The Pragma-Dialectical Approach to the Fallacies Revisited

This article explains the design and development of the pragma-dialectical approach to fallacies. In this approach fallacies are viewed as violations of the standards for critical discussion that are expressed in a code of conduct for reasonable argumentative discourse. After the problem-solving validity in resolving differences of opinion of the rules of this code has been discussed, their conventional validity for real-life arguers is demonstrated. Starting from the extended version of the theory in which the strategic maneuvering taking place in argumentative discourse is included, the article explains that the violations of the rules that are committed in the fallacies involve derailments of strategic maneuvering. This culminates in a discussion of the exploitation of hidden fallaciousness as an unreasonable way of increasing the effectiveness of argumentative discourse – a vital topic of research in present-day pragma-dialectics.

     

Pragma-Dialectical Analysis and Evaluation of Problem-Solving Discussion

In this article, after arguing that present approaches to improving problem-solving discussions for various reasons are not satisfactory, I turn to the pragma-dialectic approach to argumentative discourse to derive a normative framework that can serve as a point of departure to enhance the quality of problem-solving discussions. I then show how this approach can be used as analytical and evaluative instrument that can help the analyst to establish whether participants in actual practice act in a fashion that is in accord with the norms posited. Two real-life problem-solving discussions provide the material for this demonstration.     

SURVIVORS OF THE HOLOCAUST AND THEIR CHILDREN

Despite the importance given in their narratives to the birth of their children and grandchildren, in most of the interviews I conducted with Holocaust survivors they do not discuss their children or family life in detail. Rather, for many of them, discussion is generally connected to how or what they have explained to their children about their experiences during the war. Survivors’ preoccupation with this issue could be understood as a response to the context in which they find themselves, in which a particular social discourse about survivors has developed. This discourse arguably engendered particular responses from survivors: it is a question that survivors expect to be asked, and it is seen as part of their prescribed role. Based on over 50 narrative interviews with survivors of the Holocaust, this article explores how survivors reflect and understand their parenting. It examines to what extent their behaviour has been influenced by their experiences during the war, or in reaction to a particular social discourse. Whilst literature on the second generation has been predominantly based on the responses of the children of survivors, this article provides important evidence of how survivors reflect on and understand their parenting.     

Reproductive Technologies of the Self: Michel Foucault and Meta-Narrative-Ethics

This paper presents a direction for narrative ethics based on ethical ideas found in the works of Michel Foucault. Narrative ethics is understood here at the meta-level of cultural discourse to see how the moral subject is constituted by the discursive practices that structure the contemporary debate on reproductive technologies. At this level it becomes meta-narrative-ethics. After a theoretical discussion, this paper uses two literary narratives representing the polarized views in the debate to show how the moral subject may be compelled to relate to its self. Ethics is redefined as Foucauldian rapport à soi, and ethical analysis, at this meta-level, shows how the moral self is intimately connected to cultural discourse.     

Exploring the role of discourse in marketing and consumer research

This paper reviews the development of discourse‐based analysis in marketing and consumer research and outlines the application of various forms of discourse analysis (DA) as an approach. The paper locates this development alongside broader disciplinary movements and restates the potential for critical DA (CDA) in marketing and consumer behaviour research. We argue that discourse‐based approaches have considerable potential and application particularly in terms of supporting disciplinary reflexivity and research criticality. A discursive lens offers novel ways of understanding marketing as a subject/discipline as well as how marketing academics conceive and investigate objects of marketing inquiry. The objectives of this paper are fourfold: to outline the development of discourse and text‐based studies in marketing and consumer research; to reveal how this has shaped, framed and limited the application and utilisation of DA in particular ways; to synthesise the main principles of DA generally and CDA specifically; and highlight how these approaches could be applied to a range of marketing and consumer behaviour issues and contexts. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluating programs in applied settings through behavioral consultation

A behavioral consultation school psychology service model is presented which provides a vehicle for services and communication of process and outcome measures in program evaluation research. Within the context of the problem-solving perspective of applied behavior analysis, the consultation model (a) promotes process and outcome evaluation across a wide variety of settings, situations, and time; (b) leads to use of an applied research technology with wide applicability in educational settings; and (c) provides a communication technology for the program evaluation process through a four-stage problem-solving strategy. It is argued that the professional behavioral school psychologist can provide technical expertise to function as a system change agent within this evaluation model.     

Taking a Historical Turn: Possible Points of Connection Between Social Pyschology and History

The article confronts methodological differences between (and among) social psychologists and historians about how far the social psychologist should be interested only in contemporary or very recent history and how far general conclusions can be drawn about human behaviour across time and space. The article suggests that social psychology need not be present-centric and might take different forms of a ??historical turn??. In turn, it is suggested, historians can benefit from approaches developed by social psychologists. Seven possible points of connection with the discipline of history are put forward in the hope of fostering future collaborations. These are: the nature of modernity; collective memory and the uses of the past; political discourse and ideologies; partisanship; the public sphere; stereotypes; and languages and images. Indeed, just as they can encourage closer collaboration between historians and social psychologists, these themes might also open a wider inter-disciplinary discussion with anthropologists, sociologists, literary scholars, art historians and scholars of political discourse.     

