Argumentative Strategies Research Articles

"Personally, I feel sorry, but professionally, I don't have a choice." Understanding the drivers of anti-Roma discrimination on the rental housing market.

The aim of our study is to assess the drivers of discriminatory behaviors of real-estate agents and private landlords toward prospective Roma tenants, relying on qualitative data from Hungary. Though there is a broad literature on the forms and frequency of discrimination, we know much less about the question of why people discriminate. Previous research suggests that discrimination on the basis of ethnicity is widespread in Hungary. To understand the drivers of discrimination, we analyzed: (a) the sources and justifications of discrimination of Roma people on the rental housing market among real-estate agents and private landlords, the actors making decisions about tenants (b) mapped the social embeddedness of discrimination, and (c) assessed the resilience of discriminatory intentions by analyzing the reactions to a 3-min advocacy video showing discrimination of Roma people on the rental housing market. We conducted and analyzed five online group discussions with 18 real estate agents and landlords advertising properties for rent in different regions of the country. Our qualitative study revealed that discrimination of Roma people is understood to be a widespread and socially acceptable practice driven by the need to avoid risks attributed to Roma tenants based on widely held stereotypes about them. We identified certain specificities in the justification and argumentation strategies of real-estate agents in comparison to private landlords. By providing counter-information presenting the perspective of Roma tenants, negative views could be challenged on the emotional level and also by shifting the group dynamics, strengthening the viewpoint of those without prejudice. We discuss our findings with regards to the possibilities of interventions against discrimination in societies in which neither social norms nor state institutions expect the equal treatment of the members of ethnic minority groups.

Children’s rights and personal data protection in the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

This article analyses the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in order to identify and characterise the argumentative conclusions produced by the Court in their decisions on personal data protection and that affect children’s rights. The data collection technique consisted of a search and selection of the arguments in the Court’s judgments on situations that refer to violations of personal data. For the argumentative analysis, through an argumentation scheme, a judgment of a case that refers to child protection against sexual online exploitation was selected. In this context, we have observed that the Court structured its arguments to verify the violation of privacy and protection of personal data using the following topics: (i) respect for private life; (ii) criminal-law provisions; and (iii) positive obligations. The use of these topics in the subsequent judgments of the ECtHR is also identified through the citations to justify their own decisions.

The Topoi of Small Business Entrepreneurship

Despite students’ growing interest in entrepreneurship education (EE), the small body of research exploring rhetorical strategies for proposing new business ventures has focused only on the argument strategies that startup entrepreneurs use when delivering oral pitches to investors. This study, by contrast, explores the topoi, or lines of argument, that small business entrepreneurs use in written business plans created for bank lenders. Small business entrepreneurs use nine topoi in order to accomplish two rhetorical goals: justifying their ventures, via the creation of stability-focused value propositions, and establishing their entrepreneurial credibility. Ultimately, I argue that small business entrepreneurs use these topoi to frame their ventures as low-risk and stable, which contrasts with startup entrepreneurs’ arguments that their ventures are innovative and disruptive. In addition to learning strategies for highlighting innovation and disruption, EE students would likely benefit from learning rhetorical strategies for minimizing risk and emphasizing stability.

Written Arguments About Vaccination: Experimental Studies in the United States and China

Guided by argumentation schema theory, we conducted five psychological studies in the United States and China on arguments about vaccination. Study 1 replicated research about arguments on several topics, finding that agreement judgments are weighted toward claims, whereas quality judgments are weighted toward reasons. However, consistent with recent research, when this paradigm was extended to arguments about vaccination (Study 2), claims received more weight than reasons in judgments about agreement and quality. Studies 3 and 4 were conducted in the United States and China on how people process counterarguments against anti-vaccination assertions. Rebuttals did not influence agreement but played a role in argument quality judgments. Both political position (in the United States) and medical education (in China) predicted differences in argument evaluation. Bad reasons lowered agreement (Study 5), especially among participants studying health care. Political polarization apparently heightens the impact of claim side in the argumentation schema, likely to the detriment of public discourse.

