes that are chosen and the strategic considerations that are brought to bear. Starting from this perspective, it is shown in this article how the argumentative style can be identified that was utilised by a Member of the European Parliament in a plenary debate on labelling fruit juices.

Decades after the Second World War, fascism is still rife in Europe. After acknowledging a certain difficulty on the part of contemporary antifascist arguers to affirm their tenets and discredit those of their opponents, this investigation looks back at the past to examine an inspiring antifascist speech. The speech that socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti delivered to the Italian Parliament in 1924 is analysed though the methodological lens of Pragma-dialectics, focusing on the notions of strategic manoeuvring, argumentative structure and argumentative style. The results show that Matteotti’s argumentation against the fascists hinged on facts and rules as premises of argumentation. The speaker supported his arguments with factual evidence and organised them in a multiple argumentation structure. In addition, he “dressed up” his speech, apparently characterised by a detached argumentative style, with traits of a more engaged style, whose combination has turned Matteotti’s invective against the fascist regime into an argumentative masterpiece.

In this contribution a characterization is given of the argumentative style utilised in an opening speech of a plenary debate in the European Parliament. This debate is initiated through an opening speech in which the rapporteur of a parliamentary committee presents the European Commission’s proposal, as well as the amendments and the arguments to support them. As it is the rapporteur’s aim to gain broad parliamentary agreement with the proposal, the opening speech is vital to the debate, because all contributions of the MEPs relate directly to the argumentation put forward by the rapporteur. Based on the analytic overview the strategic design and the three dimensions of argumentative style the argumentative style that is used by the rapporteur is characterized.

This paper analyses and evaluates the use of arguments in which quotations are employed to convince the addressees of the acceptability of a proposed action. Based on the European Commission’s press releases, a communicative practice in which quotations are typically employed, the study demonstrates that quotations function as weak authority arguments that are not likely to be accepted by the addressees if they are not further supported by other argument types.

This paper develops an argumentative perspective on attacks in political election campaigns. The perspective highlights the role that attack ads play in the justification of vote claims aiming to advance our understanding of the notorious practice and to bring about a nuanced assessment of its benefits and risks. In the examination, special attention is paid to the argumentative potential that links a certain criticism of an adversary to the defense of the negative vote against the adversary as well as to the defense of the positive vote claim in favor of a campaign’s candidate. Considering the argumentative potential is especially beneficial for capturing the role of attacks in important political processes, including accountability and the stimulation of an informed public political participation.

Few of the central concepts of political discourse are as controversial as “freedom”/“liberty”. However, although “freedom” definitely belongs to the so-called “essentially contested concepts”, even “a contested concept has an uncontested core” (Lakoff 2006: 23–24). This uncontested core can be described as the core meaning of language-specific lexemes such as English freedom, liberty, German Freiheit, French liberté or Italian libertà. The core meaning can be established as the common ground underlying all more specific controversial uses and definitions.

Within political discourse, the context-specific uses of these lexemes can be described as persuasive definitions, that is, as instances of strategic maneuvering (cf. van Eemeren 2010), which try to establish one’s own use of these words as the politically dominant one and the one most widespread in the media.

With this theoretical background in mind, I would like to provide an overview of how libertà is persuasively defined and strategically used within contemporary Italian political discourse. In order to do this, I have compiled a small corpus of party programs, political speeches, interviews, newspaper editorials and posts. From this empirical basis a list of argumentative strategies concerning explicit and implicit definitions of libertà will be compiled and critically evaluated.

This article starts from the observation that, in order to ensure their legitimacy, the modes of governance in place in most Western democracies make more room for citizen participation in decision-making processes. The result is the implementation of various participatory mechanisms, many of which seek to stimulate a citizen’s argumentative expression. Based on a case study (the public debate on a gold mine project in French Guiana), we observe the norms that govern such participation processes and their implementation in the argumentative exchanges.