Argumentative Dimension Research Articles

Dependency Theory and Marxism in Latin America: Between Convergences and Contradictions

The emergence of Marxist dependency theory (MDT) in Latin America during the 1960s questioned the developmentalist doctrines of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the class alliance strategies of communist parties. MDT gained traction during the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s and saw a new cycle of ascension in the early 21st century with the rise of progressive governments during Latin America’s Pink Tide. While some MDT scholars identify with Marxism-Leninism, this article critically examines aspects of this claimed affinity. The hypothesis posits that MDT’s assertions diverge from fundamental Leninist concepts and the theoretical traditions of Marxist-Leninist parties, instead reviving in new forms the arguments of their opponents in classical Marxist debates. The analysis focuses on two key dimensions of MDT arguments: (1) political propositions concerning the two-stage theory and alliances with bourgeois sectors by proletarian parties and (2) theoretical propositions on superexploitation of labor and subimperialism.

U.S. Secondary Students’ Source-Based Argument Writing in History

Developing students’ source-based argument writing skills is a vital educational goal for the 21st-century information society. Consequently, researchers and educators continually seek ways to understand and improve students’ capacities for advancing arguments and synthesizing multiple documents, texts, or sources in a range of subject areas in secondary schools. This study examined differences between middle and high school students’ argument essays (N = 207) in multiple dimensions of source-based argument writing in history, the dimensions writing in history, and the relations of identified dimensions to overall writing quality. Using multivariate analysis of covariance, middle and high school students’ writing significantly varied in areas of writing related to language use, the presentation of ideas, and evidence use. Their writing varied less so for skills related to historical thinking, indicating a lack of development in these skills across secondary school. Findings from confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling showed a bifactor model with a general factor and 4 specific factors—Presentation of Ideas, Evidence Use, Language Use, and Historical Thinking—best represented writing in this genre, with the general factor strongly predicting holistic writing scores. Implications for both research and educational practice are discussed, including the importance of attending to developmental variation in discrete writing skills.

The Argumentative Dimension in the Structurer of Kurdish Proverbs

The Argumentative Dimension in the Structurer of Kurdish Proverbs

O ethos da inexistência

In the line of dialogue between discourse studies and argumentation studies, we analyze the construction of ethos in the paratext of the book Recordações da minha inexistência - memórias (Recollections of my non-existence – memoir) by Rebecca Solnit (2021). In view of a writing that traces a counter-hegemonic discourse in the underlying social context in the argumentative dimension, an important point to observe is how the discursive project of this autobiographical writing articulates itself in the construction of the narrative ethos of the author-narrator-personage. To this end, we will analyse the paratextual elements of the work. We consider that the ethos of female non-existence in this work occurs in linguistic and extralinguistic conditions that compose a self which resonates in the collectivity. From the analyses of the paratext of the work, we highlight how the construction of the discursive ethos of the author-narrator-character reflects and refracts the constitutive social conflicts of female self-representation in contemporaneity, in an aporetic way marking the female self-reference through the logic of a non-place.

Christopher Tindale: Exploring the Cultural Foundations of Rhetoric and Reason

The interview conducted with Christopher Tindale by Ruth Amossy in this special issue on “Challenging Rhetoric” proposes a survey of Tindale’s innovative work. Developing from Informal Logic to a theory of Rhetorical Argumentation, it eventually leads to an anthropological approach that challenges the Western rhetorical tradition. It assumes that ways of reasoning are culture-dependent and that arguments as reason-giving can take many forms beyond the ones described in the Western tradition. It thus tackles the question of cross-cultural communication in its argumentative dimension. In this framework it presents an “encounter rhetoric” exploring the encounter between people from very different cultures and looking at how a mutual cognitive environment is able, over time, to emerge and allow for argumentation.

Presuppositional Fallacies

Presuppositions are at the same time a crucial and almost neglected dimension of arguments and fallacies. Arguments involve different types of presuppositions, which can be used for manipulative purposes in distinct ways. However, what are presuppositions? What is their dialectical function? Why and how can they be dangerous? This paper intends to address these questions by developing the pragmatic approaches to presupposition from a dialectical perspective. The use of presuppositions will be analyzed in terms of presumptive conclusions concerning the interlocutor’s acceptance of a proposition, which can be assessed as reasonable or unacceptable. Their dialectical function is described in terms of dark side commitments attributed to a collective "voice" representing what is commonly shared. For this reason, they count as attempts to include the presupposed contents into the hearer’s commitment store, which in some circumstances can reverse the burden of proof. The different manipulative strategies grounded on controversial presuppositions will be examined by showing the distinct roles that the latter play and the relationship between the degrees of presuppositional implicitness and the speaker’s burden of retraction.

