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Comradery After Calamity: Bipartisan Rhetoric After 9/11, Sara A. Castro

Capstone Showcase

In the years following 9/11, bills concerning national security came out of Congress with a high bipartisan roll count vote rate. These are at the height of President George Bush’s approval rating.This thesis examines the bipartisan rhetoric during floor debate of the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002. Using content analysis, this thesis demonstrates how the President uses public support during a national tragedy to influence Congress to pass bills. Language will be identified using buzz words such as president, executive and …

Political Rhetoric And Civility: A Challenge To “The Legacy Of ‘Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Happiness’”, Timothy P. O'Brien, Melissa O. Stewart

Helm's School of Government Conference - American Revival: Citizenship & Virtue

“As you stand for your values do so with gentleness and respect—that’s how we move our country forward.”

Mike Pence, 48^th Vice President of the United States of America (2017-2021)

Since the founding of the United States of America, political discourse has often taken an unpleasant and nasty tone. Partisan disagreement concerning public policy is normal and policy should be the subject of vigorous debate. Disagreement, bickering, and even fights on the floor of Congress, are not new phenomena. However, today there is a growing sense in the country that civility and intolerance are on the rise. This study …

Doing Things With Arguments: Assertion, Persuasion, Performance, Blake D. Scott

OSSA Conference Archive

In “Three Perspectives on Argument,” Wenzel argued that scholars should orient their research around the well-known triad of rhetorical, dialectical, and logical perspectives on argument. Despite the success of Wenzel’s triad in orienting pluralistic research, he nonetheless maintained that an “eventual synthesis” of the three perspectives was both possible and desirable. In this paper I reconsider Wenzel’s idea by asking what might be preventing such a synthesis today. I argue that one obstacle to this is a common philosophical assumption about rhetoric that opposes assertion to persuasion, truth to effectiveness. Following Barbara Cassin, I challenge this assumption and consider how …

Should Logos Be Opposed To Ethos? Commentary On Adelino Cattani’S ‘Persuading And Convincing’, Marcin Koszowy

OSSA Conference Archive

No abstract provided.

Persuading And Convincing, Adelino Cattani

OSSA Conference Archive

I’ll propose a distinction based on historical, theoretical, and linguistic considerations between:

- two different ways of inducing a change of mind, that is persuading and convincing.

- two different ways of proving, that is rhetorical argumentation and logical-experimental demonstration.

There is a tendency to keep a distance from persuasion in favor of conviction. In everyday language, the difference between the two terms appears clear, and it is a distinction developed theoretically by many authors from Plato and Kant to Perelman. In particular:

1. Persuasion is centered chiefly on the speaker: it enhances one’s will and ability to modify …

Developing Critical Thinking With Rhetorical Pedagogy, Elizabeth Ismail

OSSA Conference Archive

The development of critical thinking skills is emphasized as a fundamental attribute of successful graduates (Ritchhart & Perkins, 2005; Willingham, 2008). Some critical thinking textbooks inform students to “see beyond the rhetoric to the core idea being stated” (Moore and Parker, 2009, p. 21); however, other scholars have begun to suggest that rhetoric is intrinsically interrelated to critical thinking and plays a pivotal role in everyday interactions (Saki, 2016). This paper explores the later.

Harmony In Diversity. On The (Possible) Existence Of ‘The Canadian School Of Argumentation’, Federico Puppo

OSSA Conference Archive

By looking at the birth and evolution of the informal logic movement, and by clarifying which kind of relations in a diversity we need in order to understand what “school” means, we would like to consider the hypothesis that there is something which could be called ‘the Canadian school of argumentation’ or, at least, of a Canadian tradition amongst those that make up the greater field of the study of argumentation.

