The Language Of Argumentation [36, 1st Edition] 3030529061, 9783030529062, 9783030529079

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Argumentation Library

Ronny Boogaart Henrike Jansen Maarten van Leeuwen   Editors

The Language of Argumentation

Argumentation Library Volume 36

Series Editor Frans H. van Eemeren, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Editorial Board Fernando Leal Carretero, University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico Maurice A. Finocchiaro, Department of Philosophy, University of Nevada at Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV, USA Bart Garssen, Faculty of Humanities, TAR, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, The Netherlands Sally Jackson, Communication, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA Wu Peng, School of Foreign Languages, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China Sara Rubinelli, University of Luzern, Nottwil, Luzern, Switzerland Takeshi Suzuki, School of Information and Communication, Meiji University, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan Cristián Santibañez Yañez, Faculdad de Psicologia, University of Concepción, Concepción, Chile David Zarefsky, School of Communication, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA Sara Greco, IALS, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland

Since 1986 Springer, formerly Kluwer Academic Publishers, publishes the international interdisciplinary journal Argumentation. This journal is a medium for distributing contributions to the study of argumentation from all schools of thought. From a journal that published guest-edited issues devoted to specific themes, Argumentation has developed into a regular journal providing a platform for discussing all theoretical aspects of argumentative discourse. Since 1999 the journal has an accompanying book series consisting of volumes containing substantial contributions to the study of argumentation. The Argumentation Library aims to be a high quality book series consisting of monographs and edited volumes. It publishes texts offering important theoretical insights in certain major characteristics of argumentative discourse in order to inform the international community of argumentation theorists of recent developments in the field. The insights concerned may pertain to the process of argumentation but also to aspects of argumentative texts resulting from this process. This means that books will be published not only on various types of argumentative procedures, but also on the features of enthymematic argumentation, argumentation structures, argumentation schemes and fallacies. Contributions to the series can be made by scholars from a broad variety of disciplines, ranging from law to history, from linguistics to theology, and from science to sociology. In particular, contributions are invited from argumentation theorists with a background in informal or formal logic, modern or classical rhetoric, and discourse analysis or speech communication. A prerequisite in all cases is that the contribution involved is original and provides the forum of argumentation theorists with an exemplary specimen of advanced scholarship. The Argumentation Library should enrich the study of argumentation with insights that enhance its quality and constitute a fruitful starting point for further research and application. All proposals will be carefully taken into consideration by the editors. They are to be submitted in fourfold. If the prospects for including a certain project in the series are realistic, the author(s) will be invited to send at least three representative chapters of their manuscript for review to the editors. In case the manuscript is then judged eligible for publication, the complete manuscript will be reviewed by outside expert referees. Only then a final decision can be taken concerning publication. This book series is indexed in SCOPUS. Authors interested in submitting a proposal or completed manuscript can contact either [email protected] or the Series Editor.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/5642

Ronny Boogaart · Henrike Jansen · Maarten van Leeuwen Editors

The Language of Argumentation

Editors Ronny Boogaart Faculty of Humanities Leiden University Centre for Linguistics Leiden, The Netherlands

Henrike Jansen Faculty of Humanities Leiden University Centre for Linguistics Leiden, The Netherlands

Maarten van Leeuwen Faculty of Humanities Leiden University Centre for Linguistics Leiden, The Netherlands

ISSN 1566-7650 ISSN 2215-1907 (electronic) Argumentation Library ISBN 978-3-030-52906-2 ISBN 978-3-030-52907-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52907-9 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 The chapter “Old Is the New New: The Rhetoric of Anchoring Innovation” is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). For further details see license information in the chapter. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Ton van Haaften

Contents

Introduction: From Argumentation to Language—And Vice Versa . . . . . Ronny Boogaart, Henrike Jansen, and Maarten van Leeuwen

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Theoretical and Methodological Considerations Characterizing Argumentative Style: The Case of KLM and the Destructed Squirrels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Frans H. van Eemeren

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Argumentation in Evolution: On the Relation Between Dyadic and Public Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Arie Verhagen

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Technical Terminology and Argument Analysis and Appraisal . . . . . . . . . J. Anthony Blair

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Analyzing Rhetorical Style: Toward Better Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jeanne Fahnestock

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From Argumentation to Language “Those Are Your Words, not Mine!” Defence Strategies for Denying Speaker Commitment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ronny Boogaart, Henrike Jansen, and Maarten van Leeuwen

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Uses of Linguistic Argumentation in the Justification of Legal Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Eveline T. Feteris, Harm Kloosterhuis, and H. José Plug Diagramming Counterarguments: At the Interface Between Discourse Structure and Argumentation Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Andrea Rocci

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How Face Threatening Are Disagreement Moves? A Proposal for an Integration of Insights from Politeness Theory into Argumentation Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Assimakis Tseronis From Language to Argumentation The Strategic Use of Metaphor in Argumentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Roosmaryn Pilgram and Lotte van Poppel The Maxims of Common Sense: Strategic Manoeuvring with Figurative Analogies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Bart Garssen Empty Is Emptied: How Frame Choice Affects Previous State Inferences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 Bregje Holleman and Henk Pander Maat Old Is the New New: The Rhetoric of Anchoring Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . 243 Ineke Sluiter Drawing Attention to Information in Russian Argumentation: The Function of the Performative Expression Važno Podˇcerknut’ (“It’s Important to Emphasize”) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261 Egbert Fortuin Strategic Manoeuvring with the Expression “Not for Nothing” . . . . . . . . . 285 Henrike Jansen and Francisca Snoeck Henkemans Everybody Knows that There Is Something Odd About Ad Populum Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305 Thierry Herman and Steve Oswald

Editors and Contributors

About the Editors Ronny Boogaart is an Assistant Professor at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). He (co-)authored various invited contributions to linguistic handbooks on tense, aspect and modality, but is also occupied with popularizing linguistics: in 2016, he was awarded for writing the best Dutch popular book on linguistics of the year. His current research focuses on the strategic use of constructions in argumentation. Henrike Jansen obtained her Ph.D. with a dissertation on legal argumentation from a pragma-dialectical perspective. She is an Associate Professor at Leiden University (the Netherlands), editor of the Dutch journal Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing, and member of the Steering Committee of the European Conference on Argumentation (ECA). In her research she approaches the study of argumentation from a linguistic angle. Maarten van Leeuwen is an Assistant Professor at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). His research focuses on (methodological aspects of) linguistic stylistics, its application to political discourse (e.g., the question how linguistic choices contribute to the creation of a political image, such as the image of being a “populist”), and on the integration of linguistic stylistics and argumentation theory.

Contributors J. Anthony Blair Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada Ronny Boogaart Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden, The Netherlands ix

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Editors and Contributors

Jeanne Fahnestock Department of English, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA Eveline T. Feteris Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Egbert Fortuin Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden, The Netherlands Bart Garssen Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric, ILIAS, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Francisca Snoeck Henkemans Department of Speech Communication Argumentation Theory, and Rhetoric, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Thierry Herman Institute of Communication and Cognitive Science, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland; Faculté Des Lettres, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland Bregje Holleman Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht, The Netherlands Henrike Jansen Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden, The Netherlands Harm Kloosterhuis Erasmus School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands Steve Oswald Department of English, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland Henk Pander Maat Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht, The Netherlands Roosmaryn Pilgram Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden, The Netherlands H. José Plug Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands Andrea Rocci Institute of Argumentation, Linguistics and Semiotics, Faculty of Communication, Culture and Society, Università della Svizzera italiana, Lugano, Switzerland Ineke Sluiter Centre for the Arts in Society, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands Assimakis Tseronis School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences, Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden Frans H. van Eemeren ILIAS, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Editors and Contributors

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Maarten van Leeuwen Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden, The Netherlands Lotte van Poppel University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands Arie Verhagen Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden, The Netherlands

Introduction: From Argumentation to Language—And Vice Versa Ronny Boogaart, Henrike Jansen, and Maarten van Leeuwen

Being one of the central concerns of the rhetorical tradition since antiquity, the study of the linguistic options available to language users to present their arguments in the most effective way has a long history.1 Despite this respectable tradition, language and argumentation have largely been studied as two separate phenomena in the 20th century, in linguistics and theories of argumentation respectively. More recently, in both disciplines attention for the interconnectedness of language and argumentation has been increasing (see the overviews presented by Oswald et al. 2018 and Hinton 2019).2 However, scholars from different theoretical backgrounds who explicitly include both language and argumentation in their research, do not always use these terms in the same way and approach the relationship between the two from different directions, making it difficult to compare their findings. In fact, the day to day practice 1 We

would like to express our gratitude to all our colleagues who kindly participated in the review process of the various chapters and to the two anonymous referees who reviewed the manuscript as a whole and made us rethink and substantially improve the overall structure of the book. 2 The Swiss Collectif Romand de Recherches sur l’Argumentation (CoRReA), consisting of Thierry Herman, Jérôme Jacquin, Raphaël Micheli and Steve Oswald, has recently initiated a conference series addressing the combination of argumentation and language (2015, 2018). These ARGAGEconferences resulted in the Springer book Argumentation and Language—Linguistic, Cognitive and Discursive Explorations (Oswald et al. 2018) and a special issue of the journal Informal Logic (Pollaroli et al. 2019). A similar initiative consists in the Polish WILL conferences (Workshop on Informal Logic and Linguistics), which are organised by the Linguistics Department of the University of Łódz (Hinton 2019). R. Boogaart (B) · H. Jansen · M. van Leeuwen Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] H. Jansen e-mail: [email protected] M. van Leeuwen e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Boogaart et al. (eds.), The Language of Argumentation, Argumentation Library 36, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52907-9_1

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of academic life does not stimulate for these researchers to meet and compare their results, let alone integrate them in a more encompassing view on the relationships between language and argumentation. In The Language of Argumentation we bring these different approaches together in order to get such a more global perspective on current research in this domain and to facilitate discussion within and among disciplines. This volume consists of three parts. In part I, leading figures in their respective fields reflect on general issues of theory and methodology. In the final chapter of this part, Jeanne Fahnestock (chapter “Analyzing Rhetorical Style: Toward Better Methods”) suggests a distinction between two different ways in which the relationship between language and argumentation may be investigated: either going from argumentation to language or vice versa. This basic distinction provides the structure of the remainder of this volume: The chapters in Part II each start off from a specific argumentative move and present the different ways in which it is manifested in discourse; the chapters in Part III take a specific rhetorical figure or linguistic construction as their point of departure and are concerned with its argumentative function and strategic potential. In this introduction, we present an overview of the chapters, situating them with respect to each other and to more general developments in argumentation theory and linguistics, and focusing on their relevance for the general issue of the volume: the relationship between language and argumentation. Part I: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations In the first part of this volume we present more general reflections on argumentation and language, and their interconnectedness. Frans H. van Eemeren (chapter “Characterizing Argumentative Style: The Case of KLM and the Destructed Squirrels”), discussing the concept of “argumentative style”, represents the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation, which has been inspired by theories of language use from the very start. In “Argumentation in Evolution: On the Relation Between Dyadic and Public Communication”, Arie Verhagen focuses on language, argumentation and reasoning as dealt with in evolutionary theory. J. Anthony Blair, in the chapter “Technical Terminology and Argument Analysis and Appraisal”, compares the technical and non-technical ways in which people use language about argumentation. Jeanne Fahnestock (“Analyzing Rhetorical Style: Toward Better Methods”) concludes this part by treating crucial methodological issues in researching the connection between argumentation and the use of linguistic devices. In “Characterizing Argumentative Style: The Case of KLM and the Destructed Squirrels”, Frans van Eemeren explores the notion of “argumentative style” within the framework of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. Amongst theories of argumentation it is pre-eminently the pragma-dialectical approach which has always included a language use perspective in the study of argumentative discourse. Specifically, the reconstruction of argumentation is accounted for by insights from linguistic pragmatics, integrating Searlean and Gricean notions (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984) as well as an inventory of verbal indicators marking specific argumentative moves (van Eemeren et al. 2007). (In the present volume this is also

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demonstrated in some detail by Garssen in “The Maxims of Common Sense: Strategic Manoeuvring with Figurative Analogies” on figurative analogies, analysed as indirect speech acts.) More recently, the extended pragma-dialectical theory, integrating the perspective of “strategic manoeuvring” (van Eemeren 2010, 2018), explicitly pays attention to presentational devices, i.e. the stylistic design of argumentative moves, as one of the crucial aspects of the analysis (cf. the chapters by Tseronis, Pilgram & van Poppel, Garssen, and Jansen & Snoeck Henkemans in this volume).3 However, in his contribution to this volume, van Eemeren emphasizes that argumentative style involves more than linguistic style. It crucially includes particular uses of argumentative moves that together constitute certain argumentative patterns and are based on particular strategic considerations. The linguistic design of these moves does constitute one of the relevant dimensions, but only one among others. In fact, the observation that it may not be useful, or even possible, to neatly separate the choice of linguistic presentational devices from other sorts of options arguers have (in particular “topical” ones, relating to the content of the argument) is relevant for most of the chapters in this volume; it is explicitly addressed by Fahnestock in her chapter “Analyzing Rhetorical Style: Toward Better Methods” and by Pilgram and van Poppel in their discussion of metaphor in “The Strategic Use of Metaphor in Argumentation” as well. After having defined the notion of argumentative style along these lines, van Eemeren identifies the argumentative style that is used in a quasi-apologetic press release of the Dutch airline company KLM and shows how it is used to realize KLM’s strategic scenario. In his chapter “Argumentation in Evolution: On the Relation Between Dyadic and Public Communication”, Arie Verhagen contributes to the discussion about the origin and function of argumentative language by critically examining two views on the evolution of argumentation, represented by Tomasello (2014) and Mercier and Sperber (2017). Verhagen shows that there are two important differences between these approaches: one concerning the evolutionary phase in which argumentation is assumed to have emerged; the other concerning the primacy of dyadic communication (social interaction) or public communication (community-wide decision making). Verhagen presents an alternative view that integrates the most convincing claims of both approaches. For the purpose of this volume, it is important to note Verhagen’s claim that, from an evolutionary perspective, a neutral concept of argumentation is needed, that is, in fact, manifest in language in a more general way than in the “argumentative” 3 Within

the framework of strategic manoeuvring, studies have focused on the argumentative function(s) of figures of speech such as metaphor, metonymy, litotes, hyperbole, irony, praeteritio and rhetorical questions (e.g. van Eemeren and Houtlosser 1999c, 2000b; Snoeck Henkemans 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013; Snoeck Henkemans and Plug 2008; Tonnard 2011; van Poppel 2016), but the approach has also been fruitfully applied to other aspects of linguistic presentation (e.g. van Eemeren and Houtlosser 1999a, b, c, 2000a, b, 2002, Zarefsky 2006; Jansen 2009, 2011, 2016, 2017; Tseronis 2009; Jansen et al. 2011; Boogaart 2013). Also within the framework of strategic manoeuvring research has been carried out that is focusing on “hidden fallaciousness” (van Eemeren et al. 2012, 2015; van Eemeren and Garssen 2019), which is at least partly related to the analysis of presentational devices (cf. Jansen and van Leeuwen forthcoming).

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discourse as defined by Mercier and Sperber, and by theories of argumentation. This is apparent, for instance, from the use of argumentative operators and connectives (also mentioned by Rocci in “Diagramming Counterarguments: At the Interface Between Discourse Structure and Argumentation Structure”) that are “part and parcel” of everyday interactions. Verhagen’s concept of argumentation echoes the seminal work of Anscombre and Ducrot (1983), who claim that, in principle, every utterance is argumentative since the so-called descriptive meaning of sentences merely serves as a cue for drawing conclusions about the speaker’s intention. This idea was taken up in cognitive linguistics most explicitly in the work of Verhagen (2007) himself, who frames the social dimension of interaction in terms of “argumentative orientation”.4 In this volume, Holleman and Pander Maat (“Empty Is Emptied: How Frame Choice Affects Previous State Inferences”) likewise use a Ducrot-inspired notion of argumentative orientation to explain the effect of attribute framing, as in “the glass is half full/half empty”. Such choices are treated as linguistic clues steering the hearer/reader towards certain conclusions. Whereas Ducrot’s— and, by extension, Verhagen’s—radical view of argumentativity as inherent in (all) language use suggests a wider conception of “argumentation” than is common in argumentation theory, the actual phenomena being investigated and the way they are accounted for is compatible: in argumentation theory, argumentative operators and connectives have been treated as linguistic indicators of argumentation (van Eemeren et al. 2007) and could be incorporated in present-day pragma-dialects as presentational choices that enable the arguer to manoeuvre towards their rhetorical goal. In Part III of the volume this is demonstrated for other linguistic constructions as well.5 In his chapter “Technical Terminology and Argument Analysis and Appraisal”, J. Anthony Blair discusses a highly specific topic in the domain of language and argumentation, namely language about argumentation. Blair addresses the question whether laymen arguers need a technical vocabulary in order to understand (i.e. interpret and assess) argumentation. The question is answered in the negative, mainly from a pedagogical point of view, pointing out that people who are trained in different approaches, i.e. coming from different theoretical backgrounds with their own technical terminology, will have difficulties communicating. If the latter is true for students, and for communication across different theories of argumentation, it is of course all the more true where it concerns the dialogue between argumentation theorists and linguists that we are trying to enhance in this volume. (As we saw above, this very point is well illustrated by Verhagen’s discussion in his chapter “Argumentation in Evolution: On the Relation Between Dyadic and Public Communication” of the concept of argumentation itself.) Such a dialogue, therefore, 4 Boogaart

and Reuneker (2017) show how Verhagen’s notion of “intersubjectivity” is related to “argumentativity” and how it may be applied to the semantics of grammatical phenomena like negation, complementation, modality and conditionality. Anscombre and Ducrot’s line of thinking has also been taken up by Amossy (2005, 2006), who, together with Plantin and Doury applies a linguistic (i.e. discourse analytic) approach to argumentation (e.g. Plantin 2002; Doury 2004). 5 The insight that linguistic choices steer the reader/hearer towards certain conclusions, also plays a role in the linguistic-stylistic approach, see van Leeuwen (2015), Fagel (2015), Stukker and Verhagen (2019), van Haaften and van Leeuwen (2018, forthcoming) aiming at the systematic analysis of stylistic choices and their argumentative-rhetorical consequences.

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requires quite some effort on both sides to understand the theoretical commitments that are unavoidably entailed by the use of technical terms, including the technical use of everyday words that have acquired another meaning within the theory. In fact, as Blair points out, the “non-technical” vocabulary of everyday natural language itself is not theory-free either, but rather, in various respects, embodies a folk theory of argument. In her chapter “Analyzing Rhetorical Style: Toward Better Methods”, Jeanne Fahnestock, whose works on style and persuasion (2002, 2011) can be regarded as landmarks where the language of argumentation is concerned, observes that linguistic analyses of a text usually produce so many data that analysts can easily select those data that suit their ideological agenda. In her contribution she addresses methods for designing stylistic studies that might be of help to overcome this selection bias and to make stylistic analysis a better instrument for understanding how language choices can deliver an argument. To this end, Fahnestock discusses five “selection strategies” for shaping stylistic studies. The first three of these concern limitations on the choice of texts to be analysed; more in particular, Fahnestock recommends comparing texts with other versions or drafts of the same text, with quotations thereof, or with other texts from the same genre. The other two selection strategies mention two different methods to conduct rhetorical stylistics: either the analyst uses the line of argument as point of departure and selects and interprets language choices in light of this (cf. van Eemeren’s chapter “Characterizing Argumentative Style: The Case of KLM and the Destructed Squirrels”), or the analyst starts from a particular linguistic device and determines how it is used in different instances, which is pretty much standard practice in linguistic research. Whereas Fahnestock explicitly restricts the latter method to devices that have already been identified in rhetorical stylistics, such as figures of speech, we find Fahnestock’s distinction useful for this volume to structure the field of research into language and argumentation more generally: The chapters in part II start off from argumentation, i.e. from a specific type of argumentative move and then present an overview of the different forms it may take; the chapters in part III start off from language, and are basically concerned with the argumentative function and strategic potential of a particular rhetorical figure or linguistic construction. Part II: From Argumentation to Language All four chapters in part II make use of the approach going “from argumentation to language” by taking a quite general type of argumentative move as their point of departure and investigating the different ways in which such a move may be manifested in actual discourse. The following types of moves are addressed: denying commitment to a prior utterance; using linguistic argumentation; presenting a counterargument; expressing disagreement. From the perspective of the theme of the volume, it is interesting to observe that, in all four chapters, this approach does not necessarily result in an inventory of specific lexical or grammatical markers for the argumentative move under discussion—or only indirectly so. Rather, they are all

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concerned with distinguishing between different, more specific subtypes of the relevant argumentative move, which may be considered as a topical choice available to the arguer at least as much as a presentational one. This observation is in line with van Eemeren’s comments on the inseparability of the different aspects of “argumentative style” and of strategic manoeuvring more generally (2010: Chap. 4). It also accords with Fahnestock’s insistence, when discussing this particular research strategy, that “the argument is always the core of the text, the starting point for invention, and the rationale for all the other choices in a text”. The first two chapters in part II are relevant for the topic of this volume for another reason as well. Whereas Blair discussed language about argumentation, both Boogaart et al. in ““Those are your words, not mine!” Defence Strategies for Denying Speaker Commitment” and Feteris et al. in their chapter “Uses of Linguistic Argumentation in the Justification of Legal Decisions” are concerned with argumentation about language. In the chapter ““Those are your words, not mine!” Defence Strategies for Denying Speaker Commitment”, Ronny Boogaart, Henrike Jansen and Maarten van Leeuwen focus on rhetorical strategies for commitment denial. In contrast to traditional studies of commitment in linguistics, they do not only study denial of commitment to an implicature, but also denial of commitment to literal meaning; to make these distinctions they rely on insights from linguistic pragmatics (as do Herman and Oswald in their chapter “Everybody Knows That There Is Something Odd About Ad Populum Arguments”). By discussing a series of actual cases, they investigate the argumentative strategies that arguers make use of when denying commitment to an alleged implicated or literal meaning of a prior utterance. By classifying these strategies in terms of classical rhetorical status theory, they not only show the system that underlies them, but also offer some clues for determining their reasonableness. Eveline Feteris, Harm Kloosterhuis and José Plug, in the chapter “Uses of Linguistic Argumentation in the Justification of Legal Decisions”, study the use of linguistic arguments, using the (alleged) semantics of the wording in a statutory norm, in legal decisions. By showing that linguistic arguments can be used in four different ways and with different goals, they explain why the use of linguistic arguments in legal decisions is as much contested as it is acclaimed as a tool for legal interpretation to ascertain the ideals of the Rule of Law. If we envisage the research strategy going “from argumentation to language” as a continuum, then the other two chapters in this part are to be situated somewhat more on the linguistic side of things: both Rocci in the chapter “Diagramming Counterarguments: At the Interface Between Discourse Structure and Argumentation Structure” and Tseronis in the chapter “How Face Threatening Are Disagreement Moves? A Proposal for an Integration of Insights from Politeness Theory into Argumentation Theory” include specific grammatical resources in their analysis and both of them propose to integrate argumentation theory with linguistic models, of discourse coherence and politeness respectively. In “Diagramming Counterarguments: At the Interface Between Discourse Structure and Argumentation Structure”, Andrea Rocci addresses the diagramming of counterarguments, seeking connection with more general accounts of discourse coherence and arguing in particular that such

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diagrams constitute a direct reflection of the semantics of adversative and concessive constructions. After a review of approaches to the diagramming of these arguments originating in Informal Logic, A.I. and computational linguistics, an alternative style of analysis is proposed, which captures insights from pragma-dialectics and which relies on confrontation as a primitive instead of attack.6 Assimakis Tseronis, in his chapter “How Face Threatening Are Disagreement Moves? A Proposal for an Integration of Insights from Politeness Theory into Argumentation Theory”, integrates insights from pragma-dialectics and Brown and Levinson’s theory (1987) of linguistic politeness in order to study conflict talk and disagreement. He proposes a classification of moves expressing disagreement about a position that has been previously advanced in a conversation, by taking into account their functional and linguistic properties; specifically, as a linguistic variable, Tseronis uses the formal distinction between declarative and interrogative utterances. The different categories are illustrated by means of dialogues from well-known fiction films. Part III: From Language to Argumentation The chapters in part III are, in the words of Fahnestock, “flipping the argument/language connection” by taking a specific linguistic form as point of departure rather than an argumentative function. As Fahnestock notes, there has “overall” been “little work” on this, so the seven chapters in this part may be regarded as a significant contribution to filling this gap in the literature. The first two contributions in this part follow Fahnestock’s definition of this research strategy most closely by starting off from “a particular linguistic form defined in the rhetorical tradition”, i.e. metaphor (“The Strategic Use of Metaphor in Argumentation”) and the more specific variant of figurative analogy (“The Maxims of Common Sense: Strategic Manoeuvring with Figurative Analogies”). In “The Strategic Use of Metaphor in Argumentation”, Roosmaryn Pilgram and Lotte van Poppel study the strategic functions of metaphor in argumentative discourse by integrating the extended pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation with insights from the three-dimensional (3D) metaphor model from cognitive linguistics (Steen 2008). Since the latter model provides systematic distinctions between different kinds of metaphor (novel versus conventional, direct versus indirect, and deliberate versus non-deliberate), this enables a more differentiated analysis of strategic manoeuvring involving metaphor. Whereas such distinctions have been made in cognitive linguistics starting with Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) seminal work on conceptual metaphor, they have hardly been taken into account in argumentation-theoretic work on the topic. In accordance with one of the threads running through this entire volume, the approach entails that metaphor is not merely a presentational device used for rhetorical purposes, but may also fulfil relevant argumentative functions. Bart Garssen, in “The Maxims of Common Sense: Strategic Manoeuvring with Figurative Analogies”, 6 Rocci’s

book on modality (2017) takes the perspective “from language to argumentation” by studying the relationship between the semantic analysis of modality and the structure of arguments. Together with Rigotti and Greco Morasso he represents the (linguistic) Luganese semantic-pragmatic approach to argumentative discourse (e.g. Rigotti and Greco Morasso 2010).

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argues that figurative analogies should not be seen as analogy argumentation but as arguments being based on a causal or symptomatic argument scheme. Thus, figurative analogy constitutes an instance of indirect language; the argumentation needs to be reconstructed in order to make evaluation possible. This raises the question why arguers would use such a presentational device, given that a more direct presentation is possible as well. In answer to this question, Garssen discusses three strategic functions of figurative analogies: transferring connotations of the “phoros” (source) to the “theme” (target), preventing an antagonist from asking critical questions, and introducing controversial propositions as starting points. Both Pilgram and van Poppel and Garssen point out that experimental research would be needed to test the effectiveness and actual effects of using presentational devices. In their chapter “Empty is Emptied: How Frame Choice Affects Previous State Inferences”, Bregje Holleman and Henk Pander Maat report on two of such experiments, testing the effect of the device of attribute framing, i.e. the choice of one value of a two-sided variable as in “the glass is half full/half empty”—a classic distinction in the literature on the “argumentative” function of linguistic choices that is also mentioned in the work of both Verhagen and Ducrot cited earlier. Holleman and Pander Maat show how choosing a particular attribute frame affects a hearer’s evaluations and inferences, also about so-called “previous states”: framed components are typically assumed to have increased. While admitting that they are stretching the notion of “argumentation” by including these previous state inferences under the umbrella of “argumentative orientation”, it is clear that attribute framing constitutes a text book example of how utterances are used to communicate much more than their literal, “descriptive” meaning and may be used for rhetorical purposes—even if one does not want to subscribe to Ducrot’s more radical view that there is no such thing as descriptive meaning. In “Old is the New New: The Rhetoric of Anchoring Innovation”, Ineke Sluiter discusses the phenomenon of “anchoring”, starting with the way this notion is used in linguistics to capture the semantics and pragmatics of grammatical categories like tenses and pronouns. Sluiter argues that anchoring is a more general phenomenon, providing, in fact, a unified perspective in analyzing linguistic and rhetorical elements identified by different schools of thought. From the viewpoint of argumentation, anchoring may be used for the discourse of “selling” innovations by referring to familiar practices. (As such, the notion of anchoring resembles Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s (1969) processes of “association”, defined as “schemes which bring separate elements together and allow us to establish a unity among them, which aims either at organizing them or evaluating them, positively or negatively, by means of one another” (p. 190).) It is manifested in discursive practices like genealogy, mythology, aetiology, and etymology, all of which, in Sluiter’s view, are typically used in an “engaged” style of argumentation, which is mentioned by van Eemeren in his chapter as the opposite of the “detached” style he observes in the KLM press release. To round off her paper, Sluiter returns to linguistics by mentioning the evaluative use of the words “old” and “new”, and by discussing the semantics of the phrase “X is the new Y”, which she labels an “anchoring trope”.

