Quality of argumentation in political tweets: what is and how to measure it / Qualidade da argumentação em tweets de política: o que e como avaliar

Argumentation is something inherent to human beings and essential to written and spoken communication. Because of the popularization of Internet access, social media are one of the main means of creation and profusion of argumentative texts in various fields, such as politics. As a way to contribute to research related to the assessment of the quality of argumentation in Portuguese, we aim in this paper to propose and validate criteria and guidelines for the assessment of the quality of argumentation in Twitter posts in the domain of politics. For this purpose, a corpus was produced and annotated with tweets whose content is related to the Brazilian political scenario. The texts were collected in the first months of 2021, resulting in 1,649,674 posts. From the analysis of a sample, we defined linguistic criteria that would potentially characterize relevant aspects of the rhetorical dimension of argumentation, namely: (i) Clarity, (ii) Arrangement, (iii) Credibility, and (iv) Emotional appeal. After this phase of analysis, we proposed the annotation of a new set of 400 tweets, by four annotators. As a result, an agreement of around 70% for three out of four annotators was obtained. It is worth noting that this is the first work that proposes linguistic criteria for the evaluation of the quality of argumentation in social medias for Brazilian Portuguese. It is intended to construct a computer model that can automatically evaluate the quality of argumentation in social media messages, such as Twitter, based on the establishment of linguistic criteria, annotation rules, and annotated corpus.Keywords: argumentation; corpus; quality; rhetorical dimension; tweets; politics.Resumo: A argumentação é algo inerente ao ser humano e essencial para a comunicação escrita e falada. Por conta da popularização do acesso à Internet, as redes sociais são um dos principais meios de criação e profusão de textos argumentativos de vários domínios, como a política. Como forma de contribuir com as pesquisas relacionadas à avaliação da qualidade da argumentação em português, este trabalho tem como objetivo propor e validar critérios e diretrizes para a avaliação da qualidade da argumentação em postagens no Twitter no domínio da política. Para tanto, produziu-se um corpus anotado com tweets cujo conteúdo relaciona-se ao cenário político brasileiro. Os textos foram coletados nos primeiros meses de 2021, resultando em 1.649.674 postagens. A partir da análise de uma amostra, foram definidos critérios linguísticos que potencialmente caracterizariam aspectos relevantes da dimensão retórica da argumentação, a saber: (i) Clareza, (ii) Organização, (iii) Credibilidade e (iv) Apelo emocional. Após essa fase de análise, propôs-se a anotação de um novo conjunto de 400 tweets, por quatro anotadores. Como resultado, obteve-se uma concordância de cerca de 70% entre 3 dos 4 anotadores. Vale ressaltar que esse é o primeiro trabalho que propõe critérios linguísticos para a avaliação da qualidade da argumentação em redes sociais para o português brasileiro. A partir da definição dos critérios linguísticos, diretrizes de anotação e corpus anotado, espera-se construir um modelo computacional que possa avaliar automaticamente a qualidade da argumentação em textos de redes sociais, como o Twitter.Palavras-chave: argumentação; corpus; qualidade; dimensão retórica; tweets; política.

Reshaping Authorial Presence in Translations of Research Article Abstracts

In multilingual settings, the abstract is the only part of the research article that is regularly translated. Although very brief, abstracts play an important role in academic communication, as they provide immediate access to research findings. Contrastive research has revealed considerable cross-linguistic differences in the rhetorical patterns of abstracts. The present paper focuses on how this variation is bridged in translation, by addressing an important rhetorical dimension of academic discourse, authorial presence. Specifically, it examines how authorial presence is reshaped in translated abstracts. An analysis of a small corpus of 150 Slovene research article abstracts from five disciplines and their English translations reveals several interesting types of recurring translators’ interventions, most notably the tendency to replace personal authorial references with impersonal structures. Data collected in interviews with four experienced translators of academic texts is used to shed light on potential reasons for interventions with authorial presence in translation.

Fictions of Credit in the Age of Shakespeare

In Shakespeare’s England, credit was synonymous with reputation, and reputation developed in the interplay of language, conduct, and social interpretation. As a consequence, artful language and social hermeneutics became practical, profitable skills. Since most people both used credit and extended it, the dual strategies of implication and inference—of producing and reading evidence—were everywhere. Like poetry or drama, credit was constructed: fashioned out of the interplay of artifice and interpretation. The rhetorical dimension of economic relations produced social fictions on a range of scales: from transitory performances facilitating local transactions to the long-term project of maintaining creditworthiness to the generalized social indeterminacy that arose from the interplay of performance and interpretation. Fictions of Credit in the Age of Shakespeare examines how Shakespeare and his contemporaries represented credit-driven artifice and interpretation on the early modern stage. It also analyses a range of practical texts—including commercial arithmetics, letter-writing manuals, legal formularies, and tables of interest—which offered strategies for generating credit and managing debt. Looking at plays and practical texts together, Fictions of Credit argues that both types of writing constitute “equipment for living”: practical texts by offering concrete strategies for navigating England’s culture of credit, and plays by exploring the limits of credit’s dangers and possibilities. In their representations of a world rewritten by debt relations, dramatic texts in particular articulate a phenomenology of economic life, telling us what it feels like to live in credit culture: to live, that is, inside a fiction.

