Interpretation Of Arguments Research Articles

The Interpretation of Community Law by the European Court of Justice

The article gives an account of the legal reasoning of the European Court of Justice. On the one hand, there seems to be no absolute specificity of the legal interpretation methods of the ECJ: its decisions are drafted in such a way as to be comprehensible to the national legal communities, and the Court employs interpretative arguments which are largely common to the legal traditions of the Members States. On the other hand, the case law of the ECJ has been characterized by an extensive application of the so called teleological argument, i.e. it has often been purpose-oriented. On the basis of a survey of the interpretative methods employed by the Court, the article tries to figure out what kind of conception of the EC Treaties underlines its case-law. The article suggests that the ECJ conceives of the EC Treaties as giving rise to a constitution of a special kind: a sort of project-constitution, a constitution-in-progress or dynamic constitution; a constitution which aims not just to establish the rights and duties of the contracting parties, but to initiate a constitutional project which is open-ended and evolutive.

The Short Period and the Long Period in Macroeconomics: An Awkward Distinction

The aim of this paper is to show that the meaning of the well-known concepts of short period and long period is often unclear and may be seriously misleading when applied to macroeconomic analysis. Evidence of this confusion emerges through reappraisal of the interpretative debate of the 1980s and 1990s, which aimed to establish whether Keynes's General Theory should be considered a short- or long-period analysis of the aggregate level of production. Further evidence is provided by the ambiguous use that seems to be made of this distinction in macroeconomics textbooks, as will be shown in the paper. Having explored some possible explanations for the difficulties in defining and applying these methodological tools at a ‘macro’ level, the conclusion is drawn that it would be preferable to abandon this terminology in classifying different aggregate models and simply to make explicit the given factors and the independent and dependent variables in each model, exactly as Keynes did in Chapter 18 of his major work.

Clinical practice guidelines: the need for greater transparency in formulating recommendations

A recently published critique of a set of Australian clinical practice guidelines (CPG) highlighted problematic issues in guideline development concerning conflicts of interest of guideline panellists, validity and strength of recommendations, and involvement of end users and external stakeholders. Management of financial or intellectual conflicts of interest requires: full disclosure; limitations on industry or agency financial support during guideline development; a representative panel that includes conflict-free members; and only conflict-free panellists to be involved in drafting guideline recommendations. Guideline panels should consider adopting the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation) system to assist in determining the validity and strength of recommendations. Guideline panels should seek formal feedback from external stakeholders and end users. Enacting such policies aims to lend greater transparency and credibility to CPG, limit protracted and unhelpful interpretive debates, and promote wider use of CPG.

As time goes by: Hermeneutics and originalism

What is the continuing relevance of hermeneutics to legal theory in general and to constitutional theory in particular if we are all originalists now? Both seem to be vital despite the decline of interest in hermeneutics recently. This article argues for the continuing relevance of hermeneutics to both fields because of the centrality of issues of application and practical reasoning in both. Law seeks to find the meaning of texts applied over time; legal texts are truly letters of transit. That we are all originalists, yet still have the same sort of interpretive debates we have always had, only indicates the continuing need to work on hermeneutic questions of application and practical reasoning. These issues are explored in the context of the Dworkin/Scalia discussion of the distinction between expectation and semantic originalism.Key words: originalism, hermeneutics, constitutional theory, legal interpretation.

Examining Evidence for the Validity of PISA Learning Strategy Scales Based on Student Response Processes

The aim of this study was to investigate response-process based evidence for the validity of the Programme for International Student Assessment's (PISA) self-report questionnaire scales as measures of specific psychological constructs, with a focus on scales meant to measure inclination toward specific learning strategies. Cognitive interviews (N = 22) and descriptive and statistical analysis of Norwegian questionnaire data (N = 4279) provide converging evidence that (a) a non-trivial portion of students may not be providing responses to items that can be considered valid, for a variety of reasons; (b) students who perform more poorly on PISA's science scales are less likely to provide valid responses to the questionnaire items; and (c) quantitative examinations of response patterns provide limited ways of identifying students who may not be providing valid responses, although changes in the questionnaire design could strengthen the utility of these methods. These findings are discussed in the context of the larger interpretive argument surrounding the PISA learning strategy scales, and implications for future research on the measurement of learning strategies are discussed.