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The phrase discussed by Sluiter (“X is the new Y”) exemplifies the type of linguistic expressions that have come to the fore in linguistic research recently, especially since the rise of “constructionist” approaches to grammar (see Hilpert 2014 for an introduction to “construction grammar”). Rather than making a strict division between words in the lexicon on the one hand and abstract grammatical rules on the other, the framework of construction grammar has called special attention to conventionalized linguistic units that are in between these two, i.e. more or less fixed patterns pairing a specific form to a specific meaning or discourse function. Typically, the meaning of these patterns is non-compositional and, therefore, it is argued that they need to be learned and stored independently as “constructions” (Tomasello 2003). (From this theoretical perspective, the conventionalized metaphors and figurative analogies from chapter “The Strategic Use of Metaphor in Argumentation” and chapter “The Maxims of Common Sense: Strategic Manoeuvring with Figurative Analogies” would be considered constructions as well.) Like Sluiter in chapter “Old is the New New: The Rhetoric of Anchoring Innovation”, the three final chapters in this volume show that an “idiomatic” unit may also have argumentative and rhetorical potential to be exploited in argumentative discourse (see Jansen 2016, 2017, and Boogaart 2020 for other examples; cf. Verhagen 2007 and van Leeuwen 2012, 2018 on the more abstract complementation construction). Egbert Fortuin describes the argumentative function of the Russian expression važno podˇcerknut’—“it’s important to emphasize” (“Drawing Attention to Information in Russian Argumentation: The Function of the Performative Expression Važno Podˇcerknut’ (“It’s Important to Emphasize”)”). On the basis of a corpus study, he distinguishes two main uses of this expression, i.e. one it which it anticipates an incorrect inference of the author’s own or someone else’s argument or standpoint, and one in which it introduces an argument itself, in which case the author expects the reader not to accept its content. Its use is also contrasted to the use of the oppositional construction važno zametit’—“it’s important to note”. As such, Fortuin illustrates that starting off from a specific linguistic construction often enables one to determine subtle differences with the use of “neighbouring” constructions. In “Strategic Manoeuvring with the Expression “Not for Nothing””, Henrike Jansen and Francisca Snoeck Henkemans present a study, from a pragmadialectical perspective, of the argumentative and rhetorical function of the English expression “not for nothing”. After having shown that this expression can be used both in standpoints and in arguments, they describe the types of standpoint and the types of argument scheme it can go together with. They also show that the strategic potential of “not for nothing” lies in its suggestion that sufficient support has been provided while this support has in fact been left implicit. Finally, Steve Oswald and Thierry Herman, in their chapter “Everybody Knows That There Is Something Odd About Ad Populum Arguments”, take a post-Gricean (relevance-theoretic) perspective when describing the argumentative function and rhetorical potential of the expression “everyone/everybody knows P”. They focus on two aspects of the construction: the interpretation of the universal quantifier “everyone/everybody” and the different types of propositional contents filling the variable P. Such linguistic issues, they argue, are useful in determining what the rhetorical potential of the

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construction is, as well as in which cases its use is illegitimate. At the same time, such a linguistic-pragmatic analysis of one particular construction contributes to our understanding of appeals to common knowledge more generally and, as such, it shows, once again, the usefulness of taking a linguistic starting point in the study of argumentation. We dedicate this volume to Ton van Haaften, in honour of his retirement from Leiden University as a Full Professor in Dutch Discourse Studies. After his dissertation, in which he presented a purely linguistic analysis of a problem from Dutch syntax (van Haaften 1991), van Haaften’s later research has focused on the interface of language use and argumentation, in particular in the institutional domains of law and politics (e.g. Doury et al. 2011; van Haaften 2011a, b, 2017, 2019; van Haaften and van Leeuwen 2018); van Haaften and van Leeuwen (2018, forthcoming) and van Haaften (2019) explicitly integrate the linguistic-stylistic approach (cf. footnote 5) within the pragma-dialectical theory of strategic manoeuvring. Van Haaften put much effort in shaping a coherent research program for the Leiden Dutch Discourse Studies group by making the combination of linguistics and argumentation its central research concern and in encouraging its members to cooperate exactly on this topic. His own academic work is a great example of how interconnections between the study of language use and argumentation can be made, by combining and integrating insights from both academic disciplines. We hope that we can keep on discussing these, and many other, issues with him for a long time to come.

References Amossy, R. (2005). The argumentative dimension of discourse. In F. H. van Eemeren & P. Houtlosser (Eds.), Argumentation in practice (pp. 87–98). Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Amossy, R. (2006). L’argumentation dans le discours [Argumentation in discourse]. Paris: Armand Colin. Anscombre, J. C., & Ducrot, O. (1983). L’argumentation dans la langue [Argumentation in language]. Bruxelles: P. Mardaga. Boogaart, R. (2013). Strategische manoeuvres met sterke drank: Redelijk effectief? [Strategic manoeuvres with hard liquor: Reasonably effective?]. In T. A. J. M. Janssen & T. van Strien (Eds.), Neerlandistiek in Beeld (pp. 283–292). Amsterdam/Münster: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU/Nodus Publikationen. Boogaart, R. (2020). Expressives in argumentation: The case of apprehensive straks (‘shortly’) in Dutch. In B. Garssen & F. H. van Eemeren (Eds.), From argument schemes to argumentative relations in the wild (pp. 185–204). Cham: Springer. Boogaart, R., & Reuneker, A. (2017). Intersubjectivity and grammar. In B. Dancygier (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of cognitive linguistics (pp. 188–206). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doury, M. (2004). La classification des arguments dans les discours ordinaires [The classification of arguments in ordinary discourse]. Langage, 154, 59–73.

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Doury, M., van Haaften, T., & Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2011). Strategic maneuvering in critical reactions to pragmatic argumentation: The case of Henry Porter contra Tony Blair. In E. Feteris, B. Garssen, & A. F. Snoeck Henkemans (Eds.), Keeping in touch with pragma-dialectics: In honor of Frans H. van Eemeren (pp. 21–38). Amsterdam (etc.): John Benjamins. Fagel, S. (2015). De stijl van gewoon proza [The style of normal prose] (Dissertation Leiden University). Ridderkerk: Ridderprint. Fahnestock, J. (2002). Rhetorical figures in science. Cary: Oxford University Press, Incorporated. Fahnestock, J. (2011). Rhetorical style: The uses of language in persuasion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hilpert, M. (2014). Construction grammar and its application to English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hinton, M. (2019). Language and argument: A review of the field. Research in Language, 17(1), 93–103. Jansen, H. (2009). Legal arguments about plausible facts and their strategic presentation. In J. Ritola (Ed.), Argument cultures: Proceedings of the 8th OSSA Conference, June 2009 (pp. CD). Windsor, Canada: University of Windsor. Jansen, H. (2011). “If that were true, I would never have …” The counterfactual presentation of arguments that appeal to human behaviour. In F. H. van Eemeren, B. J. Garssen, D. Godden, & G. Mitchell (Eds.), Proceedings of the Seventh Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (pp. 881–889 CD). Amsterdam: Sic Sat. Jansen, H. (2016). The strategic formulation of abductive arguments in everyday reasoning. In P. Bondy & L. Benacquista (Eds.), Argumentation, objectivity, and bias: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA), 18–21 May 2016 (pp. 1–10 CD). Windsor, ON: OSSA. Jansen, H. (2017). “You think that says a lot, but really it says nothing”. An argumentative and linguistic account of an idiomatic expression functioning as a presentational device. Argumentation, 31, 615–640. Jansen, H., Dingemanse, M., & Persoon, I. (2011). Limits and effects of reductio ad absurdum argumentation. In H. Jansen, T. van Haaften, J. de Jong, & W. Koetsenruijter (Eds.), Bending opinion. Essays on persuasion in the public domain (pp. 143–158). Leiden: Leiden University Press. Jansen, H. & van Leeuwen, M. (forthcoming). The presentational dimension of Geert Wilders’s argumentative style. Journal of Argumentation in Context. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2017). The enigma of reason: A new theory of human understanding. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Oswald, S., Herman, T., & Jacquin, J. (2018). Argumentation and language: Linguistic, cognitive and discursive explorations (Argumentation Library 32). Cham: Springer. Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1969). The new rhetoric: Treatise on argumentation. Notre Dame-London: University of Notre Dame Press [Engl. tr. of Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1958). Traité de l’argumentation. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France]. Plantin, C. (2002). Argumentation studies and discourse analysis. The French situation and global perspectives. Discourse Studies, 4(3), 343–368. Pollaroli, C., Greco, S., Oswald, S., Miecznikowski-Fuenfschilling, J., & Rocci, A. (2019). Preface. Informal Logic, 39(4), 287–300. Rigotti, E., & Greco Morasso, S. (2010). Comparing the argumentum model of topics to other contemporary approaches to argument schemes. The procedural and material components. Argumentation, 24(4), 489–512. Rocci, A. (2017). Modality in argumentation. A semantic investigation of the role of modalities in the structure of arguments with an application to Italian modal expressions (Argumentation Library 29). Dordrecht: Springer.

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Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2005). What’s in a name? The use of the stylistic device metonymy as a strategic manoeuvre in the confrontation and argumentation stages of a discussion. In D. Hitchcock (Ed.), Proceedings of Conference (pp. 433–441). Hamilton: Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2007). Manoeuvring strategically with rhetorical questions. In F. H. van Eemeren, J. A. Blair, C. A. Willard, & B. Garssen (Eds.), Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (pp. 1309–1315). Amsterdam: Sic Sat. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2009). Manoeuvring strategically with ‘praeteritio’. Argumentation, 23, 339–350. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2011). The contribution of praeteritio to arguers’ strategic maneuvering in the argumentation stage of a discussion. In T. van Haaften, H. Jansen, J. de Jong, & W. Koetsenruijter (Eds.), Bending opinion: Essays on persuasion in the public domain (pp. 133–143). Leiden: Leiden University Press. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2013). The use of hyperbole in the argumentation stage. In D. Mohammed & M. Lewi´nski (Eds.), Virtues of argumentation: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA), 22–26 May 2013 (pp. 1–9). Windsor, ON: OSSA. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F., & Plug, H. J. (2008). Apologies for metaphors as a strategic manoeuvre in political debates. In L. Dam, L. Holmgreen, & J. Strunck (Eds.), Rhetorical aspects of discourses in present-day society (pp. 102–117). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press. Steen, G. (2008). The paradox of metaphor: Why we need a three-dimensional model of metaphor. Metaphor and Symbol, 23(4), 213–241. Stukker, N., & Verhagen, A. (2019). Stijl, taal en tekst: Stilistiek op taalkundige basis [Style, language and text: A linguistic-stylistic approach]. Leiden: Leiden University Press. Tseronis, A. (2009). Qualifying standpoints: Stance adverbs as a presentational device for managing the burden of proof (Dissertation Leiden University). Utrecht: LOT. Tomasello, M. (2003). Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. Tomasello, M. (2014). A natural history of human thinking. Cambridge, MA/London: Harvard University Press. Tonnard, Y. (2011). Getting an issue on the table: A pragma-dialectical study of presentational choices in confrontational strategic maneuvering in Dutch parliamentary debate (Dissertation University of Amsterdam). Alblasserdam: Haveka. van Eemeren, F. H. (2010). Strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse (Argumentation in Context 2). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. van Eemeren, F. H. (2018). Argumentation theory: A pragma-dialectical perspective. Dordrecht (etc.): Springer. van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. (1984). Speech acts in argumentative discussions. A theoretical model for the analysis of discussions directed towards solving conflicts of opinion (Studies of Argumentation in Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis 1). Dordrecht/Cinnaminson: Foris Publications. van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (1999a). Strategic manoeuvring in argumentative discourse. Discourse Studies, 1, 479–497. van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (1999b). Over zekere waarden: Een analyse van twee objectief waarderende standpunten [On certain values: An analysis of two objectively evaluative standpoints]. Taalbeheersing, 21, 179–186. van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (1999c). William the Silent’s argumentative discourse. In F. H. van Eemeren, R. Grootendorst, J. A. Blair, & C. A. Willard (Eds.), Proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (pp. 168–171). Amsterdam: Sic Sat. van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (2000a). Rhetorical analysis within a pragma-dialectical framework: The case of R.J. Reynolds. Argumentation, 14, 293–305.

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van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (2000b). De retorische functie van stijlfiguren in een dialectisch proces: Strategisch gebruikte metaforen in Edward Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick speech [The rhetorical function of figures of speech in a dialectical process: Strategically used metaphors in Edward Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick speech]. In R. Neutelings, N. Ummelen, & A. Maes (Eds.), Over de grenzen van de taalbeheersing (pp. 151–162). Den Haag: SDU Uitgevers. van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (2002). Strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse: A delicate balance. In F. H. van Eemeren & P. Houtlosser (Eds.), Dialectic and rhetoric: The warp and woof of argumentation analysis (pp. 131–159). Dordrecht (etc.): Kluwer. van Eemeren, F. H., Houtlosser, P., & Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2007). Argumentative indicators in discourse. A pragma-dialectical study. Dordrecht (etc.): Springer. van Eemeren, F. H., & Garssen, B. (2019). And then you are left holding the baby! Strategic manoeuvring with the argumentum ad consequentiam. In F. H. van Eemeren & B. Garssen (Eds.), Argumentation in actual practice (pp. 321–334). (Argumentation in Context 17.) Amsterdam (etc.): John Benjamins. van Eemeren, F. H., Garssen, B., & Meuffels, B. (2012). The disguised abusive ad hominem empirically investigated: Strategic manoeuvring with direct personal attacks. Thinking & Reasoning, 18(3), 344–364. van Eemeren, F. H., Garssen, B., & Meuffels, B. (2015). The disguised ad baculum fallacy empirically investigated. Strategic maneuvering with threats. In F. H. van Eemeren (Ed.), Reasonableness and effectiveness in argumentative discourse (pp. 795–813). (Argumentation Library 27). Cham: Springer. van Haaften, T. (1991). De interpretatie van verzwegen subjecten [The interpretation of covert subjects]. Dordrecht: ICG. van Haaften, T. (2011a). Parliamentary debate and political culture: The Dutch case. In T. van Haaften, H. Jansen, J. de Jong, & W. Koetsenruijter (Eds.), Bending opinion: Essays on persuasion in the public domain (pp. 349–368). Leiden: Leiden University Press. van Haaften, T. (2011b). Norm en taal in politiek Den Haag [Norm and language in The Hague politics]. In M.-G. Foblets, M. Hildebrandt, & J. Steenbergen (Eds.), Liber amicorum René Foqué (pp. 631–645). Gent: Larcier. van Haaften, T. (2017). Strategic maneuvering with presentational choices in Dutch parliamentary debate. In F. H. van Eemeren & P. Wu (Eds.), Contextualizing pragma-dialectics (pp. 177–192). Amsterdam (etc.): John Benjamins. van Haaften, T. (2019). Argumentative strategies and stylistic devices. Informal Logic, 39(4), 301– 328. van Haaften, T., & van Leeuwen, M. (2018). Strategic maneuvering with presentational devices: A systematic approach. In S. Oswald & D. Maillat (Eds.), Argumentation and inference: Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Argumentation, Fribourg 2017, Volume II (pp. 873–886) (Studies in Logic 76). London: College Publications. van Haaften, T. & van Leeuwen, M. (forthcoming). On the relation between argumentative style and linguistic style: Integrating linguistic-stylistic analysis systematically into the analysis of argumentative style. Journal of Argumentation in Context. van Leeuwen, M. (2012). Rhetorical effects of grammar. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines, 5(2), 88–101. van Leeuwen, M. (2015). Stijl en politiek: Een taalkundig-stilistische benadering van Nederlandse parlementaire toespraken [Style and politics: A linguistic-stylistic approach to Dutch parliamentary speeches] (Dissertation Leiden University). Utrecht: LOT. van Leeuwen, M. (2018). Style and grammar in political discourse: Complementation and its argumentative-rhetorical potential. In S. Oswald, T. Herman, & J. Jacquin (Eds.), Argumentation and Language—Linguistic, Cognitive and Discursive Explorations (pp. 51–72) (Argumentation Library 32). Cham: Springer. van Poppel, L. (2016). Strategisch manoeuvreren met litotes [Strategic manoeuvring with litotes]. In D. van de Mieroop, L. Buysse, R. Coesemans, & P. Gillaerts (Eds.), De macht van de taal: Taalbeheersingsonderzoek in Nederland en Vlaanderen (pp. 219–232). Leuven: Acco.

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Verhagen, A. (2007). Constructions of intersubjectivity: Discourse, syntax, and cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Zarefsky, D. (2006). Strategic maneuvering through persuasive definitions: Implications for dialectic and rhetoric. Argumentation, 20, 399–416.

Ronny Boogaart is an Assistant Professor at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). He (co-)authored various invited contributions to linguistic handbooks on tense, aspect and modality, but is also occupied with popularizing linguistics: in 2016, he was awarded for writing the best Dutch popular book on linguistics of the year. His current research focuses on the strategic use of constructions in argumentation. Henrike Jansen obtained her Ph.D. with a dissertation on legal argumentation from a pragmadialectical perspective. She is an Associate Professor at Leiden University (the Netherlands), editor of the Dutch journal Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing, and member of the Steering Committee of European Conference on Argumentation (ECA). In her research she approaches the study of argumentation from a linguistic angle. Maarten van Leeuwen is an Assistant Professor at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). His research focuses on (methodological aspects of) linguistic stylistics, its application to political discourse (e.g. the question how linguistic choices contribute to the creation of a political image, such as the image of being a ‘populist’), and on the integration of linguistic-stylistics and argumentation theory.

Theoretical and Methodological Considerations

Characterizing Argumentative Style: The Case of KLM and the Destructed Squirrels Frans H. van Eemeren

Abstract After defining argumentative style in a way that distinguishes this notion from the more familiar notion of linguistic style, Frans van Eemeren identifies the argumentative style that is used in a quasi-apologetic press release of the Dutch airline company KLM. In so doing he concentrates on three characteristics of the discourse that can be described with the help of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. First, he makes an inventory of the argumentative moves that are to be included in an analytic overview of the argumentative discourse. Second, he describes the argumentative patterns that can be distinguished in the dialectical routes that are taken. Third, by taking account of the strategic considerations underlying the discourse, he lays bare the strategic design of the discourse displayed in these argumentative patterns. When taken together, these three characteristics determine the argumentative style that is used in the argumentative discourse to realize KLM’s strategic scenario. Keywords Analytic overview · Argumentative pattern · Argumentative style · Detached argumentative style · Pragma-dialectics · Strategic design · Strategic scenario

1 Introduction Ton van Haaften characterized the argumentative style of the Dutch populist parliamentarian Geert Wilders not so long ago as deliberately and systematically “violating the norms” of Dutch parliamentary debate culture (2017: 186). Among the great many other characterisations of the argumentative style of arguers I have recently

F. H. van Eemeren (B) ILIAS, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Boogaart et al. (eds.), The Language of Argumentation, Argumentation Library 36, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52907-9_2

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encountered in the literature on argumentation are “overtly promotional and quasiadvertising”,1 “flirting”,2 “feminine”,3 “breezy” and “conversational”,4 “ornate” and “comic”,5 and “reminiscent of a children’s drawing”.6 These are only a few, more or less arbitrarily selected quotes, which can be easily complemented with others. The way in which arguers go about in defending their standpoints to others often leads to such remarks from bystanders as well as analysts concerning the “style” in which their argumentative discourse is conducted (van Eemeren 2019). The quotes show that such comments may vary from general characterisations of the arguer’s argumentative conduct or descriptions of some striking properties to judgments of its appropriateness. Although the concept of style also applies to visual and other modes of communication, the characterisations of argumentative style that are given concentrate in the first place on spoken and written argumentative discourse.7 In the literature the characteristics of style are generally in the same vein described as linguistic properties.8 In “stylistics”, the current manifestation of the rhetorical study of elocutio, style is predominantly viewed from a linguistic perspective9 (e.g. “Long sentences and repetitiveness mark the style of her essays”).10 As I have explained in an earlier study about argumentative style (van Eemeren 2019), in the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation the linguistic aspect of style is also given its due, but in this approach the treatment of argumentative style is put in a perspective that is more adequate for dealing with argumentative discourse. In pragma-dialectics the style used in argumentative discourse is analysed for its instrumentality in resolving a difference of opinion by convincing the intended audience or readership of the acceptability of the standpoint at issue.11 This means that in this approach the treatment of style concentrates primarily on its argumentative function—irrespective of whether the discourse concerned is conducted verbally or (wholly or partly) visually. In line with the pragma-dialectical nature of the theorizing, the treatment of argumentative style is at the same time pragmatic in the linguistic sense and dialectical in the philosophical sense (van Eemeren 2018: 33–69). 1 Palmieri

and Mazzali-Lurati (2017: 176). et al. (2010), quoted in Hoppmann (2017: 226). 3 Jamieson (1988: 67-89), quoted in Jasinski (2001: 538). 4 Zhang (2009), quoted in Wu (2017: 226). 5 Wales (1991: 435). 6 Tseronis (2017: 347). 7 See Tseronis (2017: 348) for some provisional observations concerning visual argumentative style. 8 Wales, for one, claims in her Dictionary of Stylistics that “stylistic features are basically features of language” (1991: 436). 9 In Rhetorical Style, a prominent contribution to stylistics, Fahnestock speaks of “features of language that might enhance its power over the audience” (2011: 6). 10 When non-linguistic judgments are occasionally given in commenting upon argumentative conduct (e.g. “His debating style is aggressive”), such verdicts are usually not substantiated by any theoretical observations. 11 The pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion provides an overview of the argumentative moves that are in the various stages of a critical discussion analytically relevant in the sense that they are potentially instrumental in resolving a difference of opinion (van Eemeren 2018: 38–42). 2 Hall

Characterizing Argumentative Style: The Case …

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“Style”, it should be born in mind, is by all accounts an elusive notion.12 As Wales observes, “although style is used very frequently in literary criticism and especially stylistics […], it is very difficult to define” (1991: 435).13 “At its simplest”, she states, “style refers to the manner of expression in writing or speaking, just as there is a manner of doing things, like playing squash or painting” (p. 435). Claes and Hulsens (2015: 129) report that in the past style was seen as literary adornment (ornatus), later as a deviation of ordinary language use and nowadays as a choice between language variants. Among the factors involved in stylistic variation mentioned in the literature are the medium that is used for expressing oneself, the degree of formality of the occasion, the norms that are being played with and the contextual domain (or situation in the case of “registers”) in which the discourse takes place. Sometimes the discussion of style concentrates on the style that is used in a particular speech event (e.g. in Trump’s inaugural address of 20 January 2017), sometimes on the individual style of a certain speaker or writer (e.g. Kennedy or Nabokov), and sometimes on the general characteristics of the style used in a certain type of communicative activity (e.g. love letters) or period (e.g. editorials in the 19th century)—usually viewed in comparison with other communicative activity types or periods. These general observations may apply equally well to the notion of argumentative style I am concerned with. The literature in which the observations are made however, concentrates almost exclusively on the presentational (“linguistic”) properties of verbal styles, whereas a much broader and at the same time more specific array of properties needs to be taken into account for dealing with argumentative styles of discourse. Argumentative style is in my view a complex notion that focuses specifically on the pursuit of effectiveness in trying to convince the addressee of a certain standpoint and has more vital dimensions than just the presentational one (van Eemeren 2019). Viewed from the perspective of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, argumentative styles manifest themselves in argumentative discourse in particular uses of argumentative moves that can be described in an analytic overview14 ; these argumentative moves are part of particular dialectical routes that result in the development of certain argumentative patterns,15 and are based on particular strategic considerations that define together the strategic design of the discourse.16 When argumentative style is viewed in this way, the theoretical instruments that have been developed in pragma-dialectics for making an analytic overview, identifying argumentative patterns and tracing the strategic design of the discourse can be put to good use in identifying the argumentative style that is utilized. In Sect. 2, I will introduce a definition of argumentative style I recently proposed (van Eemeren 2019) which does full justice to its role in argumentative discourse. The notion of argumentative style is in this definition situated in the conceptual 12 This

paragraph and the following one are almost literally extracted from van Eemeren (2019). is telling that Lodewick’s (1964) infamous Dutch textbook for stylistics discusses all kinds of figures of style and stylistic errors in great detail without providing any definition of style. 14 See for the notion of an analytic overview van Eemeren (2018: 96–100). 15 See for the notion of an argumentative pattern van Eemeren (2018: 149–167). 16 See for the notion of a strategic design van Eemeren (2018: 166–167). 13 It

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framework of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, which makes it not only possible to include all vital dimensions of argumentative style, but also to relate argumentative style directly to the properties of argumentative discourse in which it manifests itself. To illustrate how the argumentative style utilized in argumentative discourse can be identified on the basis of this definition, I determine in Sect. 3 by way of an exemplary analysis which argumentative style is utilized in a specific speech event. Since I have reconstructed this speech event earlier, its analytic overview has already been accounted for (van Eemeren 2018: 100–108; 123–126). In Sect. 4, I conclude the chapter by mentioning briefly some research projects that need to be carried out in further substantiating the notion of argumentative style.

2 The Complex Notion of Argumentative Style17 Starting from the basic view of style as a particular way in which something is done or dealt with, the shortest definition of argumentative style we can now provide is: a particular way in which an argumentative discourse is conducted to be helpful in achieving the resolution of the difference of opinion at issue aimed for by the arguer. This definition needs to be made more appropriate for dealing with argumentative discourse by substantiating it theoretically through the use of the conceptual and terminological instruments of argumentation theory. This can be realized by exploiting the pragma-dialectical view that making argumentative moves to resolve a difference of opinion always involves strategic manoeuvring that gives substance to the three aspects of making a selection from the available topical potential, adapting to audience demand and using presentational devices (van Eemeren 2010: 93–127; 2018: 112–113). Regarding the three aspects of strategic manoeuvring as different dimensions of argumentative style makes it possible to characterize utilizing a certain argumentative style as shaping these three dimensions in a particular way in the conduct of argumentative discourse. Crucial to the identification of argumentative styles in the conduct of argumentative discourse is the observation that in making the argumentative moves constituting the discourse certain choices concerning argumentative style have been made for which the arguer can be held responsible.18 A first precondition that needs to be satisfied in order to be able to speak of a fully-fledged argumentative style is that these choices concern, next to the presentational devices that are used, also the selection that is made from the topical potential and the adaptation to audience demand. A second precondition is that the choices made in giving substance to the various 17 To ensure a proper understanding of the view of argumentative style underlying this chapter, this section contains a reprint of the part devoted to the definition of this notion in an article I recently published (van Eemeren 2019: Sect. 3). 18 If the arguer cannot be held responsible for such choices made in the conduct of argumentative discourse, studying the argumentative style that is used does not play a vital role in argumentation theory as a discipline out to stimulate the improvement of argumentative practices since the arguer is not accountable for it and it is not deliberately used as a tool for resolving a difference of opinion.

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argumentative moves are intrinsically related to the goals these argumentative moves are supposedly aimed to achieve in the resolution process. A third precondition is that the choices that are made are strategic by potentially contributing to keeping the balance between reasonableness and effectiveness in the discourse. A fourth precondition is that the choices are systematic in the sense of being consistently shaped in a similar fashion. A fifth precondition is that the choices are made throughout a coherent and substantial part of the argumentative discourse, so that they can be considered sustained. Utilizing a certain argumentative style in argumentative discourse involves giving a particular shape to the topical choices made in the argumentative moves, to the choices made in adapting these argumentative moves to audience demand and to the choices made in using presentational devices to carry out these argumentative moves. The shaping of these three dimensions of argumentative style is manifested in the argumentative discourse in the use of argumentative moves described in the analytic overview of the discourse, the choice of dialectical routes expressed in the argumentative patterns of the discourse and the implementation of strategic considerations captured in the strategic design of the discourse. The identification of the argumentative styles utilized in argumentative discourse should therefore always start from, and be guided by, an adequate reconstruction of the analytic overview, the argumentative patterns and the strategic design of the discourse. Only then can it be made sure that the argumentative style that is provisionally identified in the analysis can be considered indicative for the way in which the arguer’s “strategic scenario” is realized in the discourse through the implementation in the strategic design of the discourse of strategic considerations relating to the argumentative moves that are made in the dialectical routes that are chosen. Taking these observations concerning the constitutive dimensions of argumentative style and the way in which argumentative style manifests itself in the discourse into account, the following theory-related definition of argumentative style can now be provided: Argumentative style is the particular shape systematically and consistently given to the selection of topical choices, adaptation to audience demand and exploitation of presentational devices in the strategic manoeuvring taking place in a representative part of an argumentative discourse that manifests itself in the argumentative moves included in the analytic overview of the discourse, the argumentative patterns indicating the dialectical routes that are chosen and the strategic design reflecting the implementation of strategic considerations.

Although in some cases the use of a certain argumentative style may be limited to a particular part of the discourse, covering only a specific stage of the resolution process, more often than not the argumentative style that is adopted will be utilized throughout the discourse. When it has been established that in the various discussion stages one and the same argumentative style has been systematically utilized in all its three dimensions in the argumentative moves that are made, it is necessary to check whether this style is used consistently and sustained in those argumentative moves that constitute together the argumentative patterns characterizing the discourse— most importantly in the moves made in the basic argumentative patterns containing the main argumentation in defence of the standpoints at issue (van Eemeren 2018:

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151). If the argumentative style that in the first instance had been identified proves to have been used throughout the most pertinent parts of the argumentative patterns, next the argumentative considerations are to be taken into account that determine together with the argumentative moves and the argumentative patterns the strategic design of the discourse. Only if the argumentative style that has been identified agrees with the strategic scenario that may be supposed to have motivated the strategic design of the discourse, can it be safely concluded that the presumed argumentative style is indeed the argumentative style that is utilized in the discourse.

3 The Identification of Argumentative Style: A Case in Point In illustrating how the argumentative style utilized in argumentative discourse can be identified by exploiting the theoretical concepts referred to in the definition just discussed, I will concentrate on the press release “KLM apologies for destroying squirrels”, issued by the Dutch airline company in 1999. I have chosen this argumentative speech event as my case in point since I already analysed it (van Eemeren 2018: 100–108, 123–126), so that there is no need to give an elaborate account of its reconstruction.19 KLM was at the time in the spotlight because it had finished off 440 squirrels by putting them alive through a chopper. The national agency for the inspection of cattle and meat (AEMF) had forced them to destroy the animals because the required exportation and health documents were lacking and the squirrels were not adequately packaged. This is the text of KLM’s press release (with the paragraphs numbered by me): [I]

KLM sincerely apologizes for having been forced to have 440 squirrels destroyed, last Monday in the KLM Cargo animals’ hotel. KLM has acted in a way that is formally justified, but admits that an ethical assessment mistake was made. KLM fully endorses the criticisms that have been voiced by the public and the various organisations. [II] The airline company has decided to start a thorough investigation into what exactly happened at the reception of the package in Beijing. The events in the KLM Cargo animals’ hotel will also be investigated. [III] Pending this investigation and in view of the emotions that these events have aroused, the Board of KLM has deemed it desirable that the employee concerned will stay home for the period of this investigation. [IV] On Sunday, April 11, 1999, KLM has received orders from the Department of Agriculture, Environmental Management and Fishing (AEMF) to destroy the animals. KLM is of the opinion that this order, in this form and without feasible alternatives, was unethical.

19 For

further details of the analysis see van Eemeren (2015: 521–542).

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[V]

The Board of KLM holds, however, that the KLM employee concerned has acted formally correct in this matter by promptly following the directives of the Department of AEMF, but also acknowledges at the same time that this employee has made an assessment mistake. [VI] KLM once more emphasises that the company regrets the course of events and offers its sincere apologies to all animal lovers and all those whose feelings have been hurt by the events. [VII] KLM has informed the Animal Protection Society, the AAP Foundation, the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), the Cites Netherlands Foundation, the Foundation for the Shelter of Squirrels in De Meern, the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria, and the Dutch Association of Zoos of the above and has invited these organisations to come to a consultation on how to avoid deplorable situations of this kind at a short term. In dealing with KLM’s argumentative discourse in the press release I shall first give an overview of the company’s analytically relevant argumentative moves made in the empirical counterparts of the various stages of a critical discussion. Next I will pay attention to the argumentative patterns in the press release that have developed as a consequence of the dialectical routes chosen by KLM in their defence of their main standpoints. Following on from the results of these analyses, I shall subsequently describe the strategic design of the press release motivated by the strategic considerations underlying KLM’s defence. In this way I will try to determine KLM’s strategic scenario in issuing the press release and identify the argumentative style the company utilizes to realize this scenario in their argumentative discourse.

