Viele Stimmen – ein Urteil

Modern jurisprudence is intrinsically pervaded by a plurality of intertwined voices, only part of which can be traced back to the Court of Justice deciding the case. This book sheds light on the rhetorical-argumentative function of this linguistic polyphony by using the example of the Italian Constitutional Court judgement. To this end, an integrated polyphonic-argumentative approach is proposed on the basis of the Scandinavian polyphony and pragmadialectical theory of argumentation. With the help of the theoretical and methodological apparatus thus developed, the study shows how the reasons for the Italian constitutional court's decision can be understood and reconstructed as a literally staged argumentative discussion.

A pragma-dialectical perspective on obstacles to shared decision-making

Shared medical decision-making has been analyzed as a particular kind of argumentative discussion. In the pragma-dialectical argumentation theory, different types of conditions and rules are formulated for the ideal of a reasonable argumentative discussion. In this paper, we shall first show how making use of the distinctions made in the pragma-dialectical theory between different types of conditions for reasonable discussion can help to give a more systematic account of the obstacles that need to be overcome for shared decision-making to be successful. Next, by referring to the rules for critical discussion, we shall provide a more detailed explanation than can be found in the literature on health communication of why certain types of conduct of the participants in the medical encounter can be analyzed as obstacles to the goal of shared decision-making.

APPLYING CORRECTION GAME IN TEACHING NOMINALIZATION TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ WRITING OF DISCUSSION TEXT

Related to curriculum 2013 which is currently applied in Indonesia, students are required to learn genres and later write the text independently. One of the genre types learned at higher level of students, grade XII is argumentative discussion. However, they often face difficulties in delivering and elaborating their opinions and reasons in writing discussion text since they do not know exactly how to do so. Using qualitative design and Systemic Functional Linguistics analysis, this study attempts to find out the analysis result of the discussion text written by expert in which becomes the basic reference to identify the main problem found in the students’ texts which later help to discover pedagogical implication to improve their writings. The results show that the expert’s text is considered as an ideal model of discussion text. Besides, there are two problems appeared in the students’ texts in term of the situational contexts such as lack of nominalization and the absence of passive sentence. The former becomes the major problem since it is assumed to affect the appearance of the latter. The implementation of Correction Game which is integrated in the genre based approach teaching reveals as pedagogical implication.

Adding a temporal dimension to the analysis of argumentative discourse: Justified reframing as a means of turning a single-issue discussion into a complex argumentative discussion

This article seeks to extend existing models of argumentation by considering an important dimension of real-life argumentative discourse: how complex argumentative discussions evolve over time. We define a complex argumentative discussion as a multi-issue discussion, in which the different issues are interrelated in the form of a hierarchy. We claim that justified reframing might be used to transform a single-issue argumentative discussion into a complex argumentative discussion. To illustrate this, we examine the Facebook discourse of the Rhodes Must Fall movement in South Africa. We analyse how reframing is justified by means of arguments, allowing the protagonists to claim as legitimate their reframing of a single issue into a complex argumentative discussion. Our findings complement existing sociological research on social movements by highlighting how their goals are achieved by means of argumentative discourse.

Arguing Against Corporate Claims Visually and Multimodally: The Genre of Subvertisements

In this paper, we describe the conditions under which the manipulation of the verbal and the visual elements or of the visual elements alone in the genre of subvertisements can be considered as an act of objecting or rebutting in an implicit argumentative discussion. We thus consider the cognitive and pragmatic aspects of communication while paying serious attention to the interaction of semiotic modes in order to analyse a number of images produced by anti-consumerist groups such as Adbusters. We identify four different ways in which image-text relations or the visuals alone can cue an incongruity between the message of the original ad and the message of the subvertisement in such a way that the latter functions as an objection or rebuttal of the claim advanced by the original advertisement.

Use and abuse of the strategic function of in fact and frankly when qualifying a standpoint

This paper seeks to specify the strategic function of adverbs like in fact and frankly when used to qualify the utterance that functions as a standpoint in an argumentative discussion. The aim is to provide a description of their strategic function that takes into consideration the role that the move of advancing a standpoint plays in argumentative discourse. To this direction, the choice of qualifying is explained as a choice that the arguer makes in his attempt to manage the burden of proof that is incurred when advancing a standpoint. By combining the insights from the pragma-linguistic treatment of these adverbs with the theoretical premises of a systematic approach to the analysis of argumentative discourse it becomes possible to specify their strategic function and to evaluate those cases in which this strategic function has been abused to the detriment of the quality of argumentative discourse.

An Abstract Framework for Modeling Argumentation in Virtual Communities

Classic argumentative discussions can be found in a variety of domains from traditional scientific publishing to today’s modern social software. An interactive argumentative discussion usually consists of an initial proposition stated by a single creator, followed by supporting propositions or counter-propositions from other contributors, usually part of the same virtual community. Thus, the actual argumentation semantics is hidden in the content created by the contributors. Although there are approaches that try to deal with this challenge, most of them focus on a particular domain, limiting the scope of the argumentation to that domain only. In this article, the authors describe an abstract model for argumentation which captures the semantics independently of the domain. Following a modularized approach, the authors also take into account additional important aspects of the argumentation, like the provenance information or its evolution (the temporal side). Consequently, they present a possible usage of the framework in the context of virtual communities.