Reconstructing Strategic Manoeuvres with Interpretative Arguments in Legal Decisions

This paper deals with reconstructing problems regarding the strategic use of interpretative arguments in legal decisions, with the focus on linguistic argumentation. I will show how the parties and the judge try to reconcile their dialectical and rhetorical aims and to what extent this maneuvering can be considered as acceptable. In this paper I will give an analysis of linguistic arguments, their importance and their use and the relation between linguistic arguments and other interpretative arguments.

More Than One Way to (Mis)Read a Mockingbird

The task of criticism, then, is not to situate itself within the same space as the text, allowing to speak or completing what necessarily leaves unsaid. On the contrary, its function is to install itself in the very incompleteness of the work in order to theorise it--to explain the ideological necessity of those 'not-saids' which constitutes the very principle of its identity. --Terry Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology To Kill has become the object of recent renewal of critical interest, starting with Claudia D. Johnson's To Kill Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries (1994) and culminating in On Harper Lee: Essays and Reflections (2007). (1) Reading through this critical corpus, one is struck by two things: the recurrence of need to justify having spent one's time on To Kill in the first place (Johnson, Jolley, Hover & Hovet, and to lesser degree, Rowe) and the repetitive insistence on the themes of racism, sexism, and the 'coming of age' typology of the novel. Secondary themes, such as the focus on gothic elements by Johnson, the emphasis on vision by Champion, or the very coherent analysis of gift economy by John Carlos Rowe, seem to give the credit for greater discursive density, but one senses that the dynamics of the critical debate on the are already beginning to go around in circles. This gives some weight to the suspicion that To Kill Mockingbird, despite its awards and popularity, is less than great novel, without quelling the intuition that is, at the same time, worthy of critical consideration. (2) My goal here will be to elucidate some of the characteristics of this not quite splendid failure, but at least lopsided achievement. To do so, I will interrogate those aspects of the text that are radically open to interpretative debate, the knots and tangles in the work that seem to indicate points of unresolved tension symptomatic of artistic or ideological compromise. (3) These fault-lines that disrupt the evenness of the writing are related to most aspects of the novel: its structural cohesion, the identification and status of main character, and its ideological positioning in terms of race, class, and gender. What is fascinating about these textual disturbances is that they do not necessarily give rise, in recent criticism, to questioning of the presuppositions or pressures that produced them, but rather that they tend to fuel process of disavowal: refusal to see. In concrete terms, this is manifested by critical propensity to fill in the disturbing blanks, to smooth over contradictions, or simply to misread the text. Originating from few short stories, To Kill is first of all the product of marketing pressures. In the mid-1950s, Harper Lee showed the stories she had written about her childhood experiences to literary agent who suggested that she consider going step further by weaving the stories into ... She attempted to do so in 1956 and year later, she had completed the first draft of To Kill Mockingbird (Nelle). The transformation of the stories into was not immediately successful. Editors at Lippincott criticized the novel's structure, which they felt read like series of short stories strung together, but saw promise in the book and encouraged Lee to rewrite (Chapman & Dear 270; qtd in Petry 160). Lee spent nearly three years modifying her work to meet the editors' requirements. The first question this raises is: why was the transformation of short stories into considered to be a step further; why couldn't the stories be published as short stories? Clearly the answer is that novels were more marketable than short story collections. In his biography of Alice Munro, Robert Thacker notes that in the 1950s and 1960s it was truism among publishers that [short story] collections did not sell, and that they should be attempted only once an author's reputation was already established through the prior publication of novel (142). …

Never Saw It Coming

This is a book that will be of interest to scholars of U.S. religion and culture and to scholars of emerging adulthood. It would be useful i undergraduate sociology courses in U.S. religion, in sociology of religion, or sociology of c lture. It would be useful in graduate courses in these areas, as well, but only if coupled with other sources on emerging adulthood and religious commitment in the United States, so that students could assess for themselves the interpretive arguments about the implications of the patterns of belief and behavior that Smith describes so evocatively.

