Journal of Argumentation in Context - Volume 9, Issue 2, 2020

Abstract

Dialogue moves are a pragmatic instrument that captures the most important categories of “dialogical intentions.” This paper adapts this tool to the conversational setting of chronic care communication, characterized by the general goal of making reasoned decisions concerning patients’ conditions, shared by the latter. Seven mutually exclusive and comprehensive categories were identified, whose reliability was tested on an Italian corpus of provider-patient encounters in diabetes care. The application of this method was illustrated through explorative analyses identifying possible correlations between the dialogical structure of medical interviews and one of the indicators of personalized decision-making, namely the specificity of the recommendations given by the provider (“customization”). The statistical analyses show a significant correlation between the exchange of personal information and very specific and customized recommendations for change. It suggests how the creation of common ground, exceeding the boundaries of the paternalistic or patient-centered models, can lead to highly effective communication.

Abstract

This paper examines defendants’ argumentative discourse in the 2008 Nigerian investigative public hearings on the Federal Capital Territory administration. The data, which consist of nine defendants’ presentations, are analyzed qualitatively, using a combination of the pragma-dialectical and extended pragma-dialectical theories of argumentation. The findings show that the hearing panel initially starts of as the institutional protagonist and defendants as the antagonists, and but later serve as the institutional antagonist and protagonists, respectively. The defendants tend to use analogy and causal argumentation schemes while employing subordinative and complementary coordinative argumentation structures. The defendants also employ different strategic maneuvers at different argumentative stages of the critical discussion. Due to the politico-forensic communicative domain and information-seeking genre of the investigative public hearing discourse, the concluding stage is suspended. Thus, the study shows the influence of communicative activity type on the argumentative activities in a critical discussion.

Abstract

The Dutch are often thought of as direct, verbally aggressive, and argumentative. Yet, evidence for this stereotype is lacking. This study explores argumentative predispositions in the Netherlands. In a survey, Dutch students’ (N = 133) argumentativeness, verbal aggressiveness, argument frames, and conflict personalization were measured. The effects of gender and education were assessed. To explore the role of Dutch culture on argumentativeness, comparisons to U.S. students (benchmark) were made. Overall, Dutch students showed orientations, expectations, and understandings of argumentation as being useful and enjoyable, and seemed to experience argumentation predominantly positive. Males were more aggressive than females, and students in higher professional and university (preparatory) education were more constructive than students in vocational education. In contrast to expectations, Dutch students did not appear more predisposed to argue than U.S. students. Dutch students prioritized prosocial behaviors and professional reflection, thereby tempering aggression in arguing. Thus, argumentativeness is certainly not merely (stereo)typically Dutch.

Abstract

In this paper, I show that we can find some foundations of logic and legal argumentation in the tablets of Mesopotamia at least since the dynasty of Ur III. In these texts, we see the oldest correct application of logical inference rules (e.g. modus ponens). As concerns the legal argumentation established in Mesopotamia, we can reconstruct on the basis of the tablets the following rules of dispute resolutions during trials: (1) There are two parties of disputants: (i) a protagonist who formulates a standpoint and (ii) an antagonist who disagrees with the protagonist’s standpoint and formulates an alternative statement. (2) There is a rational judge represented by high-ranking citizens who should follow only logical conclusions from facts and law articles as premises.

Abstract

The research articles(RAs) as the dominant genre of academic writing can be accounted as the sites of reproduction of unequal power relations and dominance. Through critical discourse analysis of epistemological and ontological underpinnings and subsequently methodological aims and values of positivist paradigm as social structures, this article aims to foreground power and ideology stricken latent aspects of empiricist RAs. Research as a social practice mediates between the social structures and the RAs as social events. Textual analysis of practical arguments presented mostly in the pedagogical implications part revealed that the scientific world views manifest themselves as the premises of these arguments. The premises can provide reasons for actions (Searle’s,2010, social ontology theory). The reasons can signify the empiricist interests as the global concerns. They exclude the rival paradigms or ways of understanding the world. These world views maintain the dominance of Western societies on global academic and social discourses.

This article reviews Argumentation in the newsroom

This article reviews Contextualizing pragma-dialectics