3.1 Analytic Overview of Argumentative Moves In the empirical counterparts of the confrontation stage (represented in paragraph I, IV and V), KLM ascribes implicitly the following standpoint to the company’s critics: (1) KLM is to be blamed for what went wrong with the squirrels. This is in fact the standpoint that motivates the press release. Part of KLM’s strategic manoeuvring to protect the company’s position consists of suggesting that their critics accuse KLM of having made an assessment mistake rather than blaming KLM for killing 440 squirrels. Although they initially seem to admit right away that they had made an assessment mistake, in the second instance KLM makes clear that they put the blame on others. They do so by stating explicitly that AEMF is to be blamed for giving an unethical order and KLM has acted in a way that is formally justified and conveying implicitly the view that KLM has acted appropriately after the destruction of the squirrels had taken place. On closer inspection, the two main standpoints KLM implicitly proves to defend therefore are: (2) AEMF is to be blamed for what went wrong with the squirrels and (3) KLM is not to be blamed for what went wrong with

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the squirrels.20 In my investigation of KLM’s public defence in their press release I will focus on their implicit standpoints (2) and (3). In the empirical counterparts of the opening stage (represented in paragraph I, IV, V and VI), KLM states that they decided to start a thorough investigation into what exactly happened at the reception of the package in Beijing, that the events in the KLM Cargo animals’ hotel would also be investigated, that they made the employee concerned stay at home for the period of the investigation in view of the emotions the events aroused, that they received an order from AEMF to destroy the animals and that the employee acted formally correct by promptly following AEMF’s directives. KLM’s strategic manoeuvring in creating these starting points is aimed at making preparations for a successful defence of the company’s two implicit standpoints. The company puts the emphasis on formal responsibility, while pushing the act of finishing off the squirrels, which is detrimental to KLM’s position, to the background, wrapping it up in expressions of regret. The facts that are positive for their position KLM mentions explicitly: they had received an order from higher up to destruct the animals and sent home the employee who decided to carry out this order. Mentioning the fact that the employee was sent home not only makes clear that KLM reacted appropriately, but also leaves room for the suggestion that there might be something wrong with the employee. By making the strategic manoeuvres of shifting the blame first to AEMF and then in a way also to their employee, KLM establishes the idea that the company as a whole is not to blame, thus accepting the responsibility for what went wrong only partly and in the least harmful way. In the empirical counterparts of the argumentation stage (represented in paragraph II, III, IV, V and VII), KLM’s implicit standpoint (2) that AEMF is to be blamed for what went wrong with the squirrels is defended by the argumentation that KLM received an order from AEMF to destroy the squirrels and that this order was unethical.21 The latter argument is in its turn supported by the multiple argumentation that the order did not have the correct form and that no feasible alternatives were offered. KLM’s implicit standpoint (3) that KLM is not to be blamed is supported by the implicit argument that the company acted responsibly, which is in its turn supported by a coordinative argumentation consisting of the explicit argument that KLM acted in a way that is formally justified and the implicit argument that the company acted appropriately after the destruction of the squirrels. The argument that KLM acted in a way that is formally justified is supported by the explicit coordinative argumentation that KLM received an order from AEMF to act in this way and that their employee followed AEMF’s directives. The implicit argument that KLM acted appropriately after the destruction of the squirrels is substantiated by the fully explicit coordinative argumentation that KLM started a thorough investigation into what happened at the reception of the package in Beijing and into what happened in the KLM Cargo 20 As is shown in van Eemeren (2018: 123–126), by taking in this way KLM’s strategic manoeuvring

into account in the reconstruction, the standard analysis of KLM’s press release (van Eemeren 2018: 100–104) can be made more adequate. This extended analysis makes clear which unexpressed main standpoints (2 and 3) are underlying KLM’s argumentation described in the standard analysis. 21 Standpoint (1) of KLM’s critics, which is not part of the current analysis, is supported by the company’s acknowledgement that their employee has made an ethical assessment mistake.

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animals’ hotel, let the employee who carried out the order stay at home during the investigation and made sure that such disasters will not happen again in the future. The argument that the employee had to stay at home during the investigation is in its turn motivated by the subordinative multiple argumentation that the investigation was still to be carried out and that the emotions concerning the destruction made the employee’s staying at home necessary. The argument that KLM made sure that such disasters will not happen again in the future gets support from the subordinative argumentation that KLM informed all interested parties and started consultations with them. The argumentation structure of KLM’s defence of their two main standpoints can be represented in the following way:

In thus exploiting the argumentative technique of “association” in the empirical counterparts of the argumentation stage KLM uses in virtually all cases symptomatic argument schemes. Their defensive strategic manoeuvring however also involves making use of the argumentative technique of “dissociation”22 : to make sure that the company as a whole will not be blamed when only one of its employees is guilty, they 22 The distinction between association and dissociation stems from the “new rhetoric”. See for their view of dissociation Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969: 411–459) and for the pragma-dialectical view van Rees (2009), van Eemeren (2019: Sect. 1) and Wu (2019).

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suggest that what is true of a part is not necessarily true of the whole. This dissociation distinguishes between KLM as a general label that is comprehensive and KLM as a corporate body (“the company”) that does not include every individual employee. The press release emphasizes that from a formal perspective both the company and the individual employee who carried out AEMF’s order acted in a correct way, since they did precisely what the authorities required them to do. By means of the dissociation KLM nevertheless suggests that the verdict about the individual employee may in the end be different from the judgment concerning the company. As is usual in communicative activity types such as advertorial-like press releases, the discourse suggests that the conclusion of the argumentative process will be clear to all concerned, so that there is no need to mention the outcome explicitly. In this kind of macro-context protagonists have put themselves in a position that enables them to determine the course of the argumentative process on their own. In so doing they try to make sure that it is completely obvious what the conclusion should be, so that it can be left to the audience to draw this conclusion themselves. In such communicative activity types the empirical counterpart of the concluding stage is therefore as a rule left implicit. In this case there is an extra reason for not stating the conclusion explicitly: saying bluntly that not KLM but AEMF is responsible for what went wrong with the squirrels would not go well together with the apologetic set-up of the press release and KLM’s emphatic expressions of regret.

3.2 Argumentative Patterns of Dialectical Routes Argumentative patterns consist of particular constellations of argumentative moves in which in dealing with a particular kind of difference of opinion in defence of a particular type of standpoint a particular argument scheme or combination of argument schemes is used in a particular kind of argumentation structure (van Eemeren 2018: 150). Such argumentative patterns come into being as a result of the arguers’ choice of a particular dialectical route. The occurrence of argumentative patterns in argumentative discourse can be described with the help of the theoretical instruments provided in pragma-dialectics for characterizing the standpoints at issue in a difference of opinion, the argument schemes put to good use in defence of these standpoints and the structure of the argumentation constituted by the various supporting arguments.23 The argumentative patterns displayed in KLM’s defence of their two main standpoints can be identified by applying these instruments to the results of the reconstructive analysis of KLM’s press release. In giving a description of these argumentative patterns, I will make use of the following standard abbreviations of the relevant theoretical notions: “ CH > CT > CT + CC > CC (ibid: 243). In determining the degree of face aggravation for each type, they use surface criteria derived from conversation analysis such as prefacing, hesitation, use of pauses and other markers. By combining the considerations of facework with the relationship between the T2–T3 sequences, they conclude that the degree of T2’s face aggravation determines T3’s orientation. That is, the more damaging T2, the more likely speaker A will focus on restoring their own face: the speaker will thus choose in T3 to support the initial T1 claim instead of countering speaker’s B T2 claim (ibid: 248–9). Finally, they conduct an empirical test, which confirms these regularities in the sequential distribution of the acts that make up an argumentative exchange, and which proves that these categories are also oriented to by the conversational participants. Muntigl and Turnbull’s study is a first step toward correlating the force of a claim opposing a previously advanced claim with face considerations (see also Kakavá 2001: 662; and Hample 2006: Chap. 7 for a discussion). Among the strengths of this study is that it is empirically based and that it captures the interactive and dialogical way in which disagreement arises and is managed in face-to-face interaction, by focusing on types of disagreement occurring both at T2 and at T3 in a dialogue. This focus is justified by the authors’ interest in determining the face-threateningness of a type of disagreement based on the way the act is perceived by the second speaker in the following turn. Such a focus, however, does not help the analyst in studying the way in which a disagreement move is designed by the speaker in an attempt not only to maintain self and other face but also to promote the goal of critically testing the claims advanced. For this latter function of the design of a disagreement move, a more systematic and theoretically informed conception of argumentation is required. The lack of such a clear theoretical conception of argumentation raises problems with Muntigl and Turnbull’s classification both in the identification of the different disagreement moves and in the specification of their relative face-threateningness. Regarding the identification of the different types of disagreement, Muntigl and Turnbull do not apply the same pragmatic and linguistic criteria consistently and throughout in order to explain what the difference between one type and the other is. For example, while irrelevancy claims are defined in terms of the target of the criticism, concerning the relevance of the previous claim, challenges are described in terms of their syntactic form, being an interrogative. Also the difference between a contradiction and a counterclaim is not clear. From the examples provided, it seems that the former is a negation of the claim that the first speaker makes in the previous turn while the latter is a negation of the argument that the first speaker provides. A systematic distinction between disagreement moves attacking the standpoint and those attacking the arguments in support of a standpoint (see the proposal made by Snoeck Henkemans 1992, 1995) would have helped Muntigl and Turnbull to make clearer the orientation and goal of the various acts of disagreeing. Regarding the linguistic formulation, Muntigl and Turnbull take the structural and surface characteristics of the way the disagreement move is formulated to indicate how face aggravating that act is (1998: 243ff). Their exclusive focus on the linguistic

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formulation for determining in retrospect the face-threateningness of the disagreement act does not allow them to consider the argumentative function that the different types were intended by the speaker to fulfil. Moreover, the authors do not take the linguistic formulation of disagreement as an interrogative or as a statement to be a criterion in identifying the various moves. While they note that “CHs … typically have the syntactic form of an interrogative” (ibid: 229), they do not specify what the typical form is of the other types of disagreements acts.5 As a result, their classification does not allow for cases where the antagonist prefaces their objection or criticism with a question that ambiguously invites for explanation while at the same time prepares a disagreement. From the above discussion of the shortcomings in Muntigl and Turnbull’s classification of disagreement moves, it should be clear that criteria based solely on the linguistic manifestation of disagreement are bound to be context-dependent, partial, and eventually ad hoc, and not generalizable over different situational contexts. The dialectical insights drawn from the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, as discussed in Sect. 3, could provide a basis for determining the face-threateningness of disagreement moves as inherent in the act of disagreeing, irrespective of the various situational and institutional contexts in which it occurs. Below I distinguish three dimensions along which a disagreement move can be described: the first dimension concerns a reinterpretation of the distinction between on-record and off-record introduced by politeness theory applied here to describe the type of disagreement, the second dimension concerns the linguistic manifestation of disagreement (whether the disagreement move has the form of a question or a statement), and the third dimension concerns the target of criticism based on distinctions made within argumentation theory. For each of the three dimensions, there is a greater or lesser degree of face-threateningness attached to the choices afforded. In total, twelve types of disagreement moves are identified ranked from most to least face-threatening. The choices that an arguer can make regarding each of these three dimensions when designing their disagreement move can also be mapped to the choices concerning the three aspects for strategic manoeuvring distinguished within pragma-dialectics (van Eemeren 2010). The choice regarding the target of criticism (about acceptability, about relevance or about sufficiency) concerns the topical potential of the disagreement move. The choice as to whether a disagreement move is on-record or off-record reflects in a certain way the arguer’s adaptation to the audience. The arguer who puts forward an off-record disagreement move leaves it up to the other party to provide more arguments in support of the proposition that has been challenged. Conversely, the arguer who puts forward an on-record disagreement move chooses to confront the other party with a proposition that directly counters the proposition advanced earlier. Finally, the choice regarding the stating or questioning form is one that concerns the presentation of the disagreement move. 5 In

fact, Snoeck Henkemans (1992) does not seem to be concerned with making such a distinction either. However, such a choice can be justified given her interest in the reconstruction of argumentation structures and the dialectical approach to argumentation that she assumes, as opposed to the linguistic manifestation of disagreement that appears to be the main focus of Muntigl and Turnbull’s study.

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Table 1 Classification of disagreement moves

By combining the dimensions of the two linguistic means of manifestation of disagreement, that is stating (S) and questioning (Q), and the three targets of criticism concerning acceptability, relevance or sufficiency, with the two types of making a disagreement move, that is on-record and off-record, I propose the following classification of disagreement moves, ranked from the most to least face threatening (Table 1). At first sight, the above table appears to be the reverse of Brown and Levinson’s (1987) table presenting the ranking of politeness strategies and their intrinsic payoffs. This impression is mainly caused because in Brown and Levinson the on-record/offrecord distinction concerns the use of language when performing any type of act that has a certain degree of face-threateningenss, while in the above table the distinction concerns the type of disagreement move, not the linguistic strategies one could apply in order to express their disagreement. When trying to relate these two tables, one could hypothesize that a speaker would, in principle, opt for implicitness and for what Brown and Levinson describe as off-record politeness strategies when carrying out disagreement moves that fall under what in the above table is termed an “on-record disagreement”. Alternatively, the speaker would opt for what Brown and Levinson have termed bald on-record politeness strategies when carrying out disagreement moves that fall under what in the above table is termed “off-record disagreement”. This is a hypothesis that needs empirical testing which falls outside the scope of this chapter.

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4.1 On-Record Versus Off-Record Disagreement Moves In the context of a mixed difference of opinion, which I take to be the prototypical type of dispute where the face of both parties is at stake the most, it makes a difference whether the antagonist chooses to put forward a claim (or ask a question) that directly counters the standpoint/arguments advanced by the protagonist and thereby to commit themselves to the opposite standpoint, or to make a contribution to the discussion without committing themselves from the start to the opposite claim. In the former case, the antagonist has made a move which explicitly counters the argument that the protagonist has advanced, as unacceptable, irrelevant or insufficient. In the latter case, the antagonist offers a kind of meta-discursive comment6 on the process of arguing that may function as a pre-sequence to the disagreement proper and thereby leaves it to the protagonist to decide how to proceed, inviting them to observe the rules of the critical discussion, and reminding them of the commitments to truth, relevance and pertinence. Eventually, the latter choice may help the antagonist to prepare the ground before advancing their own standpoint as a protagonist this time. Inspired by Brown and Levinson’s (1987) distinction between on-record and offrecord politeness strategies and having the intrinsic payoffs associated with each in mind, I propose distinguishing between on-record and off-record disagreement, not as linguistic strategies of expressing disagreement but as types of disagreement moves. Along these lines, putting forward a claim (or asking a question) which rebuts the standpoint/arguments advanced as unacceptable, irrelevant or insufficient is an on-record act of disagreement, whereas passing a judgement on (or asking a question about) the acceptability, relevance or sufficiency of the advanced standpoint/arguments is an off-record act of disagreement. In the on-record type of disagreement, the antagonist adds new information into the discussion either in the form of a statement or in the form of a suggestive question, to the content of which they commit themselves. In doing so, they aim at the maximum efficiency by opting for directness and explicitness in bringing forward a counter claim, which contributes substantially to the argumentative discussion and to the dialectical aim of critically testing the standpoint/arguments advanced (van Eemeren et al. 2002). It is in this sense that one may say that the on-record disagreement concerns the content of the previous argumentative move. The protagonist is confronted with counter-move attacking explicitly the tenability of their argument and therefore threatening their positive face. The antagonist’s face is also threatened since they openly put forward a claim (or question) that expressly counters the claim advanced already by the protagonist, and commit themselves to bring forward support for it if challenged later on. Choosing to attack the protagonist’s argument by stating that a certain statement holds, which, if conceded, renders the argument unacceptable, entails the greatest face threat for both the protagonist’s and the antagonist’s positive face. The antagonist 6 Muntigl

and Turnbull (1998: 229) use the term “meta-dispute acts” to refer exclusively to the irrelevancy claim type of disagreement without making any further systematic use of it.

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would then be expected to make use of the most indirect and implicit strategies (what Brown and Levinson (1987: 214, Fig. 6) describe as “off-record politeness strategies”) to formulate such a disagreement, as is the case in the following dialogue from the film American Beauty (1999)7 : CAROLYN and you’ll be surprised how much a ceiling fan can cut down on your energy costs. MAN → I got a cousin, he was a ballplayer. Ceiling fan fell on him in a bar and severed a tendon in his shoulder. Never fully regained use of that arm. Ruined his career.

The future buyer of the house attacks the acceptability of the seller’s argument that the ceiling fan that comes with the house will cut down the couple’s energy costs. He chooses to formulate his disagreement in an indirect way, by violating the Gricean maxim of Relevance in narrating the story of one of his relatives, in order to minimize the threat for the face of his interlocutor and save his own. In the off-record type of disagreement, the antagonist challenges the information provided by the protagonist without however committing themselves to any concrete new proposition. In doing so, they opt for indirectness and eventually avoid the responsibility of being committed to bringing forward a counter-claim. Instead, they assert that or question whether one of the felicity conditions (sincerity or preparatory) has been met and simply confine their contribution to an evaluative comment on the procedure, leaving it to the protagonist to decide how to proceed, and at the same time preparing their next move. It is in this sense that one may say that the offrecord disagreement is about the conditions regarding the testing of the tenability of a standpoint. The antagonist by carrying out an off-record disagreement avoids direct threat to the positive face of the protagonist and at the same time protect their own face (see Brown and Levinson 1987: 132; and Jacobs 1987). Unlike disagreement moves that introduce a claim (or a question) that directly counters the acceptability of the argument advanced by the protagonist, statements (or questions) that evaluate the previous argument as unacceptable (irrelevant or insufficient) constitute an off-record disagreement move. They leave it up to the protagonist to decide on how to react and they do not commit the antagonist to any particular counter claim, but help them prepare for their next move. Because of the intrinsic low threateningness of those moves, they can be realised in a straightforward and bald way, as in the following example from the film When Harry Met Sally (1989). 7 The examples discussed in this and the following two sub-sections are collected from movie scripts

available on the internet. I have paid attention in choosing from films whose story is situated in contemporary western society and involves everyday people interacting in various settings, such as family, work, university, peer groups, etc. The turns where the particular type of disagreement move appears are signaled with an arrow: →. The examples discussed here do not claim to be exhaustive of the possible ways in which each disagreement move can be realized, but rather illustrative of what I consider indicative cases of each type. Even though the data are by no means natural occurring everyday spoken discourse, they were nevertheless preferred to ad hoc invented examples based on intuition, for the spontaneity and interactiveness, among other conversational features, that excerpts from film scripts exhibit.

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HARRY What I’m saying is… and this is not a come-on in any way, shape or form, is that men and women can’t be friends because the sex part always gets in the way. SALLY → That’s not true, I have a number of men friends and there’s is no sex involved.

In the above dialogue, Sally starts her turn with a statement that comments on the acceptability of the argument advanced by Harry: “that’s not true”. She then adds new information which functions as a counter claim to Harry’s previous utterance. The first part of Sally’s utterance counts as an off-record disagreement move because she makes a statement which merely evaluates Harry’s argument as unacceptable. Compare it to the second part of her utterance which adds new information that seeks to show that Harry’s argument is unacceptable (an on-record disagreement move). Sally could have chosen one or the other type of disagreement move. The off-record type of disagreement move is more frequent as a critical reaction to a standpoint rather than to arguments in support of a standpoint. It can function as a preface to an on-record disagreement, as in the above dialogue.

4.2 Stating Versus Questioning The next dimension along which a disagreement move can be described concerns its linguistic manifestation. The arguer may choose to formulate their contribution (be it an on-record or an off-record disagreement move) as a statement or as a question. In the literature, the difference between statements and questions is that by means of the former, the speaker provides information to the interlocutor, whereas by means of the latter, the speaker asks for more information from the interlocutor (Sinclair 1990; Leech and Svartvik 1994). With that distinction in mind, it seems plausible to assume that expressing disagreement by putting forward a question instead of making a statement is less face threatening since it leaves it up to the protagonist to decide what the intent of the question was and how to answer it. When these two possible linguistic manifestations of a disagreement move are combined with the on-record/off-record dimension, four theoretically possible types of disagreement moves can be distinguished, namely: on-record disagreement by stating, on-record disagreement by raising a question, off-record disagreement by stating, and off-record disagreement by raising a question. While expressing an on-record disagreement by making a statement (attacking acceptability, relevance or sufficiency) is the most face threatening disagreement move, expressing an offrecord disagreement by raising a question (concerning acceptability, relevance or sufficiency) is the least face threatening move. The difference between on-record and off-record disagreement moves by stating was discussed in Sect. 4.1. In this section, I discuss two examples that illustrate the difference between on-record and off-record disagreement moves by raising a question.

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Compared to making a statement that attacks the acceptability (relevance or sufficiency) of the argument of the protagonist, raising a question would be less face threatening both for the antagonist and the protagonist. The antagonist cannot really be held accountable for putting forward the criticism, and the protagonist is relatively free to decide on the next argumentative move. In principle, questioning is considered to be more indirect because it invites the antagonist to make more inferences (see also Verbiest 1987: 89–90).8 However, when the form of a question is used to introduce new information into the argumentative discussion which attacks the acceptability (relevance or sufficiency) of the previous argument, it is a more face-threatening disagreement move, compared to a question that is merely asking whether the argument is true, why it is relevant or whether it is sufficient. This is the difference between questions that invite a so-called problemizing dialogue and questions that ask for explanation and thus introduce an explicative dialogue (Snoeck Henkemans 1992). This difference is captured by distinguishing on-record disagreement moves by raising a question from off-record disagreement moves by raising a question. The following dialogue from the film When Harry Met Sally (1989) contains an example of a question used to express an on-record disagreement: HARRY Because no man can be friends with a woman he finds attractive, he always wants to have sex with her. SALLY So you’re saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive. HARRY Nuh, you pretty much wanna nail’em too. SALLY → What if they don’t want to have sex with you? HARRY Doesn’t matter, because the sex thing is already out there so the friendship is ultimately doomed and that is the end of the story. SALLY Well I guess we’re not going to be friends then.

In this example, Sally puts forward a question that indicates that she still does not fully accept the truth of Harry’s argument, namely that both men and women are out for sex in their relationships, which supports his claim that there can never be friendship between the two sexes. Note that Sally formulates her move in a hedged way by using the conditional “what if” which mitigates her criticism about the acceptability of the unexpressed premise in her protagonist’s argument. 8 Verbiest

goes further in making a distinction between questions asking about the recognizability conditions (essential and propositional) as being less face-threatening than questions inquiring about the correctness conditions (sincerity and preparatory).

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The following dialogue from the film Good Will Hunting (1997) contains an example of a question used to express off-record disagreement. In this type of disagreement move, the antagonist invites the protagonist to bring more support or reformulate the argument they have already advanced, but does not put forward any explicit counter claim. CHUCKIE All I can say is; I known Will a long time– And I seen [sic] him with every girl he’s ever been with. But I’ve never seen him like this before, ever with anyone, like how he is with you. SKYLAR → Is that true? CHUCKIE Yeah, it is.

In the above dialogue, Skylar challenges Chuckie’s argument with a polar yes/no question that asks whether the argument is acceptable. She could have also advanced the same disagreement move by qualifying Chuckie’s argument as “dramatic” or “weird”, etc. as in “isn’t that a little dramatic?”.

4.3 Targets of Criticism The third dimension along which types of disagreement moves can be described and distinguished concerns the question whether the target of the criticism pertains to the propositional content of the argument or to its argumentative potential. The propositional content of an argument can be criticized as unacceptable, while its potential in supporting a standpoint can be criticized as either irrelevant or insufficient. While the three criteria of acceptability, relevance and sufficiency have been originally proposed by informal logicians for evaluating argumentation, Snoeck Henkemans (1992) has also made reference to these in her pragma-dialectical analysis of argumentation structures.9 The dialectical approach she assumes in order to explain how different argumentation structures result from the types of criticism can provide support for a plausible ranking of the imposition on the face of the other party involved in these three types of criticism. According to Snoeck Henkemans (1992: 89–91), criticism advanced by the antagonist regarding the acceptability gives rise to subordinative or multiple argumentation, whereas criticism regarding the sufficiency of the arguments calls for coordinative argumentation, and criticism regarding relevance gives rise to subordinative 9 She

refers to Freeman’s (1988) explanation of the various argumentation structures as responses to three main dialectical questions (cited in Snoeck Henkemans 1992: 56): 1) “Can you give me another reason?”, which is mainly a criticism by the antagonist regarding the sufficiency, 2) “Why is that true?”, which is a criticism regarding the acceptability of the argumentation advanced, 3) “Why is that relevant?”, which concerns the relevance of the argumentation advanced with the original claim.

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argumentation for the unexpressed premise. Provided that in pragma-dialectical terms a relative ranking of the different argumentation structures can be derived based on the relative impermeability of each structure to the critical questions of the antagonist, a retrospective identification of the weightiness of imposition of the criticisms advanced by the antagonist may also be proposed. Along these lines, multiple argumentation structure could be considered the strongest support that the protagonist could advance for their claim. This is so because each argument separately and independently supports the standpoint, and any attack on the standpoint by the antagonist would involve an attack on each one of the arguments advanced (Snoeck Henkemans 1992; van Eemeren et al. 2002). Coordinative argumentation structure consists of a series of arguments that need to be taken into account as a whole in order to sufficiently support the standpoint. Subordinative argumentation involves a series of arguments that support each other in a chain structure. It would then seem at first sight that coordinative argumentation is weaker than argumentation structured subordinatively, since once one of the arguments is attacked, the whole complex is invalidated, whereas in the subordinative structure there is still chance for the protagonist to put forward another, modified sub-argument, without necessarily the whole complex falling apart. However, one should note that in the case of the coordinative argument, at least one part of the argument is accepted but not considered enough, whereas in the case of subordinative argumentation each argument is accepted upon condition that the following is acceptable too. By focusing on the protagonist’s subsequent reaction to the antagonist’s criticism, the analyst could find clues that can help to assess the degree of threateningness of the disagreement move, on the assumption that the stronger support the protagonist puts forward in reaction to the critical tests of the antagonist, the more they perceive their face to be threatened by the criticisms/questions of the antagonist.10 The use of multiple argumentation in reaction to a criticism about the acceptability of the argument would indicate that the protagonist interpreted the antagonist’s criticism as most threatening, whereas the use of coordinative or subordinative argumentation would indicate that the criticism was interpreted as relatively less threatening. Of course, the above remains only a theoretical hypothesis which abstracts from the complicated patterns of argumentation structures that occur in everyday argumentative discourse and which cannot be matched a priori to specific face saving strategies. In Sects. 4.1 and 4.2 I discussed examples where the target of criticism concerned the acceptability of the argument, which, following the above discussion, would be theoretically the most face-threatening type of disagreement move. The following examples provide an illustration of disagreement moves that target the sufficiency of the argument, and thereby are considered to be, comparatively, less face-threatening. Similar to the target of criticism regarding the acceptability of the argument, the sufficiency of the argument can be targeted by an on-record disagreement move in the form of a statement or in the form of a question, and by and off-record disagreement move in the form of a statement or in the form of a question. The antagonist, when 10 Muntigl

and Turnbull (1998) hint at such an interactive assessment of the face threateningness when they discuss the orientation of T3 in response to the imposition on face that T2 incurs.

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choosing to disagree on-record, brings the protagonist’s attention to a new aspect of the issue under discussion that points that the argument is not enough to support the initial claim. The frequent use of disclaimers and prefaces like “yes, but…” hints not only to the double orientation of the antagonist’s turn (on one side to accept partially the argument already advanced and on the other to express disagreement),11 it also constitutes a mitigating formulation, which seeks to attenuate the face threateningness of such a disagreement move. The following dialogue from the film American Beauty (1999) contains an example of an on-record disagreement stating a criticism that attacks the sufficiency of the previous argument. JANE You must really hate him. RICKY He’s not really a bad man. He’s just one of those people who needs everybody to make the same choices he did. So he can feel good about himself. JANE → Yeah, but you lost two whole years of your life. RICKY I didn’t lose them. It taught me how to step back, and just… watch, and not take everything so personally. And that’s something I needed to learn. That’s something everybody needs to learn.

Ricky’s position against Jane’s claim is that he does not really hate his father, because he can justify his father’s behaviour on the grounds of his authoritative and demanding character. Jane’s criticism to Ricky’s argument indicates that she does not take his argument to be a sufficient reason for him not to hate his father. To that, Ricky replies saying that even in those two years that he was in the institution, he got to learn something so it was not such a waste. Note that only if the two arguments are reconstructed together in coordinative structure can they be taken to sufficiently support Ricky’s standpoint that he does not hate his father.12 Compared to statements against sufficiency, questions that introduce content which attacks sufficiency are less face-threatening of a disagreement move at the antagonist’s disposal. The antagonist asks the protagonist about an aspect of the argument previously advanced, which indicates that there is still more support needed, without however risking their face or that of the interlocutor any more than the engagement in a discussion over a difference of opinion entails. This is illustrated in the following example of an on-record disagreement in the form of a question that attacks sufficiency from the film Erin Brockovic (2000):

11 Snoeck Henkemans (1995) in her study of “but” as an indicator of counter arguments and conces-

sions argues that the use of “but” at the beginning of an utterance does not straightforwardly and unambiguously imply that the antagonist accepts even partially the argument already advanced. 12 Examples of this particular type of disagreement move bear similarities with the counter claim (CC) type of disagreement move recognised by Muntigl and Turnbull (1998: 231–233).

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GEORGE What’s the matter, you got so many friends in this world, you can’t use one more? I’m serious. If you need someone to keep an eye on them – after school or something – I don’t have a job now, so I’m around in the afternoons. ERIN Oh, that’s a great recommendation. You’re unemployed? GEORGE By choice. I work when I need to. ERIN → Yeah? And what do you do the rest of the time, live off your trust fund? GEORGE I do construction, which pays real good. And I make it last by living cheap.

In the above fragment, Erin questions the arguments that George advances to support his proposal to baby sit for Erin’s children. The question she puts forward regarding his sources of funding, after he has admitted that he is unemployed and works only occasionally, invites for an answer that only in conjunction with the rest of his argumentation would make him a suitable baby sitter. Again, the argument holds water only if structured coordinatively with the ones advanced previously.