Revising Toulmin’S Model: Argumentative Cell And The Bias Of Objectivity, Thierry Herman

OSSA Conference Archive

This paper presents what we call with Plantin (1900, 2005) an argumentative cell as an unit which is inspired by Toulmin’s layout of arguments (and refined with linguistic insights), in order to analyse two major effects of pseudo-objectivity in argumentation. Four problems of Toulmin's layout will be tackled: (1) Data are only described as facts, (2) the definition of Backing is blurred, but it may be linked with sources of information (linguistic evidentiality) and extended to Data, (3) the dialectical component of the Rebuttal needs to be extended to concessions, and (4) dealing with complex argumentation (linked and convergent argument) …

Constructing A Periodic Table Of Arguments, Jean H.M. Wagemans

OSSA Conference Archive

The existing classifications of arguments are unsatisfying in a number of ways. This paper proposes an alternative in the form of a Periodic Table of Arguments. The newly developed table can be used as a systematic and comprehensive point of reference for the analysis, evaluation and production of argumentative discourse as well as for various kinds of empirical and computational research in the field of argumentation theory.

Meta-Argumentation In Deliberative Discourse: Rhetoric 1360b05-1365b21, Paula Olmos

OSSA Conference Archive

In Rhetoric 1360b05-1365b21, Aristotle naturally assumes the debatable, exceptionable and multidimensional character of the kind of allegations, adduced as reasons for the proposals (Kock 2006, 2012; Vega 2013) which act as conclusions of the practical arguments typical of political debate. This is a problem which has been currently addressed in terms of the prima facie incommensurability caused by the multi-dimensionality of value-based argumentation, an approach that seems to lead us to an evaluative and dialectical dead-end. But in the Aristotelian text, we find a different tactic. Aristotle analyses in very explicit and revealing terms how the “continuum between argument and …

Envisioning A Better Design Education: How Language Can Invite Or Discourage Collaboration, Angela L. Dow, Susanna Kelly Engbers

DRS Biennial Conference Series

The possibilities for collaboration among faculty teaching in various disciplines in an art and design college are often limited by the language we use to analyze, create, and discuss our work. Although there may, in fact, be a great deal of overlap, our language sometimes obscures rather than clarifies the possibility of productive and fruitful overlap. Our paper—itself the fruit of a collaboration between a professor of graphic design and a professor of English—discusses the ways in which various constituent groups at our college talk about visuals (e.g., logos, advertisements, interiors, photographs, illustrations, etc), noting the ways in which our …

The Virtues Of Dissoi Logoi, Victor Ferry

OSSA Conference Archive

My claim is that rhetorical training is required to develop citizenship skills. I illustrate this claim by focussing on dissociation of notions, that is, a rhetorical technique that citizens might have to use in their civic life. After distinguishing a rhetorical and a normative approach to dissociation, I argue that dissoi logoi, as an exercise invented by the Sophists, offer a relevant training to master this technique.

Rhetoric, Dialectic And Logic: The Triad De-Compartmentalized, Charlotte Jørgensen

OSSA Conference Archive

Taking Blair’s recent contribution to the debate about the triad as its starting point, the paper discusses and challenges the effort to reduce the intricate relationship between rhetoric, dialectic, and logic to a single criterion or watertight trichotomy. I argue that such efforts obscure the complexities within the fields, their differences being partly due to disciplinary traditions. They neglect the intermingling properties of the fields as well as the possibilities for theoretical bridging between them.

Arguing Or Reasoning? Argumentation In Rhetorical Context, Manfred Kraus

OSSA Conference Archive

If dialogue is a necessary condition for argument, argumentation in oratory becomes questionable, since rhetoric is not a dialogically structured activity. If special norms apply to the ‘solo’ performances of rhetoric, the orator’s activity may be more appropriately described as reasoning than as arguing. By analyzing in what respect rhetorical texts can be interpreted as dialogue-based and subject to criteria of Informal Logic, the virtues of rhetorical argumentation in contrast to logic and dialectic emerge.