Two kinds of evidence: how information systems form rhetorical arguments

Purpose – This paper aims to examine how systems for organizing information construct rhetorical arguments for a particular interpretation of their subject matter.Design/methodology/approach – The paper synthesizes a conceptual framework from the field of rhetoric and uses that framework to analyze how existing organizational schemes present evidence in support of arguments regarding the material being organized.Findings – Organizational schemes can present logical arguments as posed in rhetoric, using two forms of evidence for their claims: relationship evidence from the category structure and resource evidence from the ways that items are assigned to categories.Research limitations/implications – This study does not attempt to identify all types of evidence that organizational schemes might use in argumentation. Further research may describe additional forms of evidence and argumentative structures.Practical implications – When creating organizational schemes, designers might develop a strategy to facil...

Towards a computer-delivered test of productive grammatical ability

This study piloted test items that will be used in a computer-delivered and scored test of productive grammatical ability in English as a second language (ESL). Findings from research on learners’ development of morphosyntactic, syntactic, and functional knowledge were synthesized to create a framework of grammatical features. We outline the interpretive argument and present results from four pilot test administrations in terms of (a) reliability, (b) relationships between item difficulties and developmental stages, (c) correlations with other English tests, and (d) predictability of test scores in relation to proficiency levels. The results support the potential of assessing productive ESL grammatical ability by targeting areas identified in SLA research, and the plausibility of moving forward with computer delivery and scoring.

Evaluation of Validity and Validation by Means of the Argument-based Approach

Validity is the most important quality aspect of tests and assessments, but it is not clear how validity can be evaluated. This article presents a procedure for the evaluation of validity and validation which is an extension of the argument-based approach to validation. The evaluation consists of three criteria to evaluate the interpretive argument, the validity evidence provided, and the validity argument. This procedure is illustrated with an existing assessment: the driver performance assessment. The article concludes with recommendations for the application of the procedure. Keywords Competence assessment, validity, validation, argument-based approach, evaluation. Expressive Reading Aloud on IEA-PIRLS 2006 Gabriella Agrusti This in-depth research study was aimed at investigating the effects of readaloud modification on students' performance on PIRLS 2006 reading comprehension tests, in two different forms: expressive reading and neutral reading. In Italy international comparative surveys often represent the main reference measure for student achievements in basic skills, but few experimental designs descending from secondary analyses attempt to investigate possible relationships among variables in order to translate results in suggestions for teaching practices. The present study was intended as a first step in this direction, analyzing if specific aspects of reading aloud can influence students' achievements in comprehension. Differences in means between groups were found statistically significant between expressive reading aloud administration and silent standard administration, though the strong concurrent validity of PIRLS 2006 test items allowed only a small variance in results due to experimental modification. Neutral reading aloud alone did not have significantly different effects on test results, confirming the general assumption that at this age word recognition skill is at an advanced level. More evident results were shown in items focused on the processes of interpreting and integrating ideas and information, highlighting how inferential more than retrieval processes are influenced by reading aloud, that efficiently convey the gist of the story and some of the implications in meaning of complex semantic topics, such as the identification and description of main characters' feelings.

Skalds, Runes, and Voice

The word skald is often explained as deriving from words for ‘abuse’, and the skald would thus have received his name as a ‘defamer’. This paper tests the arguments of that interpretation and arrives at the conclusion that ‘skald’ is more probably derived from words for ‘sound’: the skald proclaims. Through a discussion of the word run, the argument is made that the runes could be understood as sounding in a way analogous to the activity of the skald: in an oral society, writing would have been understood as the carrier of voice. The name of one of the most prolific rune carvers, Œpir, has seemed mysterious: why would anyone call himself ‘the screamer’ or ‘the loud-mouth’? In this paper, it is suggested that if the runes were considered as voice carriers, Œpir in the sense of ‘the proclaimer’ would be a congenial signature for a rune carver — or for several carvers.