5 Concluding Remarks In his edited book that paved the way for subsequent studies on conflict and discourse, Grimshaw (1990: 308–9) identified two shortcomings: “discourse analytic studies (including those of conflict talk) are neither theoretically cumulative nor empirically methodologically systematic”. Among the competing theories that Grimshaw mentions, which seek to explain all or part of what goes on in conflict talk, are either those which focus on talk as socially constrained and determined or those which focus on social behaviour neglecting talk.13 In this paper, I have attempted to provide a theoretically informed and systematic classification of disagreement moves by combining insights from argumentation theory, namely pragma-dialectics, and politeness theory, namely Brown and Levinson’s model of politeness and facework. The classification I have proposed takes for granted that disagreeing is a face-threatening act and seeks to rank disagreement moves in a scale of greater to lesser weightiness of the face threat. The degree of face-threateningness, I have argued, is not based exclusively 13 It

should be noted here that the research conducted under the label of conflict talk encompasses a much broader field, and studies cases that would not necessarily all fall under disagreement or argument as studied within pragma-dialectics or normative pragmatics and rhetoric. It is rather those cases where two parties make and/or support statements that they construe to be mutually incompatible, for which they go on arguing by making use of verbal means, that pragma-dialectics studies and which I treat here as well.

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on the linguistic formulation of these moves or on their directness/indirectness, but crucially on the target of the criticism advanced. The combination of the three dimensions (on-record vs off-record type of disagreement, stating vs questioning form of disagreement, and the three targets of criticism involved) helps us understand that disagreeing is a face-threatening act for both the antagonist’s and the protagonist’s face, which nonetheless is crucial for the initiation and development of the process of critically testing the tenability of a standpoint. Moreover, the combination of the three dimensions helps to specify the varying degrees of face-threateningness in relation to the different aspects inherent in the act of disagreeing in the process of an argumentative discussion, namely disagreement over the content of the argument or over the conditions of the discussion, and criticism pertaining to the acceptability, relevance or sufficiency of the argument. At the same time, the integration of politeness considerations in the study of argumentative discourse helps to focus on the relational and social dimension of this particular communicative activity. As scholars who have studied conflict talk and politeness have already observed (Kakavá 2001; Grimshaw 1990; Walkinshaw 2015), there is a multitude of factors that may influence the expression and/or interpretation of disagreement in the various situational contexts. The proposed classification can provide a basis for studying disagreement in various contexts and for comparing the different politeness strategies that can be applied to make one type of disagreement move or another. One such application of the proposed classification could be in the analysis of the act of disagreement in written monological argumentation, a form of communication where conflict and disagreement have been understudied. Moreover, an empirical study of a corpus of spoken or written discourse is necessary in order to identify patterns of the actual linguistic realisation of the different types of disagreement moves that have been theoretically identified in this study. Primary sources American Beauty, 1999. Director: Sam Mendes Erin Brockovic, 2000. Director: Steven Soderbergh Good Will Hunting, 1997. Director: Gus van Sant When Harry Met Sally, 1989. Director: Rob Reiner

References Angouri, J., & Locher, M. A. (2012). Theorising disagreement. Journal of Pragmatics, 44, 1549– 1553. Bilmes, J. (1988). The concept of preference in conversation analysis. Language in Society, 17, 161–181. Bilmes, J. (1991). Toward a theory of argument in conversation: The preference for disagreement. In F. H. van Eemeren & R. Grootendorst et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (pp. 462–369). Amsterdam: SicSat.

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Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown, P. (2015). Politeness and impoliteness. In Y. Huang (Ed.), The Oxford handbook of pragmatics (pp. 383–399). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Edmondson, W. (1981). Spoken discourse. A model for analysis. New York: Longman. Fraser, B. (1990). Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 219–236. Freeman, J. B. (1988). Thinking logically. Basic concepts for reasoning. Engelwood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall. Goodwin, M. H. (1983). Aggravated correction and disagreement in children’s conversations. Journal of Pragmatics, 7, 657–677. Greatbatch, D. (1992). On the management of disagreement between news interviewees. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (Eds.), Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings (pp. 268–301). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics (Vol. 3, pp. 41–58)., Speech acts London: Academic Press. Grimshaw, A. D. (Ed.) (1990). Conflict talk: Sociolinguistic investigations of arguments in conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hample, D. (2006). Arguing: Exchanging reasons face to face. London: Routledge. Hoppmann, M. (2017). Competition and conflict between communicative norms. Journal of Argumentation in Context, 6, 220–246. Jacobs, S. (1987). The management of disagreement in conversation. In F. H. van Eemeren, et al. (Eds.), Argumentation across the lines of discipline (pp. 229–239). Dordrecht: Foris Publication. Kakavá, C. (1993). Aggravated corrections as disagreement in casual Greek conversations. In R. Queen & R. Barrett (Eds.), Proceedings of the First Annual Symposium About Language and Society—Austin (SALSA) (pp. 187–195). Austin, Texas: University of Texas, Department of Linguistics. Kakavá, C. (2001). Discourse and conflict. In D. Schiffrin, D. Tannen, & H. E. Hamilton (Eds.), Handbook of discourse analysis (pp. 650–670). Oxford: Blackwell. Kasper, G. (1990). Linguistic politeness: Current research issues. Journal of Pragmatics, 14, 193– 218. Kasper, G. (2001). Politeness. In R. Mesthrie (Ed.), Concise encyclopedia of sociolinguistics (pp. 187–193). Oxford: Elsevier. Kotthoff, H. (1993). Disagreement and concession in disputes: On the context sensitivity of preference structures. Language in Society, 22, 193–216. Leech, G. (2014). The pragmatics of politeness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1994). A communicative grammar of English (2nd ed.). London: Longman. Muntigl, P., & Turnbull, W. (1998). Conversational structure and facework in arguing. Journal of Pragmatics, 29, 225–265. Pomerantz, A. (1984). Agreeing and disagreeing with assessments: Some features of referred/dispreferred turn shapes. In J. M. Atkinson & J. Heritage (Eds.), Structures of social action: Studies in conversational analysis (pp. 57–101). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schiffrin, D. (1985). Everyday argument: The organization of diversity in talk. In T. A. van Dijk (Ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis (Vol. 3, pp. 35–46)., Discourse and dialogue London: Academic Press. Scott, S. (2002). Linguistic feature variation within disagreements: An empirical investigation. Text, 22, 301–328. Sinclair, J. (Ed.) (1990). Collins COBUILD English grammar. London: Harper Collins. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (1992). Analysing complex argumentation: The reconstruction of multiple and coordinatively compound argumentation in a critical discussion. Amsterdam: SicSat. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (1995). ‘But’ as an indicator of counter-arguments and concessions. Leuvense Bijdragen, 84, 1–14. van Eemeren, F. H. (2010). Strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse: Extending the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. (1991). The study of argumentation from a speech act perspective. In J. Verschueren (Ed.), Pragmatics at issue: Selected papers of the International Pragmatics Conference (pp. 151–170). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. (2004). A systematic theory of argumentation. The pragmadialectical approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van Eemeren, F. H., Grootendorst, R., & Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2002). Argumentation: Analysis, evaluation, presentation. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. van Eemeren, F. H., Grootendorst, R., Jackson, S., & Jacobs, S. (1993). Reconstructing argumentative discourse. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press. van Rees, M. A. (1992). The use of language in conversation. Amsterdam: SicSat. Verbiest, A. E. M. (1987). Confrontaties in conversaties. Ph.D. Thesis. Amsterdam: Universiteit van Amsterdam. Walkinshaw, I. (2015). Agreement and disagreement. In K. Tracy, C. Ilie, & T. Sandel (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of language and social interaction (pp. 1–6). Oxford: John Wiley.

Assimakis Tseronis defended his Ph.D. on the topic of stance adverbs qualifying standpoints under the supervision of Ton van Haaften and Frans van Eemeren at Leiden University in 2009. He subsequently worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the CNRS in Paris and as an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam. Since 2018 he works as an Assistant Professor at Örebro University, where he teaches and carries out research in the areas of verbal and visual rhetoric as well as visual and multimodal communication.

From Language to Argumentation

The Strategic Use of Metaphor in Argumentation Roosmaryn Pilgram and Lotte van Poppel

Abstract In this chapter, the strategic functions of metaphor in argumentative discourse are studied by integrating insights from the three-dimensional (3D) model of metaphor (Steen 2008) and the extended pragma-dialectical theory (van Eemeren 2010). The aim of this study is to show that the combination of these approaches enriches argumentative metaphor analysis. Based on the 3D-model, we take into account the conventionality/novelty, the (in)directness, and the (non-)deliberateness of metaphors. These different characteristics of metaphor arguably have distinct dialectical and rhetorical consequences when used in the argumentation stage of a discussion, which can be used strategically by an arguer to maintain a balance between being both reasonable and effective. The distinct consequences of metaphor use are discussed first in theory and some of these are subsequently illustrated by an example taken from practice: US president Donald Trump’s use of the metaphor of “The Snake” in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 2018. Trump’s use of “The Snake” showed that this direct, novel and deliberate metaphor offers creative variation and more ambiguity concerning his commitments and therefore may help in making the best case for his standpoint. Keywords Deliberate metaphor theory · Metaphor · Pragma-dialectics · Strategic manoeuvring · Trump

1 Introduction When asked what would be the first thing to happen if he were to come to power, Dutch right-wing politician Geert Wilders responded that he would close down the borders, because “the tsunami of Islamisation has to stop” (ten Hoove and du Pré 2006, our R. Pilgram (B) Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] L. van Poppel University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Boogaart et al. (eds.), The Language of Argumentation, Argumentation Library 36, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52907-9_10

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translation). By means of this disaster metaphor, Wilders implies vividly that vast numbers of Islamic migrants are currently entering the Netherlands, resulting in a catastrophe. Wilders refers to the so-called source domain of natural disaster to make a claim about the target domain of immigration. Using this source domain to speak about immigration is quite conventional (e.g., Charteris-Black 2006; Musolff 2011; Santa Ana 1999). Yet, the term “tsunami” was relatively new in the Netherlands at the time: people generally only learned about this concept because of the catastrophic tsunami in Asia in December 2004. Connecting the concept of tsunami to immigration drew a lot of attention to Wilders’s claim and can be seen as a powerful, strategic way of painting a negative picture of Islamic immigrants (see De Landtsheer et al. 2011). The rhetorical power of metaphors has been studied both by argumentation scholars (e.g., Aristotle 1926; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969; Quintilian 1920) and by metaphor scholars (e.g., Charteris-Black 2004; Mio 1997; Musolff 2004). Those focusing on real-life metaphor use predominantly take a Critical Discourse Analytical approach (e.g., Musolff 2004), which studies and evaluates the ways in which discourse reflects and steers social reality. Researchers such as Musolff (2004) and Pielenz (1993) also use argumentation-theoretical insights, such as the Toulmin model, which is used to reconstruct metaphors in terms of reasoning. In the current chapter, we will take a new perspective on metaphor that has remained largely unexplored in the literature thus far: we will focus on the strategic use of metaphor in argumentative discussions, using the extended pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation (van Eemeren 2010; van Eemeren and Houtlosser 2005). By “strategic”, we mean the use of metaphor to reach both the dialectical goal (of being reasonable) and the rhetorical goal (of being effective) in argumentative discourse (i.e., the use of a metaphor as a strategic manoeuvre in argumentative discourse). In the context of an argumentative discussion (such as Wilders’s contribution to the public discussion about immigration), this amounts to optimally using a metaphor in order to persuade the audience, while contributing to the process of resolving a difference of opinion. Our goal with this chapter is to show that an integration of insights from metaphor analysis, specifically the 3D-model of metaphor developed by Steen (2008), into the extended pragma-dialectical theory will enhance the analysis of the strategic use of metaphor in argumentative discourse. The advantage of adopting an extended pragma-dialectical approach to metaphor in argumentation is that this theory offers a systematic procedure to analyse metaphors as part of an argumentative interaction. Pragma-dialectics offers a framework in which the commitments associated with particular discussion moves can be determined, while also taking the rhetorical advantages of the particular design of discussion moves into account. This is done by describing the efforts of arguers to combine reasonableness and effectiveness in terms of what is called strategic manoeuvring (van Eemeren 2010). Metaphor can also be used in a discussion to manoeuvre strategically (Garssen and Kienpointner 2011). Although not all metaphorical expressions are necessarily relevant for the outcome of a discussion, some may be instrumental for strategic manoeuvring. The strategic potential of metaphor depends to a certain extent on the kind of metaphor with

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which we are dealing. According to Steen (2008, 2010, 2017), metaphor has three dimensions: the conceptual, the linguistic and the communicative dimension. On these dimensions, Steen respectively distinguishes conventional and novel metaphor, direct and indirect metaphor, and deliberate and non-deliberate metaphor. Despite the fact that these distinctions have been made in (empirical and theoretical) metaphor studies (Musolff 2016; Reijnierse 2017; Reijnierse et al. 2018), they have not been taken into account in argumentation-theoretical approaches to metaphor (see van Poppel 2018, 2020). Since we think these distinctions can enrich argumentation analysis, we will apply them to analyse the strategic use of metaphor in argumentative discourse. In Sect. 2, we will go into the differences between conventional and novel, direct and indirect, and deliberate and non-deliberate metaphors. In Sect. 3, we will briefly describe the extended pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation. In this section, we will discuss how the different types of metaphors can be seen as strategic manoeuvres in an argumentative discussion. In Sect. 4, we will present a case study of a speech by US president Donald Trump in which he deliberately uses a novel and direct metaphor for immigration. With this case study, we will try to illustrate how the analysis of the strategic use of metaphor in argumentative discourse can benefit from taking into account the different dimensions of metaphor distinguished in the aforementioned sections. In Sect. 5 we will provide our conclusions and discussion.

2 Three Dimensions of Metaphor While traditional argumentation handbooks generally speak of metaphor primarily in terms of a linguistic figure of style, present-day metaphor theory builds on Conceptual Metaphor Theory (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003), which considers metaphor as a cross-domain mapping in thought, connecting a (typically more concrete) source domain (or “vehicle”) to a (more abstract) target domain (or “tenor”). Lakoff and Johnson (1980/2003) argue that metaphor is ubiquitous in our thinking and speaking: we constantly use the one concept to think about another concept (e.g., DOWN is BAD, RELATIONSHIPS are JOURNEYS) and these cross-domain mappings are reflected in our language use (e.g., “He’s feeling down”, “We’ve come a long way”). The 3D-model of metaphor introduced by Steen (2008) posits that metaphors do not only have a conceptual and linguistic dimension, but also a communicative one: metaphors constitute conceptual mappings in thought, they occur in metaphorical expressions in language use, and are used with particular communicative goals in mind. On each of these dimensions, different kinds of metaphors can be distinguished. These distinctions can point to the argumentative role that metaphors can play in argumentative discourse as well as provide different opportunities and constraints for strategic manoeuvring within this discourse.

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At the conceptual level, one can distinguish between conventional and novel metaphors.1 Conventional metaphors are used in everyday language to such an extent that the recipient in principle does not need to actively map what has been said about the source domain onto what is meant about the target domain. Examples include expressions such as “running out of time” or “core of the problem”, in which the recipient does not have to vigorously think about a physical activity or the centre of a piece of fruit to understand what is meant. Rather than being processed by means of a comparison, Bowdle and Gentner (2005) stipulate in their Career of Metaphor theory that conventional metaphors are processed by means of categorisation: the metaphor’s meaning is already in place in the recipient’s mind and simply has to be retrieved. By contrast, in novel conceptual metaphors, the source domain that is used to convey something about the target domain is new; it is not typically used in terms of the target domain. Therefore, active mapping between the source and target domain is needed to understand a novel metaphor (Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003: 53). After all, the recipient cannot rely on previous interpretations of this metaphor because of its novelty. Such a metaphor, for example, is used when saying something like we are “flowing out of time”. The source domain of STREAM is not typically connected to target domain of TIME. The novelty of the source domain here highlights particular aspects of the target domain, such as the steadiness and continuity with which the lack of time occurs.2 Conceptual metaphors can manifest themselves in language in various types of words. The Pragglejaz group (2007) and Steen et al. (2010) have developed a procedure to identify metaphors, or “metaphor-related words”, in discourse (the “Metaphor Identification Procedure” (“MIP”), which was further developed at the Vrije Universiteit (VU) in Amsterdam (“MIPVU”)). This method entails determining for each lexical unit whether it has a more basic meaning than the meaning it has in the particular context in which it is used and whether the contextual meaning is sufficiently distinct from its basic meaning. If so, and if the contextual meaning can be related to the more basic meaning based on some kind of similarity, the unit can be considered metaphor-related (Steen et al. 2010). For instance, in “We should stop the tsunami

1 More precisely, one can distinguish between maximally conventional and maximally novel metaphors, as a metaphor’s “novelty” (or “conventionality” for that matter) can be regarded as a gradual concept. Indeed, Philip (2016: 226) argues: “Novelty, like metaphoricity itself, is gradable. It runs the gamut from nonce-forms (i.e. those which have never previously been documented in the language), to metaphors which exist in the language and are familiar to the speaker but not to the interlocutor”. 2 It should be noted that the novelty of a metaphor could also arise from the level of language use only (Philip 2016: 224–225). This occurs when a metaphor is formulated in a non-standard way, while the metaphor can be said to be conventional at the conceptual level (e.g., a “rogue wave of immigrants” instead of the nowadays more conventional “stream of immigrants”). Here too, the linguistic deviation in “rogue wave of immigrants” might emphasise particular aspects of the source domain of NATURAL DISASTER that the more conventional expression “stream of immigrants” does not (e.g., that there is just a single, “one-off”, instantiation of extreme and devastating immigration).

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of Islamisation”, the unit “tsunami” can be considered a metaphor-related word, drawing on the conceptual metaphor IMMIGRATION is a NATURAL DISASTER. Besides defining the steps to identify metaphors in language, the procedure also distinguishes between direct and indirect metaphors (Steen et al. 2010). The example “We should stop the tsunami of Islamisation” contains an indirect metaphor: the word tsunami activates the concept of “a very large wave” (MacMillan dictionary), which is the presumed referent, but which is used to indirectly refer to another concept, i.e. “a very large quantity of Islamic immigrants”. This incongruity is resolved when comparing the concept of the wave with the concept to which it indirectly refers. In direct metaphors, there is no contrast between the contextual meaning of the words by which the metaphor is expressed and the basic meaning of those words: the words activate the concepts directly referred to in the text, but a new referent is introduced that is incongruous with the context. Direct metaphors are often part of an explicit comparison or simile (Steen et al. 2010), such as “life is (like) a play”, which expresses a cross-domain mapping that is explicitly signalled or flagged. They can also occur without flag or signal: again, there is no contrast between basic and contextual meaning of the units, but there is a contrast between the referents in the units and the text or topic. For instance, this happens in the following example from the MIPVU corpus: (1) They [system developers] seem to think that you can ask a businessman what his requirements are and get an answer that amounts to a draft system specification. A doctor doesn’t ask his patient what treatment to prescribe. […] (Steen et al. 2010: 57). The words in the second sentence are used in their basic meaning, but they introduce referents that are incongruous with the referents in the first sentence of the fragment: the words “doctor” and “patient” in the second sentence refer to concepts in a different domain than the units “they” and “businessman”. The incongruity can be explained by a mapping between the domains: the system developer and his client should be seen in terms of doctor and patient. At the communicative level, metaphors can be distinguished based on their purpose in the interaction. Steen (2011) therefore distinguishes between deliberate and non-deliberate metaphors.3 Although much of our metaphor use may be unconscious, deliberate metaphors in language are intended to change the perspective on the target domain by exploiting the source domain, for instance, in order to clarify complicated matters or to change someone’s opinion. Fragment (1) is an example of such deliberate metaphor use. For non-deliberate metaphors, the source domain is not exploited, because their intended meaning is inferred directly from the metaphor-related words without forming an image of the source domain (Steen 2011: 102). 3 Charteris-Black

(2012) criticizes the term “deliberate” because it assumes that researchers know what the intentions of language users are, while they cannot know for sure. Therefore, CharterisBlack proposes to use the term “purposeful”, especially in the context of persuasive discourse, because this term would describe the language as a speech act with a particular purpose, namely, convincing the audience.

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These three dimensions of metaphor are interrelated to some extent: the most clearcut cases of deliberate metaphor are metaphors that are both novel and direct.4 Such deliberate, novel and direct metaphors are therefore suitable candidates for strategic manoeuvring in argumentative discourse; the arguer can purposefully employ the metaphor to maintain a balance between being reasonable and effective. Yet, also indirect and conventional metaphors may be deliberate, depending on the context in which they are used and the way in which they are presented. For example, when an indirect conventional metaphor is extended, it may come to life again and may thus be considered as a metaphor at the communicative level as well (see Reijnierse 2017: 111).

3 Strategic Functions of Different Types of Metaphors 3.1 Strategic Manoeuvring To say more about the strategic functions of different types of metaphor in argumentative discourse, we will use the framework of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984, 1992). According to this theory, argumentation arises when arguers attempt to convince an audience of a standpoint. Arguers engage in an argumentative discussion to resolve (expected) disagreement about the standpoint. In this attempt, they will strive for both dialectical and rhetorical goals: they will try to achieve a resolution of the difference of opinion between themselves and their audience by advancing argumentation in a reasonable fashion (their dialectical goal). Simultaneously, they will attempt to be as persuasive as possible by advancing appealing arguments and other discussion contributions that are adapted to the beliefs and values of their audience (their rhetorical goal). Balancing these two goals is called strategic manoeuvring (van Eemeren 2010; van Eemeren and Houtlosser 2005). Strategic manoeuvring takes place in each individual move in a discussion, such as putting forward a standpoint or advancing an argument. Arguers attempt to design every move in the most effective way by making suitable choices from the available discussion moves and topics (the topical potential), by making use of attractive presentational techniques and by adapting these choices to the preferences of the intended audience. These three aspects of strategic manoeuvring interact: a topical choice always entails a presentational choice and a choice with respect to audience adaptation. The strategic choices hence cannot be seen as completely separate, but they can be analytically distinguished (van Eemeren 2010: 39).

4 In

fact, novel metaphors are by definition deliberate metaphors, and Reijnierse (2017: 16) points out that direct metaphors (as well as lexical signals such as “like”) indicate potentially deliberate metaphors.

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3.2 Strategic Functions of Metaphors In some argumentation-theoretical contributions, metaphors are seen as merely presentational devices (e.g., Garssen 2009). It is true that the choice to use a metaphor, instead of another linguistic presentation of argumentative moves, can as such be seen as a form of presentational strategic manoeuvring. Their function is, in our view, however not limited to the presentational aspect of such manoeuvring. Van Eemeren (2010: 125) argues that figures such as metaphor always have a rhetorical function (as they promote acceptance), but “in certain cases they have a dialectical function as well”. In other words, metaphors may also be functional in performing a particular discussion move (see van Poppel 2020). Some of the particular dialectical functions ascribed to metaphor in argumentative discourse are, in pragma-dialectical terms, advancing an argument, expressing a standpoint and introducing a shared starting point (e.g., Juthe 2016; Musolff 2004; Oswald and Rihs 2014; Santibáñez 2010; Wagemans 2016). In particular, metaphors are considered to be a type of analogy argument (e.g., Musolff 2004; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969). Van Eemeren (2010: 121) argues that figures can be put to “argumentatively profitable use”, for example by introducing a starting point by means of a metaphor that “is likely to appeal to the audience”. As such, the metaphor is a way to perform a relevant discussion move while adapting it to the audience using a particular stylistic presentation. The idea that metaphor can contribute to a discussion while enhancing a discussion move’s persuasiveness resembles the view of Burgers et al. (2016) on metaphor as both framing and reasoning device. They argue that metaphors can be used as a linguistic form of expression, or “framing device”, and at the same time as a “reasoning device”, which provides content to an argument. Metaphors (and figures such as hyperbole and irony as well) add conceptual content by foregrounding a particular problem definition, cause, evaluation and/or solution. The linguistic expression “tsunami of Islamisation”, for instance, pictures Islamic immigrants as a hazard; such a problem definition is a relevant starting point for Wilders’s political agenda. Metaphors may thus aid achieving both dialectical and rhetorical goals: they can fulfil a relevant argumentative function and they may contribute to a persuasive design of discussion moves. When both of these goals are achieved, the metaphor is a successful strategic manoeuvre. Depending on the type of metaphors used, metaphors can thus be said to fulfil particular strategic functions in argumentative discourse. In the following sections, we will discuss for each of the types of metaphors distinguished (deliberate vs. non-deliberate, direct vs. indirect, and novel vs. conventional) what kind of strategic functions they can fulfil. For clarity’s sake, we will do so for each of these types separately, but it should be noted that in actual argumentative practice, metaphors function on all three dimensions of Steen’s (2008) 3D-model (i.e., the conceptual, linguistic, and communicative dimension), and can thus be labelled on deliberateness, directness and conventionality at the same time. Moreover, we will only focus on the strategic function of metaphors in the argumentation stage, because

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this stage is the stage where the actual arguments and criticisms are advanced, and it is thus fundamental for the strategic argumentative use of metaphors.

3.3 Strategic Functions of Deliberate Versus Non-deliberate Metaphors In the argumentation stage, discussants set out to defend their standpoint by advancing argumentation or to criticise the position of the opponent by asking critical questions or advancing counterarguments. The discussants’ rhetorical objective is to make their defence or attack as strong as possible (van Eemeren and Houtlosser 2002). In this endeavour, metaphors may be used both deliberately and non-deliberately. Deliberate metaphors can be used strategically in an argumentative discussion because calling attention to the source domain helps to draw inferences or evoke associations that in some way support the discussant’s case. The metaphor in example (1) in Sect. 2, for instance, proposes a new perspective on the relation between system developers and their clients by evoking the image of a patient and his or her doctor. Non-deliberate metaphors are not meant to draw attention to the source domain, but they can be used strategically in a discussion as well. A statement like “We have to let employees go” is metaphorical, as the more basic meaning of “letting go” means to allow a captured person or animal to go free, but is not meant to invoke the idea of a released person or animal. This metaphor can nonetheless be used strategically in an argumentative discussion because it can make firing employees seem more acceptable, or even favourable to the employee. Discussants who need to justify a lay-off may thus achieve their goals more easily by making the presentational choice to speak of “letting go”. The strategic advantages of such non-deliberate metaphor use are not very different from other non-metaphoric (euphemistic) uses of language. In the remainder of this chapter, we will nevertheless focus on the strategic functions of deliberate metaphor in argumentative discourse, since these functions arise from the “metaphoricity” of these metaphors (i.e., their use as metaphors).

3.4 Strategic Functions of Indirect Versus Direct Metaphors In argumentative discourse, the direct or indirect expression of a metaphor is of great influence on what function it can have in the discussion. The choice between the two types of metaphors is not only a matter of presentation, but has topical and audience adaptation dimensions too. It can be a way to make an opportune choice from the topical potential (i.e., all the available moves at a certain point in the discussion) and appeal to the intended audience (i.e., their beliefs, expectations, hopes, norms, values, and wishes). Direct metaphors consist of statements about the source domain in discourse about the target domain. Such statements commit the discussant to their

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acceptability and hence can function as premises in an argument. Direct metaphors can, for instance, be used as analogy arguments. This is illustrated in fragment (2), which is taken from the website of John Redwood, a British politician who argued that the UK should not pay to leave the European Union. (2) Being in the EU is a bit like being a student in a college. All the time you belong to the college you have to pay fees. You have to obey all the rules of the institution. When you depart you have no further financial obligations (Redwood 2017). By directly formulating a metaphor, the protagonist (in this case Redwood) draws attention to the source domain that he wants to exploit (that of college tuition). If this source domain is easily recognisable and the protagonist’s claims about it are readily acceptable to the audience, the audience might accept the claims about the target domain more readily as well. Using direct metaphors in this way can thus amount to a strategic presentational choice. Additionally, it involves adaptation to the audience’s demands (which statements about the source domain are recognisable and acceptable?) and topical choices (which source domain to select and what claims to make about it?). If the connection between the source and target domains is made explicit in a direct metaphor (which Redwood does in the very first sentence of example (2): “Being in the EU is a bit like being a student in college”), the protagonist can be clear about the analogy that s/he wants to make. The audience might welcome this clarity, but it also involves a risk. Metaphors typically allow for multiple interpretations, especially if the connection between the source and target domain is left implicit. Explicitly presenting the connection between source and target somewhat limits this interpretational leeway, which means that it clarifies to what the protagonist can be held committed, thereby incurring a clear burden of proof. Still, the protagonist can benefit from such a direct metaphor by exploiting a source domain that is familiar to the audience and by selecting statements about that domain that contribute to his or her case. In indirect metaphors, referents from the source domain are used in the context of the target domain, such as in the case of Wilders’s metaphor of a “tsunami of Islamisation”. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969: 400) ascribe rhetorical advantages to metaphors in which the domains are “fused” (i.e., in which indirect metaphors are used). They argue that if the phoros (that which is said about the source domain) and the theme (that which is said about the target domain) are merged, the metaphor may be more effective, as the connection between phoros and theme is presupposed, rather than suggested (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 400). By using the source domain term “tsunami” together with the target domain term “Islamisation”, the connection between the two domains is thus presented as though it is a common starting point that Islamic immigration is necessarily catastrophic, amounting to a strategic topical selection (this starting point is advantageous for Wilders) as well as a potential adaptation to audience demand (by suggesting that the starting point is shared).

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Regardless of the (in)directness of a metaphor, it should be noted that referring to the target domain while using lexical elements belonging to the source domain can be a strategic presentational choice in itself. Such a presentation enables the arguer to evoke all kinds of associations and to connect these to the target domain, while evading commitment to any concrete statement (see Feteris 2012: 207). In the Wilders example, the word “tsunami” evokes associations of a deadly disaster and connects these to the target domain of Islamic immigration, while no explicit statements about the consequences of immigration are made. This presentational manoeuvring can make commitments smaller and claims easier to defend. After all, one could simply deny having expressed that the consequences of Islamic immigration are like those of a deadly tsunami.

