Abstract
Everybody knows the kind of argumentation of the ‘Look out! Do you want to get run over?’-type. In these argumentations a standpoint, which is not always presented as one, is defended by an argumentation, which may pose as a question, often called ‘rhetorical’, or which otherwise does not show itself directly as an argumentation.
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Notes
- 1.
Indirectness is part of the subject matter of the Argumentative Language Use research project of the University of Amsterdam which was started some years ago by Rob Grootendorst, M. Agnes Haft-van Rees, Bert Meuffels and myself (VF UvA LET Discourse Analysis 102. 023 A). This paper is intended to give a wider circle of interested persons an inkling of the nature of this project, which will be carried on in co-operation with Sally Jackson and Scott Jacobs of the University of Oklahoma, whose work on conversational argument is closely related both in aims and theoretical background.
- 2.
cf. van Eemeren (1986a).
- 3.
- 4.
See van Eemeren (1986b).
- 5.
cf. van Eemeren (1986a).
- 6.
cf. van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984, 3–18) for explanatory notes to this definition. Without giving into an objectionable tendency towards dissociating terms and concepts—treading for once in Russell’s footsteps—possible confusion about the word ‘argumentation’, as may arise in English (cf. O’Keefe 1982, 3–6), is disregarded here as due to the infirmities of natural language, in this case the English language.
- 7.
A report of this study in English is to appear in van Eemeren et al. (to be published in 1987). In fact, several feasibility studies were carried out in order to attain a more or less complete image of the suitability of the measuring instruments chosen. In measuring the ease with which argumentation can be identified, to start with, the research concentrated upon single argumentations in which a single argument in defence of a standpoint is articulated. The conceptual validity of our notion of argumentation was proven by the fact that argumentation was identified correctly in 95 % of the items in a preliminary test submitted to the experimental subjects. This conceptual validity was confirmed by the ceiling-effects in pur first pencil and paper test.
- 8.
This terminology is suggested in van Eemeren et al. (1984, 22), but no explanation is offered there for the divergence in ease of recognition.
- 9.
This illocutionary indirectness is to be distinguished from propositional indirectness, which may combine with it. See, for this, van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1987, Chap. 5).
- 10.
- 11.
With direct argumentation context definition does not have this influence, which suggests some confirmation of van Dijk and Kintsch’s (1983) contention that language users who have to determine the communicative force of verbal utterances in the first instance take refuge in so-called linguistic strategies. All non-linguistic factors mentioned by Clark (1979) as affecting the interpretation of indirect speech acts seem to be incorporated in our defined contexts.
- 12.
The other correctness conditions for pro-argumentation, as well as the conditions for contra-argumentation, are stated in van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984, 39–46), where distinctions are also made between recognizable, correct and successful performances of these speech acts as seen from the varying perspectives of the speaker or writer and the listener or reader.
- 13.
Edmondson (1981, 26) correctly observes that ‘the distinctiveness of some illocutionary categories (in a Searlean sense) derives at least in part from their sequential placing and relevance in a sequence of speech acts’.
- 14.
Though a speech event always consists of one or more speech acts, these categories are by no means identical. As is explained in van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984, 1987) speech acts are theoretically motivated analytical units of language use, characterized by their correctness conditions and distinguished in pragmatics because of the different kinds of commitments they create for the language users. Due to the conventional connection between speech acts as communicative acts and certain interactional goals, various speech acts may play a more or less fixed and regular part in the organisation of a speech event in which these goals are pursued. This may be so in real life speech events but also in ideal models of speech events such as the normative reconstruction of the distribution of speech acts over the various phases of a critical discussion proposed in van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984).
- 15.
Confusing the communicative level and the interactional level of analysis, and confusing speech acts and speech events, leads to an underestimation of the possibilities of speech act theory by many authors, for example Levinson (1983), who overestimate its pretensions. Searlean communicative speech act theory does not claim to replace Gricean and other interactional speech event insights, and, accordingly, ought not be reproached for inadequacies in performing this task.
- 16.
Of course, this structural organization is not always determined in advance but may develop during the verbal interaction (cf. van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1987, Chaps. 7–9) on the structural organization of argumentation).
- 17.
Here, it should be emphasized that similar observations are made by Jackson and Jacobs (1980, 1981, 1982, 1983) as were also made by Grootendorst and myself, and which are rephrased here in a dialectically redefined version of the terminology of conversational analysis as described in Levinson (1983, Chap. 6).
- 18.
Apart from relevance, the coherence of the discourse is also at stake here (cf. Edmondson 1981, 14).
- 19.
Given a standpoint cast into doubt, one knows because of the correctness conditions already that argumentation is to be expected and because of the kind of condition which is unfulfilled one also knows precisely what kind of argumentation is to be expected. This needs elaboration. In a joint project with Grootendorst, Jackson and Jacobs more details will be given on these matters.
- 20.
This dialectical approach avoids the Scylla of ‘geometrical’ formal absolutism and the Charybdis of ‘anthropological’ epistemic relativism by combining logical problem-validity and rhetorical intersubjective validity in a code of conduct for resolving disputes by means of a critical discussion, regimented by procedural rules for the distribution of speech acts through the various stages (cf. Barth and Krabbe 1982; van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984). According to this dialectical approach, inspired by the critical rationalist views of Karl Popper, Hans Albert, Else Barth, among others, a discussion is deemed to be reasonable inasmuch as it congrues with rules which further the resolution of disputes and a discussant is deemed reasonable inasmuch as he obeys the rules of the ideal model. This construction of a rational judge who acts reasonably, is that of an ideal exponent of rationality whose conduct is in all respects in coherence with the code, and who judges others solely according to this code. In certain respects, Perelman’s ‘universal audience’, Mead’s ‘generalized other’, and Habermas’ ‘ideale Redesituation’ fulfil not dissimilar functions, but the advantage of the dialectical concept of a rational judge, by virtue of its embodiment in the framework of an ideal model of a critical discussion aimed at resolving disputes, is that not only its intersubjective validity but also its problem-validity can be made subject to scrutiny.
- 21.
To be precise, this argumentation is an example (‘substitution instance’) of the well-known argumentation scheme of reasoning from analogy (cf. van Eemeren and Kruiger 1986, Chap. 2).
- 22.
See van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1987, Chap. 8).
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van Eemeren, F.H. (2015). For Reason’s Sake: Maximal Argumentative Analysis of Discourse. In: Reasonableness and Effectiveness in Argumentative Discourse. Argumentation Library, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20955-5_17
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