Using Cognitive Interviews and Student Response Processes to Validate an Interpretive Argument for the ETS iSkills™ Assessment

Evaluating the trustworthiness of Internet-based or other digital information has become an essential 21st century skill. The iSkills™ assessment, from Educational Testing Service (ETS), purports to measure such digital evaluation skills, along with other digital literacy skills. In this work, we use an argument-based approach to assessment validation to investigate the extent to which iSkills test scores can support inferences about the ability of college students to evaluate information in a digital environment. Eighty-eight undergraduates responded to iSkills assessment tasks and to more open-ended "naturalistic" tasks. These naturalistic tasks were designed to be like homework assignments that incorporate the critical evaluation of digital information. We observed weak-to-moderate correlations between scores, suggesting overlap in the skills assessed by the iSkills and the naturalistic tasks. Analyses of concurrent cognitive interviews (n=11 of 88) suggested distinctions between students' response processes to the assessment and naturalistic tasks. Although iSkills assessment tasks appear to elicit skills consistent with evaluation of digital information in the real world, students' responses to the naturalistic tasks demonstrated broader evaluation skills and less attention to the testing context. This study provides empirical validity evidence regarding ETS's iSkills assessment, as well as valuable insights into how undergraduates evaluate information in a digital environment.

Treacherous ‘Saracens’ and Integrated Muslims: The Islamic Outlaw in Robin Hood’s Band and the Re- Imagining of English National Identity, 1800 to the Present

Robin Hood, as a popular fictional narrative of history, has played a significant role in the development of modern social cohesion and what it means to be English. A Muslim character who becomes a member of Robin’s band is one of the most overlooked additions to the evolving Robin Hood legend since 1800 in regard to its impact on shaping English identity. In this article, I propose two interpretive arguments that are unique to studies on Robin Hood. First, the different Muslim characters, despite their diverse names, constitute variations of the same character, which has become a fixture in the legend. Second, we can divide this character’s variations into two general types: the treacherous “Saracen” and the integrated Muslim. The first type is characteristic of 19th-century England as part of the British Empire, while the second type is characteristic of postwar (and post-Empire) England. Both types contributed to the re-imagining of English identity in different ways. This article seeks to trace how the transformation of this character from treacherous “Saracen” to integrated Muslim within the context of the development of Robin Hood reflects changing conceptions of what it means to be English.

Newtonian Forces and Evolutionary Biology: A Problem and Solution for Extending the Force Interpretation

There has recently been a renewed interest in the “force” interpretation of evolutionary biology. In this article, I present the general structure of the arguments for the force interpretation and identify a problem in its overly permissive conditions for being a Newtonian force. I then attempt a solution that (1) helps to illuminate the difference between forces and other types of causes and (2) makes room for random genetic drift as a force. In particular, I argue that forces are not different in kind from other types of causes but rather that forces are situated on a continuum of causes distinguished by their unifying power.

“So This Is Dyoublong”: A Report on the Dublin James Joyce Summer School, 5–11 July 2009