3.5 Strategic Functions of Conventional Versus Novel Metaphors Apart from presenting a metaphor directly, one can also draw attention to the metaphor by introducing a novel metaphor. The strategic function of such metaphor most clearly emerges when used as an analogy argument. The choice to use a metaphor as analogy argument in defence of a standpoint can be regarded as a strategic choice from the topical potential. An example of such a strategic choice can be found in (2). In this example, the novel conceptual metaphor invites the audience to use the knowledge on college rules and apply it to the complex issue of EU rules. It can be strategic to use a novel conceptual metaphor, because it can portray issues in a simplified way and if the audience finds the statement about the source domain (that of college tuition) acceptable, they are more likely to accept the standpoint about the target domain (that of financial political obligations). Metaphors are useful in making complex political matters more accessible to the public (Santa Ana 1999), so such a metaphor may work very well, especially when the topic in the standpoint is quite complex for the general audience. Instead of using a metaphor, an alternative choice from the topical potential would be to use a regular comparison argument, in which there is a within-domain comparison (e.g., between regulations in the US and in the EU). However, such an argument is presumably less appealing to a general audience in case of a complex issue, because it would demand knowledge about a similarly complex issue (e.g., US regulations). In addition, a suitable and acceptable comparison argument might be harder to select (e.g., there is no union between states that is exactly comparable to the EU; the US is for instance a federation of states that all subscribe to the US constitution, etc.). A novel metaphor lends itself to analogy argumentation, as this type of metaphor invites the audience to actively map what has been said about the source domain onto what has been said about the target domain. An argumentatively used conventional metaphor does not necessarily result in analogy argumentation, because it does not entail active transference from source to target domain, and therefore also not from

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premise to conclusion. Conventional metaphors may nonetheless be used as part of an argument or standpoint (see Wagemans 2016). For instance, using the conventional metaphor of the EU as a building (Musolff 2000), one could argue that “the UK should not pay an exit fee, because Article 50 says a nation has no more obligations when it leaves the house”. Presenting an argument with a conventional metaphor may still be strategic as it departs from (assumed) common conceptions of the target domain. The metaphor is therefore rather uncontroversial and less risky to use. Conversely, novel metaphors are relatively risky: drawing an analogy between two distinct domains that have not been connected before may invite criticism. At the same time, novel metaphors may be more effective than conventional ones, because these allow the audience to discover unexpected connections between source and target domain, and because they give more salience to the argument (Sopory and Dillard 2002; Kauffman and Parson 1991). Furthermore, novel metaphors offer more freedom to discussants to deploy the metaphor the way that suits their case. Firstly, the protagonist of a standpoint can select those aspects of a source domain that are convenient for the defence and ignore those elements which might not contribute. For instance, in example (2), Redwood focuses on college tuition while ignoring part of the analogy that implies that the UK is an immature college dropout. Secondly, a novel metaphor does not have a fixed meaning yet, because the used source domain is not normally used to speak of the target domain. This allows members of the audience to interpret the metaphor in their way (Philip 2016: 224) and thus relieves the protagonist from a clear burden of proof. Through its ambiguity, the metaphor is adaptable to multiple audiences. A conventional metaphor, with a more established meaning, lacks this advantage.

3.6 Metaphor as Strategic Manoeuvring In the previous sections, we argued based on the extant literature that deliberate metaphor can be particularly strategic in argumentative discourse. If formulated directly, metaphors can be used as (analogy) arguments, particularly when they are novel. In contrast to regular comparison arguments, novel metaphors can be a strategic topical choice to introduce reference to a more simple, concrete source domain in a discussion on more complex or problematic issues. They can be used to depict the issue in a way that is favourable to the discussant’s own case and, due to their openness to interpretation, potentially relieve the discussant of his/her burden of proof, especially if the connection between source and target domain is left implicit. At the same time, conventional metaphors may be used to make use of uncontroversial common ground. Furthermore, indirect metaphors can be used strategically in argumentative discourse by indirectly connecting the target domain to a source domain, presupposing that this connection is acceptable or unproblematic. In combination with a metaphor’s general characteristic to evoke associations that are favourable to the protagonist’s case, this makes the use of indirect metaphors potentially quite effective.

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4 A Case in Point: “the Snake” To see whether the strategic functions of metaphors that have been discussed in theory for deliberate, novel direct metaphors (i.e., providing a simplified, more concrete depiction of a complex or problematic case, evoking associations that support the protagonist’s case, and (partially) relieving the protagonist from the burden of proof) can indeed be found in practice, we will analyse the strategic manoeuvring with such a metaphor used by US President Donald Trump in his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference 2018. In this speech, Trump used an extended novel metaphor to support his stance on immigration. Before looking more closely at Trump’s strategic manoeuvring with metaphor, some background information must be provided.

4.1 Background Information About “the Snake” The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) organises an annual conference that aims to bring together US conservative activists and elected representatives. During CPAC 2018, speakers included, amongst others, US Senator Ted Cruz, US Secretary Betsy DeVos, British politician Nigel Farage, French politician Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, and, the speaker of interest for the present chapter, US President Donald Trump. In his 85-minute speech, Trump addressed a variety of topics, ranging from a diplomatic visit to Vietnam to US energy to jobs to immigration. In contrast to election speeches, the speakers at CPAC directly preach (more or less) to the choir; the audience that attends the conference adheres by and large to the same conservative principles as the speakers. Yet, similar to election speeches, the audience that the speakers directly address at CPAC is not their only audience; the speeches are webcasted and covered by traditional news media, meaning that the audience can be regarded as a “multiple audience” (van Eemeren 2010: 110). In line with other political speeches, the speakers therefore have to take into account that there might be some mixed disagreement (i.e., opposing positions) about the standpoint(s) they put forward in their speech, which indicates the need for careful strategic manoeuvring. In Trump’s speech at CPAC 2018, such careful strategic manoeuvring resulted in the use of a metaphor that he introduced as “The Snake” (“So this is called—this is called the snake.”). This metaphor actually consists of the lyrics of the song The Snake composed by Oscar Brown Jr. (inspired by Aesop’s fable “The farmer and the viper”), and performed by American soul singer Al Wilson. These lyrics are about a snake in desperate need of care that, despite being given this care by a tender-hearted woman, bites this woman when it is revived (see Appendix). In itself, the song The Snake can be regarded as a fable; it presents a succinct fictional story in which a point is made about the unchangeable nature of (evil) people, no matter how much effort you put into changing them. This story is told

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through a simplified narrative, featuring not just a human protagonist, but also a thinking and speaking animal: the snake (“Oh, shut up, silly woman, said the reptile with a grin. You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”) (see, on fables as argumentation, Olmos 2014; Stevens 2018). Trump’s use of “The Snake” can furthermore be regarded as a relatively novel, direct and deliberate metaphor. It is “relatively novel” because the fable had not been commonly told in this way before to say something about immigration.5 One could argue that “The Snake” is not such a novel metaphor after all, as it consists of the lyrics of a popular song by that title. However, Trump’s use of it gives the metaphor a more specific meaning than the original song meaning. The reason for this is that Trump did not just talk about the unchangeable nature of (evil) people in general; he presented “The Snake” in order to make a point about immigration. The metaphor is “direct” because there is no contrast between contextual and basic meaning of the lexical units (instead, there is a contrast between contextual and basic meaning at the level of the entire text). The novelty and directness of the metaphor and the fact that source and target domain are explicitly connected make the metaphor deliberate. Indeed, Trump actively encouraged the audience to interpret the story metaphorically by stating: “I don’t want people coming in the way they do now. Because I want people that contribute. So this is called — this is called the snake. And think of it in terms of immigration” (Trump 2018, our emphasis). In so doing, Trump encouraged the audience to connect the reference to the snake and its bad behaviour towards the woman (the source domain of animal care) to immigrants and the consequences of their admission to the US (the target domain of immigration), which was not the case in the song lyrics.6 In the following, the metaphor is analysed in terms of strategic manoeuvring.

4.2 Selection from Topical Potential Trump’s use of “The Snake” can be considered as a strategic selection from the topical potential in the argumentation stage. In fact, “The Snake” constitutes part of his argumentation.7 As is apparent from the quote above, Trump put forward the standpoint “I don’t want people coming in [the US] the way they do now” and subsequently presented an argument supporting it (as signalled by the argumentative indicator “because” (see van Eemeren et al. 2007: 114–118). Trump’s reading of “The Snake” followed this argument. 5 It should nevertheless be noted that Trump also read “The Snake” at least three times before: during

his rallies in Cedar Falls, Iowa on January 12, 2016, in Fort Myers, Florida on September 19, 2016, and in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on April 29, 2017. 6 Indeed, the daughters of the song’s writer, Oscar Brown Jr., have objected to Trump’s use of “The Snake” because of this change in meaning: “He [Trump]’s twisting Oscar’s meaning to serve his own campaign and climate of intolerance and hate, which is the opposite of what the original author, Oscar Brown Jr., intended” (Mediaite 2018, our emphasis). 7 See also the analysis of Stevens (2018) about this metaphor as an argumentatively used fable.

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Fig. 1 Reconstruction of the argumentation that Trump presented in the part of his CPAC 2018 speech in which he read “The Snake”

Although the reading of “The Snake” might be regarded as sheer entertainment or attention-seeking, Trump (2018) immediately followed it by remarking “And that’s what we’re doing with our country, folks. We’re letting people in. And it is going to be a lot of trouble”. He thereby indicated that the negative consequences as presented in “The Snake” are analogous to negative consequences in the present immigration situation, which can be taken as a reason why he does not want people “coming in the way they do now”. This is a combination of pragmatic and analogy argumentation: immigration has negative consequences (pragmatic argument 1.1b) and this situation is comparable to the woman getting bitten after letting the snake in (analogy argument 1.1b.1). “The Snake” can consequently be seen as clearly deliberately used and as part of the argumentation in support of Trump’s standpoint. A reconstruction of his argumentation can be found in Fig. 1.8 The use of this novel metaphor as analogy argumentation can be considered advantageous because it is a way to introduce an easy-to-follow story implying the negative effects of immigration, without having a large burden of proof. The fact that the metaphor is direct rather than indirect also has a particular strategic advantage. Contrary to indirect metaphors, in which there is a contrast between contextual and basic meaning at the level of the lexical meaning, the audience of Trump’s speech could simply regard the contextual meaning of “The Snake” as identical to the basic meaning. What this means is that, for the entire duration of the reading of “The Snake” (i.e., 2:33 min), the audience only had to imagine the rather simple and concrete story of a caring woman who fed a “poor, half-hearted frozen snake” milk and honey, and a snake that begged to be taken in by the woman and repaid her kindness by a fatal bite. This story is easy to go along with: there is a clear division between good (the woman) and evil (the snake), and the ending is inevitable (the bite was fatal). For the reading duration, the audience members can thus regard the story as a given. They have no reason to question that the woman is “tender-hearted” and the snake “vicious”. Only after listening to the entire story, the audience can fully map these characteristics of the source domain of animal care onto the target domain of immigration. They might therefore be less inclined to question what has been said about the source domain and what it conveys about the target domain. 8 In

the argumentation structure, 1 represents the standpoint, 1.1a and 1.1b represent supporting coordinative or linked arguments, 1.1b.1 represents a subordinative argument, 1.1b.1’ represents a connection premise, and parentheses indicate that an element in the structure was left implicit in the actual discourse.

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The specific choice of referents from the source domain themselves amount to strategic topical selections as well. For example, to present the US as a “tenderhearted woman” (rather than, for example, a “harsh man”) evokes sympathy and connects to the traditional nurturing role of women, to which some of the conservative audience members might subscribe. Additionally, the selection of a “vicious snake” (instead of a less malicious animal) could have had strategic advantages, as it resonates with traditional depictions of snakes being evil and cunning. Notably, for the Christian members of the audience, the reference to immigrants by means of a snake might call to mind associations with the deceptive serpent that seduces Eve to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Feeding the snake “milk and honey” might strengthen this Christian connotation, as it could be regarded as a reference to the Promised Land or “Land of Milk and Honey”. Thus, it is not just the directness of the metaphor, but also the familiarity of the images that it evoked that make it easier for the audience to agree with the point that Trump wanted to make.

4.3 Choice of Presentational Devices Trump’s presentation of his argumentation by means of a (relatively) novel metaphor might also have resulted in strategic advantages. As a presentational device, the relative novelty of the metaphor enables presenting the negative consequences (of the snake biting the woman, causing the woman’s death) as uncomplicatedly horrendous and unavoidable facts. Contrastingly, a truly conventional metaphor might not enable the speaker to use it exactly the way s/he wants to use it, because it already has a rather predefined meaning. The choice for a relatively novel metaphor as presentational means can thus be regarded as strategic. What is more, specifically presenting the negative consequences by means of a metaphor can be analysed as a strategic use of presentational devices as well, since this metaphorical presentation has the distinct advantage that Trump can make simplified claims about the consequences of the current immigration situation without actually having to go into detail about them; he neither has to provide real-life examples of such consequences, nor discuss how these consequences are caused by the immigration situation or how representative particular consequences are. He can thereby avoid being held accountable for such factual claims.9 It is hence not just the matter of choosing a metaphor, but also the choices in expressing the metaphor that can be regarded as strategic use of presentational devices.

9 Whether avoiding these matters is sound remains to be seen; the metaphor paves the way for Trump

to evade his burden of proof (see van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1992: 117–120). The soundness of manoeuvring strategically with metaphor will further be addressed in Sect. 4.5.

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4.4 Adaptation to Audience Demand What also could have been a strategic advantage of presenting the argumentation by means of a metaphor is that, due to the metaphor being an indirect speech act, its exact meaning is subject to discussion. Although “ambiguity” might sound like something that should be avoided in a speech, it can actually be regarded as a strategic way to adapt to audience demand.10 First, let us illustrate the ambiguity of Trump’s metaphor of “The Snake”. In the final part of “The Snake”, the reptile tells the woman that she should have known it would bite her, because “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in”. Whether or not this statement should be interpreted as “people cannot change their nature, no matter how much effort you put into changing them”, or “evil people cannot change their nature, no matter what” is unclear. Is it accidental that the snake has an “evil” or “cunning” nature, or should it be seen as an essential part of the story? Additionally, the snake’s statement seems to indicate that the morale of the story is not just that (evil) people cannot change their nature, but that they actually do not want to change their nature—and perhaps even relish in their evilness (as the snake seems to do, as indicated by its grinning). The question then arises whether Trump, using “The Snake” to discuss immigration, means that immigrants do not just cause the US harm, but intentionally aim to do so. It is exactly this ambiguity that is strategic: audience members that are of the opinion that immigrants are evil or cunning and will intentionally cause negative consequences can interpret the speech as though Trump agrees with them, while audience members that only think immigration will result in negative consequences, regardless of the immigrants’ nature or intention, can also interpret Trump being in agreement with them. Even audience members that directly oppose Trump’s standpoint, and thus have a mixed difference of opinion with him, can only with certainty ascribe the claim to Trump that the current immigration situation causes problems, not anything about the immigrants’ nature or intentions; it thereby limits their disagreement space. Thus, the metaphor’s ambiguity enables tailoring to the demands of the multiple audience that Trump addressed.

4.5 The Aspects of Strategic Manoeuvring Combined In sum, Trump’s use of “The Snake” in his CPAC 2018 speech can be regarded as a strategic manoeuvre. The directness of the metaphor had the potential to draw the audience into a straightforward story, thereby making them less critical about 10 Please note that this adaptation to the audience demand could only be done by means of using ambiguous presentational devices as well as the particular topical selection made in “The Snake”. However, for the sake of clarity, we distinguish these aspects of strategic manoeuvring here analytically again to show in more depth what happens in the speech to adapt to the beliefs, expectations, hopes, norms, values, and wishes of the audience.

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the mapping of that which is said about the source domain onto the target domain. Simultaneously, the specific choices from the source domain might have resonated with the traditional (Christian) values of certain members of the speech’s audience. The (relative) novelty of the metaphor enabled Trump to stress that the current immigration policy is problematic without actually having to go into detail about its actual negative consequences. And at the same time the ambiguity of the metaphor enabled Trump to adapt to the different (sub)groups in his audience; each can take out of the metaphor that which confirms their own views. Whether or not Trump evaded his burden of proof with the use of “The Snake” is subject to discussion. On the one hand, this direct metaphor allowed him to avoid going into detail about the kind of trouble the US can expect when immigration continues the way it is now. Trump therefore seems to commit the fallacy of evading the burden of proof. On the other hand, Trump does provide other argumentation (e.g., that he wants “people who contribute” (argument 1.1a, Fig. 1) and is not directly requested by the conservative audience at CPAC to provide more argumentation on this matter. He therefore seems to strategically limit his burden of proof, but not to evade it. Yet there are other audience members to consider, for example those who watched the webcasted speech or read about it in the traditional media. Given that Trump’s views on immigration are typically not shared by his (Democrat) opponents, it is likely that these audience members would have requested more argumentation about the negative consequences of immigration if they had been present during Trump’s speech. Taking this into account, Trump did evade the burden of proof by using this metaphor. Going further into detail about the evaluation of Trump’s argumentation would go beyond the goal of this chapter, but what the difficulty of determining the soundness of “The Snake” at least makes clear is the strategic potential of Trump’s use of this metaphor.

5 Conclusion and Discussion In this chapter, we have used the extended pragma-dialectical theory to investigate the strategic functions of deliberate and non-deliberate, direct and indirect, and conventional and novel metaphors. So far, argumentation-theoretical approaches have not paid much attention to these different types of metaphor. Yet these types have distinct consequences for the argumentative discourse itself. From the extended pragmadialectical perspective, using these metaphors argumentatively can be understood as strategic manoeuvres with particular implications for the dialectical and rhetorical objectives of discussants. In this chapter, we have discussed what kind of implications the use of different types of metaphors has for the argumentation stage. The choice for either a novel or a conventional metaphor can be seen as topical choice to connect the topic in the target domain to a topic in a distinct domain instead of a topic in the same domain. A novel metaphor is suitable for expressing a figurative analogy argument, which can be strategic when the topic under discussion is rather complex. Novel metaphors in argumentative discourse seem most likely

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to be direct metaphors: they offer a new view on the target domain which requires a more elaborate description. They are therefore also necessarily deliberate on a communicative level. Conventional metaphors can be used strategically as part of an argument to incorporate shared, positive conceptions about the source domain in the argument. Such metaphors are likely to be indirect and non-deliberate, as they are used to present the relation between domains as a given. Such conventional, indirect metaphors may evoke positive associations among the intended audience without creating much commitment to the protagonist. In Trump’s CPAC 2018 speech, his use of “The Snake” showed that this direct, novel and deliberate metaphor offers more creative variation and more ambiguity concerning one’s commitments and therefore may help in making the best case for one’s standpoint. The (signalled) directness of the metaphor enables the audience to consider the metaphor as an analogy argument, transferring conclusions about the story of the snake to the target domain of immigration. With this metaphor, Trump managed to allude to certain knowledge and values of his audience while minimising his commitments to the implications of the metaphor for his stance on immigration. This single case study obviously does not allow bold generalisations about the effects of these types of metaphors. Experimental research would be needed to measure the effects on an actual audience and the example analysed here is only one possible instantiation of a direct novel deliberate metaphor with particular correspondences between a specific source and target domain. Moreover, the example of “The Snake” is a very long and rich metaphor, which may work differently than shorter metaphors. For instance, an elaborated reference to the source domain might cause the audience to be “transported into” the world of the story, thus enhancing the persuasiveness of the discourse (Green 2004). In the current chapter, the particularities of longer metaphors such as fables, allegories and extended metaphors have been left unaddressed, as it goes beyond the goal of this chapter. We are well aware that these particularities might have additional strategic value. What this chapter does signal, however, are what the strategic advantages of novel versus conventional, direct versus indirect, and deliberate versus non-deliberate metaphors in general may be. To put it metaphorically, this paves the way for a more intricate analysis of metaphors in argumentative discourse.

Appendix Excerpt of Trump’s Speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 2018 “You know what is happening? All these companies are coming into our country, they’re all coming into our country, and when they come in, we need people that are going to work. I’m telling you, we need workers now. We need workers. But

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when I walked in today, did anyone ever hear me do the snake during the campaign? Because I had five people outside say, could you do the snake? I said, well, people have heard it. Who hasn’t heard the snake? You should read it anyway. Let’s do it anyway. I’ll do it. Okay. Should we do it? Now, this was a rock ‘n’ roll song, little amendments, a rock ‘n’ roll song, but every time I do it, people—and you have to think of this in terms of immigration. I want people to come into our country. And I want people that are going to help us. I don’t want people that are going to come in and be accepting all of the gifts of our country for the next 50 years and contribute nothing. I don’t want that. You don’t want that. I want people that are going to help and people that are going to go to work for Chrysler, who is now moving from Mexico into Michigan. And so many others. And apple, by the way. And fox con in Wisconsin. They’re going to need 25,000 workers. I want people that can come in and get to work and work hard, even if it means a learning period that is fine. But I want people that are going to come in, and work. And I want people that love us, and look at security and they want you to be safe and they want to be safe. I want great people coming into this country. I don’t want people coming in the way they do now. Because I want people that contribute. So this is called—this is called the snake. And think of it in terms of immigration and you may love it or you may say isn’t that terrible? Okay. If you say isn’t that terrible, who cares. Because the way they treat me, that’s peanuts compared to the way they treat me. Okay. Immigration. On her way to work one morning, down the path along the lake, a tender-hearted woman saw a poor, half-hearted frozen snake. His pretty colored skin had been all frosted, with the dew. Poor thing, she cried. I’ll take you in. And I’ll take care of you. Take me in, oh tender woman, take me in for heaven’s sake, take me in, oh tender woman, sighed the vicious snake. She wrapped him up all cozy in a comforter of silk. And laid him by her fire side with some honey and some milk. She hurried home from work that night, and soon as she arrived she found that pretty snake she had taken in had been revived. Take me in, oh tender woman, take me in for heaven’s sake. Take me in, oh tender woman, sighed the vicious snake. She clutched him to her bosom. You’re so beautiful, she cried. But if I hadn’t brought you in by now, surely you would have died. She stroked his pretty skin again, and kissed and held him tight. But instead of saying thank you, that snake gave her a vicious bite. Take me in, oh tender woman. Take me in for heaven’s sake. Take me in, oh tender woman. Sighed the vicious snake. I saved you, cried the woman. And you’ve bitten me, heavens why? You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die. Oh, shut up, silly woman, said the reptile with a grin. You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.

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And that’s what we’re doing with our country, folks. We’re letting people in. And it is going to be a lot of trouble. It is only getting worse.” (Trump 2018)

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2018, from https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-conser vative-political-action-conference-2/. van Eemeren, F. H. (2010). Strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse: Extending the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. (1984). Speech acts in argumentative discussions: A theoretical model for the analysis of discussions directed towards solving conflicts of opinion. Berlin/Dordrecht: De Gruyter/Floris. van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. (1992). Relevance reviewed: The case of argumentum ad hominem. Argumentation, 6(2), 141–159. van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (2002). Strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse: A delicate balance. In F. H. van Eemeren & P. Houtlosser (Eds.), Dialectic and rhetoric: The warp and woof of argumentation analysis (pp. 131–159). Dordrecht: Kluwer. van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (2005). Theoretical construction and argumentative reality: An analytic model of critical discussion and conventionalised types of argumentative activity. In D. Hitchcock (Ed.), The uses of argument: Proceedings of a conference at McMaster University (pp. 75–84). Hamilton, ON: OSSA. van Eemeren, F. H., Houtlosser, P., & Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2007). Argumentative indicators in discourse: A pragma-dialectical study. Dordrecht: Springer. van Poppel, L. (2018). Argumentative functions of metaphors: How can metaphors trigger resistance? In S. Oswald & D. Maillat (Eds.), Argument and inference. Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Argumentation, Fribourg 2017 (Vol II, pp. 909–923). London: College Publications. van Poppel, L. (2020). The study of metaphor in argumentation theory. Journal of Argumentation. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-020-09523-1. Wagemans, J. H. M. (2016). Analyzing metaphor in argumentative discourse. Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, 10(2), 79–94.

Roosmaryn Pilgram received her Ph.D. in argumentation theory at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). After obtaining her Ph.D., she continued to work as a Postdoc and Lecturer at the UvA. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Dutch Discourse Studies at Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, the Netherlands. Roosmaryn’s research focuses on argumentation, health communication and metaphor. Lotte van Poppel received her Ph.D. in argumentation theory from the University of Amsterdam (UvA). She is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Communication and Information Studies at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Before that, she was a Lecturer at Leiden University and Lecturer and Postdoc researcher at the UvA. In her research, she focuses on argumentation, stylistic devices, and resistance to persuasion in (health) communication.

The Maxims of Common Sense: Strategic Manoeuvring with Figurative Analogies Bart Garssen

Abstract While in literal analogies the concrete characteristics of two items from the same domain are compared, in figurative analogies a comparison is made between items from very different domains. Since it is not the actual (literal) similarities and differences that are at stake in figurative analogy, this type of argument should not be seen as analogy argumentation but as a way of expressing a different type of argument scheme. If what is expressed by way of a figurative analogy can also been said without this indirect mode of expression, the question arises why an arguer would use a figurative analogy. In this paper three strategic functions of figurative analogy are distinguished and applied to an example drawn from Dutch politics. Keywords Descriptive analogy argumentation · Figurative analogy · Metaphor · Normative analogy argumentation · Strategic manoeuvring

1 Introduction In the introduction of her essay “people” Fran Lebowitz criticizes an often used metaphorical analogy: People (a group that in my opinion has always attracted an undue amount of attention) have often been likened to snowflakes. This analogy is meant to suggest that each is unique – no two alike. This is quite patently not the case. People, even at the current rate of inflation – in fact, people especially at the current rate of inflation – are quite simply a dime a dozen (Lebowitz 1994: 189).

As she points out, the analogy Lebowitz refers to in this quote is used to suggest that there is one similarity between people and snowflakes: in both cases there are no two alike. This paper is about the use of such metaphorical analogies in argumentation. Metaphorical analogies consists of a comparison between two elements taken from different spheres of life, which means that in principle these elements B. Garssen (B) Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric, ILIAS, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Boogaart et al. (eds.), The Language of Argumentation, Argumentation Library 36, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52907-9_11

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are very different. Such analogies are also used in arguments called figurative analogies. There is general agreement among argumentation theorists that we can make a distinction between literal and figurative analogies. This distinction can be illustrated by comparing the following two examples: (1) Britain can leave the EU without any financial problems. Norway is doing perfectly well without being a member of EU. (2) You should never correct a misbehaving child by giving it a spanking. It is like hitting a watch with a hammer because it does not keep good time. Example (1) is a literal analogy because two elements are compared coming from the same domain: Britain and Norway are both countries. Example (2) is a figurative analogy based on a metaphorical relation because two elements from two totally different domains are compared. There is much less agreement when it comes to the appreciation of figurative analogy (Garssen 2009). Should this form of analogy be seen as a serious form of argumentation and if so, what type of argumentation is it? Theorists like Hastings (1962: 114) believe that figurative analogies can lend support to a standpoint, although most of them urge the analyst to be careful when evaluating figurative analogies, as they may not be as convincing as normal comparison arguments. Waller on the other hand is of the opinion that “figurative analogies do not argue, though they may elucidate” (1991: 200). Freeley and Steinberg dismiss this type of argumentation as well: Carefully developed literal analogies may be used to establish a high degree of probability. Figurative analogies on the other hand, have no value in establishing logical proof (Freeley and Steinberg 2005: 162).

Garssen (2009) and van Eemeren and Garssen (2014) take a different stance. Viewed from a pragma-dialectical perspective figurative analogies should be seen as argumentation but not as comparison argumentation: figurative analogy is a way of expressing another type of argumentation: causal or symptomatic argumentation. In order to evaluate figurative analogies, first a reconstruction of the argumentation is needed that reveals the argument scheme that is actually used by the arguer. Figurative analogies can be arguments and they are not per se weak forms of argument. However, they will prove to be very weak if one treats them like normal analogy argumentation. The question is, why would anyone present the argumentation by way of a figurative analogy if a more direct way of presenting the argumentation is also possible? What are the advantages for a speaker to use such a roundabout way of putting forward the argumentation? In this paper I intend to show that figurative analogies can be effective in more than one way. First, I will go into the differences between literal and figurative analogies. Next, I will show that figurative analogies should be seen as indirect language use that needs to be reconstructed for an adequate evaluation of the argumentation. Finally, I will elaborate on the strategic functions of figurative analogies.

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2 Literal and Figurative Analogy Argumentation According to van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992: 97) and van Eemeren and Garssen (2019: 16), in analogy argumentation the argumentation is presented “as if there were a resemblance, an agreement, a likeness, a parallel, a correspondence or some other kind of similarity between that which is stated in the argument and that which is stated in the standpoint” (1992: 97). This type of argumentation can be generally characterized in the following way: Y is true of X because: Y is true of Z, and: Z is comparable to X.

Two prominent subtypes of analogy argumentation are “descriptive analogy” and “normative analogy” (Garssen 2009: 134).

2.1 Literal Descriptive Analogy Argumentation A typical characteristic of descriptive analogy argumentation is that both the standpoint that is defended and the reason that is advanced in its support are descriptive: in both propositions a certain state of affairs is expressed. The standpoint will in these cases invariably be a prediction (Y will be the case), a hypothetical prediction (If X will be the case, then Y will be the case), or a quasi-prediction predicting something about the past or the present instead of about the future (At time t Y was to be expected). This explains why the first kind of analogy argumentation is called “descriptive” analogy. In descriptive analogy, a comparison is made between the actual characteristics of one thing, person or situation and the actual characteristics of another thing, person or situation. This happens, for instance, in example (1). In this argumentation two things are compared which belong to the same category of things (Britain and Norway are both countries). It is claimed that something will be the case in Britain because it is already the case in Norway and Britain is comparable to Norway, or Britain is similar to Norway in a certain respect. It is assumed in this argumentation that there are a number of similarities shared by the two countries directly relevant to the financial dependency of the EU. Because of these similarities we have to take it that the property (“being able to do well without being a member of the EU”) is also shared by the two countries. In other words, the presence of the property that is discussed is “extrapolated” from the properties the two cities already share. It is important to realize that the similarities are often not mentioned explicitly in the argumentation. In claiming that what is mentioned in the standpoint is similar to what is mentioned in the premise, the similarities are only assumed. However, as we shall see, the similarities often come into play in the evaluation of the analogy argumentation. In descriptive analogy argumentation the inferential principle of analogy

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is used in extrapolating a property from a list of commonalities. Because the two things, persons or situations compared have a series of properties in common, they are assumed to share also another property that is mentioned in the standpoint.1 The first step in the testing procedure for descriptive analogy argumentation is to ask whether the things, persons or situations compared in the argumentation are, in principle, comparable. If asked to do so, the protagonist is obliged to show that the things, persons or situations compared indeed belong to the same class. From then onwards the testing procedure can take different routes. Since the relevant similarities on which the extrapolation is based remain implicit, the antagonist may ask the protagonist to add to what has been said by mentioning the relevant similarities. The protagonist is then forced to provide additional argumentation in which one or more relevant similarities are mentioned. The similarities to be mentioned are the properties that allow for the extrapolation step. Mentioning similarities can again lead to criticism from the antagonist because the similarities that are mentioned may not be recognized as actual similarities, or they may be seen as similarities which are not relevant to the issue at hand. The antagonist can also criticize the argumentation by pointing at differences between the things, persons or situations that are compared. The protagonist is then forced to show either that these differences are not relevant or that the similarities outweigh the differences. In this way it is established in the testing procedure whether or not the intended extrapolation of characteristics is allowed. The more similarities there are, the more likely it is in principle that an extrapolation is successful. It is important to emphasize that it is not enough to just point to similarities and differences: these similarities and differences should also be relevant to the standpoint that is defended by putting forward analogy argumentation. These are the kind of issues that are pertinent to a continuation of the evaluation of argumentation that is part of the critical testing procedure for descriptive analogy argumentation. The question vital to the testing procedure for this type of analogy argumentation is whether the step of extrapolating properties is indeed acceptable to both parties.

