The paper is about the uses of the argument from legislative counterfactual intention, in the field of legal interpretation and argumentation. After presenting the argument from intention in general, it distinguishes the varities of the argument from counterfactual legislative intention and discusses their justification conditions.

This paper examines the argumentation in the case Janowiec and Others vs. Russia, heard before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, primarily based on the hearings with additional references to the two judgments issued. The proffered analysis focuses on the types and forms of argumentation used in the counsels’ oral arguments, as well as their rhetorical strategies and tactics, as based on Douglas Walton’s argumentation schemes and Stephen Toulmin’s model of argumentation. The starting point of the analyzed dispute (...) is the verbal classification of the subject of the dispute, which reflects the different historical perspectives in the narratives about the Katyń crime, as related by the litigating parties and the court. The political and media context of this dispute in the Polish, Russian, and international public space is also considered. (shrink)

This paper argues that surface-level analysis of political argument fails to explain the effectiveness of ideological enthymemes, particularly within the context of presidential debates. This paper uses the first presidential debate of the 2012 election as a case study for the use of “Obamacare” as an ideological enthymeme. The choice of a terminological system limits and shapes the argumentative choices afforded the candidate. Presidential debates provide a unique context within which to examine the interaction of ideological constraints and argument due (...) to their relatively committed and ideologically homogenous audiences. (shrink)

Contemporary theory of argumentation offers many insights about the ways in which, in the context of a public controversy, arguers should ideally present their arguments and criticize those of their opponents. We also know that in practice not all works out according to the ideal patterns: numerous kinds of derailments are an object of study for argumentation theorists. But how about the use of unfairstrategiesvis-à-vis one’s opponents? What if it is not a matter of occasional derailments but of one party’s (...) systematic refusal to take other parties seriously? What if one party continually forgoes any form of critical testing and instead resorts to threats or blackmail? Can this be countered by the tools of reason? Or should one pay one’s opponent back in the same coin? To gain some grasp of these issues, we describe a number of strategies used in the public controversy about induced earthquakes in Groningen. We check whether these strategies arefair,i.e.balanced, transparent,andtolerant.We also investigate the effects of the choice for a particular kind of strategy. It appears that, in circumstances, choosing a fair strategy may be detrimental for resolving the controversy and choosing an unfair one beneficial. Following up ideas from social psychology and political science, we formulate some guidelines for the choice of strategies. At the end, we stress the importance — especially for those whose opinions carry little weight — of having a society in which the knowledge and skills needed for assessing the fairness of strategies are widespread. (shrink)

This paper investigates the apologies of four US politicians whose marital infidelities were made public. The paper notes the variations in the use of religious language, representations of the transgressions, and metadiscourse. These variations can be calibrated to political ethos, the nature of the transgression, and the amount of repair work required. Thus, generic qualities of the personal political apology are best interpreted as existing on a sliding scale relative to the situation.

This paper explores the viability of a synergy between corpus linguistics and the study of argumentation in context. While quantitative approaches to the study of discourse have been profitably integrated at the levels of lexico-grammar and syntax, more rarely has this been the case for higher levels of analysis such as argumentative structures. Such an approach would help identify those recurring patterns of argumentation that build up cumulatively, and which can only be identified in larger samples of discourse. In particular (...) this paper concerns how the tools of corpus linguistics can be put to use for the analysis of strategic manoeuvring, and especially topical selection. In order to do so, the televised prime ministerial debates held on the occasion of the 2010 general election in the UK will be taken as a case study, with a focus on the use of linguistic indicators that might help retrieve argumentative patterns. (shrink)

It is an essential requirement of democracy that politicians provide account of their words and actions to the public. However, being able to account is especially important when a politician or the party he/she is representing is assumed responsible for a critical event that has undesirable consequences for the public. Under such a condition, political press conferences serve as an instrument for a politician to justify the position of the government by means of argumentation. By adopting the pragma-dialectical framework, this (...) paper sets out to explain how a politician maneuvers strategically in a press conference for the purpose of diminishing political responsibility when his party which is in charge of the government is assumed responsible for a critical event. The paper draws its data from the political press conference held by Erdoğan, a former Prime Minister of Turkey, following the mine accident that took place in Soma, Turkey, in 2014. (shrink)

This study correlates argumentation, translation, and literature to construct a new model for assessing the quality of translated literature. Literary translation is described as being compatible with the rhetorical stream of argumentation studies, while the study rests on the overriding notion of ethics of difference in argumentative cross-cultural and translational encounters. The model incorporates ethics of difference and interpretive act, pragma-dialectical contributions of scheme/structure and rhetorical/dialectical situations, and aesthetic features including figures of speech and genres of literature. Application of the (...) model to an English translation of a classical poem shows that the model can be systematically applied to quality assessment of translated literature. Considering the implications and suggestions for further research, the study can progressively develop into a literary or cross-linguistic subgenre of argumentation theory, with implications for comparative literature, philosophy of meaning, translation theory, and dialectical hermeneutics. (shrink)