Orthodoxy revisited: the postsecular classroom

As is the case with many new intellectual concepts, the definitional parameters of the term ‘postsecular’ are in flux and ultimately will shape its critical usefulness. This article represents an effort to participate in this discussion with a particular emphasis on the pedagogical importance of the tenets of religious orthodoxy when discussing spiritual matters in the university-level liberal arts classroom. The analysis is contextualized by reflection on the place of religion in the public sphere by various scholars, including Jürgen Habermas and Rowan Williams. This analysis establishes that the study of traditional religious positions in the university classroom can enrich the discourse of the liberal arts; however, neither proselytization nor an emotion-based spiritual paradigm bereft of intellectual rigor will serve these ends. I argue that the re-introduction of religion into analytical discourse in the humanities classroom will be successful if the discussion of religion is complemented by the recognition of the serious study of religious thought and scholarship. The argument is then developed through a pedagogical case study of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited that illustrates how the discussion of orthodox positions can enhance discussion of the novel in the postsecular classroom.     

Move evaluationasa predictor and moderator of success in solutions to well-structured problems

This paper presents three studies concerned with the evaluation of moves in solutions to Tower of Hanoi problems and the effect that such evaluation processes have on solution success. The existing literature on problem solving suggests that verbalizing whilst solving a problemcan havea positive effect upon performance. However,such verbalization has to be directed toward an explicit evaluation of particular moves. What remains unclear is whether evaluation without verbalization has the same effects or whether some characteristic of the process of verbalization gives rise to improved performance on such tasks. For example, the act of verbalizing per se may simply mean that more processing time is directed toward the problem-solving process. The studies reported in this paper suggest that the process of evaluation may be independent of verbalization processes and that non-verbal evaluation of moves (indicated by a key press) produces the same effects as a verbal evaluation of such moves. Moreover, the process of evaluating moves appears to producea form of behaviour that is prone to disruption via the administration of secondary tasks, whereas non-evaluated solutions are not. This may suggest that problem solvers who engage in evaluation processes develop an explicit representation of the strategies used to solve the problem.     

质性比较专家与新手的物理问题解决过程

本实验致力于回答两个问题 :(1 )在何种任务限制下 ,专家表现出对新手的解题优势 ;(2 )可以采用何种实验手段 ,来细致刻画解题过程中运用的程序性知识 (“条件 -行动”)。本实验以物理学领域的“欧姆定律”为研究内容 ,采用专家 -新手比较范型 ,对被试的言语报告进行编码与分析 ,进而描绘了解题活动所依赖的“条件 -行动”关系 ,从中展现了专家解题相对于新手的整体优势。对这些优势的进一步个案分析表明 ,物理学解题专长的实质在于 :(1 )条件化操作 (从已知条件得出复杂关系 ) ;(2 )精致化知识 (比例公式与嵌套公式 )。     

GROUP COMMUNICATION AND PROBLEM-SOLVING EFFECTIVENESS: AN INVESTIGATION OF GROUP PHASES

The present study sought to determine whether “successful” problem-solving groups can be distinguished from “unsuccessful” problem-solving groups on the basis of the phases that characterize their problem-solving discussion. The results, while based on a limited sample of nine groups, provide strong evidence to indicate that no single uniform sequence of phases is necessarily associated with either “successful” or “un-successful” group problem-solving. Rather, the study found that both “successful” and “unsuccessful” groups take their own unique “paths” to solving their problems, perhaps depending on the conditions and circumstances present at critical points in the problem-solving process. Interestingly, however, while the study discovered that there are several different sequences of phases associated with both “successful” and “unsuccessful” group problem-solving, a comparison of those different sequences revealed one general difference. Specifically, it was discovered that “successful” groups tend to begin their discussion by attempting to analyze the problem before attempting to search for a viable solution to it, while “unsuccessful” groups tend to begin the discussion by immediately attempting to search for a viable solution to the problem before attempting to analyze the problem.     

Cognitive Processing in Specifically Language-Impaired Children

Eighteen language-impaired children and 25 non-language-impaired children were evaluated to investigate the relationship between language ability and selected aspects of the five-component problem-solving process defined by Kagan and Kogan (1970). Non-impaired children performed better than language-impaired children on nearly all components of the problem-solving process. Language-impaired children had particular difficulties in the areas of coding and hypothesis generation. In fact, coding ability was inversely related to the number of errors made in hypothesis evaluation. Coding ability was also positively correlated with language ability. The exact causal relationship between coding ability, language ability, and error-making in hypothesis evaluation is unclear; however, improving coding skills through training may increase automaticity and lead to improved performance in the higher levels of the problem-solving process.     