2.2 Normative Analogy Argumentation The same goes for normative analogy argumentation. Although the inferential step from argument to standpoint is slightly different from descriptive analogy argumentation, the testing procedure also revolves around weighing differences and similarities. 1 Most

accounts of analogy argumentation follow this model. However, there are other models of analogy argumentation that do not involve this extrapolation of characteristics or inductive step. Whately (1963), for instance, believes that analogy is a form of argument that actually comprises two separate arguments “for it is evident that there can be no reasoning from one individual to another, unless they come under some common genus” (86). In the first part a general rule is defended by means of an argument by example, while in the second part this general rule is used as the basis for defending the standpoint.

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Just like in the descriptive subtype, the arguer claims in this kind of analogy argumentation that what is mentioned in the standpoint is comparable to what is mentioned in the premise. This happens for instance in example (3): (3) The employees in the administration department should get a salary raise because the salespersons in our firm also get a salary raise. The general argument scheme for normative analogy argumentation is as follows: Y is appropriate for X because: Y is appropriate for Z and: Z is comparable to X

Normative analogy argumentation differs from descriptive analogy argumentation because in the former the principle of consistency is vital while in the latter the extrapolation of characteristics is basic to the argumentative inference. In normative analogy argumentation the central issue is here whether the two things, persons, groups, etc. that are compared really belong to the same category. Another difference between normative analogy argumentation and descriptive analogy argumentation is that in normative analogy argumentation the standpoint is by definition normative. This kind of argumentation invariably involves a call for consistent behaviour in the sense that the standpoint always claims that for the sake of consistency a thing, person, group, event, situation or institution should be treated in a certain way. What descriptive analogy and normative analogy argumentation have in common, however, is the fact that the evaluation of the argumentation is about weighing relevant similarities and differences.

2.3 Figurative Analogy Argumentation In appearance figurative analogies resemble literal analogies, but argumentation in which a figurative analogy is used should be treated differently (Garssen 2009: 137– 139). There are two important differences between literal and figurative analogies: the first is that the elements that are being compared are situated on different levels of experience, stem from different “spheres,” or are of a completely different kind. The second difference is that in figurative analogies not the concrete characteristics are compared but the abstract relations between elements within the situation referred to in the standpoint and elements within the situation referred to in the argument. This is illustrated by a figurative analogy used by president Truman in his Radio Report to the American People on Korea and on U.S. Policy in the Far East, April 11, 1951: (4) The Communists in the Kremlin are engaged in a monstrous conspiracy to stamp out freedom all over the world. If they were to succeed, the United States would be numbered among their principal victims. It must be clear to everyone that the United States cannot – and will not – sit idly by and await foreign conquest.

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The only question is: What is the best time to meet the threat and how is the best way to meet it? The best time to meet the threat is in the beginning. It is easier to put out a fire in the beginning when it is small than after it has become a roaring blaze.2 Truman argues that the best time to start acting against Korea is now (in the beginning) because it is easier to put out a fire in the beginning when it is small than after it has become a roaring blaze. Fire and war belong to different classes of events, which makes it impossible to compare them directly. In this case however the similarities we have to look for are not so much between the concrete features of fire and war, but between the abstract relationship between what is said in the argument and what is said in the standpoint. It is predicted that the war in Korea will become unmanageable if we do not act now and this is the reason why we should act immediately. The similarity can be expressed in a general practical principle or maxim: one should always stop a violently expanding process before it becomes impossible to stop it. This maxim is applied in the argumentation put forward to defend the standpoint to act immediately. After this reconstruction it becomes clear that no comparison argumentation is used but pragmatic argumentation. Because Truman does not make a direct comparison between war and fire, the standard critical questions going with analogy argumentation (are there relevant similarities? are there relevant differences?) do not apply. In fact, if we would ask these questions in this form, no figurative analogy could ever stand the test. Truman’s argumentation should be analysed as follows: 1. We should act immediately. 1.1 It is easier to stop this conflict now, before it becomes unmanageable. 1.1’ One should always stop a violently expanding process before it becomes impossible to stop it. Apparently, the figurative analogy does not involve a normal comparison but a comparison of the abstract relations within one situation and within another situation. Hence Hastings’s characterization of the relationship as a “comparison of ratios.” Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) characterize the “resemblance of structures” that is at issue here as follows: A and B together, the terms to which the conclusion relates […], we shall call the theme, and C and D together, the terms that serve to buttress the argument […], we shall call the phoros (373).

In figurative analogy there is a similarity between what is stated in the standpoint and what is stated in the argument and this similarity is normally expressed as A is to B (standpoint) is as C is to D (premise).3 This comparison of structures involves 2 Truman, Radio Report to the American People on Korea and on U.S. Policy in the Far East. https://

www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=290. 3 In modern accounts of metaphor the theme is called the target, while the phoros is called the source or base. In this article I will follow Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca and use the terms “theme” and “phoros”.

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a metaphorical relation. This metaphorical relation is apparent in every figurative analogy. The model for literal analogies does not apply to figurative analogy, because in principle the latter only contains one similarity: the abstract parallel expressed in the ratio A is to B is as C is to D. One might reply that in practice there may be more similarities. However, these similarities are on the same abstract level and they do not allow for the use of the same kind inferential principles central to literal analogy argumentation. If there are more similarities on this abstract level then they are all part of one and the same structural resemblance. The structural resemblance between war and fire involves the following elements: war and fire can be devastating, they tend to spread easily, when they have spread it is much harder to stop. What happens if we do not reconstruct the analogy and treat it like comparison argumentation? First of all, the critical questions pertaining to literal analogy have to be reformulated: “are there relevant similarities” becomes “are there relevant similarities between the abstract relations in the situations compared”, etc. This will not lead to a normal testing procedure in which the arguers consider the similarities and differences because there is only one similarity and a lot of differences. Therefore, weighing similarities and differences makes no sense. It ignores the fact that there is only one basic similarity. The only solution to this problem is to reconstruct the indirect message conveyed in a figurative analogy and base the dialectical evaluation on this reconstruction.

3 Figurative Analogy as an Indirect Speech Act Figurative language is non-literal and in that sense it is indirect. The figurative analogy can also be seen as a form of indirectness, because of the metaphorical relation. For an evaluation of the argumentation, reconstruction of indirectness is almost always needed (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004: 95). In order to come to an adequate reconstruction of a figurative analogy we need to look for an alternative expression of the argument that enables a critical testing procedure of the argumentation. For the reconstruction of figurative analogy one observation is vital: in a figurative analogy what is basically said is that the phoros and the theme are very different except for one thing: they are similar in respect to the relation(s) of elements (A is to B is as C is to D). This is exactly what is communicated by the arguer. There is a similarity between what is said in the argument and what is said in the standpoint and this similarity stands out from a background in which there are no similarities whatsoever. The analyst needs to trace what exactly is this similarity. Because the theme and the phoros are typically very different in all other respects, tracing the single similarity is generally not problematic. In fact it is this huge difference that makes it possible for the analyst to find out what the speaker is hinting at. This understanding of the analogy is in line with Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s remark that the situation mentioned in the phoros (the premise or reason) is supposed to be better known than the situation mentioned in the theme (the standpoint): the

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phoros should clarify the structure of the theme. In other words, the principle (or maxim) underlying the situations that are mentioned in the standpoint and the premise come about in the phoros (1969: 374). When the similarity is found, it can be expressed in terms of a general principle. In many cases of figurative analogy this general principle turns out to be sort of a maxim that will be directly understood. Next, this general principle should be applied to the case at hand (the situation in the standpoint). The analogy disappears from this point on. Following van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992: 58) I propose the following inference scheme for analysing figurative analogies. Original argumentation, see example (4): The best time to start acting against Korea is now (in the beginning) because it is easier to put out a fire in the beginning when it is small than after it has become a roaring blaze. 1. S has said (a) (It is easier to put out a fire in the beginning when it is small than after it has become a roaring blaze) in defense of standpoint (b) We should act now against Korea) 2. Interpreted literally, (a) is an argument based on a comparison relation. 3. In this context, given standpoint (b) the interpretation of (a) as comparison argumentation is incorrect because the elements of the comparison are taken from different domains and there are no concrete characteristics shared by the elements of the comparison. 4. There is one similarity that stands out in the phoros that can be formulated as a general principle: One should stop a violently expanding process before it becomes impossible to stop it. 6. Taken this general principle as the bridging premise of the argumentation enables a correct interpretation of the argumentation: we should act now and stop this conflict. Because later, when it has grown into a full blown war we will not be able to stop it (and one should stop a violently expanding process before it becomes impossible to stop it) This reconstruction procedure can be further illustrated by means of another example. Example (5) concerns a much-quoted argument put forward by President Lincoln in his reply to the National Union League on 9 June, 1864: (5) I have not permitted myself, gentleman, to conclude that I am the best man in the country: but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer who remarked to a companion once that “it was not best to swap horses while crossing a stream.” The figurative analogy in Lincoln’s argument (I should not resign at this moment because one should not swap horses while crossing a stream) can be schematised as follows: Standpoint: Theme (A – B): changing president – being in the midst of a war Premise: Phoros (C – D): swapping horses – crossing a stream

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What becomes clear in this schematization is that the two situations share only one similarity. In both cases the practical principle “it is risky to make important changes when there is hardly time for realizing these changes while being in a difficult process” applies.4 These considerations lead to the following reconstruction of Lincoln’s argument: 1. Lincoln should not resign at this point. 1.1 Changing the residing president in mid-war, when there is no time for a major change, leads to a risky situation. There is only one similarity in the Lincoln example: the practical principle. Again, this marks a crucial difference between the literal analogy and the figurative analogy. Figurative analogy argumentation is based on a metaphorical relation that serves as an indirect means of expressing a principle that is the basis for the argument. Once this practical principle is reconstructed it makes no sense to look for more similarities. The analogy as such disappears after the reconstruction. The analogy provides the grounds for the reconstruction, but is not part of the argumentation as such. After the reconstruction it becomes clear that Lincoln used pragmatic argumentation in which he points at the negative consequences of the proposal to resign. What is interesting about the Lincoln example is that over the years changing horses in midstream has become an idiomatic expression.5 It is immediately clear that in idiomatic expressions or comparisons like “That is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater” no real (literal) argumentative comparison is made. In evaluating argumentation in which such an idiomatic expression is used, it does not make sense to ask the standard critical questions going with analogy argumentation, since it is immediately clear that the proverb should not be taken literally and that it has a fixed meaning: “You should be careful not to lose the good parts of something when you get rid of the bad parts.” It seems quite obvious that normal language users would not treat the following argumentation as comparison argumentation: (6) We should not do away with the whole production department when reorganizing our company. It would be like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In this case the interpretation of the proverbial expression is of course facilitated because of its conventional meaning. But the listener can come to same interpretation in cases where a same kind of expression is used that is not part of the idiom.

4 Branham (1991: 178) uses the same example to explain his view of analogy as a strategy for moral

argument. According to Branham, Lincoln used the analogy to highlight the risk associated with such change. The easily visualized risk of the former (the farmer) is used to make clear the less apparent risks of the latter (178). In his view, (figurative) analogy involves a moral principle that goes for both the situation in the argument and the standpoint. His formulation of the principle that is at stake is less informative than the one I propose here. 5 Fogelin and Sinnott-Armstrong include this expression in their list of examples of idiomatic expressions they call “maxims of common sense” (2005: 33).

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Idiomatic expressions containing a metaphorical comparison are in fact figurative analogies that have become conventional. The only difference with non-conventional figurative (or new) analogies is that they have become part of the idiom. This means that what can be said about the meaning and use of proverbial expressions as arguments can also be said of figurative analogies. The general idea that indirect speech acts “may vary from weakly conventionalized (requiring a well-defined context) to strongly conventionalized (not requiring a welldefined context)” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1992: 57) also goes for figurative analogies. Conventionalization is a matter of degree. The degree of conventionalization for one particular case of analogy may differ over time. We may take it that Lincoln was highly original with the use of his changing horses analogy. The use of this analogy was new and therefore it was not conventionalized. To understand the expression one has to know the phoros so that the connection with the theme can be established. However, in the course of time the expression became part of idiomatic language use and it became conventionalized. Idiomatic expressions like “that is like throwing out the baby with the bath water” are even more conventionalized. The use of these kinds of analogical expression do not require any context whatsoever.6 An objection to the kind of reconstruction that is proposed here is that it seems that a vital element is taken out of the argumentation: because of the reformulation of the argument the analogy gets lost. That means that the vivid picture displayed in the phoros of the metaphor disappears after reconstruction. The images of danger, stupidity, war etc. are not taken up in the analysis of the argumentation. That is to say they do not get a place in the analytic overview of the argumentative discourse. They will however be taken into account when the analyst turns to the strategic manoeuvring that takes place in the argumentative discourse. The main question remains why arguers choose to use a figurative analogy instead of a direct presentation of the argumentation.

4 The Strategic Use of Figurative Analogies: The Case of the Garden Chair Why would an arguer present an argument by way of a figurative analogy if it is also possible to do this in direct way? Much has been said about the persuasive function

6 Note

that in these highly conventionalized cases, the indicator “that is like” can be omitted. The interpretation of weakly conventionalized analogies will be much more difficult without the indicator “that is like”.

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of metaphor.7 However, in this case we are not dealing with normal metaphorical expressions but with argumentation in which an expression is used analogically. According to Freeley and Steinberg “if well-chosen, [figurative analogies] may have considerable value in establishing ethical or emotional proof, in illustrating a point, and in making a vivid impression on the audience” (2005: 162). While Freeley and Steinberg do not explain how figurative analogies can ensure “ethical” and “emotional” proof, we can imagine that figurative analogies give a vivid impression on the audience. Without having the intention to be exhaustive I see three further advantages of using a figurative analogy instead of the literal presentation of the argument. These advantages or strategies may play a strategic role simultaneously. The advantages are the ability to: 1. transfer of connotations from the phoros to the theme; 2. restrain the possibility of critical testing; 3. introduce propositions as starting points. With “transference of connotations” I mean the fact that when an arguer uses a figurative analogy, connotations and values associated with the phoros are transferred to the theme. In Truman’s example (4) fire is compared to war. Fire is hazardous and dangerous. The emotions attached to fire are transferred to war. In Lincoln’s example (5) Lincoln’s resignation is connected with a very stupid decision. In using the metaphor the stupidity is transferred from the phoros to the theme. This transference of connotations lies at the basis of what Whaley calls “rebuttal analogies”, which can be considered a special type of figurative analogies. According to Whaley rebuttal analogies accomplish two pragmatic functions: argument and social attack, and these are pursued simultaneously. In example (7) a rebuttal analogy is used. (7) Henry Steadman, Sociologist: A few cases are intriguing, outrageous, and get a lot of press coverage, and the public therefore assumes that the insanity defense is represented by all the cases like that when, in fact, those cases represent a very small portion of all insanity cases. Abraham Halpern, Psychiatrist, responds: That would be like saying that nuclear leaks in atomic plants are not very, very serious because they don’t occur very often (Day One, 1-22-93) (Whaley 1998: 353). In rebuttal analogies the phoros in the argument is usually a reference to a stupid or negative act. “The degree of assault on the opponent relates directly to the degree of exaggeration in the analogy’s base. The more exaggerated the base, the more 7 Ottati

and Renstrom (2010: 791) claim that metaphors serve multiple functions in persuasive communication, and the effect of metaphor on persuasion is potentially mediated by multiple psychological process mechanisms. They propose to organize the various functions into three categories. “First, metaphorical statements can activate information that is directly applied to the communication topic and thereby influence attitudes toward the communication topic. Second, metaphorical language may influence impressions of the communication source and thereby impact attitudes toward the communication topic. Third, metaphors may affect attitudes toward the communication topic by influencing the direction or amount of elaboration that takes place when recipients process literal statements contained in the communication”.

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ridicule the analogy implies” (Whaley 1998). This makes the Lincoln example a rebuttal analogy. The second strategic function of figurative analogies lies in the fact that the antagonist has to reconstruct the argumentation first before critical questions can be asked. The antagonist may be inclined to take the argument as a literal analogy and may ask critical questions pertaining to normal comparison argumentation. However, since these critical questions are not really relevant for the evaluation, the protagonist may reply that he or she did not mean to make a literal comparison. The antagonist may also reconstruct the argument and then ask the relevant critical question. This procedure takes time and energy and will therefore postpone and even frustrate the actual testing procedure. Whatever the case will be, the use of a figurative analogy does not lead to a straightforward testing procedure. The third strategic function, introducing controversial propositions, is closely connected with the second strategy. Figurative analogies are instances of indirect language use and troublesome propositions that only come to light after the reconstructions can be introduced by way of a figurative analogy. The general principle underlying the figurative analogy is not expressed explicitly and by remaining implicit, may escape critical scrutiny. I will illustrate the strategic use of figurative analogy by means of an example taken from Dutch parliamentary debate. When the financial crisis was calming down in 2015, the Dutch government decided that after years of financial reorganizations and financial cuts the time had come to reduce taxes in order to create more employment. During a special parliamentary session (Algemene beschouwingen) on 17 September 2015, following the presentation of the general state budget plans of the government, these tax reductions were discussed by the leader of the Christian Democrats (CDA), Sybrand Buma, and the leader of the Liberal Democrats (D66), Alexander Pechtold. During the financial crisis Buma was never in favour of financial cuts because, in his opinion, they were not good for employment. Now that the crisis is over Buma certainly thinks that we should stop the financial cuts. Pechtold on the other hand always supported the severe cuts and financial reorganizations by the Dutch government and even after the crisis is over, he still believes that economizing is wise. He believes that we can only spend money now because of the financial reorganizations his party made possible. In the debate Pechtold wants to make Buma admit that the reformations were necessary after all and that Buma is not in the position to promote spending money because he did not help the government in overcoming the crisis. When Buma does not seem to get the point, Pechtold brings in a figurative analogy: (8) All spring, we have been ploughing there, we have been grubbing, we have done all kinds of necessary things to the trees, this and that. We tidied up the whole garden. The garden chairs are put outside and now Buma comes and says, well let me sit down here (Handelingen Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, 2015). [My translation, BG] In Dutch: Het hele voorjaar hebben we daar staan ploegen, hebben we daar staan rooien, hebben we daar in die bomen alles staan doen, dit en dat. We

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hebben die hele tuin op orde. De tuinstoelen worden buitengezet en Buma zegt dan: nou, ik ga wel zitten. Judging by the cheer and laugher from the Members of Parliament, Pechtold’s analogy was very successful. The laughter makes a direct reaction of Buma impossible.8 The analogy is clear: Buma, who did not help to reform and was against the cuts when these were necessary, suddenly wants to profit from all the work that is done by others. The analogy is well chosen because of the vivid image it evokes. The first part of the analogy, garden maintenance, is particularly effective. Everybody understands that gardens need maintenance and that this is hard work. The element of necessary hard work is transferred to the actual discussion about the necessity of the reformations and cuts during the financial crisis. Because no one will question the need for garden maintenance, Pechtold makes it seem as if the cuts and reformations where unavoidable. The second element in the analogy, the garden chair is also a very good find. Pechtold’s argument can be seen as a rebuttal analogy and the social attack that is implied makes Buma seen as a freeloader. The garden chair analogy implies the following general social rule: if someone did not participate in joint work, that person cannot profit from that work. This general rule is used in a subtype of symptomatic argumentation. This comes about in the following overview of Pechtold’s argumentation: 1. Buma has no right in spending money now. 1.1 Buma was against all cuts and did not participate in the work necessary to make the Dutch economy healthy again. 1.1’ If someone did not participate in joint work, that person cannot profit from that work. The analogy also serves a different purpose: it helps Pechtold to smuggle in a controversial starting point. In using the analogy, Pechtold makes it seem as if Buma agrees with the assertion that during the economic crisis cuts are indeed necessary. Buma however believed that these cuts were harmful for economic growth. By using the analogy Pechtold wants to make it seem as if Buma just did not want to be responsible for unpopular cuts but wanted to profit from these cuts. To uncover this, Buma needs to reconstruct the argumentation first. The garden chair metaphor does not take into account the fact the Buma was against cuts because he thought they were harmful for the economy. The effect of the analogy is fourfold: 1. As it is a rebuttal analogy, it makes Buma looks bad. The image of the person sitting in the garden chair while all the hard work is done evokes laughter in the audience. 2. It blocks Buma’s possibility for a direct response, not only because of the audience’s reaction, but also because an adequate response requires reconstruction of the figurative analogy. 8 Only the next day Buma comes with a relevant reaction: “I keep sitting in my garden chair, because I

don’t think that is a bad plan. You may prune all you want, it won’t make the garden more beautiful.”

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3. Pechtold does not need to repeat anymore that the cuts and tax raises were necessary. This is implied by the analogy, since everybody understands that a garden needs to be maintained and that this entails hard work. 4. By using this metaphor Pechtold keeps the presupposition implicit that Buma has no right to spend money now because he did not support the financial reorganizations that took place during the financial crisis.

5 Conclusion In conclusion, figurative analogies are arguments and they have probative force. I hope to have shown that figurative analogies are not comparison arguments but should be reconstructed in order to evaluate the argumentation. Only when the arguers are aware of the argument scheme that is actually used, can the relevant critical questions be asked. In the reconstruction the analyst has to look for the commonality between what is stated in the argument and what is stated in the standpoint. Because the two situations are so different this commonality stands out. The commonality can be expressed as a general principle or maxim. This maxim is used as a premise in the argumentation. In many cases the reconstructed argumentation will prove to be pragmatic but other types of argumentation are also possible. Reconstruction is also necessary to analyse the strategic manoeuvring involved in using figurative analogies. In this paper I have distinguished three strategic effects of the use of figurative analogies: (1) transfer of connotations from the phoros to the theme, (2) restrain the possibility of critical testing and (3) introduce propositions as starting points. Empirical research has to shed light on the question whether ordinary arguers’ view of figurative analogies is in line with the pragma-dialectical analysis that is described here. Furthermore, the effectiveness claims that are made in this paper should be tested by way of experimental work as well.

References Branham, R. J. (1991). Debate and critical analysis: The harmony of conflict. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum. Fogelin, R. J., & Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2005). Understanding arguments: An introduction to informal logic. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth. Freeley, A. J., & Steinberg, D. L. (2005). Argumentation and debate: Critical thinking for reasoned decision making. Belmond, California: Wadsworth. Garssen, B. (2009). Comparing the incomparable: Figurative analogies in a dialectical testing procedure. In F. H. van Eemeren & B. Garssen (Eds.), Pondering on problems of argumentation: Twenty essays on theoretical issues (pp. 133–140). Dordrecht: Springer. Handelingen Tweede Kamer der Staten-Generaal, Handeling 2015–2016, nr. 2 item 7 https://zoek. officielebekendmakingen.nl/h-tk-20152016-2-7.html. Hastings, A. C. (1962). A reformulation of the modes of reasoning in argumentation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

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Lebowitz, F. (1994). The Fran Lebowitz reader. New York: Vintage books. Ottati, V., & Renstrom, R. A. (2010). Metaphor and persuasive communication: A multi-functional approach. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4(9), 783–794. Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1969). The new rhetoric: A treatise on argumentation. Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press. van Eemeren, F. H., & Garssen, B. J. (2014). Argumentation by analogy in stereotypical argumentative patterns. In H. J. Ribeiro (Ed.), Systematic approaches to argument by analogy (pp. 41–56). Dordrecht: Springer. van Eemeren, F. H., & Garssen, B. (2019). Argument schemes: Extending the pragma-dialectical approach. In F. H. van Eemeren & B. Garssen (Eds.), From argument schemes to argumentative relations in the wild variety of contributions to argumentation theory (pp. 11–24). Dordrecht: Springer. van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. (1992). Argumentation, communication, and fallacies: A pragma-dialectical perspective. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. (2004). A systematic theory of argumentation: The pragmadialectical approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waller, B. N. (1991). Classifying and analyzing analogies. Informal Logic, 21(3), 199–218. Whaley, B. B. (1998). Evaluations of rebuttal analogy users: Ethical and competence considerations. Argumentation, 12(2), 351–365. Whately, R. (1846/1963). Elements of rhetoric. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.

Bart Garssen is a Lecturer in the Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric at the University of Amsterdam. His research interests include argument schemes, fallacies and political argumentation. He is editor of the journal Argumentation (Springer) and the Journal of Argumentation in Context (Benjamins).

Empty Is Emptied: How Frame Choice Affects Previous State Inferences Bregje Holleman and Henk Pander Maat

Abstract Frame choice generally affects readers’ evaluations: objects or events framed positively are evaluated more positively than objects or events described negatively (Levin and Gaeth 1988; Holleman and Pander Maat 2009). This socalled “valence-consistent shift” is an important rhetorical resource: speakers may steer hearer inferences and evaluations just by choosing a particular attribute frame. Moreover, the framing choice in utterances as this glass is half empty seems to affect inferences about “previous states”, that is about the change leading to the current state of affairs. This chapter replicates and extends the experimental work on these previous state inferences. Furthermore, it explores the mechanisms behind this framing effect. Experiment 1 provides a Dutch replication of the seminal study by Sher and McKenzie (2006) on half full and half empty cups. It confirms the role of prior state reference points in frame interpretation: half full tends to be comprehended as “fuller than before”, while half empty is seen as “emptier than before”. Our experiment 2 constitutes a conceptual replication of the first study, using a variety of written scenarios and a variety of descriptors different from full and empty. Once more, the framed component tends to be taken to have increased over time. In closing, we relate the results to the notion of reference points and to the concept of argumentative orientation. More specifically, we propose that the reference point idea instantiates a more general principle of argumentative orientation. Keywords Attribute framing · Argumentation · Reference points · Relevance · Linguistic markedness · Communicative task

B. Holleman · H. Pander Maat (B) Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS, Utrecht, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] B. Holleman e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Boogaart et al. (eds.), The Language of Argumentation, Argumentation Library 36, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52907-9_12

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1 Framing Choices, Argumentative Orientations and Reference Points Reasoning is typical human behavior, and yet, human reasoning is often described to be irrational or flawed. Unravelling the mechanisms underlying our “flawed superpower” (Mercier and Sperber 2018), helps us gaining insight into both human cognition and communication. Framing is a classic example of communicative input causing biases in reasoning. Roughly, one may distinguish between issue framing and equivalency or valence framing. Issue framing is concerned with differential attention for various aspects of phenomena, often in the context of media analysis. An overview of this field is presented in Lecheler and de Vreese (2018). Equivalency framing, or valence framing, is all about different presentations of what is essentially the same information, often by varying a positive vs. a negative perspective. An early overview of this field is provided by Levin et al. (1998). They distinguish between goal framing and attribute framing. Goal framing is about choices such as the one between if you quit smoking, you will live longer versus if you continue smoking, you will live shorter. This paper is about attribute framing, which refers to choices concerning statements on two-valued attributes, such as half full versus half empty or 60% men versus 40% women. Framing effects arise both from basic cognitive factors such as selective attention and from communicative choices regarding the perspective to adopt in a message. On the cognitive side of the issue, framing research is linked to psycholinguistic research on attentional effects on sentence production (see Myachykov et al. 2009 for a review). An exemplary finding in this literature is that, in scene descriptions, entities in the focus of attention tend to be realized as syntactic subjects, not objects (Tomlin 1997). On the communicative side, framing research needs to be aware of how communicators do not just say what they think, but are sensitive to what they see as relevant in their communicative situation (Schwarz 1996). One of the interests of communicators is a “rhetorical” one, in that they choose wording variants in accordance with their persuasive intentions. For attribute framing, the rhetorical angle is clearly of interest as attribute framing choices are often related to different evaluations of a situation. For instance, one could say that the survival rate of a surgical procedure is 60% (the positive frame), or that its mortality rate is 40% (the negative frame). There is abundant evidence that speaking of success yields more positive evaluations of the procedure than speaking of failure, and a stronger inclination to, for example, consider undergoing the procedure. These attitudinal and behavioral effects of attribute framing are known as the “valenceconsistent shift” (Levin et al. 1998): hearers or listeners tend to evaluate the object in accordance with the valence of the description, causing positive frames to lead to positive evaluations of the object described.

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1.1 Communication: Argumentative Orientation If we assume that the two expressions are equivalent in meaning, the valenceconsistent shift seems an irrational behavior of language users. Holleman and Pander Maat (2009) have challenged this view by showing that different frames convey different Argumentative Orientations (AO). This concept of AO is taken from the work of the French linguist Oswald Ducrot (1980, 1996); it does not refer to explicit argumentation of the kind studied by researchers in pragma-dialectics (e.g. Doury et al. 2011). For Ducrot (1996: 49), an utterance having an AO means “it is represented as being able to justify a certain conclusion”. Most of the time those conclusions remain implicit. Ducrot’s own favorite examples of AO are the differences between wording choices involving certain function words, such as it’s already/ only eight and it’s almost/ not yet eight. The first members of these pairs are oriented on conclusions in the direction of “lateness”, while the second members have the opposite AO. Ducrot treats half full and half empty in the same way (1996: 58). The AO principle applied to framing states that, when faced with a framing choice, speakers tend to choose the component that best fits the direction of the (generally implicit) conclusions they would prefer to be drawn from the utterance (Holleman and Pander Maat ibid.: 2209). In other words, the suggested conclusion is the one consistent with primarily attending to the framed component, not the one that would follow from attending to its counterpart. Like any pragmatic principle, AO is twosided, meaning that hearers will assume speakers act according to the AO principle (Grice 1975). When the components carry different evaluations, this leads hearers to choose more positive conclusions after a positively framed statement than after a negatively framed one.

1.2 Cognition and Language: Markedness Asymmetries It has been observed that negative information carries more weight than positive information (Rozin and Roizman 2001). Accordingly, negative frames have been shown to be more negative in their implications than positive frames are positive (Holleman and Pander Maat 2009). Negativity biases are also observed in antonym pairs: recently Liebrecht et al. (2019) showed that negative evaluations were stronger than positive ones. Holleman and Pander Maat (ibid.: 2210) related these negativity biases to markedness differences. Markedness refers to the linguistic and cognitive asymmetry in many antonym pairs: one of the pair members appears as the more usual or expected choice (the “unmarked” member), whereas the other is the more remarkable choice (the “marked” member). The unmarked members of antonym pairs have more uses and derivations than the marked ones (Lehrer 1985). For instance, when asking about the size of an object, one tends to ask how long it is, not how short. Likewise, the size variable can be referred neutrally to as length, not as shortness.