“So This Is Dyoublong”: A Report on the Dublin James Joyce Summer School, 5–11 July 2009 Amanda Sigler Leaning over the area railings in Georgian Dublin and debating whether they should dare to hang over the edges like Bloom but eventually opting to recline against them like Stephen, students at the 2009 Dublin James Joyce Summer School flashed their cameras and smiles, combining literary curiosity with a documentary impulse as they proceeded on the School’s walking tour. The lively tour, led by Keel Geheber of the James Joyce Centre, was the concluding activity in a richly rewarding week of lectures, seminars, workshops, and social events—all organized under the expert academic directorship of Anne Fogarty. When participants gathered at Hourican’s Pub on the opening evening, a convivial spirit of reunion pervaded the atmosphere as longtime friends embraced and joyfully recounted the highlights of past Joycean gatherings. But there were many newcomers as well, and students traveling from places as varied as Asia, Europe, America, and the Middle East were quickly welcomed into the community. This year’s Summer School had a particularly youthful touch on account of the attendance of ten eager teenagers from the Oak Park and River Forest High School in the Chicago suburbs. Their teacher, Brendan Lee, plans to continue the tradition and take a group to Dublin every other year. [End Page 210] On the first day of the School, I sat in on Christine O’Neill’s A Portrait seminar with them and was both impressed by their ability to summarize the morning’s lectures and enlightened by their amateur readings of Joyce’s work. Though “Flaubert” occasionally morphed into “Flow-burt” on their lips (and here “flow” was often pronounced like the abbreviated flower of U 11.861), the students nevertheless extracted the essential points from Scarlett Baron’s characteristically sharp presentation, “‘I will have shown somebody the way’: Flaubert and the Making of James Joyce.” In class, students reported that Stephen Dedalus’s dependence upon literary precedence, as outlined by Scarlett, made him “less of a smarty-pants” and “more accessible.” Responding to Anne Fogarty’s lecture on “Inventing Dublin,” students expressed surprise over how inconsistent Joyce could be in statements about his fictional recasting of Ireland. Flipping through her handout, the class re-examined such famous quotations as “I chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis” (LettersII 134). In an earlier comment, Joyce had described “the soul of that hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city,”1 casting yet further doubt on the precise subject of his project: is it hemiplegia or paralysis? A city or only a place considered to be? The week’s subsequent lectures and seminars were equally thought-provoking. For the remainder of the School, I attended Terence Killeen’s fascinating Finnegans Wake seminar at Boston College, where we sank into overly comfortable chairs and closely studied the henpecked letter of I.5. Other, simultaneous seminars included Peter van de Kamp’s Dubliners, which, I heard, sparked spirited interpretive debates between students and instructor, and two Ulysses classes, led by Fritz Senn and Tom Halpin, which incorporated student-led presentations, included one ambitious high-school participant, and received enthusiastic reviews. In lectures, topics covered a broad spectrum, ranging from the Hungarian and Romanian translations of Ulysses (Erika Mihálycsa) to error (Matthew Creasy), Shakespeare (Laura Pelaschiar), and the textual-genetic origins of Leopold and Molly Bloom (Luca Crispi). Delivered by a combination of seasoned Joyceans and newly-minted doctors of philosophy, the lectures were often enhanced by multimedia presentations or humorous anecdotes. In “A Bloom for No Seasons,” Fritz Senn, Patron of the Dublin James Joyce Summer School, described how Bloom is often defined by what he does not do—in “Cyclops,” for instance, he passes up the drinks and opts instead for a cigar. Here Fritz related a corollary story: an Irishman once asked a Swiss man, “Can I get you a drink?” “No thanks,” the Swiss replied. “I’ve already had one.” Just as the fictional Bloom and his modern-day Swiss counterpart fall short of Irish drinking expectations, so Bloom also refrains from...

Performing Discussion

This article argues that students still must be encouraged to participate in active, interpretive communities that build viable textual meanings in literature classes (and elsewhere). It questions how instructors in student-centered classrooms negotiate the balance between maintaining professorial authority and empowering students to test out interpretive arguments.

Pearson’s Prize: Canada and the Suez Crisis (review)