The Diagnostic Power of the Stages of Critical Discussion in the Analysis and Evaluation of Problem-Solving Discussions

In this article, the pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion is demonstrated to provide a useful instrument for discovering causes of an unsatisfactory development of problem-solving discussions. First a sketch is given of the development of a problem-solving discussion which, in the opinion of the participants themselves, developed in an unsatisfactory fashion. Then it is argued that this development can be traced back to flaws in the execution of the stages of a critical discussion.     

Cognitive processing in specifically language-impaired children

Eighteen language-impaired children and 25 non-language-impaired children were evaluated to investigate the relationship between language ability and selected aspects of the five-component problem-solving process defined by Kagan and Kogan (1970). Non-impaired children performed better than language-impaired children on nearly all components of the problem-solving process. Language-impaired children had particular difficulties in the areas of coding and hypothesis generation. In fact, coding ability was inversely related to the number of errors made in hypothesis evaluation. Coding ability was also positively correlated with language ability. The exact causal relationship between coding ability, language ability, and error-making in hypothesis evaluation is unclear; however, improving coding skills through training may increase automaticity and lead to improved performance in the higher levels of the problem-solving process.     

Academic contributions to psychological counselling. 2. Discourse analysis and the formulation of case-reports

The composition of psychological case-reports can be studied in terms of discourse analysis. This examines the rhetorical features of reports and contributes to the work of critical evaluation and constructive revision. The coherence of case-reports is dealt with mainly in terms of substantive logic, which consists in identifying and interrelating the component statements of one or more arguments used to explain a case. Practical suggestions are made about analysing arguments with the help of a word processor. Local cohesion in normal linear test also affects comprehension; diagrams and hypertext are mentioned. Factors affecting the production of a case-report include the reporter's expertise and the difficulty of the task. The reporter's understanding of, and ability to deal with, a case are likely to be modified in the process of reflecting on and revising a report. Preparing a case-report is an exercise in problem-solving. Such exercises can be used in training-a tutorial outline is provided together with a framework for the layout of case-reports at a scientific and professional level.     

'I'm Just Saying . . .': Discourse Markers of Standpoint Continuity

Examining discourse markers (Schiffrin, 1987) in two transcribed discussions of controversial issues in an undergraduate 'critical thinking' class, we note frequent uses of 'I'm just saying' and related metadiscursive expressions (I'm/we're saying, I'm/we're not saying, etc.). Our central claim is that these 'saying' expressions are pragmatic devices by which speakers claim 'all along' to have held a consistent argumentative standpoint, one that continues through the discussion unless changed for good reasons. Through close analysis of a series of discourse examples, we show how these discourse markers are used to display continuity, deflect counterarguments, and acknowledge the force of counterarguments while preserving continuity. In a concluding section we reflect critically on the use of these continuity markers with regard to four pragmatic functions that they potentially serve: to specify and clarify argumentative standpoints, to acknowledge a presumption of standpoint continuity, to acknowledge a normative expectation that discussion participants should have standpoints, and to avoid overt disagreement while saving face.     

Formalization of the ad hominem argumentation scheme

In this paper, several examples from the literature, and one central new one, are used as case studies of texts of discourse containing an argumentation scheme that has now been widely investigated in literature on argumentation. Argumentation schemes represent common patterns of reasoning used in everyday conversational discourse. The most typical ones represent defeasible arguments based on nonmonotonic reasoning. Each scheme has a matching set of critical questions used to evaluate a particular argument fitting that scheme. The project is to study how to build a formal computational model of this scheme for the circumstantial ad hominem argument using argumentation tools and systems developed in artificial intelligence. It is shown how the formalization built using these tools is applicable to the tasks of identification, analysis and evaluation of the central case studied. One important implication of the work is that it provides a foundational basis for showing how other argumentation schemes can be formalized.     

Living with Contradictions: The Taken-for-Granted in Israeli Political Discourse

Two apparently contradictory ideas are closely linked in Israeli political discourse: Israel is powerful and independent and Israel is vulnerable and dependent. This study used content analysis and focus groups, as well as existing survey data analyzed by others, to explore how this paradox has been reflected in newspapers and conversations during six different time periods from 1948 to 1996. The goal was not to explain the paradox but to examine its consequences for Israeli perceptions of U.S. policy in the Middle East—and, in the process, to explore Israeli self-images. The nature of U.S. strategic interests was originally treated as problematic and in need of political discussion, but in the past 25 years these interests have become taken for granted. Surprisingly, even after the end of the Cold War, a critical discourse moment in which a reexamination of U.S. interests in the Middle East would seem inevitable, the U.S. role remains taken for granted and largely unexamined. The strong/vulnerable paradox explains this absence of discussion: Examining U.S. interests too closely upsets the delicate balance that keeps the sense of vulnerability in check.