TYPOLOGY OF THE PRESENTER’S COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES IN THE ODESA TOURISM MEDIA DISCOURSE

The article is devoted to the analysis of the Russian- language television program “Where are we going?!” as a special type of tourist discourse, one of the forms of which is the genre of television excursion. The main direction of the research was chosen to be linguo-pragmatic, which led to the identification of the main strategies of the communicative behavior of the presenter of the TV program and his interaction with the TV viewers. The linguistic-pragmatic principles of the study of communicative strategies and tacts in modern linguistics are defined, the main problems are outlined and typologies of strategies relevant specifically for the televised tourism discourse are proposed. The specifics of the speech behavior of the presenter of the TV program are considered and the presentation, informational, argumentative and game strategies are characterized. The tactics of identification, solidarity, self-presentation, criticism and intrigue were analyzed within the framework of the presentation strategy. It is proved that the information strategy is directed at presenting actual, verified information of a local history nature to the addressees and is presented by descriptive and characterological tactics. It was determined that the argumentative strategy is based on logical reasoning and evidence and is represented by the tactics of verbalizing logical reasoning, evaluation, and explanation. The game strategy is considered as an actualization of the presenter’s linguistic creative activity and the language means of implementing the language game are outlined.

Is there a right to knowledge about our origins?

Is there a right to knowledge about the origins of life and the origins of humanity? Here, I mean knowledge of a sort that astrobiology may be able to supply. And a right of the sort that might be acknowledged within international declarations, agreements, and codes of conduct. A distinguishing feature of the paper is an argument strategy that draws upon pragmatic discussions of animal rights and links a pragmatic idea of rights to interests. The background thought here is that discussions of rights in the non-human case can enrich our understanding of the rights that we should ascribe to humans as well as our understanding of what it means to ascribe a right. A right to knowledge about our origins can be supported by the classic autonomy-based approach towards rights, given that such a right would help to optimize the conditions under which autonomy is exercised. However, the case for a right to knowledge about origins strengthens when we draw upon a more interest-based approach and say that rights can also be tied to strong interests. In order to support the idea that humans have a sufficiently strong interest in the relevant kinds of knowledge, i.e., astrobiological knowledge about origins, appeal is made to the historical spread, depth and persistence of our human concern with origins, evidenced by Indigenous cosmologies and storytelling about how life began. Our history as a moral community is, in part, a history of reflection upon origins, with astrobiology functioning as a recent and productive way of engaging in such reflection.

ARGUMENTATIVE STRATEGIES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS IN ENGINEERING STUDENTS

This study allowed to contribute and systematize the knowledge on the subject of the effects of the argumentative strategy in the development of critical thinking skills in engineering students, which will also allow the realization of other investigations. This research acquires significant relevance and topicality because we worked with modern theoretical constructs derived from the models of argumentation, critical thinking. The objective of this document was tofinalize the degree of relationship between argumentative strategies and critical thinking skills in Engineering students 2022. The results of this research constitute a reference for subsequent research at different levels on the effects of argumentative strategy on the development of critical thinking skills in engineering students from public universities in the rest of the country. Among the main findings, it was determined that between argumentative strategies and critical thinking skills there is a directly proportional relationship, of small to moderate effect in engineering students.

Antiabortion legal mobilization in Brazil: Human rights as a field of contention

Abstract This article analyzes the legal strategies used by the Brazilian antiabortion movement, observing its frames and argumentative strategies. It contextualizes the importance of the antiabortion movement within the recent conservative wave, as the movement had recently undergone a process of renewal, becoming one of the support bases for right-wing populist President Jair Bolsonaro’s government. The new configurations and strategies advanced by the movement reveal the centrality of lawyers and legal strategies, using the language of human rights. An analysis of court documents and public hearings at different political moments highlights recent shifts in antiabortion legal framings. While human rights language has always been ambivalent and contested, this article argues that what is taking place in the context of the reframed antiabortion movement is an appropriation (or misappropriation) of human rights, which distorts its most fundamental feature and advocates for anti-pluralist ends.