Reviewed by: Pearson’s Prize: Canada and the Suez Crisis Adam Chapnick (bio) John Melady. Pearson’s Prize: Canada and the Suez Crisis. Dundurn. 2006. 208. $30.00 Written to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Lester Pearson’s receipt of the Nobel Prize for Peace, John Melady’s popular history, Pearson’s Prize: Canada and the Suez Crisis, is underwhelming. Melady’s summary of the events leading up to, including, and following the conflict pitting Great Britain, France, and Israel against Egypt in 1956 is written in an accessible style. His short, crisp chapters, captivating anecdotes, and treatment of the crisis from an international perspective are all praiseworthy. And indeed, Canadians do not know enough about their history, and any effort to facilitate a greater popular understanding of the national past should be looked upon positively. Nevertheless, this book is weak in the crucial areas of historiography and historical context, and reinforces unhelpful national myths far more than it reveals the Canadian past. Popular history appeals to non-specialists because it does not concern itself too seriously with complicated theory that is largely incomprehensible to anyone but the most dedicated scholars. The best of the genre, however, demonstrates awareness of the interpretive debates and reveals them to the reader simply, even if only in passing. This book does not. Contemporary scholars differ, for instance, over the extent to which British Prime Minister Anthony Eden’s health problems affected his decision making in the summer and fall of 1956. Melady notes proudly that he has travelled to New York, to Egypt, and to London to see the relevant sites and conduct somewhat random interviews, but he has not read the full extent of the secondary, let alone primary, literature that has already been published on the Suez Crisis. Considering its title, it is ironic that Pearson’s Prize does a better job of conveying the international context of the crisis than it does Pearson’s (and Canada’s) role in managing it. For example, while Melady devotes more than half of the book to the Middle East, he does not mention the TransCanada Pipeline debate, the Gordon Commission, or developments in North American radar defence, all of which help explain the intense anti-American sentiment that dominated parts of Canada and the [End Page 398] national media at the time. For many aging Canadian imperialists and recent immigrants from Great Britain, the Liberal response to Suez was the last in a series of policy decisions that wrongly shifted the national focus from the Commonwealth to the Continent. Finally, the book is unwilling to confront some of the less comfortable realities of the period. Melady’s comment that ‘in the decades that have passed since Pearson’s day, Canada has truly become a peacekeeping nation’ belies recent history. Certainly, during the Cold War, Ottawa was a leader in contributing to un peacekeeping initiatives. Since then, however, its overall ranking has dropped to approximately sixtieth, and it has participated in genuine wars in the Persian Gulf, in Kosovo, and now in Afghanistan. Readers of this book will not realize that Lester Pearson himself would have preferred that the British and French be allowed to act as un peacekeepers as a means of saving them from additional international criticism. And the extent of Pearson’s regret over the eventual composition of the United Nations Emergency Force is not made sufficiently clear. Pearson knew that its mandate was too weak, that the requirement that peacekeepers use their weapons only if fired upon directly was problematic, and that developing the solution to a military conflict through the General Assembly was less than ideal. He had intended to create a Security Council–sponsored rapid reaction force, one that could violate national sovereignty in the case of political intransigence. Looked at from this perspective, the results of the Suez Crisis were actually rather tragic. The peacekeeping force that was established set a precedent that drew attention away from the need for a standing international force with real power. Adam Chapnick Adam Chapnick, Department of Defense Studies, Canadian Forces College Copyright © 2009 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

Milton's Paradise Lost: Moral Education– By Margaret Olofson Thickstun

<i>Milton's</i> Paradise Lost: <i>Moral Education</i>– By Margaret Olofson Thickstun

Politics and Foreign Relations

These are good times for the of U.S. foreign relations history, as Thomas W. Zeil er 's lucid essay makes clear. Not as good as they could be, but let's not be too finicky. Job openings are up, books are winning major prizes and generating heated interpretive debates, and the field's organizational home, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (shafr), is in robust health. No less important, one detects in recent years a greater willingness on the part of social and cultural historians?long ascendant in the discipline in the United States?to tolerate and even embrace the propositions at the heart of diplomatic history: that high politics matters, that top-down approaches are worthy and important, and that the projection of American power and influence abroad over the past two plus centuries needs serious and sustained study. Perhaps as sure a sign as any of the field's resurgence was the decision by the editors of the distinguished Ox ford History of the United States series to publish a volume on foreign relations. George C. Herring's magisterial From Colony to Superpower is currently the only book in the series written on topical rather than temporal lines. Thus what stands out in this survey of the state of the field is the health of the field. Zeiler is an enthusiast, and although it would have been helpful to get more details on some of his suggestions?he calls, for example, for pulling the mainstream a bit back toward considerations of the state, but does not really develop the point?there can be no denying the basic thrust of his essay: we are seeing an extraordinary amount of imaginative, useful work being done by histo rians employing widely varying categories of analysis. This is all to the good. U.S. foreign relations is very much a Janus-faced field, looking outward as well as inward.1 But it is the outward that is getting the lion's share of attention these days. Interna tional history is all the rage, as Zeiler duly notes. The approach is hardly new?it is worth recalling that Samuel Flagg Bemis, Ernest R. May, and other giants in the were writ ing international history half a century and more ago. But only in recent years has it be