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Several factors help predict what members of a pair will be marked and unmarked. According to Givón (1995: 63–66), culturally salient pair members tend to be unmarked. Perceptive saliency explains the asymmetry in pairs such as big–small and near–far. A consequence of this saliency is that positive expressions tend to be unmarked: non-events and non-states can be perceived and conceptualized less easily. This polarity asymmetry, when applied to the full–empty contrast, identifies full as the unmarked and empty as the marked member. This seems to be supported by the use of full in neutralized contexts such as in the question “how X is it?”. Another factor is the default goal orientation on success adopted in many real-life scenarios, such as medical treatments or games. This orientation leads to survival rate (not mortality rate) and winning (not losing) as unmarked pair members. So framing choices differ in terms of argumentative orientation, and hence are not entirely equivalent in meaning. Holleman and Pander Maat (2009) show that asymmetries between pair members due to markedness differences will modify the AO mechanism: it will cause stronger AO inferences for the marked pair member. In other words: the inference that a course described in terms of its failure rate is negative, is drawn by a large proportion of language users, whereas a description in terms of its success rate suggests a positive course evaluation, but also leaves room for a neutral evaluation. Despite this markedness asymmetry, the AO principle is quite general and holds for marked as well as unmarked pair members.

1.3 Reference Point Inferences The AO principle is quite general. A more specific interpretational mechanism underlying framing effects has been proposed by Sher and McKenzie (2006, 2011) and McKenzie and Nelson (2003). They claim that framing choices suggest that the framed component has increased in comparison to some reference point. Thus, speakers are more likely to describe a proportion in terms of component 1 (further C1) (e.g., success rates) when C1 has increased relative to a reference point proportion than when C1 has decreased relative to the reference point. This reference point may be drawn from general knowledge about the “normal” level of a certain attribute, or from information about earlier states of the entity in question. In the case of such “prior state reference points”, this means that success rate-descriptions suggest that an object has become more successful, while failure rate-descriptions suggest that it has become more unsuccessful than it was previously. In other words, when the only thing you say about the Swedish 2018 elections is that the Sweden Democrats have 18% of the votes (instead of saying that 82% of the voters preferred other parties over the Sweden Democrats), you seem to suggest that the number of votes for the Sweden Democrats has increased, i.e., the Sweden Democrats have grown (as in fact they did). This orientation on increases beyond a reference point may be deeply rooted in our cognitive systems. McKenzie and Nelson (2003: 597) note “that (English) speakers appear to have a general tendency to use terms that correspond to the label (or pole)

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that has increased. For example, a person whose height has increased is usually referred to as taller, not less short, whereas a person whose height has decreased (i.e., shortness has increased) is usually referred to as shorter, not less tall. Note further that there is no morpheme in English that is analogous to the suffix -er to indicate that a dimension has decreased, which also seems to imply that increasing labels or poles have a special status.” If all this is true, one would expect these “increasing component orientation” to arise in text interpretation as well as in text production. Interestingly, McKenzie and Nelson (2003) conducted a speaker study (frame production task) as well as a listener study (frame interpretation task). Speakers were asked to select a frame (e.g. half full vs. half empty) to describe an object or event after having read a short text about this object, or readers were asked to read a framed description and draw an inference about the previous state of this object “given the way the object is described now”. These experiments supported their hypothesis that frame choice tends to tag along with the proportion that has grown, whilst frame interpreters tend to assume that the framed proportion has grown compared to a previous point in time. Building onto this work, this study focuses on the interpretation of framed information with respect to previous state inferences. As most of the previous work on this theme focuses on “half full” and “half empty” as frames, our first inquiry is whether these English adverbs are fully comparable to the Dutch halfvol and half leeg. This is not self-evident. Although both the English and Dutch adjectives are similar in that they are related to verbs (full/fill, vol/vullen; empty/empty, leeg/legen), there is a difference in spelling for the unmarked pair member: the English uses two words (half full), whereas the Dutch uses one word ((halfvol). This difference may make the “full” and “filling” aspect of the word more prominent in English, and hence lead to stronger previous state inferences. This is investigated in Experiment 1. Experiment 2 aims to generalize the findings for half full and half empty to other contrasts in a conceptual replication focusing on other contrasts.

2 Experiment 1: A Dutch Replication of Half Full and Half Empty McKenzie and Nelson (2003) asked people to read a short text about an object and draw an inference about the previous state of this object “given the way the object is described now”. Sher and McKenzie (2006) replicated these interpretation effects in a naturalistic interpretation task, in which subjects actually had to complete a task after having read a (framed) instruction. In this experiment, speakers were presented with two cups, one full and one empty. Half of the participants was randomly assigned to a half full-frame, the other group was assigned to the half empty frame. They were asked to pour some water from the first into the second cup and then to hand over a half full cup (first condition) or a half empty cup (second condition). As expected, a comparison between groups revealed that the half full cups handed over were more often the recently filled cups than the half empty cup.

234 Table 1 Results of the Dutch replication of experiment 1 in Sher and McKenzie (2006)

B. Holleman and H. Pander Maat Instruction Result

“Hand a half full cup”

“Hand a half empty cup”

Hands previously full cup

19

42

Hands previously empty cup

29

8

In cooperation with our MA-student Dianne Gosens (2006), we replicated this Sher and McKenzie (2006) experiment in Dutch. In our study, 98 subjects (students) participated; 48 of them were in the half full-condition, the other 50 in the half empty-condition. The procedure in the study was exactly as described above. Table 1 provides the results. When asked to hand a half empty cup, 42 persons (84%) handed the cup that had been emptied and was previously full; whereas when asked to hand the half full cup, only 19 persons (40%) handed the emptied cup whereas 60% handed the filled cup(χ2 = 20.56, df = 1, p < 0.001). That is, in both cases the framed component tended to be taken to refer to the component that had grown: empty is associated with an increase in the empty part, whereas full is related to a growth in the full part. So our Dutch data support the hypothesis that people tend to think that the framed component has increased beyond a reference point, in this case: a previous situation. We have spoken above on the asymmetry between marked and unmarked members of antonym pairs. In the pair under consideration here, empty is the marked member and full the unmarked one. According to Holleman and Pander Maat (2009), marked frames elicit stronger interpretations than unmarked ones. This tendency is confirmed here, as the empty-frame elicits more extreme interpretations (84% frame-consistent choices for the “emptied” cup) than the full-frame (60% frame-consistent choices for the “filled” cup) (χ2 = 6.82, df = 1, p < 0.001). So the markedness differences found in AO interpretations generalize to other frame-induced inferences: increased proportion inferences are drawn as a result of both frames, but stronger (or more unambiguously) so for the marked pair member (empty).

3 Experiment 2: Generalizing the Reference Point Effect in Frame Interpretation 3.1 Method Now the pouring situation is a very vivid one, in that it involves physical actions. Another peculiarity of the cup experiment is that the semantics of the central adjectives full and empty are linked to corresponding verbs. Hence there is every reason to look into the generalizability of the “increasing proportion orientation” carried by framed utterances.

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In cooperation with our BA student Sabine Geerligs (2009), we designed an experiment in which we presented subjects with a variety of framed statements providing the value for a dichotomous variable for a particular year. We asked them to guess whether compared with a previous point in time, this value has increased or decreased. We used 16 interpretation items, mixed with 16 filler items. Each item consisted of a small text (about three sentences long), and two answering options; see Box 1. Box 1: Example of an Symmetrical Item (Item 1) from Our Second Experiment The Dutch government values the representation of women in city councils, provincial councils and national parliament. When asked about the development of female representation between 2003–2006, the mayor of the Dutch city of Harlingen answers that in 2006, 63% of the city council members was male. What do you think the situation was in 2003? In 2003, less men were a council member than in 2006 In 2003, more men were a council member than in 2006 In each item, two variables were crossed. First, either the largest or the smallest proportion is framed. So while in Box 1 “63% of the city council members was male”, other item versions stated that “37% of the city council members was female”. Second, the order of the answering options was varied: either the “less men” (or “women”, in case of a female frame in the main text) option is presented first, or the “more men” (or “women”) option was presented first. We used both symmetrical as well as asymmetrical items, i.e. items using pairs which have a marked and an unmarked member. The asymmetrical items contain strong evaluative associations, with the positive (successful or desirable) pole representing the unmarked member. The largest proportion was assigned to the positive pole. These evaluative differences were absent in the symmetrical items. Table 2 briefly describes the items. Both within the symmetrical and the asymmetrical items, a variety of proportions were used. The mean proportion for largest proportions over the 16 items was 69.9% (SD 12.4%) with a range from 52 to 88% (consequently, the mean for the smaller proportions was 30.1%, with a range from 12 to 48%). Our hypothesis is that respondents will more often say that the framed proportion has grown compared to the previous situation (which is left unspecified) regardless the order of answering options. For instance, if the 2006 city council is said to have 63% men, we expect most subjects to choose the answer “there were less men in 2003”; whereas if the same council has 37% women, most subjects are expected to say “there were less women in 2003”. With regard to proportion size, there is no reason to expect differences regarding proportion size for the symmetrical items, while one could imagine a proportion size effect for asymmetrical items on the basis of the markedness effect found in Experiment 1, where negative frames induced stronger interpretations. Such an effect would lead to an interaction between proportion size and item symmetry. We are doubtful here, as the markedness effect has less support in the literature than the primary framing effect. Still, we will examine this interaction.

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Table 2 Description of the items included in experiment 2 Percentages useda

Symmetry

Topic

1

Symmetrical

The proportion of male/female council members in a 63/37 Dutch city

2

Symmetrical

The proportion of female/male internet users worldwide

65/35

3

Symmetrical

The proportion of pigs/dairy cows at a Dutch farm

54/46

4

Symmetrical

The proportion of men/women among the deceased persons in a certain week in The Netherlands

53/47

5

Symmetrical

The proportion of violent crimes/financial crimes in a certain year

76/24

6

Symmetrical

The proportion of persons preferring an open air pool/an indoor pool

73/27

7

Symmetrical

The proportion of Dutch farms lying in a certain Dutch region (Overijssel)/the rest of the country

88/12

8

Symmetrical

The proportion of soil surface used for greenhouse/“open soil” cultivation of strawberries

84/16

9

Asymmetrical

The proportion of healthy/unhealthy fats in Dutch supermarket products

85/15

10

Asymmetrical

The proportion of driving school clients passing/flunking their first exam

54/46

11

Asymmetrical

The proportion of information technology course participants passing/flunking their exam

52/48

12

Asymmetrical

The proportion of trains arriving in time/too late

78/22

13

Asymmetrical

The proportion of jobless people finding/not finding 65/35 new employment within 6 months

14

Asymmetrical

The proportion of Dutch theaters that are at least/less than half full in a certain decade

77/23

15

Asymmetrical

The proportion of healthy/unhealthy fats in muesli bars

68/32

16

Asymmetrical

The proportion of TIA patients that could/could not be rescued by reanimation in a certain year

83/17

a “percentages

used” indicates the percentage that was used to describe the larger proportion, and the percentage used to describe the smaller proportion

3.2 Results and Discussion of Experiment 2 The experiment was administered to 100 subjects, of which 44% were male and 56% female; the mean age was 31 years and 39% of the participants had completed some form of higher education. Sex and educational level did not differ across versions. Each participant received 8 symmetrical and 8 asymmetrical items. Within each group, 4 items were framed in terms of the smallest proportion and 4 others in terms of the largest proportion. And within each group of 4 items, the order of answering

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options was counterbalanced. For each cell, we determined the proportion of cases the framed proportion was inferred to have grown. We expect this proportion to be significantly higher than 50% (the base-rate in two-sided proportions), regardless the symmetry value, the framed proportion and the order of answer options. Our design requires two analyses (Clark 1973), using either our 16 items or our 100 subjects as cases. In the items analysis, framed proportion (smallest/largest) and order of answers (“less option” first/“more option” first) are within-variables (as they vary within a particular item) and symmetry (symmetrical/asymmetrical) is a between-variable (as it varies between, not within items). In the subjects analysis, all three factors vary within participants. In repeated measures analyses of variance, we did not find any effects for proportion size, symmetry, and order of answering options, or any interactions, neither in the subjects nor in the items analysis. On average, participants chose the increasing proportion answer in 57.8% of the cases; the standard error for this proportion of 0.578 is 0.121 (SD 0.012) for the subjects analysis and 0.099 (SD 0.024) for the items analysis. We used one-sample t-tests to test whether this mean proportion differs from the 0.50 proportion implied by the null hypothesis. Both for the subjects data (n = 100) and the item data (n = 16), these t-tests indicated that the increasing proportion is chosen significantly more often than half of the time (items analysis: t[15] = 3.15, p < 0.01; subjects analysis: t[99] = 6.48, p < 0.001). Cohen’s d for the items analysis is 0.79, for the subjects analysis it is 0.65. That is, we are dealing with medium size effects. These results support the prior state reference point hypothesis proposed by Sher and McKenzie (2006): framing a certain proportion leads people to more often assume that this proportion has grown compared to a previous point in time. We found no effects of proportion size, nor an interaction between proportion size and item symmetry. That is, while the answers differed over items due to itemspecific prior knowledge, these differences were unrelated to these factors. We need to consider the possibility that our experiment lacked the power to find the markedness effect, which is a more subtle effect than the primary framing effect, both in Holleman and Pander Maat (2009) and in Experiment 1. Using G*Power we estimate that our items analysis has 0.8 power to find effects with Cohen’s f2 of 0.18 and larger (f2 being defined as η2 /1 − η2 ); the subjects analysis has 0.8 power to find effects for which f2 is 0.11 or larger. As effects below 0.15 are considered small, the subjects analysis is quite powerful, and the items analysis moderately so. As 16 items seems a substantial number for this kind of quite repetitive task and fillers are needed as well, it is hard to further increase the power of the items analysis. So possibly the markedness effect is simply not there, for instance because the written scenarios are less engaging than the physical pouring context and because the most descriptors in the scenarios lack the close relation with a corresponding verb that holds for full and empty.

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4 Conclusion and Discussion Our results are clear: in a wide variety of attribute framing scenarios, the majority of readers assumes that the framed component, the proportion in terms of which the situation is described, has increased in size. For experiment 1 there is a markedness effect as well, in that the negative frame leads to stronger interpretations. Such an effect is not found for the written scenarios in experiment 2. We should start our discussion by noting some limitations. We need to realize that our experiments used highly constraining, binary response formats. We certainly need to explore reference point effects further by using an open response format. Another issue is whether the interpretational preference for increasing proportions also holds for frame production, in that speakers tend to choose to frame the increased component (as hearers assume they do). Let us now revisit the relation between the concept of argumentative orientation and the reference point notion proposed by Sher and McKenzie (2006) as the mechanism behind the valence-consistent interpretation of framed descriptions. They (o.c.: 482) state: “the reference point hypothesis maintains that describing a proportion in terms of “X1” signals to listeners that the proportion of X1 has increased relative to the reference point—i.e., that X1 is relatively abundant.” However, later on in the same article, Sher and McKenzie allow for other varieties of frame-based inferences, saying more generally that frame choice is a cue to the salience of a property in the speaker’s representation of some entity (ibid.: 483): “(...) it is unlikely that relative abundance is the only determinant of salience. In particular, properties and events which are either representative of the thing being described (e.g., the successes of a team judged to be generally successful), or intrinsically notable (e.g., the successes of a team with spectacular successes and ordinary failures), will presumably tend to be salient in psychological, and hence linguistic, representations.” Hence we are left with the general notion of saliency as the primary attribute conveyed by frame choice. We see little difference between our own concept of Argumentative Orientation and this notion: what is the difference between saying that a component is salient and saying that hearers are invite to base inferences on this component, not on its counterpart? Reference point-bound interpretations of relative abundance are only one of several ways of following this lead. Two other kinds of frame-induced inferences are the ones Sher and McKenzie discuss in terms of “representativeness” and “intrinsical notableness”. How might these inference types be approached in further work? The most straightforward indication of representativeness seems to be the size of the component. McKenzie et al. (2001) already found that when asked for a summary of a set with two-valued properties, their subjects tended to frame the largest component. “Component size” differs from “component direction of change” in that it is only an option in frame production, not in frame interpretation (the receiver “has to deal” with the component size choice she is confronted with by the producer). Hence we intend to investigate the interaction between component size and direction of change in subsequent frame production experiments.

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The property of “notableness” seems more elusive, but one variant of it seems to derive from goal orientations associated with certain topics. For instance, a Master’s Thesis by van de Geer (2008) presents a corpus analysis of texts providing the percentages of men and women in various professional domains. Many of those texts are about the minority status of women. Often, women are the framed component without suggesting that the female component is either the largest or even increasing. Instead, the female component is given to illustrate that it falls short of the expectations. As in this topic domain the goal orientation is to raise the proportion of women, this framed component is the preferred choice, just like winning is preferred over losing. So we need to realize that previous state inferences related to frame choice may give way to other considerations, such as in discourse contexts with a strong goal orientation, projecting an “only X-reading” on the proportions of X% when X is lower than it should be. We might also see such goal orientations as topic-specific normative reference points; in this man/women-case, the reference point seems to be 50%. Hence, frame choice may be used to invite several kinds of inferences; these may have to do with the direction of change to the current situation, but also with the representativeness of a component, or with its being notable given contextually relevant goal orientations. All these inferences focus on the framed component, and hence are instantiations of the principle of argumentative orientation. We are aware that in these types of inferences under the AO umbrella, we stretch the notion of argumentation. We already did so in our earlier work (Holleman and Pander Maat 2009), but there we focused on frame-induced evaluations and recommendations, in other words, on inferences that could be said to be “the point” of the framed utterance. This does not hold anymore for the inferences discussed above, which are more specific in their content. Whether we need further distinctions in the set of frame-induced inferences is a matter we leave for future work. What stands out for now is that the previous state inferences illustrate the power of subtle linguistic choices in steering hearer conclusions. Ducrot has argued that discourse does not inform us, but orients us; in his radically argumentative semantics, he tries to eliminate notions such as “factual content” and truth conditions. We doubt whether he can do without these notions. In fact, he himself uses a version of them when he states that it’s eight and it’s only eight provide the same information (Ducrot 1996, 56); and he concedes that he has not yet established beyond any doubt that an utterance such as there are seats in this room is devoid of any informational content (Ducrot 1996, 24). But he is right to insist that as a rule, utterances do more than describe states of affairs. Our experiments confirm how quite general linguistic cues may produce quite specific differences in hearer inferences.

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References Clark, H. H. (1973). The language-as-fixed-effect fallacy: A critique of language statistics in psychological research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 12(4), 335–359. Doury, M., van Haaften, T., & Henkemans, F. S. (2011). Strategic maneuvering in critical reactions to pragmatic argumentation. In E. Feteris, B. Garssen, & F. Snoeck Henkemans (Eds.), Keeping in touch with pragma-dialectics: In Honor of Frans H. van Eemeren (pp. 21–38). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Ducrot, O. (1980). Les échelles argumentatives. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit. Ducrot, O. (1996). Slovenian lectures (Ed. Igor Ž. Žagar; transl. Sebastian McEvoy). Ljubljana: ISH Inštitut za humanistiˇcne študije Ljubljana. Geerligs, S. (2009). Kiezen mensen altijd voor de verbetering? Een onderzoek naar het effect van de toegenomen proportie bij actuele interpretatietaken [Do people always choose the improvement? A study into the effects of the increasing proportion in actual interpretation tasks]. Bachelor’s Thesis Communication and Information Sciences, Utrecht University. Grice, H. P. (1975). Logic and conversation. In P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (Eds.), Syntax and semantics (vol. 3). Speech acts (pp. 41–58). New York: Academic Press. Givón, T. (1995). Functionalism and grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Gosens, D. (2006). Halfvol of halfleeg??? Een onderzoek naar het effect van framing op de keuze uit twee mogelijkheden [Half-full or half-empty??? A study into the effect of framing on the choice between two options]. BA Thesis Communication and Information Sciences, Utrecht University. Holleman, B. C., & Pander Maat, H. (2009). The pragmatics of profiling: Framing effects in text interpretation and text production. Journal of Pragmatics, 41, 2204–2221. Lecheler, S., & de Vreese, C. H. (2018). News framing effects: Theory and practice. Routledge. Lehrer, A. (1985). Markedness and antonymy. Journal of Linguistics, 21(2), 397–429. Levin, I. P., & Gaeth, G. J. (1988). How consumers are affected by the framing of attribute information before and after consuming the product. Journal of Consumer Research, 15, 374–378. Levin, I. P., Schneider, S. L., & Gaeth, G. J. (1998). All frames are not created equal: A typology and critical analysis of framing effects. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 76, 149–188. Liebrecht, C., Hustinx, L., & van Mulken, M. (2019). The relative power of negativity: The influence of language intensity on perceived strength. Journal Of Language and Social Psychology, 38(2), 170–193. McKenzie, C. R. M., & Nelson, J. D. (2003). What a speaker’s choice of frame reveals: Reference points, frame selection, and framing effects. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 10, 596–602. McKenzie, C. R. M., Ferreira, V. S., Mikkelsen, L. A., McDermott, K. J., & Skrable, R. P. (2001). Do conditional hypotheses target rare events? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 85, 291–309. Mercier, H., & Sperber, D. (2018). The enigma of reason: A new theory of human understanding. Penguin books. Myachykov, A., Garrod, S., & Scheepers, C. (2009). Attention and syntax in sentence production: A critical review. Discours, 4. http://discours.revues.org/7594. Rozin, P., & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5, 296–320. Schwarz, N. (1996). Cognition and communication: Judgmental biases, research methods, and the logic of conversation. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Ass. Publishers. Sher, S., & McKenzie, C. R. M. (2006). Information leakage from logically equivalent frames. Cognition, 101, 467–494. Sher, S., & McKenzie, C. R. (2011). Levels of information: A framing hierarchy. Perspectives on framing, 35. Tomlin, R. S. (1997). Mapping conceptual representations into linguistic representations: The role of attention in grammar. In J. Nuyts & E. Pederson (Eds.), Language and conceptualization (pp. 162–189). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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van de Geer, F. (2008). Dertig procent vrouw, zeventig procent man [Thirty percent women, seventy percent men]. MA Thesis Communication Sciences, Utrecht University.

Bregje Holleman is a Senior Researcher and Lecturer of Language & Communication at the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS. Her main research interests are persuasion, political communication and document design. Henk Pander Maat is a Senior Researcher at the Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS and teacher in Language & Communication. His main research interests are stylistics, text structure and document design.

Old Is the New New: The Rhetoric of Anchoring Innovation Ineke Sluiter

Abstract In life, language, and argument, we need to feel at home. “Anchoring” connects whatever seems “new” to what is considered familiar. This paper studies the argumentative use of “anchoring” in the wider context of its role in language use. “Anchoring” provides a unifying perspective in analyzing linguistic and rhetorical elements identified by different schools of thought (Sect. 2). Several features of language, elsewhere studied in the context of “discourse linguistics”, direct the addressee on how to anchor new information to the common ground. Categorizing, labeling and naming (topics from philosophy and psychology) can be considered anchoring functions. And formal linguistic iconicity anchors linguistic representations in evolutionarily older senso-motor systems. Section 3 discusses the anchoring effects of some specific discourse types: genealogy, mythology, aetiology, and etymology. All of these frequently take the form of narrative and are used in affective, “engaged” argumentation. Finally, the rhetorical and argumentative implications of the terminology of “new” and “old” itself are discussed, and one specific “anchoring trope” is analyzed, which sets up an anchor as a reference point for something new: the phrase “X is the new Y” (Sect. 4). Keywords Anchoring · Innovation · X is the new Y · Affective argument · Association

1 Introduction Human experience is an onslaught of phenomena that are either presented to us as new or strike us as such. Whenever this happens, a cognitive process or activity of integration may be activated (or not: we may also fail to observe things, fail to comprehend or accept them, or even actively ignore and block them). We live in an era in which innovation is a buzz-word, although it is mostly (and wrongly) reserved for specific developments in technology, the sciences, and I. Sluiter (B) Centre for the Arts in Society, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 R. Boogaart et al. (eds.), The Language of Argumentation, Argumentation Library 36, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52907-9_13

243

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medicine. However, innovations may affect every domain of life, and the social sciences and the humanities have much to offer for a more general understanding of how people process “the new” and how they cope with it. In particular, it is crucial to understand that without attention to “the human factor”, no invention will turn into an (accepted) innovation. A Dutch research team of classicists has used the term “anchoring” for such a forging of a connection between “the new” and what is already familiar. A central hypothesis is the following: Innovations may become acceptable, understandable, and desirable when relevant social groups can effectively integrate and accommodate them in their conceptual categories, values, beliefs and ambitions. This is the case when they can connect what is perceived as new to what they consider familiar, known, already accepted, when, that is, innovations are “anchored”. (Sluiter 2017: 23)1

“Anchoring” is a basic condition for successful linguistic exchanges, an instrument of argumentation, and one of the goals of persuasive rhetoric. This paper studies the argumentative use of “anchoring” against the wider backdrop of its role in language use. The concept of “anchoring” will be used to provide a unifying perspective on linguistic and rhetorical elements and concepts from different levels of analysis and different schools of linguistic thought, without denying or eliding relevant distinctions.

2 The Linguistics of Anchoring Innovation On a very fundamental level and without needing the lexeme “new” as a signpost, linguistic communication itself is a prime example of “anchoring innovation”, or maybe better: “anchoring the new”. In any felicitous act of communication, there is a constant mutual assessment of the amount of relevant knowledge available to the different partners in communication, and a gradual addition of new information. Crucially, this new information must constantly be anchored in the “common ground”, defined by Clark as: “the sum of [two people’s] mutual, common, or joint knowledge, beliefs, and suppositions” (Clark 1996: 93).2 This common ground may contain both items of culturally shared information, and individually or personally shared information (Clark 1996). As Allan, van Gils, and Kroon have demonstrated from a pragmatic or discourse linguistic perspective, different linguistic devices can be fruitfully regarded as tools for common ground management, in that they actively “anchor” new information 1 The research program is coordinated by OIKOS, the Dutch National Research School in Classical

Studies. See the website: https://www.ru.nl/oikos/anchoring-innovation/. The program is supported by a 2017 so-called “Gravitation Grant” from the Dutch Ministry of Education. 2 First discussion in Clark and Brennan (1991); Stalnaker (2002); see Camp (2018) for discourse strategies of plausible deniability that never fully adds information to the common ground; for applications in Classics, see e.g. Huitink (2009), here especially p. 24, on presupposition; in the anchoring innovation program, see Allan and van Gils (2015), Kroon (2015, 2019).

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to the common ground. Examples are the use of the so-called historical present tense (praesens historicum) (Kroon 2015), the use of anaphoric deictic pronouns (Kroon 2017) and the use of discourse particles and negation, understood as “the speaker’s instruction to the addressee specifying in which way new information is to be cognitively anchored to the already established common ground” (Allan and van Gils 2015; van Gils 2016; Allan 2017).3 The Latin particle enim, for instance, can be used to introduce an explanation (“for”) of what has just been said before, while also suggesting that this information is already shared between speaker and addressee and thus part of the common ground (“for, as we both know”). If tenses, discourse particles and negations can serve as linguistic devices to anchor information to the common ground, “categorization” and “labelling” are conceptual anchoring activities that particularly affect our use of nouns and sometimes verbs. In this context, the term “anchoring” was used in an influential paper by Bauer and Gaskell (1999).4 They restrict their use of the term “anchoring” to the “naming and classifying of novel encounters, ideas, things or persons” (Bauer and Gaskell 1999: 172). This is certainly an important and basic form of integrating the new into existing conceptual structures. A helpful first step in cognitively processing the new and connecting it to what is already familiar is to find an answer to the question “what is this?”. To give an example from classical literature: this whole idea was dramatized to great comic effect by Sophocles in his Satyr play The Searchers (Gr. Ichneutai). A chorus of satyrs is trying to find a herd of stolen cattle, which in the end will turn out to have been taken by the baby god Hermes. But they are disturbed and scared by an underground sound they have never heard before. As it turns out, baby Hermes had just managed to invent the lyre, by fastening strings into the shell of a tortoise, and the sound is that of its music. Of course, the lyre is a cultural object well-known to the audience, who here witness what happens when the chorus tries to figure out for the first time, in a dialogue with a nymph, “what this is”. In effect, they witness the anchoring of an invention in the categories available to the satyrs.5 When they have more or less figured out what kind of (dead) animal is at the source of the sound, they finally come around to the question “What is the name you give it?” (verse 311), and the nymph replies: “the boy (Hermes) calls the animal a ‘tortoise’, and the thing that makes the sound a ‘lyre’”. Now they know what the instrument looks like, what it 3 For

an example of this anchoring use of negation, see Sect. 4 (example c). Its technical effect can be compared to the argumentative concept of “dissociation”, in the terminology of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969: 190–191) and van Eemeren (2019: 157). Dissociation is defined as “techniques of separation which have the purpose of dissociating, separating, disuniting elements which are regarded as forming a whole or at least a unified group within some system of thought” (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 190). Van Eemeren uses it specifically for the (negative) clarification of a vital term. “Dissociation” is the opposite of “association”, which refers to the bringing together of separate elements and establishing a unity among them. 4 Who in turn refer to Moscovici (1976). 5 I thank Efstathia Athanasopoulou for bringing this example to my attention through her paper “Anchoring cultural objects in the ancient Greek imagination” during the conference “How to Do the Psychology of the Ancient World”. Leiden 13–15 December 2018.