Effects of the Triple Q Intervention on Argument Writing: Findings from a Small-Scale Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial

We examined the effects of a text-based argument writing intervention, Triple Q, on argument writing skills in a cluster-randomized trial where groups of middle schools were assigned to conditions within school-level SES blocks. The intervention comprised three 15-day units. Students read and discussed argument texts representing different positions on a policy-related question; examined the features and quality of arguments within and across texts; provided feedback on peers’ arguments; and drafted and revised their own arguments. The study was conducted in 27 sixth- and seventh-grade classrooms (k = 12 intervention) in 13 schools with 494 students (n = 220 intervention) in the southeastern United States. Results from differences-in-differences analyses showed that intervention students improved in overall argument writing quality compared to the control condition on a far transfer measure (ES = .44). To further explore the impact on specific dimensions of argumentation, we examined binary outcomes of conceptually robust indicators of argument writing skill. Results indicated greater increases in intervention students’ likelihood of incorporating some dimensions of argumentation, such as supporting reasons with evidence and citing sources of evidence with specificity.

Visual Rhetoric and Its Arguments in Caricature: The Speech of Saudi Women in Manal Al-Rasini's Drawings as an Example

This study is concerned with a rhetorical approach to the visual discourse, and it shows its argumentative dimensions through a theoretical glossary that deals with the concept of visual rhetoric, its significance, the sections of the visible sign, its functions, and levels of analysis, then standing on the discourse of Saudi women in drawing (caricature) through two topics: The first is strengthening the position of Saudi women in society, and the other is women and families of violence. The study led to the richness of non-linguistic sign systems, their understanding of the eloquence of the phrase, and the mechanisms of arguments and their connecting links. It recommended the need to open up to other visual arts towards formation (comics), conceptual photography, and to study their rhetorical techniques and their argumentative foundations that guide awareness and action.

Argumentation and the interpretation of religious texts

Abstract The interpretation of religious texts is an area of research in which rhetoric and the use of arguments play a central role. The analysis of the persuasive message expressed in many biblical passages, the reconstruction of the implicit messages conveyed by the texts, and the justification of an interpretation are questions that concern directly argumentation studies. The pragmatic dimension of arguments, the instruments developed for bringing to light implicit assumptions and conclusions, and the methods for justifying an interpretative claim can be important resources for biblical studies and applications that can open new research paths. This introduction outlines the crossroad between the two fields and the possible directions of future inquiry.

MULTIMODAL ARGUMENTATION: ASSOCIATION OF WORDS AND IMAGES IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE ARGUMENTATIVE DIMENSION OF DISCOURSE

MULTIMODAL ARGUMENTATION: ASSOCIATION OF WORDS AND IMAGES IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE ARGUMENTATIVE DIMENSION OF DISCOURSE

Secondary school mathematics teacher-perceived factors involved in argumentation: an emerging framework

ABSTRACT Our research focuses on ways teachers envision argumentation in their secondary mathematics classrooms. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 31 secondary school mathematics teachers in Israel. They were asked to envisage a hypothetical classroom dialogue focusing on mathematical tasks which would engage their students in some argumentative activity. Analysis of the teachers’ responses identified categories related to both structural and dialogic aspects associated with three dimensions of argumentation: (1) task characteristics, (2) teaching strategies, and (3) students’ characteristics. From a cross-analysis of the teachers’ statements certain categories appeared more frequently than others. We interpret our results from a theoretical and practical perspective and make recommendations for areas of future research.

Macro-Structure of Argumentative Text as Manifestation of Chinese EFL Students' Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinking cultivation has been regarded as one of the key objectives of tertiary education, which has drawn attention from the field of foreign language teaching in China. In contrast, the deficiency of critical thinking among English-major college students has become a heated-discussed issue in the past two decades. This study endeavored to combine two dimensions of argumentation: the nature of content and how it is organized, thus investigating the association between critical thinking skills manifested in each rhetorical move and EFL students' macro-structure of argumentative text. Both the move-structure approach based on Toulmin's model of argumentation and the text analysis approach were utilized to explore critical thinking skills manifested in each move. The findings show that participants had grasped the basic argumentative pattern (claim+ground) though lacking sufficient elaboration on evidence. But for secondary argumentative elements like counterargument and rebuttal, both quantity and quality lag the former. The most evident moves in the macro-structure of argumentative texts were introduction, claim, subclaim, ground, warrant, backing, counterargument, rebuttal, and conclusion. All in all, evaluation and inference critical thinking skills were the most evident in terms of composing a quality argumentation.

On the occasion of the first Argumentation Network of the Americas special issue

In this short commentary, I identify a common theme that argumentation scholars of and from the Americas might have in common - despite the vast heterogeneity of their research interest. I trace the interest in moral and political dimension of argumentation through ANA sponsored events and publication and make the case that this is a welcome development.

