Characteristics of a detached argumentative style in public policy analysis

This study is a contribution to the recently introduced notion of argumentative style (van Eemeren 2019) in the framework of the pragma-dialectical approach. It aims at characterizing a detached argumentative style, by focusing on a speech event pertaining to the communicative activity type organizational discourse, a report on EU environment and climate change policies. The analysis concerns the executive summary and the key findings of the report, reconstructed in the analysis as the concluding stage of the critical discussion corresponding to the pragma-dialectical model. The notion of text type (Adam 1992) used in the analysis has allowed a more fine-grained characterization of the detached argumentative style, especially since the communicative practice under analysis displays a specific discourse format and structure for reasons of conventionalization and institutionalization. In such circumstances, determined by the type of conventionalization imposed by the context, the adoption of a detached argumentative style appears to be a pre-requisite. In the concluding stage of a critical discussion the difference of opinion is not restated, while the most significant standpoints are synthetically (re)presented by an adequate balance of narrative, descriptive and metadiscursive text strategies meant to support the objectivity, the conciseness of the presentation and also ensuring the necessary density of information required in a report summary or the presentation of key findings, respectively. While explicit negative evaluations or formulations of standpoints are avoided, the recommendations are presented as open to adoption or reconsideration by policymakers.

Stability and hybridity in refugee legal advice meetings

This article offers new insights into the discursive structuring of legal advice communication. Drawing on interactional data from eight legal advice meetings between one immigration lawyer and several different clients concerning the reunification of refugee families, the article employs communicative activity type (CAT) as a meso-level analytical approach to reveal the dynamically structured discursive organisation of these meetings. I show that whilst the stable discursive structure of the legal advice meeting evident in these data broadly confirms existing pedagogic models of legal advice communication, three different kinds of hybridity are also evident, revealing flexible use of the discursive structure in everyday practice. I also show that this stable but flexible discursive structure functions as a resource to support intercultural communication in this immigration advice context. This finding contrasts with analyses of intercultural communication in institutional gatekeeping interactions, which have argued that discursive structure functions as a barrier. The present study demonstrates the importance in discourse analysis of considering the purpose of an intercultural interaction when interpreting the meanings and functions of hybridity in discursive structure. The CAT analysis enhances our understanding of existing legal advice communication research, and functions as a heuristic for viewing legal advice as a form of institutionally grounded intercultural communication.

Argumentation in Nigerian investigative public hearings

This paper examines defendants’ argumentative discourse in the 2008 Nigerian investigative public hearings on the Federal Capital Territory administration. The data, which consist of nine defendants’ presentations, are analyzed qualitatively, using a combination of the pragma-dialectical and extended pragma-dialectical theories of argumentation. The findings show that the hearing panel initially starts of as the institutional protagonist and defendants as the antagonists, and but later serve as the institutional antagonist and protagonists, respectively. The defendants tend to use analogy and causal argumentation schemes while employing subordinative and complementary coordinative argumentation structures. The defendants also employ different strategic maneuvers at different argumentative stages of the critical discussion. Due to the politico-forensic communicative domain and information-seeking genre of the investigative public hearing discourse, the concluding stage is suspended. Thus, the study shows the influence of communicative activity type on the argumentative activities in a critical discussion.

Inleiding

Introduction to special issue on political debateThis special issue is dedicated to the retirement of former editor in chief of the Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing Ton van Haaften. It presents an investigation of some aspects of the communicative activity type ‘political debate’ from both a discourse and a historical angle. A special focus is put on Dutch parliamentary debate, of which it is shown that its norms and conventions originate from nineteenth century parliamentary discussions on how to conduct such a debate. Ever since, the strategy of attacking politicians personally has both been employed for rhetorical purposes and fiercely criticized. It was also the (late) nineteenth century when a rhetorical style was introduced in politics, i.e. by former pastor and politician Abraham Kuyper, whose famous ‘Maranatha’ speech to his followers is analyzed for its rhetorical features. Today, even more than in Kuyper’s days, politicians claim to speak on behalf of ‘the people’. An inventory of the ways in which populist politician Geert Wilders presents his appeals to the people shows four stylistic features that may have a strategic function.

Strategic maneuvering with presentational choices in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports

In the framework of the extended pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting is approached in this study as a particular communicative activity type, which can be reconstructed as part of a critical discussion. CSR reports excerpts are viewed in the analysis as parts of a virtual critical discussion in which a company acts as a protagonist maneuvering strategically to defend the standpoint according to which the business is operated ethically, and to convince the audience about what is mentioned in the standpoint. The reconstructed standpoint of a CSR report, We are doing business responsibly, may be regarded as stereotypical, since it corresponds to the institutional point of this regulated type of communicative activity. In the first part of the study, a brief overview is given of the CSR reporting activity, then the concept of strategic maneuvering is presented, under its three aspects (topical potential, audience demand, and presentational techniques), as well as the notion of communicative activity type, with a highlight on the role of the (macro-)context and of institutional preconditions in analytical studies on argumentation. The analysis in the latter part of the study concerns presentational techniques used by the protagonist in the confrontation and in the argumentation stages in CSR reporting, in order to reconcile rhetorical and dialectical aims by maneuvering strategically. The coordinatively and the subordinatively compound structure of argumentation, the symptomatic argument scheme, as well as reformulations of the standpoint, use of emotionally endowed words, concentration of the arguments in the form of nominal sentences acting as headings are among the most important presentational devices constitutive of argumentative moves aimed at convincing the audience that the company acts ethically, but also at promoting a positive image of its business responsibility, which appears to be the ground for winning the discussion.

Context-dependency of argumentative patterns in discourse

This introductory article concludes the examination of prototypical argumentative patterns manifesting themselves in communicative activity types in the political, legal and medical domain reported in this special issue of the Journal of Argumentation in Context (JAIC) and an earlier special issue of the journal Argumentation (2016, 30(1)). First, the results pertaining to the use of pragmatic argumentation in the main argumentation of prototypical argumentative patterns in the various domains are described that were reported in the latter issue. Next, the results are described which are reported in this issue of JAIC; they pertain to prototypical argumentative patterns in the various domains that come into being as a result of the employment of an argument scheme in the main argumentation that is perfectly suited for being used in a certain communicative activity type in a specific domain. In the following section an overview is provided of the most conspicuous differences in the prototypical argumentative patterns between the various communicative domains caused by the institutional preconditions for strategic maneuvering in the communicative activity types that were examined. Finally, some general conclusions are discussed.