Learning to argue with parents and peers

The infant's first natural response when faced with opposition or when he opposes others' actions is to cry. As this kind of behavior becomes ineffective, the responses of the individuals with which he interacts force him to adopt more conventional — especially verbal — patterns of arguing, leading him to rational argumentation. The purpose of the present paper is to observe progressions in children's earliest verbal arguments and to see how and when they learn to adjust their strategies for different kinds of opponents (peers; parents; other adults). In order to examine the emergence of such persuasive strategies, and their distribution according to the different categories of opponents, systematic audiotape recordings of two Spanish-speaking girls between 2 and 3 years were analyzed. The data suggest that, although there were some differences in how the girls argued with parents versus peers, they were only beginning to adjust their speech to make it appropriate for one or the other type of listener. In general, they resorted to one dominant strategy for all listeners (insist, repeat, cry, scream, ...). Each girl, however, developed a small number of less frequently used strategies that she reserved for a subcategory of opponents. For example, one of them, Nancy, only threatened and insulted peers, while the other, Marisa, only used please and a temporizing strategy with parents. The girls used less adaptive, more agressive strategies (e.g. threats and insults) with their peers. With one exception, all of the girls' moves were self-centered. In fact, the girls had not yet reached the stage of rational argumentation.     

Ad hominem arguments in practical argumentation

This paper is ultimately about the nature of argumentation in general and about the nature of practical argumentation in particular. (Practical argumentation is the form of argumentation which aims at answering the question: ‘What is to be done?’) The approach adopted here is an indirect one. I analyze one traditional form of argumentive fallacyargumentum ad hominem and try to show that in some argumentative situations it is an intuitively legitimate move. These intuitions can be explained if we accept that practical argumentation is also governed by the general rules of practical rationality.     

Cultural attitudes: in contexts of argumentation and explanation

Traditionally, attitudes are supposed to predict behavior. However, due to their poor performance, we are sometimes advised to abandon the notion. The present study attempts to preserve the concept but takes attitudes to be evaluative goals accomplished through interactional, especially argumentative and explanatory activities. The paper uses reasoned-discourse analysis and demonstrates the attainment of positive attitudes towards the Dutch by expatriate Chinese intellectuals in the Netherlands by attending to a variety of argumentative and explanatory strategies in their interview talk. Results suggest that there is good empirical reason to believe that attitudes are accomplishments of communicating actors' rhetorical contextualizations.     

The argumentative impact of causal relations — An exemplary analysis of the free predicate in the promotional discourse

The semantic relations between and within utterances are marked by the use of connectors and adverbials. One type of semantic relations is causal relations expressed by causal markers such as because, therefore, so, for, etc. Some of these markers cover different types of causal relations such as causality, explanation and justification. In certain types of discourse, causal relations also imply an intentional element. This paper describes the way in which the semantic and pragmatic functions of causal markers can be accounted for in terms of linguistic and rhetorical theories of argumentation.     

Poisoning the Well

In this paper it is shown is that although poisoning the well has generally been treated as a species of ad hominem fallacy, when you try to analyze the fallacy using ad hominem schemes, even by supplementing with related schemes like argument from position to know, the analysis ultimately fails. The main argument of the paper is taken up with proving this negative claim by applying these schemes to examples of arguments associated with the fallacy of poisoning the well. Although there is a positive finding in this quest, in that poisoning the well is shown to be based on and associated with these forms of argument in interesting ways, the paper in the end is led to the conclusion that the fallacy is irreducibly dialectical. Poisoning the well is thus analyzed as a tactic to silence an opponent violating her right to put forward arguments on an issue both parties have agreed to discuss at the confrontation stage of a critical discussion. It is concluded that it is a special form of strategic attack used by one party in the argumentation stage of a critical discussion to improperly shut down the capability of the other party for putting forward arguments of the kind needed to properly move the discussion forward.     

Empirical research on the identification of singular,multiple and subordinate argumentation

To examine to what degree argumentation skills are mastered by pupils who attend the vocational, general and academic streams in Dutch secondary education various subtests were constructed. The theoretical study of argumentation as exposed by Van Eemeren and Grootendorst was the basis for this test construction. In this article tests for the identification of singular, multiple and subordinate argumentation are described. Also an account is given of a pretest of these three subtests.     

Semantic Shifts in Argumentative Processes: A Step Beyond the ‘Fallacy of Equivocation’

In naturally occuring argumentation, words which play a crucial role in the argument often acquire different meanings on subsequent occasions of use. Traditionally, such semantic shifts have been dealt with by the fallacy of equivocation. In my paper, I would like to show that there is considerably more to semantic shifts during arguments than their potentially being fallacious. Based on an analysis of a debate on environmental policy, I will argue that shifts in meaning are produced by a principle I call local semantic elaboration. I will go on to show that semantic shifts in the meaning of a word, the position advocated by a party, and the questions that the parties raise during an argumentative process are neatly tailored to one another, but can be incommensurable to the opponent's views. Semantic shifts thus may have a dissociative impact on a critical discussion. By linking the structure of argumentation to its pragmatics, however, it may be revealed that there are two practices that account for a higher order of coherence of the debate. The first practice is a general preference for disagreeing with the opponent, the second practice is the interpretation of local speech acts in terms of an overall ideological stance that is attributed to the speaker. Because of these practices, parties do not criticize divergent semantic conceptions as disruptive, but they treat them as characteristic and sometimes even metonymic reflections of the parties' positions.     

Argumentational Integrity: A Training Program for Dealing with Unfair Argumentative Contributions

In this article we present a training program based on the empirical research conducted in the project 'argumentational integrity'. After a brief sketch of the problem dimensions concerning unfair argumentation we give an overview of the training concept and the underlying empirical research. Exemplification of the instructional design is given for the second and the fifth training dimension (standards of argumentational integrity and reactions to unfair contributions). Finally we indicate how the training is to be evaluated and present initial results demonstrating that in comparison with an untrained control group participants in the training significantly improve their skills in identifying and naming argumentative rule violations.     

Fallacies in pragma-dialectical perspective

In the pragma-dialectical approach, fallacies are considered incorrect moves in a discussion for which the goal is successful resolution of a dispute. Ten rules are given for effective conduct at the various stages of such a critical discussion (confrontation, opening, argumentation, concluding). Fallacies are discussed as violations of these rules, taking into account all speech acts which are traditionally recognized as fallacies. Special attention is paid to the role played by implicitness in fallacies in everyday language use. It is stressed that identifying and acknowledging fallacies in ordinary discussions always has a conditional character. Differences between the pragma-dialectical perspective, the Standard Treatment, and the formal logic approach to fallacy analysis are discussed.