Educational policy agenda, ideological transformation and radical right populism: the case of the education-identity nexus of the Northern League in Italy, 1994-2018

ABSTRACT The study of the relationship between parties and education policies has so far largely disregarded populist parties. Despite the success of this party family, little attention has been paid to their proposals in terms of education and interpretation of the role of schools and higher education in society. The central research question of the paper concerns the development of the educational agenda of the Northern League party in Italy, from 1994 to 2018. If the general framework suggests that political parties are losing power and influence in education matters, Italy can be considered an interesting deviant case. Education policy is politically divisive, with multiple stakeholders, different ideological preferences and vested interests. It should therefore come as no surprise that a party, as deeply rooted in the Italian party and political system as the Northern League, has invested in positioning itself in education policies both in terms of identity and argumentative strategies associated with the use of political symbols. Against this background, the purpose of the paper is to study how the Northern League’s education agenda is shaped by symbolic frames and rhetorical narratives that illustrate and reflect the ideological tenets and evolution of the party over the last decades.

Anti-Black sentiments in Chinese Weibo discourse: a critical discourse historical analysis

ABSTRACT Diplomatic ties have deepened between China and Africa. However, unlike the friendly rhetoric at the State level, racist issues at the individual and societal levels, which are under-researched, are becoming increasingly salient in the Chinese context. Analysing 2766 posts and 13 477 comments from Weibo, this study deploys the 2021 Shadeed Abdulmateen murder case in Ningbo to investigate the online racial discourse that Chinese Weibo users construct around Black people. While thematic analysis shows that racism in China comprises a complex combination of anti-Black, anti-government, and anti-social class attitudes, critical discourse analysis identifies the discursive strategies used to construct the dichotomy between “positive Chinese” and “negative Black people". Specifically, the argumentation strategy justifies exclusionary practices against Black people in China, whereas the predicational strategy criminalises the Black community. Moreover, the nomination strategy discursively represents Black people as foreign threats and animals. Lastly, this study also reveals the orthographic manoeuvrings contrived by Weibo users to avoid censorship of racist language use on Weibo.

Literature in Politics

The relationship between English Literature and Politics has, historically, been understated and underexplored in academia. This article recognises the value of this relationship, significantly contributing to the field through original research which explores the political appropriation of literature. Using politicians’ references to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in parliamentary debate as a precedent, this research shows how fiction is used as a strategy of political argument. In supporting this claim, this research engages with the rising approach of Rhetorical Political Analysis, and wider theory which views political rhetoric as argumentation.

How to build a “Dream” in political speech? A critical discourse analysis of the discursive construction of the Chinese Dream speech

ABSTRACT This paper examines how Chinese politician tactically builds a dream narrative in political speech, namely, the Chinese Dream. By combining the discourse-historical approach, corpus-assisted methods and framing analysis, the study forms a complementary framework to examine the discursive construction of the Chinese Dream in President Xi Jinping’s representative speeches between 2012 and 2022. It identifies four key thematic representations, i.e. NATIONAL REJUVENATION, CPC’S LEGITIMACY, CHINESE PEOPLE’S INTERESTS and WORLD’S INTERESTS and also finds that the strategies of nomination, predication, argumentation and perspectivization are skillfully used and reveals the Chinese-centric narrative frame. Beyond that, it further discusses Chineseness in the dream narrative. The paper argues that the Chinese Dream is an artificially discursive construct in a grand narrative used to build an ultimate national consensus and to serve the ideological legitimacy of the ruling class.

