Argumentative strategies in adolescents’ school writing

Author(s):  
Sachinidou Paraskevi
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Barbara Botter

L’obbiettivo del presente articolo è di circoscrivere ed approfondire lo studio di alcune strategie persuasive messe in atto da Socrate nel Gorgia platonico. Analizzando dapprima lo stile letterario, quindi gli scambi di battute fra gli interlocutori, ci proponiamo di evidenziare le ragioni della scelta platonica per lo stile drammatico, le strategie argomentative messe in atto dai protagonisti e le finalità in vista delle quali Platone crea un Socrate a due volti, un Socrate filosofo e un Socrate erista. In vista di ciò divideremo il testo in due sezioni principali: dapprima forniremo la cornice letteraria nella quale si inserisce il dialogo Gorgia; quindi esamineremo le strategie discorsive usate dagli interlocutori per difendere le rispettive tesi e giustificheremo la ragioni per cui la cura del discorso è importante per garantire un regime politico corretto. The aim of this article is to investigate the persuasive strategies produced by Socrates in the Plato’s Gorgias. First we’ll analyse the literary style, then the dialectical practices between Socrates and the other people, specifically Polo and Calicles. Our aim is to highlight the reasons why Plato choices a dramatic style in Gorgias; the argumentative strategies put in place by the protagonist and the other dialogue’s figures; and the Plato’s aims to create a Socrates with two faces: a Socrates philosopher and an eristic Socrates. With these aspects in mind, this paper has two main objectives. First we will consider the literary framework in which the dialogue Gorgias is put; then we’ll look at the discursive strategies used by the interlocutors to defend their arguments and justify why the care of speech is important to safeguard an appropriate politics.


2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 531-542
Author(s):  
PATRICK TODD

AbstractThere are various argumentative strategies for advancing the claim that God does not exist. One such strategy is this. First, one notes that God is meant to have a certain divine attribute (such as omniscience). One then argues that having the relevant attribute is impossible. One concludes that God doesn't exist. For instance, Dennis Whitcomb's recent paper, ‘Grounding and omniscience’, proceeds in exactly this way. As Whitcomb says, ‘I'm going to argue that omniscience is impossible and that therefore there is no God.’ This is not, I hope to show, a very promising way to start a paper. If having a given property is impossible, the greatest possible being need not have that property. Accordingly, the argumentative strategy in question is doomed to failure. The upshot of this article is a quite general one concerning how arguments against the existence of God in fact must proceed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 1483-1547
Author(s):  
Alejandro Gabriel Manzo

Abstract The article brings the debate about Global Justice to the centre stage of the Sovereign Debt Restructuring (SDRs) field. The judicial system that intervenes in sovereign debt conflicts was not on the agenda of the last reform processes activated in this field. In the NML Capital vs. Argentina (NML) trial, judges from different instances and different jurisdictions issued declarations of the same dimensions related to the same object of litigation. The article makes a comparative analysis of the argumentative strategies that judges used at the time of justifying their positions in order to show the tensions in which they incurred. It is explained that: a) these tensions are the result of agents -the judges- that must take decisions in a context of crossroads where the expected option in accordance with usual legal practices would undermine their own position in the field of sovereign debt market; b) these crossroads are rooted in the structural limits of the judicial system in which these agents operate. Contrary to what official statements postulate, it is argued that these limits conspire against the possibility that state courts provide Justice in transnational disputes, in which they must judge another equally sovereign State.


Author(s):  
Emily Blyth

The idea that there are grammatical structures which form accusations and defenses in language has been explored in the context of isolated instances of political debate (Rasiah 2009). This paper goes beyond that, looking at the specific linguistic strategies that compose such a structure, and evaluating those strategies over time. A discourse analysis is used to isolate, contrast and compare argumentative strategies in two different sections from the Canadian Hansard corpus. The first section consists of transcriptions of question period recorded in 2005 while the second is from 2014, allowing for a comparison that explores these trends through time. The strategies found in each section consist of specific linguistic elements which are relevant in the context of grammar structure analysis. Beyond this the individual strategies can also be sorted into larger groups, such as temporal distancing and diverting agentivity, which map the grammar of evasion on a more general scale. These groups expose language trends in political debate, and allow for an analysis of general evasion tactics used in Canadian government. By exploring the implications of said trends, this paper raises the question of political integrity in our Country’s leadership. A presentation of this thesis would explore the specific strategies, however would focus on the general groups, the trends that they expose and their implications.  This information could be found relevant in many academic contexts including sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, politics, and English studies.


2018 ◽  
pp. 182-184
Author(s):  
John McMillan

Sidgwick claimed that if we want to understand the methods of ethics, we should study the methods by which people reach reasoned convictions about morality. This book has explained how speculative reasons and drawing distinctions are the building blocks of moral reason. Of course, moral principles, concepts and theories have some role to play but it should be much more limited than it currently is and is not the most useful thing to teach those new to bioethics. When bioethics draws upon these argumentative strategies and is empirically engaged, then bioethics can give us normative, practical advice about what we should do.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
John E Richardson

This article explores the rhetoric, and mass mediation, of the national Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) commemoration ceremony, as broadcast on British television. I argue that the televised national ceremonies should be approached as an example of multi-genre epideictic rhetoric, working up meanings through a hybrid combination of genres (speeches, poems, readings), author/animators and modes (speech, music, light, movement and silence). Epideictic rhetoric has often been depreciated as simply ceremonial ‘praise or blame’ speeches. However, given that the topics of praise/blame assume the existence of social norms, epideictic also acts to presuppose and evoke common values, in general, and a collective recognition of shared social responsibilities, in particular. My methodology draws on the Discourse-Historical Approach to Critical Discourse Analysis, given, first, its central prominence in analysing argumentative strategies in discourse and, second, the ways it facilitates a reflexive ‘shuttling’ between text-discursive features, intertextual relations and wider contexts of society and history. Here, I examine how a catastrophic past is invoked in speech and evoked through image and music, in response to the demands that uncertainty of the future ‘places upon one’s conscience’.


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