DUALIST POPULAR CONSTITUTIONALISM A Reply to Michelman

DUALIST POPULAR CONSTITUTIONALISM A Reply to Michelman

John Rawls and R. M. Hare: A Study of Canonization

Abstract Why is someone enduringly prized as a philosopher? To answer this question, this historical case study examines the intersecting careers of John Rawls and R. M. Hare. It looks at their writings, a complex chain of disagreements, the argumentative dimension. The essay moreover explores the clash of differing temperaments. Finally, themes in addition to ratiocination and personality are factored in: the leanings of the institutions that control access to intellectual endeavor; the public square—politics widely conceived—into which the two men were thrown; and the cultural rivalry between England and America after World War Two.

Trends in integrated waste management research: A content analysis

Analyze the trends that characterize scientific production through textual statistics and text mining methods, highlighting the most debated topics useful for developing new research perspectives in this field. Textual statistics and text mining methods were chosen to analyse the real scope of integrated waste management, focus the investigation on the central elements of their discussion, and the trends that characterized scientific production in that field. Two argumentative dimensions that characterize the corpus, the one with the greatest response, in terms of quotation, is aspects with 48 extracted quotations. This result indicates how scientific research focuses more on the relationship between integrated waste management and waste treatment, recycling, disposal, and environmental. The analysis made it possible to define the most debated issues in integrated waste management clearly. From an elements point of view, integrating waste management depends on the treatment, recycling, and disposal.

Secundum Quid and the Pragmatics of Arguments. The Challenges of the Dialectical Tradition

The phrase secundum quid et simpliciter is the Latin expression translating and labelling the sophism described by Aristotle as connected with the use of some particular expression “absolutely or in a certain respect and not in its proper sense.” This paper presents an overview of the analysis of this fallacy in the history of dialectics, reconstructing the different explanations provided in the Aristotelian texts, the Latin and medieval dialectical tradition, and the modern logical approaches. The secundum quid emerges as a strategy that is based on the pragmatic dimension of arguments, and in particular the complex passage from an utterance (what is said) to its logical form (a proposition in an argument). The medieval and modern logical theories attempted to explain from different philosophical perspectives how the pragmatically enriched semantic representation can be achieved, justified, and most importantly manipulated. The different analyses of this fallacy bring to light various dimensions of the pragmatics of arguments, and the complex interdependence between context, meaning, and inferences.

Surfaces, Subjectivity, and Self-Denial

Surfaces, Subjectivity, and Self-Denial Amber Jamilla Musser (bio) NONE LIKE US: BLACKNESS, BELONGING, AESTHETIC LIFE BY STEPHEN BEST Durham: Duke University Press, 2018 None Like Us begins with a story of familial cleavage. Though he does not explicitly delve into its contours, Stephen Best describes a graduation dinner that reveals (to him) a distance between him and his father. Another attendee describes this separation (on the part of father) as having been born from a conflict between pride and disgust—the father is proud of his son's success, but it also announces an unassimilable difference between the two. Best likens this to an injunction to community within Black studies, which he describes as not only uncomfortable but problematic: "the feeling that I am being invited to long for the return of a sociality that I never had, one from which I suspect (had I ever shown up) I might have been excluded" (1). This narrative is meant to explain Best's project, which is to decouple Black studies' relationship between the archive and community. However, this is not just any archive but that of the transatlantic slave trade, which has traditionally undergirded the idea of a Black diaspora, a term that itself has been understood to refer not only to a shared history but to common cultural, aesthetic, and religious practices. Best bristles not only at the mandate to think with slavery when thinking about Blackness but also the assumption that this history provides a useful form of commonality. Ultimately, Best aims to uncover and work with a productive version of negation: "This coveted alienation would entail a gesture best parsed as a kind of doubled movement: away from the 'clenched little [End Page 153] history of our selves' and into a language we would not naturally speak" (37). The first part of the book draws on visual art (El Anatsui, Mark Bradford), poetry (Gwendolyn Brooks), and fiction (Toni Morrison) to show how artists and writers have already been producing these unnatural languages of freedom. This section gives texture to Best's politics while also giving insight into his method of analysis. The second part uses the techniques and politics already honed to return to moments in the archive that have not coalesced into productivity; they neither align with possibilities of resistance or generate new lineages. Rumor and suicide simply are. Here, Best rewrites our understanding of these practices of negation as moments of freedom, even and especially because they don't go anywhere. By announcing that None Like Us intervenes into Black studies' oscillation between subjection and belonging, Best asks us to look specifically at the parameters of selfhood as it stretches along the axes of projection and expression. Though he does not announce it as such, the perspective that Best is grappling with has psychoanalytic undertones, which we can parse through his indebtedness to Lee Edelman even as psychoanalysis might be said to be a form of symptomatic reading par excellence. Beyond the language of the symbolic, however, psychoanalysis gives us language to think about space between belonging and subjectivity in which Best is interested. When we return to the scene of separation that inaugurates the text, alienation is not merely a condition of queerness but seemingly compelled by a psychoanalytic (glancing at Oedipus) reading of the scene in which renunciation of the father inaugurates a version of selfhood and produces its own scene of fraught belonging. Best acknowledges some of these coordinates—"I have chosen to begin in conversation with Baldwin, in an autobiographical meditation on fathers, sons, and the intimate kinship shadowed from both sides of the relation by its imminent severance, because I am seeking to understand the filial world of subjects and the ethics of subjectivity" (8)—but does not bring this to bear on the book's overall schema. Best's tiptoeing around psychoanalysis is puzzling on the one hand but also, given his investment in surface reading, is understandable. In addition to making more transparent the mechanisms between the making of subjectivity and belonging, thinking psychoanalytically also allows us to plumb the gendered dimensions of Best's argument. [End Page 154] There are several ways to think about Best's...