Narration As Argument, Paula Olmos

OSSA Conference Archive

In this paper I explore the possibilities of acknowledging the argumentative character of (at least some cases of) narration. Two basic models will be revised: 1) primary (core) narratives, regarding issues and facts under discussion, which may work as implicit arguments about the coincidence between discourse and reality via their own internal plausibility and 2) secondary narratives, imaginatively inserted in discourse, and serving as evidence for diverse lines of (either stated or unstated) analogical or exemplary argumentation.

What Argumentation (Theory) Can Do For Philosophy In The 21st Century, Henrique Jales Ribeiro

OSSA Conference Archive

The author holds that the old theory according to which philosophy is the matrix of argumentation studies must be entirely reviewed currently. He argues that argumentation theory, as an interdisciplinary domain, may start playing, in new terms, the role which ― in the Cartesian tree ― was that of philosophy as the trunk of the different branches of human knowledge, as long as a set of requirements, which he lists, were met.

Khôra, Invention, Deconstruction And The Space Of Complete Surprise, Michael C. Souders

OSSA Conference Archive

Borrowing from Plato, argumentation tends to imagine that invention is at home in the khôra—the space of the ideas—because it is the space for discovering and sorting argument options. In contrast, this paper suggests we re-conceive the idea of inventio as emerging possibility. Inventio is not only the process of sorting the set of possible arguments but is the possibility of the new idea itself; the idiomatic, the absolute surprise.

Defining Functions Of Danish Political Commentary, Mette Bengtsson, Mary L. Kahl

OSSA Conference Archive

In Denmark political commentary is still a relatively new phenomenon. This paper analyzes the metadiscourse in relation to political commentary to identify the different understandings that have coalesced around political commentary as a genre. I argue that people in different positions (e.g. citizens, politicians, journalists, political editors, chief editors and political commentators themselves) emphasize different explanations for the rise of the genre and thereby functions of political commentary as part of an argumentative strategy favouring their own interests.

Fallacies: Do We “Use” Them Or “Commit” Them? Or: Is All Our Life Just A Collection Of Fallacies?, Igor Zagar, Dima Mohammed

OSSA Conference Archive

After C. L. Hamblin's groundbreaking work Fallacies (1970), re-interpreting what used to be known as "mistakes in reasoning" or "bad arguments" since Aristotle (On Sophistical Refutations), the study of fallacies started to bloom, coming up with ever new perspectives and conceptualizations of what should count as a mistake in reasoning and argumentation, and why a certain kind of reasoning should at all be considered a mistake (Woods & Walton 1989, van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992, etc.). This paper will be concerned with two questions. First, an epistemological one: do we (unintentionally) commit fallacies, or do we (intentionally) use them? Secondly, …

Designing For Cultural Diversity: Participatory Design, Immigrant Women And Shared Creativity, Naureen Mumtaz

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Immigration and multiculturalism are realities of the globalized world that has given rise to subcultures, which possess specialized knowledge. This increasing interaction among people from diverse cultures has produced a complex ethno-cultural mosaic that presents formidable challenges for visual communication designers’ as well as for other designers. Cultural diversity of designers and audience of messages in a design scenario brings complexity in the design research process. This research study explores an effective visual communication language, through the medium of the poster, for culturally diverse audience of immigrant women in Edmonton, Canada. The decision was informed by triangulated results from a …

Audio-Visual Rhetoric: Visualizing The Pattern Language Of Film, Gesche Joost, Sandra Buchmuller, Roman Englert

DRS Biennial Conference Series

Audio-visual Rhetoric is a knowledge domain for designers in theory and practice that is valid for all communicative actions through media that aim for persuasion. Within this domain, we introduce a framework for media analysis. We developed an Audio-Visual Pattern (AVP) language for film that is visualized within a notation system. This system shows auditory and visual parameters in order to reveal film's rhetorical structure. We discuss related theories from pattern language and rhetoric and apply the AVP method to analyze 10 commercials.