Стратегии и тактики речевого воздействия в дискурсе англоязычных публичных лекций TED Talks

Based on the analysis of the genre-forming and pragmalinguistic features of English-language public speeches on the TED Talks platform, the study aims to compile a comprehensive set of the leading strategies and tactics of speech influence used in this discourse. Public speeches demonstrate the characteristics of popular science discourse, which is due to their genre-stylistic features and main goal, i.e. to disseminate scientific knowledge in a non-professional environment. The study is novel in that it is the first to identify and analyse in detail a group of influencing strategies functioning in the discourse of TED public lectures. The analysis of the pragmatic orientation of TED Talks speeches shows that the immanent communication strategies are represented by the strategies aimed at establishing non-confrontational contact with the audience, voicing one’s position in the relevant field of scientific knowledge in a most complete, clear and reasoned manner. The paper analyses in detail the identified strategies, describes the tactical methods and language means representing them that provide the speaker with the effective mechanisms of influencing the audience. As a result of the study, the strategies inherent to this discourse have been identified: the strategies of organisation, cooperation, argumentation and self-presentation.

Комплексная анафора как структурный элемент речевой и текстовой стратегий (на материале немецкого языка)

The aim of the study is to determine the features of complex anaphors and complex anaphoric entities as units of organisation of a textual strategy of argumentation in political discourse at the structural and pragmatic levels of language. The paper focuses on the relevance of considering political discourse to examine speech impact, summarises the existing research on Sahra Wagenknecht’s individual speech style, justifies the need to involve the textual categories of coherence and cohesion to analyse the construction of a strategy of argumentation in a text of political speech. The scientific novelty of the study lies in identifying correlations between the structural and pragmatic levels of the text using the example of text-forming means, i.e. complex anaphors and complex anaphoric entities. In addition, some patterns between the types of complex anaphoric entities, their strategic functions and the sequence of their use in the text were found. As a result, it was proved that complex anaphors and complex anaphoric entities, being the means of coherence of political speech, implement a textual strategy of argumentation and a speech strategy of discrediting. The study was conducted on the material of the German language.

The hybrid discourse of the ‘European Green Deal’: road-mapping economic transition to environmental sustainability (almost) seamlessly

ABSTRACT The ‘European Green Deal’ (EGD) is a set of communications from the European Commission that outlines EU roadmap to climate neutrality by 2050. The policy envisions that, with the facilitation of speedy and just ‘green transition’, the goals of environmental protection and economic development can be reconciled. This article offers a language-focused critical study of the EGD. After giving an overview of neoliberal ‘discourses of sustainability’ and explaining the notion of ‘interdiscursivity’ in CDS, it presents the results of a close thematic analysis supported by keyword and concordance analysis of representations of ‘environment’ and ‘climate’ on the one hand, and ‘economy’ and ‘transition’ on the other. This study attends to salient language patterns and reveals how interdiscursive crossovers are established to normalise ‘sustainability’ as the contingency between environmental and economic orders of discourse. Also, it identifies the discursive strategies of nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivisation and mitigation or intensification and shows how tensions between discourses are smoothened. This analysis of EGD’s ideological hybridity also sheds light onto how EU institutions are (self)authorised to lead actions on environmental challenges on behalf of European citizens.

Exploring argumentative strategies in student-teacher partnerships: patterns of deliberative communication

ABSTRACT A core element of student-teacher partnerships, a form of student participation, is their dialogical nature. However, little research attention has been paid to communication in this context. Therefore, this study aims to gain an in-depth understanding of their deliberative communication patterns. Seventeen deliberative episodes, derived from two cases where students and teachers collaboratively participated in a year-long inquiry project, were subjected to a two-stage analysis: a within-case analysis to determine the structure, function, features, and content of each unit of deliberation, and a cross-case analysis to iteratively compare both cases. The study reveals that in these deliberative discussions (1) students and teachers frequently and equally formulate substantive contributions or arguments, (2) they adopt four argumentative strategies: construction, confirmation, problematisation and regulation, (3) alternating use of the different argumentative strategies leads to more substantive and candid discussions, and (4) there is a need for moderating interventions. These findings call for reflection on the teachers’ role when partnering, more specifically on how to facilitate deliberative communication without compromising on the authenticity between teachers and students.