Protodemocracy and the Fall of Sovereignty (Hobbes, Aristotle)

A close reading of Hobbes stresses the latter’s recognition of a democratic or proto-democratic moment at the root of the political, at the aporetic moment of transition from the state of nature to the political state. This rather effaced priority of democracy sits uneasily with Hobbes’s deep suspicion of it, and its constant association in his work with rhetoric and oratory. A reading of Hobbes’s language theory in light of Aristotle’s distinction between phonè and logos shows how this rhetorical dimension of language is in fact irreducible (and indeed exuberantly exploited in Hobbes’s own writing), and how, especially in Hobbes’s elaborate and fascinating discussion of counsel, it relates to the structural failing both of the sovereignty Hobbes is concerned to defend and of the models of reading he promotes in the Leviathan.

Transdziedzinowość – retoryczność – cyfryzacja. W stronę tekstów transdziedzinowych i eksplozji strukturalnej

The article analyses the agency of transgression and transcendence at the domain level. It characterizes the specificity of this process and points to factors that influence its intensification (especially the development of digital technologies). The text presents the effects of this process – the impact on the way cultural texts and their structures exist. The article examines the rhetorical dimension of a trans-disciplinary nature, the effect of which is the creation of trans-disciplinary texts. It proves the thesis that in the interaction between disciplines a structural explosion takes place, which leads to the creation of new textual figures and structures and the formation of new types of texts. These issues are illustrated using specific examples of trans-disciplinary texts.

A dimensão retórica e a dimensão discursiva no design gráfico | The rhetorical dimension and the discursive dimension in graphic design

O objetivo deste artigo é explorar diferenças e construir pontes entre a dimensão retórica e a dimensão discursiva (na perspectiva foucaultiana) no design gráfico. A ideia é justapor uma abordagem já comum e outra pouco utilizada na área, e assim buscar entender suas finalidades. Para isso, fez-se uma breve introdução aos conceitos principais de ambas dimensões e suas aplicações. Após isso, realizou-se uma análise de três artefatos (peça publicitária, pictogramas e infográfico) considerando as perspectivas apresentadas e seus critérios. Conclui-se que a abordagem discursiva difere da retórica pois não se concentra apenas nos aspectos semânticos das linguagens e sim, propõe que o discurso, para Foucault, regula as conotações e denotações consideradas possíveis.*****The purpose of this article is to explore differences and build bridges between the rhetorical dimension and the discursive dimension (in a Foucaultian perspective) in graphic design. The idea is to juxtapose an already common approach to another little used in the area, and thus seek to understand its purposes. For this, a brief introduction to the main concepts of both dimensions and their applications was made. After that, an analysis of three artifacts (advertising piece, pictograms and infographic) was performed considering the presented perspectives and their criteria. We conclude that the discursive approach differs from rhetoric because it focuses not only on the semantic aspects of languages but rather proposes that, under the Foucault's bias, discourse regulates the connotations and denotations considered possible.

European Virtual Politics

Hooghe and Marks’ update of Rokkanian European cleavages recognises the existence of a European political arena with opposite poles. The paper first contrasts rhetorics on a European level by two European Council members at opposite poles, the French President E. Macron and the Hungarian President V. Orbán, then it compares their immigration policies on a national level. While a vast difference can be detected in the rhetorical dimension, their national regulations and executive decisions on immigration are stunningly similar. Such discrepancies are explained through an institutional analysis of the European Council, which gives structural incentives to perform “virtual politics” consisting of statements aimed at gathering domestic support against virtual “opponents”, while avoiding any political risky decisions at home. Furthermore, as theneoliberal nature of the EU incentivizes the status quo in this area, only pro-found institutional reform can lay the ground for a change.

Narratives: the rhetoric of intentional action

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to clarify that narratives have a rhetorical dimension, whose study has to be considered an important part of rhetoric (this claim is not accepted by important scholars). The arguments are based on the properties that narratives are very persuasive and that they are implicitly involved in the three species of rhetoric (deliberative, judicial and celebrative) introduced by Aristotle in his Rhetoric. Second, narratives are strongly related to the concept of intentional action or human action that has a purpose, a mental project and the execution of the act, such it is defined in the classical paper by Alfred Schutz common-sense and scientific interpretation of human action (1953). This property relates narratives with phenomenology, epistemology of social sciences and management research and practice. Design/methodology/approach This research is a theoretical work based on the study of central concepts of rhetoric, narratives, historiography and epistemology of social sciences and it uncovers the narrative aspects involved in intentional action. As a theoretical study, it does not include empirical studies, but it points out some kinds of management activities, such as creating projects and case studies. Findings It uncovers the relationships between rhetoric and narratives, and between narratives and intentional action. If offers a new conceptual frame that can be very productive. Originality/value This conceptual approach is new. It clarifies important misunderstandings about narrativity, facts, meanings and interpretations.