In this paper, I examine the question of commitment transmissibility in public political arguments. I explore the idea that under certain conditions, arguers become accountable for the commitments of their “argumentative associates” (Mohammed 2019a ). I present cases where arguers make discursive effort to distance themselves from an undesirable associate in order to avoid acquiring the associate’s commitments, as well as cases where arguers fail to do so and face the consequences. I discuss the concept of commitment in argumentation (e.g. (...) Hamblin 1970, Walton & Krabbe 1995 ), and I build on the scheme of guilt and honour by association (Groarke and Tindale 2004 ). The result is a nuanced normative view of arguments by association: the transmissibility of commitments between argumentative associates is a way to hold arguers accountable for the argumentative potential (Mohammed 2019b ; see also Kjeldsen 2017 ; Serafis 2022 ) of their discourse, and yet, commitment transmissibility remains defeasible to avoid the over-attribution of commitment by association. (shrink)

This paper investigates the relationship between characterization frames and argumentation in activists’ discourse about the public controversy surrounding fashion sustainability. While previous studies proposing an argumentative approach to frames have acknowledged that frames are related to underlying implicit premises, how frames select certain implicit premises still needs to be systematically explained. Therefore, drawing on a theoretical framework combining Pragma dialectics (van Eemeren 2010 ) with the Argumentum Model of Topics an empirical analysis of a social media corpus has been performed (...) in order to examine the connection between characterization frames and underlying implicit premises. This paper offers both a methodological and a theoretical contribution. From a methodological point of view, it offers linguistic-discursive tools for the analysis of characterization frames. From a theoretical perspective, it shows how characterization frames contribute to construct _endoxa_, i.e. underlying implicit premises, through argumentative patterns. (shrink)