Disentangling Critical Questions from Argument Schemes

Critical questions have been understood in the framework of argument schemes from their conception. This understanding has influenced the process of evaluating arguments and the development of classifications. This paper argues that relating these two notions is detrimental to research on argument schemes and critical questions, and that it is possible to have critical questions without relying on argument schemes. Two objections are raised against the classical understanding of critical questions based on theoretical and analytical grounds. The theoretical objection presents the assumptions that are embedded in the idea of argument schemes delivering questions to evaluate arguments. The analytical objection, on the other hand, exposes the shortcomings of the theory when critical questions are used to evaluate real-life argumentation. After presenting these criticisms, a new theory of critical questions is sketched. This theory takes into account the dynamics of dialectical discussions to describe the function of critical questions and their implications for evaluating arguments.

Tek Parti Döneminde Faşizan Söylemler: Cumhuriyet Gazetesi Örneğinde 1942 Varlık Vergisi

Fascism, which sometimes defends racial superiority through its emphasis on consanguinity, often makes the distinction between “us” and “them” in the form of discriminatory language in daily life. Despite the Single Party Period in Turkey between 1923 and 1950 being characterized as an authoritarian regime, some implications during World War II as the Wealth Tax Law are claimed to contain fascist components. Though it mainly covers the commercial bourgeoisie, subsidiary farmers, some claims state that this tax targeted non-Muslims and Jewish people especially. The aim of this study is to understand whether the Single Party Period in Turkey produced fascist discourse in ordinary daily life in the case of the Wealth Tax Law. For this purpose, in this study the news texts and articles about the 1942 Wealth Tax Law in the newspaper Cumhuriyet are examined using a discourse–historical approach with the strategies of predication and argumentation.

EQRbot: A chatbot delivering EQR argument-based explanations.

Recent years have witnessed the rise of several new argumentation-based support systems, especially in the healthcare industry. In the medical sector, it is imperative that the exchange of information occurs in a clear and accurate way, and this has to be reflected in any employed virtual systems. Argument Schemes and their critical questions represent well-suited formal tools for modeling such information and exchanges since they provide detailed templates for explanations to be delivered. This paper details the EQR argument scheme and deploys it to generate explanations for patients' treatment advice using a chatbot (EQRbot). The EQR scheme (devised as a pattern of Explanation-Question-Response interactions between agents) comprises multiple premises that can be interrogated to disclose additional data. The resulting explanations, obtained as instances of the employed argumentation reasoning engine and the EQR template, will then feed the conversational agent that will exhaustively convey the requested information and answers to follow-on users' queries as personalized Telegram messages. Comparisons with a previous baseline and existing argumentation-based chatbots illustrate the improvements yielded by EQRbot against similar conversational agents.

Accountability Issues, Online Covert Hate Speech, and the Efficacy of Counter‐Speech

Concerning individual or institutional accountability for online hate speech, research has revealed that most such speech is covert (veiled or camouflaged expressions of hate) and cannot be addressed with existing measures (e.g., deletion of messages, prosecution of the perpetrator). Therefore, in this article, we examine another way to respond to and possibly deflect hate speech: counter-speech. Counter-narratives aim to influence those who write hate speech, to encourage them to rethink their message, and to offer to all who read hate speech a critical deconstruction of it. We created a unique set of parameters to analyze the strategies used in counter-speech and their impact. Upon analysis of our database (manual annotations of 15,000 Twitter and YouTube comments), we identified the rhetoric most used in counter-speech, the general impact of the various counter-narrative strategies, and their specific impact concerning several topics. The impact was defined by noting the number of answers triggered by the comment and the tone of the answers (negative, positive, or neutral). Our data reveal an overwhelming use of argumentative strategies in counter-speech, most involving reasoning, history, statistics, and examples. However, most of these argumentative strategies are written in a hostile tone and most dialogues triggered are negative. We also found that affective strategies (based on displaying positive emotions, for instance) led to a positive outcome, although in most cases these narratives do not receive responses. We recommend that education or training—even machine learning such as empathetic bots—should focus on strategies that are positive in tone, acknowledging grievances especially.