In axiological argumentation that refers to issues concerning matters of ethics, politics, or aesthetics, a warrant is derived from a general axiological base, which consists of propositions that are accepted by a particular social group. Such a warrant is supported by ideology, understood as a relatively well organised set of evaluative propositions. In axiological argumentation beliefs are represented by cultural objects that serve as the arguments. Cultural objects are universals, which have a culturally developed interpretation. Without proper recognition of the (...) interpretant, the correct reading of the sign and its appraisal is impossible. The main purpose of this article is to show how ideological objects constitute the base of the discourse. In analysis of chosen texts I will demonstrate, how at every stage of argumentation arguers exploit the topic and interactive potential of argumentation. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to an understanding of the politicians’ burden of proof in political interviews by explaining how politicians attempt to delimit the burden of proof which they acquire for their standpoints in response to criticism. As politicians always want to give a positive evaluation of their activities, they respond to the critics by delimiting their burden of proof in such a way that their standpoints are easy to defend. The research question to be answered is: How do (...) politicians expediently delimit their burden of proof in political interviews in response to criticism? First, the author characterizes political interviews as accountability practices which by virtue of their institutional traits impose limits on the politicians’ burden of proof. Second, the author explains some of the possibilities for delimiting the burden of proof in the communicative practices at issue by analyzing in detail several fragments from a political interview. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to an understanding of the politicians’ burden of proof in political interviews by explaining how politicians attempt to delimit the burden of proof which they acquire for their standpoints in response to criticism. As politicians always want to give a positive evaluation of their activities, they respond to the critics by delimiting their burden of proof in such a way that their standpoints are easy to defend. The research question to be answered is: How do (...) politicians expediently delimit their burden of proof in political interviews in response to criticism? First, the author characterizes political interviews as accountability practices which by virtue of their institutional traits impose limits on the politicians’ burden of proof. Second, the author explains some of the possibilities for delimiting the burden of proof in the communicative practices at issue by analyzing in detail several fragments from a political interview. (shrink)

This paper aims at pointing out the normative expectations constraining political editorials. We adopt an internal perspective focusing on the process of “making” an editorial: how and why is argumentation constructed and what is at stake with it from the journalistic point of view. The focus is on the making of an editorial on David’s Cameron speech about his plans for a referendum on British membership of the European Union. Taking into account the editorial conferences where the topic is discussed (...) as well as the writing process and the verbal protocol leading to proper comments by the journalist himself on the making of the text, we analyze in detail the emergent normative expectations and the individual credos of argumentation in the editorial. (shrink)

Compared to other domains of media discourse, economic-financial news contain a considerable amount of speech acts regarding future events, in particular predictions. This can be explained by their specific institutional context, financial markets, where investors constantly seek to single out gain opportunities and to correctly assess their risk. One of the crucial factors making economic-financial predictions worthy of being considered in investment decisions is argumentation, in particular the extent to which the predicted proposition follows from a plausible and acceptable reasoning. (...) Starting from a corpus of 50 articles of the Italian economic-financial press, we consider the inferential dimension of prediction-oriented arguments, focusing on the locus, i.e. the ontological relation on which the connection between the argument and the predictive conclusion rests. All predictions found in the corpus were manually annotated with the software UAM Corpus Tool. For each of them we identified the source, which could be either the journalist him/herself or a third party, typically financial analysts or corporate actors. We distinguished mere predictive opinions from predictive standpoints, i.e. predictions for which the journalist advances one or more supportive arguments. For the latter category, we identified the locus referring to an adaptation of the taxonomy outlined by Rigotti. The findings highlight in particular the following three interesting aspects: in predictions, journalists reinforce their stance by plausible justifications, but weaken it at the same time by marking it as uncertain and/or by using reported speech or evidential means to reduce their responsibility for the predictive speech act; the justification of a predictive standpoint, by the journalist or by third parties, is mostly based on loci of causality, in particular on the locus from efficient cause, the locus from final cause and complex forms of causality where the involvement of rational agents is implied but defocused; moreover, journalists refer to the predictive opinions of experts or corporate insiders to activate the locus from authority, either by explicit argumentation or implicitly, by reporting speech from reliable sources. Our study suggests that the role of predictions in financial news is not so much that of giving any straightforward advice to investors, but rather that of providing chunks of sound argumentative reasoning, including both supportive evidence and rebuttals or refutatory moves, that the investor-reader might apply and combine in the highly uncertain context of financial markets. Overall, our findings shed light on how financial journalists fulfil the function of information intermediaries in finance. (shrink)

The paper offers a single-case analysis of newsmaking discourse, considering the source, the writing process and the news product from the vantage point of argumentation. The case study examines how a journalist of the business-finance desk of a generalist newspaper copes with the argumentative and persuasive nature of the corporate press releases on financial results on which he depends for his reporting. The paper contributes to the understanding of journalistic practices in the economy-finance desk showing that even within the constrained (...) genre of hard news reporting and despite the epistemic and practical limitations of newsmaking practices the journalist does not renounce to a critical stance towards the argumentation in the source. This is done without fully and explicitly assuming the argumentative roles of antagonist and protagonist of alternative standpoints but rather by rhetorically framing the reader in these roles. Methodologically, the paper showcases a two-way cross-fertilization between argumentation theory and the ethnography of newsmaking. The newsmaking process joining the press release and the newspaper article is analyzed in vivo thanks to the ethnographic methodology of Progression Analysis. Progression Analysis provides a new kind of evidence for argumentative reconstruction, while argumentative reconstruction provides an explicit framework for comparing source and product texts and for laying down the reasoning behind the journalist’s decision making as elicited by. (shrink)

Argumentation is generally conceived of as a dialogic activity between two or more participants. Nonetheless, it operates also at an intrapersonal level, in a soliloquy where protagonist and antagonist of the critical discussion are embodied in the same person. We argue this case by analyzing journalists’ argumentation about linguistic choices in newswriting processes. Empirically, we draw on data generated with progression analysis, in particular with cue-based retrospective verbal protocols. The data was produced by the journalists under investigation when they, while (...) watching video recordings of their text production processes, reconstructed and verbalized their decisions. In the detail analysis, we focus on one editorial by an experienced journalist of Corriere del Ticino, the main Italian-language newspaper in Switzerland. (shrink)