Science teachers in research labs: Expanding conceptions of social dialogic dimensions of scientific argumentation.

Argumentation is a central epistemic process contributing to the generation, evaluation, and application of scientific knowledge. A key challenge for science educators and researchers is to understand how the important social and discursive (“social dialogic”) dimensions of argumentation can be implemented in learning environments. This study investigates how science educators learned about such argumentation through a professional development program at a scientific research center. The 13‐day program included 5‐days working in research laboratories with a mentor and observing scientific argumentation in context. Theoretically, this research draws on sociocultural frameworks to investigate the social dialogic dimensions of scientific argumentation. Methodologically, it examines the reflections of a cohort of 21 secondary science teachers as they observed argumentation in scientific research settings. It examines how research experiences for teachers can promote an understanding of the social dialogic dimensions of argumentation and to help teachers take up educational approaches that foster expansive argumentation practices. Teachers shared a heightened awareness of argumentation as a ubiquitous, embedded feature of authentic scientific activity; expanded ideas about forms, uses, and purposes of argumentation; and developed an understanding of how contexts for argumentation such as collaborative sensemaking and critique can help manage uncertainty and build knowledge. A year after their program participation, teachers recounted shifts in pedagogical practices, including desettling traditional classroom talk patterns, scaling back their epistemic authority, providing students with more agency and ownership of ideas, and recognizing the value of establishing a culture of community and collaboration. Findings highlight how professional development in research settings has the potential to broaden teachers' views of argumentation, with implications for secondary science teaching.

Тактика эмоционального усиления аргументации в письменном научно-гуманитарном дискурсе

The aim of the article is to reveal the specifics of the implementation of the tactic of emotional amplification of argumentation in the written discourse of the humanities. The research is carried out on the material of Russian-language articles on sociology, psychology, cultural studies, linguistics, journalism, published in peer-reviewed academic journals for 2001-2019. Methodologically, the work is related to convergent theory, which ensures the integration of descriptive and normative dimensions of argumentation using qualitative analytical methods: description, functional-semantic, contextual and propositional analysis. The tactic of emotional amplification of argumentation involves the choice of communicative speech actions that actualize the emotional dominant of message perception. According to the results obtained, in the written discourse of the humanities, this cognitive attitude is realized at three levels: structural, verbal, and metatextual. Structural amplification of argumentation is associated with conceptual amplification and provides for a special construction of reasoning using the techniques of manipulating with concepts: emphasizing key concepts; creating a certain emotional evaluating background of the discourse; contrasting concepts. At the verbal level, emotional amplification of argumentation is embodied in two subtactics: psychological accentuation and para-argumentation. The techniques of psychological accentuation include the following: use of expressions with the meaning of evidence, reliability of a fact (knowledge) that convey categorical confidence; use of quantifiers with meaning of “general” and intensive words; expansion of standard argumentative verbalizers by intensifying lexemes; activation of language forms of negation; contact use of modal predicates, as well as semantically close or equivalent verbs in different temporal modes; selection of pragmatically strong verbs with argumentative semantics; use of authorized constructions that include various means of verbal amplification. The methods of paraargumentation are speech actions using rhetorical means, primarily metaphors (especially conceptual ones), as well as irony/sarcasm. Metatextual amplification of argumentation is achieved with graphic accentuation, which are typographic means (font emphasis) and techniques of expressive graphics (as a rule, exclamation constructions with appropriate punctuation). The maximum amplification of argumentation is provided by the syncretic use of structural, verbal, and metatextual means. The author concludes that the effectiveness of the tactics of emotional amplification of argumentation in the written discourse of the humanities depends on how much the speech actions that implement this tactic are consistent with rational criteria for evaluating the quality of scholarly justification and comply with the institutional norms of scholarly communication.