Journalists’ moves in political press conferences and their implications for accountability

Political press conferences are important spaces for public accountability because they give journalists the opportunity to scrutinize politicians’ decisions. However, the structure of press conferences poses specific constraints to journalists because their role is limited to ask questions. This situation is not problematic if their goal is to ask informative or critical questions, but it becomes problematic if journalists want to advance standpoints, arguments, or criticisms. In the latter case, journalists have to perform their argumentative moves through façade questions in order to comply with the protocol of press conferences. For this reason, it is not easy to distinguish the argumentative function of journalists’ questions, and consequently, their value for accountability. This paper draws on the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation to give an argumentative account of political press conferences. Furthermore, the implications of journalists’ questions for accountability purposes are discussed.

Demosthenes’ strategic maneuvering in the First Olynthiac

The article focuses on the analysis of Demosthenes’ strategic maneuvering in the First Olynthiac delivered in the Athenian Assembly of the People in 349 BC. It is a case study of the famous § 24 in which Demosthenes calls for the attack on Philip of Macedonia, based on a hypothetical reciprocal scenario: Philip would attack Athens in a similar situation. The first part of the paper offers an argumentative characterisation of the Assembly of the People. Subsequently, the historical and situational circumstances of the speech are described, and an argumentative reconstruction of Demosthenes’ speech is presented. The evaluation of the speech’s context serves as a reference point for the analysis of strategic maneuvering by putting forward the argument in § 24. The argument is analysed in terms of three strategic maneuvering aspects: choice of topical potential, adaptation to audience demands, and presentational devices.

“Completely impartial opinion, okay?”

Sponsorships on YouTube – i.e., video creators on YouTube promoting a third-party product or service to their audience – have attracted considerable research interest recently in various disciplines. This multidisciplinary study analyzes it from the perspective of argumentation theory, specifically pragma-dialectics, which offers valuable new insights into the discursive tensions inherent to this type of promotion. These tensions arise between the creator’s relationship with their audience on the one hand, which is built upon ‘parasocial’ evaluations of authenticity and community, and the commercial third party brand on the other. The insights provided by the pragma-dialectic analysis are demonstrated by means of a case study examining a sponsorship segment by YouTuber PewDiePie, which shows that creators can employ specific types of presentational choices and audience adaptation strategically to undercut commitment to the sponsor while furthering the relationship with their viewers.

Bricks as arguments

This study applies Leo Groarke’s (2019) ART approach and KC (Key Component) table method to social housing buildings designed by a significant Dutch architectural movement during the early twentieth century – the so-called Amsterdam School. Unlike members of other contemporary architectural movements, architects of the Amsterdam School seldom wrote about their theories or beliefs, leaving very little evidence about their feelings and attitudes apart from the architectural forms they constructed. The expressive designs of Amsterdam School social housing buildings Het Schip and De Dageraad present promising opportunities for theoretical reflection on architecture as a form of embodied visual and multimodal argumentation (‘bricks as arguments’), however, other theoretical tools may be necessary to supplement the ART approach in order to fashion a critical method capable of apprehending the full scope of argumentation in the complex and rich Dutch polylogue.

The co-construction of campaign argumentation on U.S.A. late-night talk shows

This study shows that when presidential candidates visit, late-night talk show discourse is argumentative, and that this argumentation is co-constructed by the host and the candidate. Through their questions, hosts implicitly invoke arguments by casting doubt on the candidate’s presidential bid. By treating the host’s questions as critical questions expressing skepticism whether people should vote for the candidate, politicians prototypically use two types of argument schemes to defend their case. First, to argue that their policy proposals are needed, candidates use complex problem-solving argumentation. Second, to maintain that they have the skills and character to succeed as president, candidates use symptomatic argumentation. In their response, candidates also deal with other critical questions belonging to the argument scheme invoked through the host’s question. Which critical questions of that argument scheme the candidate addresses in addition to the one posed by the host depends on the type of question the host has asked.

A system of circumstantial evidence for fact-finding in criminal trial

One of the most intractable, but significant problems in the theory of legal evidence concerns circumstantial evidence. The diversity and complexity of criminal cases cause some bottlenecks and difficulties in developing reasonable methods to prove the criminal issue by means of circumstantial evidence. The main purpose of this paper is to present more effective methods of fact-finding just by means of a system of circumstantial evidence (SCE). On the basis of analysis of the nature of circumstantial evidence, we find it necessary for the prosecution to construct a SCE in order to make a judge or jury accept the prosecution’s conclusion as the best explanation. We also present a reasonable logical structure of such a system and address some legal and logical problems in introducing it.

Strategic maneuvering in extended polylogues

This paper presents the analysis of the Hungarian nuclear expansion controversy using a conceptual framework that links strategic maneuvering with an extended polylogical controversy and evaluates the strategic maneuvering of political, environmentalist and expert actors. The paper aims to show that the three aspects of strategic maneuvering (audience demand, topical potential, presentational devices) are flexible enough that they can be analyzed when the object of study is not a spatially and temporally localized argumentative situation, but a decade-long debate with multiple actors. In 2014, Hungary signed a deal with Russia to finance 80% of the investment costs and supply two new reactors to maintain the 40–50% of nuclear energy in the national energy production.