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Fig. 1 Two enigmatic objects

does, and what it is called. We are on the way to having the lyre be part of Greek culture. Sophocles was imagining the process of categorization necessary to accommodate a new invention in the lexicon. A historical example of such anchoring through categorization is studied as part of “lexical acculturation theory” by Goldwasser (2017). She analyses the process through which the arrival of the horse is marked in Egyptian, Sumerian and Nahuati. This is done partly through adopting loan words, but also through referential extension or semantic insertion into a known category: in Mesopotamian the horse is called a “donkey of the mountain”.6 There are many more banal examples derived from the propensity of the design industry to invent such cute packaging for their products that one is made to ask “what is this?”/“what is this for”, in order to anchor the new into the familiar. People who acquire such gadgets enjoy a privileged position vis-à-vis newcomers (such as visitors): from a position of superior knowledge, they can enlighten, if they so choose, the outsiders: “Guess what this is?”, “Guess what I’ve got!”. The object is anchored for one partner in the exchange and not yet for the other, and the appeal to belong to the “in-group” is exploited as an implicit argument by marketeers. Figure 1 offers two examples: Well might one be puzzled by these two objects. The object to the left resembles a Formula-1 racer, dressed in protective gear and helmet, with the Audi logo visible on the helmet. The object to the right is an orange fish made of silicone, with an open mouth. One cannot make much more of it. But with some helpful instructions, we can categorize and label each of these novel cultural objects. The AudiStore website reveals that the little racer is in fact a corkscrew, designed on the basis of the legendary cork screw “Alessandro” by designer Alessandro Mendini—a.k.a. Alessi. When the red helmet is taken off, the actual corkscrew is revealed.7 For the orange fish, it is best to refer to Fig. 2, although here, too, the crucial thing we need to know is the name: “yolkfish egg separator”8 : 6 Goldwasser

(2017) also refers to Eco (2000: 127–130) for different strategies to anchor a new cultural item. 7 https://store.audi.co.uk/audi-sport-corkscrew19991.html. Accessed Jan. 2019. 8 https://peleg-design.com/products/yolkfish. Accessed Jan. 2019.

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Fig. 2 How to use the yolkfish egg separator

Fig. 3 “Beep-egg”

Just having the labels/categories of “corkscrew” and “egg separator” makes all the difference for knowing what we are supposed to do with these objects. Similarly, it is hardly obvious that if you put the egg depicted in Fig. 39 in with the eggs you are trying to boil, it will start singing (as it will in fact do) “Killing me softly” once the egg is a perfectly soft-boiled. Not even the name “beep-egg” will help you grasp its purpose (as an immersive egg timer) on its own, although once you know what the implement is for, it is a helpful moniker. “Beep-egg” is the kind of invention that tries to create its own need—you didn’t know you wanted it before it existed.

9 http://sleepychef.com/the-king-beep-egg-timer-piep-ei-elvis-presley-edition/.

Accessed Jan 2019

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Finally, as a transition to discussing higher-level (rhetorical, discursive, and argumentative) forms of anchoring, there is the linguistic anchoring provided by iconicity: in iconic language the formal aspects of an utterance “resemble” their conceptual content (Nijk 2018).10 Sound effects, rhythmic patterns or cola length, for instance, can all be used to promote ease of processing of the conceptual content. The principle of quantity suggests that morphologically heavier forms will convey “extra” meaning. An example is the formation of comparatives, as in “great – greater”. Such aspects of form, it is argued by Nijk (2018) who first connected the topic with “anchoring”, are cognitively processed by systems of perception and motor control that are evolutionarily older than those of reasoning. Iconicity appeals to the older systems and thereby anchors our capacities for rational understanding. As with the pragmatic and discourse-linguistic studies mentioned above, this effect of linguistic iconicity is best explained within the framework of cognitive linguistics as promoting ease of processing, as an anchor for understanding.

3 Genealogy, Mythology, Aetiology, and Etymology as Discursive Anchoring Practices Whenever something that presents itself as new is being anchored for the relevant social groups in something familiar, this is often brought about through analogy, considered the most basic human cognitive strategy by Hofstadter and Sander (2013). The familiar analogue that one invokes may be a case of “horizontal anchoring”, in which case the new in one domain is related to the familiar in another, contemporary, one. Or one may engage in “vertical anchoring”, when a new object, idea, practice or technique is related to something familiar from the past. One example of horizontal anchoring, fitting Bauer and Gaskell’s (1999) emphasis on categorization and labeling, was the “donkey of the mountain”, to indicate a “horse”. Another example is the explanation of a “drone” as “a flying computer with a camera or sensor attached”. A drone is a specific kind of the presumably better-known computer.11 Similarly, there must be several Business Books out there that exploit a parallelism between business and sports.12 Vertical anchoring is exemplified by the slogan of the current President of the United States: MAGA. “Make America Great Again” appeals to feelings of nostalgia for an ill-defined but happy past greatness, which the new regime claims to bring back. Anchoring is here directly connected with persuasion and argumentation: it can win elections.13

10 For

the related concept of “depiction”, see Clark (2016).

11 https://www.dronezon.com/learn-about-drones-quadcopters/what-is-drone-technology-or-how-

does-drone-technology-work/. Emphasis added. Accessed Jan. 2019. 12 As just one example: Perry and Jamison (1997). 13 Again, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s notion of “association” is relevant (1969: 190–191); van Eemeren 2019: 156–157; 159 (on symptomatic and comparison argumentation).

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Fig. 4 Coin from the time of Julius Caesar, showing a bust of Caesar on one side and a depiction of Venus holding Victory on the other. Wikimedia commons

There are various identifiable types of discursive practices or discourse types (“–logies”) that specifically contribute to “anchoring” the (new) present either by emphasizing its unbroken continuity with the past, or by explaining a certain aspect of the status quo on the basis of the past. These practices, which frequently and heavily rely on cultural memory, are genealogy, mythology, and aetiology. Each of these is affectively charged and hence contributes to an “engaged” style of argumentation (van Eemeren 2019: 166), which is a style that shows an arguer’s close involvement. In addition, there is the ancient and medieval practice of etymology (to be carefully distinguished from the academic discipline of etymology as originating in the 19th century), which anchors an understanding of the present in an important element of the common ground: language itself. All these four types of discourse can take the form of an explanatory narrative, and they are frequently used as argumentative devices. Genealogy determines the place in the world of the latest link in a chain of direct descent by connecting it to some meaningful point of origin in the past. In classical antiquity, such a meaningful point of origin might be a god (or goddess) or a hero: this is the (argumentatively constructed) anchor. The Julian dynasty, for instance, particularly Julius Caesar and his (adoptive) son Octavian, better known as the first emperor Augustus, traced their lineage through the Trojan hero Aeneas to the goddess Venus (Aphrodite). Aeneas, who was to lay the groundwork for the foundation of Rome, was the son of the goddess Aphrodite and a human father, Anchises. The epic poem Aeneid thus provided a genealogical anchor for Augustus, one that underpinned his position of authority.14 Obviously genealogy and mythology go hand in hand here. Julius Caesar would call attention to his descent by featuring the goddess Venus on his promotional coinage (Fig. 4). And Augustus would do the same, emphasizing in 14 The

more critical tendencies of the Aeneid cannot be discussed here.

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the legend on the coin that he was divi filius, the son of the deified Julius. In the New Testament, there are two genealogies of Jesus, one in the Gospel of Matthew, the other in the Gospel of Luke. Matthew (1.1–17) puts his version right at the beginning of his text. He states that Jesus is a “son” (i.e. descendant) of David, son of Abraham, and this serves two implicit arguments: in this way he secures his lineage as a King (by anchoring to David) and as a part of Israel (by anchoring to Abraham). The genealogy in Luke 3:23–38 is set at the juncture where Jesus takes up a more public role. In this passage Jesus’ descent is traced to Adam, “son of God” (3:38). And, si parva licet componere magnis, at the Pieterskerk (Peter’s Church) in Leiden, there is a commemorative plaque with the names of the Pilgrim Fathers who set forth from Leiden to the United States. An explanatory sign specifies which Presidents of the United States could trace their descent to the Pilgrims. Among the nine who qualify are both Presidents Bush. Another Pilgrim descendant is President Obama.15 For all these Presidents, the symbolically meaningful genealogy stops there, although clearly the Pilgrim Fathers themselves had also descended from someone. But this is how anchoring works. In this case it provides an argument both for the status of these Presidents and for the importance of the role of Leiden in the voyage of the pilgrims. We have already seen an example of mythology as an anchoring discourse in the Aeneid. Myths provide social groups with a meaningful set of stories that can help explain or even justify the status quo. It is this particular role for the present of the narrators and recipients that defines it as an anchoring practice and explains its argumentative force. Myths identify or construct formative moments in the past, and thus help, among other things, to create a sense of group identity in the present by providing a common frame of reference. For the ancient Greeks, the story of the Trojan war defined the moment at which they came together as a group, and it came to function as a normative charter myth, by which one might justify certain political or military situations. When in a later war (against the Persians) the Athenians and the Spartans were looking for allies and turned to Sicily, the Sicilian king Gelon announced his willingness to help on condition of becoming the supreme commander. The Spartan ambassador answered first and in his argument pointed out that Agamemnon—the commander of the Greeks in the Trojan War—would basically turn over in his grave if he saw the Spartans hand over military leadership to Gelon and his Sicilians. At this Gelon relented a bit and suggested that the Spartans could command the land army if he himself were made commander of the navy. But now the Athenian envoy protested, with a double appeal to mythological anchors: the Athenians, he argued, were the oldest people and had never been migrants (in other texts this is called “autochthony”, the condition of “being sprung from the land itself”).16 And, secondly, like the Spartan had done, the Athenian also makes an instant and serious reference to the Iliad. Surely, the Athenians had to remain in the lead, since “Homer, the epic poet, had said that the 15 https://www.mayflower400uk.org/visit/leiden-holland/. 16 Many

sources brought together in Loraux (2006), e.g. pp. 209–217.

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man who had come to Troy as the very best at putting an army in order and organizing it, was one of the Athenians”.17 Mythology could be put to normative use, anchoring an argument in an affectively charged, “engaged” way. In this case, however, it failed to help the Athenians to acquire their coveted ally. Aetiology is another specific kind of explanatory or justifying discourse. In the study of ancient literature, the term is usually reserved for the explanation, based on past origins, of a specific custom, object, or practice (see Klooster and Wessels forthcoming). Many Greek tragedies feature such an aition, an explanatory narrative. One example is the story of how the murder court of the Areopagus originated. Historically, this had taken place in 462 BCE, when the Areopagus, initially a “council of elders”, saw its purview radically restricted to that of a court in which cases of intentional homicide (and some other things) were tried. Four years later, the tragedian Aeschylus produced a trilogy (the Oresteia), three coherent tragedies set in the mythical past: the aftermath of the Trojan war. In the last of the three plays, the Eumenides, the central issue was the fate of Orestes, who had murdered his mother in order to take revenge for his father Agamemnon, and who was now being persecuted by the Furies. In order to end the intrafamilial bloodshed, Orestes’ case was brought to trial in a court that was organized for the first time for this purpose. The Furies were the accusers, Orestes was defended by the god Apollo. The goddess Athena presided over the court and when the vote was a tie, hers was the casting vote that acquitted Orestes. In the political circumstances of mid-fifth-century-BCE Athens, this story was an overt, but apparently welcome, attempt at anchoring innovation. It showed how ancient feuds could be laid to rest in an orderly way through a court of law, in Athens and with the help of the Athenian city goddess Athena and a jury of Athenian citizens. It anchored their (virtually brand-new!) court in an affectively charged way to the most canonical myths in the Greek playbook and this rhetorical association was a strong argument for its value and legitimacy. The play won first prize. This is not to say that no other explanatory stories about the Areopagus were available, and in fact this takes us to the fourth type of ancient anchoring discourse, that of etymology (see Sluiter 2015). This discursive practice in no way resembles the systematic study of language change that we have called by the same name since the 19th century: the modern form engages in identifying the conditions and laws that determine how phonemes develop over time through a comparative approach. It determines one single historical development for each word form in question. On the other hand, the practice of ancient etymology creates an explanatory and interpretive semantic relationship, on the basis of often superficial and partial similarities in sound, between the word in question and the “definition” contained and hidden within the word-form itself, if only one knows how to unpack it. Such a definition (the etymology) serves to explain form and meaning (in the present) at the same time. In other words, language itself is seen as part of the culturally shared common ground between speaker and addressee, and one may refer to it in argument, when 17 The

story of this debate is found in the Histories by Herodotus (7.157–162); the Spartan refers to Agamemnon at 7.159; the Athenian’s answer at 7.161.3; the reference is to Iliad 2.552–554.

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attempting to explain or justify the world around us. It is a form of “thinking with language”. As argued elsewhere, (…) ancient etymology is ultimately all about synchrony, even though it invokes a discourse that references the past. It is about the relationship between words and their semantic explanation or definition – it wants to know why anything is called what it is called, the reason for the name, and what motivates the namegiver (Sluiter 2015: 898).

To return to the Areopagus: this word has a transparent meaning as the areios pagos, “the hill of Ares”, and this fact itself probably inspired an alternative explanation of how its judiciary function originated: the god Ares was tried there for murdering a son of Poseidon, who had raped one of Ares’ daughters.18 The name was there first, the later function triggered a new explanation of the name. Such a story may also have had a mnemonic function, creating a mental link between name, mythology, and well-known juridical function. In modern Greece, incidentally, the Areios pagos is the name of the Supreme Civil and Criminal Court of Greece—and it is obviously no longer located on the hill of Ares. Ancient and medieval etymologies are often accompanied by the language of causality, motivation, explanation, and justification. In the Etymologies by Isidore of Sevilla, for instance, the following is offered as the explanation for the word litterae “letters”19 : litterae autem dictae quasi legiterae, quod iter legentibus praestent “litterae [letters] are called as it were leg-iterae, because they show readers (leg-entibus) the way (iter).”

Such etymologies use the formal aspects of language itself as a cognitive support for its meaning. Ancient uses of etymology often serve as a rhetorical argument, using language itself as a locus of inventio, the place where one might find rhetorical ammunition for one’s positions. And in fact this sometimes carries over into our own time, as with the frequently found internet wisdom: “Each day is a gift. That’s why it’s called the present”. Ancient etymologists could not have put it better: there is an assertion. And to reinforce the claim contained in it, there is an argument based on a causal (“that’s why”) explanation based on language itself that hinges on the double use of the word “present”, both for “what is now”, i.e. “this day”, and for a “gift”. Each day may be called “the present”, so clearly it’s a gift. The only thing lacking is the phonetic resemblance between the words that would have clinched the matter in ancient Greek or Roman ears.20 Modern examples of this type of etymology are usually classified as “folk etymology”, although it should be noted that in Antiquity its argumentative use can be 18 The

Parian marble or Parian chronicle dates this event to 1531/0 BCE, see Rotstein (2016) (especially https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/6483.2-text-and-translation). 19 Isid. Etym. I iii 2. 20 The argumentative form of the example would have been called metalêpsis in Antiquity. See Sluiter (1990, 111–117), also for a relationship with etymology “proper” (at note 274). The causal type of argument scheme (as a form of “association”) is part of van Eemeren’s typology (2019: 159); see above notes 3 and 13.

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found in all kinds of (literary, scholarly) texts.21 It is simply a different kind of “language game” than “our” form of academic etymology. A modern example is the re-etymologizing of the word “hamburger”, derived from the German city of Hamburg, as a compound from “ham” and “burger”, leading to new formations such as “cheese-burger”, or “fish-burger”. “Look at all these burgers!”, said President Trump, when hosting a national college football champion team at the White House on January 14th, 2019. Nothing wrong with that linguistically speaking.

4 The Terminology of “Old” and “New” and an Anchoring Trope The most obvious linguistic aspect of dealing with the old and the new is when those actual lexemes are being used. These words evoke a frame of change and development. It is important to note that “old” and “new” are not only used as descriptive labels: they are also and frequently employed in an evaluative sense. However, unlike words like “good” or “bad”, whose evaluative charge is stable even though they can be applied to very different things, in the case of “old” and “new” the affective load they carry depends on speaker, context, societal domain, and object. “Old” can be positively charged, for instance, when discussing antiques, or in professions or political or religious circles that value traditions and “old-fashioned reliability”. In such cases it is equivalent to expressions such as “historic”, “venerable”, “(well) established”, “tried”, “tried-and-true”. “Old” can be negatively charged when discussing technological equipment, or in youth culture, where it may connote “old-fashioned”, “tired”, “passé”, and “obsolete”.22 “New” can be relatively neutral or negative, when used for “untried”, “newfangled”. It tends to convey positive affect in contexts in which it is equivalent to “fresh”, “original”, and “state-of-the-art”. Different subgroups in society have different relationships to the new and the old in different domains. The flexibility of these terms makes it particularly easy for them to be weaponized for argumentative and rhetorical purposes. In Greek and Latin, words for “new” are definitely not usually positively charged. Latin res novae (literally “new things”) is a word for revolution, Greek kainotomia (from kainos “new”) is the (senseless) pursuit of new things (for their own sake). On the other hand, even as early as the Odyssey we hear that people prefer to listen to the latest (neôtatê “newest”, from neos, “new”, “young”) song.23 And the Athenians were in fact pretty radical innovators in many domains of life (D’Angour 2011; Sluiter 2018). However, even so there was ample scope for disagreement on the desirability of innovation. D’Angour (2011: 204) points out, for instance, how new musical styles gaining popularity in Athens in the 5th century BCE “were associated by conservative thinkers with educational laxness, sexual permissiveness and antisocial 21 Ancient

criticism of the practice is fairly rare (e.g. Cicero, Galen, see Sluiter 2015: 917). “valuing the past” in classical antiquity, see Ker and Pieper (2014). 23 Odyssey 1.351–352. 22 For

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individualism”, terms of debate that may equally evoke the 1960s of the last century.24 It is one of the contentions of the Anchoring Innovation program that these kinds of societal debates ultimately offer the frames and arguments for connecting what is new to what is familiar—in effect, “anchoring” the new. But there is also a very concrete way to use the term “new” that in and of itself functions as an anchoring trope with relevant effects on the cognitive processing of a situation. This is the formula “X is the new Y”, a phrase to which several of the points raised earlier in this paper will turn out to be relevant, and which I will discuss at somewhat greater length to round off this paper. An unremarkable example—not the type of primary interest here—is a sentence such as “Das Gewicht der Worte is the new novel by Pascal Mercier”. Here, there is a reference to a familiar category “novels by Pascal Mercier”, with apparently a “new” item fitting that description. This is the type of “anchoring” the new by categorizing, labeling, and naming addressed by Bauer and Gaskell (1999) (Sect. 2). A more striking use of the formula can be found in phrases such as the following: a. b. c. d. e. f. g.

Seaweed is the new kale.25 Why Team Resilience is the New Employee Engagement.26 Blockchain is hardly the “new internet”.27 Who is the new Mondrian?28 This millennial may be the new Einstein.29 the new Homer.30 Hamberders is the new covfefe.31

24 Cf. also the debate in Clouds by the comic poet Aristophanes between Right and Wrong, representatives of the older conservatives and the hip young respectively, where Wrong’s strong point is claimed to be to think up new (kainas) thoughts. See D’Angour (2011: 214–215). 25 Many instances on internet, e.g. https://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-25249/seaweed-is-the-newkale-a-doctor-explains.html, accessed Jan. 2019. 26 https://www.forbes.com/sites/karlynborysenko/2018/12/27/why-team-resilience-is-the-newemployee-engagement/, accessed Jan. 2019. 27 https://twitter.com/Xische/status/962597073248911360, accessed Jan. 2019. 28 https://tlmagazine.com/new-dutch-icons, Oct. 23, 2017, accessed Jan. 2019. 29 https://www.ozy.com/rising-stars/this-millennial-might-be-the-new-einstein/65094, about Sabrina Pasterski, accessed Jan. 2019. 30 Raubitschek (1954). 31 https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/hamberder-new-covfefe-leftists-losing-harmless-typo/, accessed Jan. 2019.

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In all these phrases,32 we are again dealing with examples of categorical anchoring, but the anchor (“Y” in “X is the new Y”) is not a general category, but it is itself a prototype or best example of a category. The formula thus appeals to communal common ground (cf. Sect. 2), culturally shared information, either by the culture at large, or by a knowledgeable in-group. It is always relevant to establish what the relevant social group is, for which a piece of new information is anchored here. Example (a) is not that easy to process for people who are not into dieting and “superfoods”: its successful understanding requires that we recognize “kale” as a prototype of the category “superfood”, so that we realize the appropriate question to ask is not “what is the old kale, then?”. “Kale” should immediately evoke its relevant category, so that we can successfully anchor “seaweed” into it. The same goes for example (b), “why team resilience is the new employee engagement”, where the relevant social group should be one capable of processing “employee engagement” as a prototypical (or at least: recent) business strategy for optimizing team performance. Notice that “new” in both (a) and (b) is valued positively: the term announces that there is a new candidate for “best example” of a category. Both life-style advice and business counseling are domains in which new insights or pseudo-insights are put forward in rapid succession. They are sensitive to trends and fashions and there is very little resistance to change. Example (c) belongs to a similarly rapidly developing area: information technology. I have added this example because it showcases the use of negation for purposes of managing common ground and expectations (Sect. 2). In “block chain is hardly the new internet”, the negative adverb “hardly” contains an instruction on how to anchor the new “block chain” technology, through contradicting an expectation that was apparently in the common ground. Although block chain may be important and helpful, do not expect it to become as prototypically significant as the internet has been. The internet still holds its own. As an argumentative move, in all these examples a particular kind of starting point (what I would call the anchor) is evoked, which invites the audience to take a certain perspective, either through association or dissociation (van Eemeren 2019). The “basic critical question” that is raised is whether the implicit comparison is a valid one (van Eemeren 2019: 156; 161).33 Examples (d), (e), and (f) all have a cultural icon in the anchor-slot: Mondrian as the outstanding Dutch painter, Einstein as the brilliant scientist par excellence, and Homer as the canonical and unsurpassed poet. Both (d) and (e) announce that 32 The

existence of this formula was noted by Whitman (2004) (but others had spotted it before him, as he admits), who also coined the highly infelicitous term “snowclones” for it, inspired by Geoff Pullum of Language Log; see also Veszelszki (2017: 9–10 n. 4); Hill (2018: 426). The term is used pejoratively for a cliché, “lazy” expression. However, since I’m interested in its rhetorical, specifically its “anchoring” effects and its cognitive function, I will stick with the more neutral term “trope”, or, as Hill calls it (l.c.) “ready-made template”; having a label does not mean the task of explaining how a linguistic feature works is done. I thank an anonymous referee for these references. 33 Van Eemeren (2019) also suggests that the use of analogy argumentation is likely to belong to “the engaged”, rather than to the “detached”, style of argumentation, when “the still to be accepted state of affairs referred to in the standpoint is compared with an already familiar or easily recognizable state of affairs” (van Eemeren 2019: 167): I would call this an attempt at “anchoring”.

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the search is on for a “new” candidate to fill the slot. Example (f) deserves a special comment: throughout Antiquity, candidates were identified (or offered themselves) for the predicate “the new Homer” (or “a second Homer”, with slightly different framing).34 Mostly this was done without using the lexeme “new” (Lat. novus, Gr. neos, kainos). However, the trope X is the new Y was available even then: the virtually unknown C. Iulius Nicanor, a contemporary of the emperor Augustus, was known as the Neos Homeros, “new Homer” (see Raubitschek 1954). Nicanor may have written a Latin Iliad. Oddly, the man was also known as “the new Themistocles”. Themistocles was the Greek general who had led the Athenians in the famous battle of Salamis, in which the Persians were defeated. Did Nicanor win a staged replication of this battle? Was he involved in financial dealings involving Salamis? We cannot be sure. However, what the example proves is that the trope was not a recent discovery and that it is more helpful to analyze its cognitive effects than simply to dismiss it as “laziness” or a “snowclone”. Finally, there is example (g), which within 10 years will most likely and hopefully be impossible to understand without explanatory commentary, to point at the relevance of “embedded cognition” for the successful processing of such sentences. Examples (a) and (b) are probably somewhat decipherable even in the future for people not belonging to the subcultures primarily addressed in them. However, the phrase “hamberders is the new covfefe” only makes sense in a very narrowly circumscribed historical setting. As elsewhere in X is the new Y, “covfefe” forms the anchor and prototypically represents a category: that of the weird typos found with some regularities in tweets by President Donald Trump. “Covfefe” featured in an abortive tweet containing only the words “the constant negative press covfefe”.35 “Hamberders” (here quoted rather than used, as is clear from the singular predicate “is”) was a spelling mistake for “hamburgers”, the food offered by the President to a group of football players (see Sect. 2) when a government shutdown prevented more conventional White House dinner arrangements. The author of the quote notes with disapproval that people are “losing it” over a harmless typo when more urgent matters should be on their minds. In this case then, “new” does not imply approval of the substitution, but just registers it—though with some irritation at the addition of yet another irrelevant criticism. Without this context, it could have also been a gleeful criticism of the President’s twitter habits. A variant on the anchoring formula “X is the new Y”, is the form “X is the new thing”. h. Baby names inspired by health foods is the new thing.36

34 E.g. Ennius is deemed Homerus alter, a second Homer, by the ancient satirist Lucilius (fragment

1189 ed. Marx = fragment 413 ed. Warmington). 12:06 am, 31 May 2017, clearly meaning “coverage”. Lots of humorous suggestions on its meaning were made on Internet. 36 https://www.wrmf.com/baby-names-inspired-by-health-foods-is-the-new-thing/, quoting names such as Kiwi (f.), Kale (m.), Maple (f.), and Clementine (f.). Accessed Jan. 2019. 35 @realDonaldTrump,

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i. Ayurvedic eating is the new thing.37 j. LeBroning is the new thing all the kids are doing.38 k. Old is the new thing.39 Here, the background idea is specifically that people will be interested in learning what the latest fashion is—“the new thing”. Once again, it is clear that particular domains of life lend themselves especially well to the accommodation of this phrase: mostly lifestyle issues, where “the new” is valued, even if it is represented, as in example (k) by “the old”. Example (k) represents a situation in which both old and new are positively valued, if only because the old has unexpectedly become fashionable again. The accompanying text also demonstrates the extent to which “old” and “new” are a matter of social construction. The “old” is not “really” new: there is a renewed interest in it, and it is seen as a new asset class. Old is the new new, so to speak. A sentiment a classicist can only wholeheartedly approve of.

5 Conclusion In this paper I have investigated the persuasive and argumentative uses of “anchoring” against the backdrop of its cognitive role in various domains of language, communication, and discourse. When taking “anchoring” as one’s starting point and umbrella, a connection becomes apparent between different levels of linguistic communication. Seen through an “anchoring” lens, the linguistic and rhetorical phenomena here described connect (“associate”, in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s (1969: 190) terms) something that is presented or constructed as new to something already deemed familiar. Discourse linguistic approaches suggest the importance of common ground management in directing the addressee to correctly anchor new information to knowledge that is mutually understood to be available, either on the basis of shared culture or of specific shared experiences of speaker and addressee. Categorizing, labeling and naming are ways to order and cognitively process new objects, ideas, practices and techniques, and connect or anchor them to what is familiar. Iconic features of language can be used to reinforce cognitive processing (Sect. 2). I have also identified types of discursive practices that are particularly connected with anchoring: genealogy, mythology, aetiology, and etymology. All of these attempt to explain or justify a current situation by a narrative that anchors the status quo in a relevant point of origin in the past (genealogy, mythology, aetiology). This use 37 https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellness/ayurvedic-eating-is-the-new-thing-hereis-how-to-do-it-20180815-p4zxmt.html, accessed Jan. 2019. 38 https://deadspin.com/lebroning-is-the-new-thing-all-the-kids-are-doing-1501082101, accessed Jan. 2019. This refers to a propensity of famous basketballer LeBron James to drop to the floor in dramatic ways. The accompanying video shows kids imitating this behavior (and having it filmed). 39 Blog 21 Aug. 2018, https://www.jlevines.com/2018/08/21/old-is-the-new-thing, accessed Jan. 2019: “the growing trend I’ve spotted in the design community is combining something old with something new … also, there’s a renewed interest in antique investing. And the thing is, it’s seen as a “new”, alternative, tangible asset class”.

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of anchoring is particularly suitable in argumentative contexts and may belong to an “engaged” style of argumentation (cf. van Eemeren 2019: 166). In the case of the ancient practice of etymology (carefully to be distinguished from its modern scientific counterpart), anchoring takes place in a specific element of the common ground: language itself. The nouns (mostly nouns and names) that we use are cracked open as if they were containers to reveal information about the present (Sect. 3). Thus they are turned into epistemological and argumentative tools. In Sect. 4 I turned to the lexemes of “old” and “new” themselves, and commented on their evaluative use. I then discussed a specific “anchoring trope”: X is the new Y, particularly those examples in which “Y” represents a prototype of a category. Deciphering the phrase requires accessing communal common ground, whether “real” or constructed by the speaker, and sometimes of a kind only readily available to a specific sub-culture in society. The cognitive and rhetorical effect is again one of using analogical thinking to promote ease of processing and acceptability, in this case by evoking a familiar prototype of a category.40

References Allan, R. J. (2017). Ancient Greek adversative particles in contrast. In C. Denizot & O. Spevak (Eds.), Pragmatic approaches to Latin and Ancient Greek (pp. 273–301). Amsterdam-Philadelphia. Allan, R. J., & van Gils, L. (2015). Anchoring new ideas in common ground: A linguistic approach. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/24015356/Anchoring_new_ideas_in_com mon_ground._A_linguistic_approach. Bauer, M. W., & Gaskell, G. (1999). Towards a paradigm for research on social representations. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 29(2), 163–186. Camp, E. (2018). Insinuation, common ground, and the conversational record. In D. Fogal, D. W. Harris & M. Moss (Eds.), New work on speech acts (Chap. 2). Retrieved from http://www.oxford scholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780198738831.001.0001/oso-9780198738831-chapter-2. Clark, H. H. (1996). Using language. Cambridge: CUP. Clark, H. H. (2016). Depiction as a method of communication. Psychological Review, 123, 324–347. Clark, H. H., & Brennan, S. (1991). Grounding in communication. In L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, & S. D. Teasley (Eds.), Perspectives on socially shared cognition (pp. 127–149). Washington: APA Books. D’Angour, A. (2011). The Greeks and the new: Novelty in ancient Greek imagination and experience. Cambridge: CUP. Eco, U. (2000). Kant and the Platypus: Essays on language and cognition. Orlando: Harvest Books (A. McEwen, Trans.). Goldwasser, O. (2017). What is a horse? Lexical acculturation and classification in Egyptian, Sumerian, and Nahuati. In T. Pommerening & W. Bisang (Eds.), Classification from antiquity to modern times (pp. 45–64). Berlin-Boston: De Gruyter. Hill, I. E. J. (2018). Memes, munitions, and collective copia: The durability of the perpetual peace weapons snowclone. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 104(4), 422–443. Hofdstadter, D., & Sander, E. (2013). Surfaces and essences: Analogy as the fuel and fire of thinking. New York: Basic Books. 40 I

am grateful to the editors of this volume for their helpful comments, to the anonymous readers of this paper for their valuable suggestions, and to my colleagues in the Anchoring Innovation team, particularly Lidewij van Gils, Caroline Kroon and Luuk Huitink, for their comments and input.

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Huitink, L. (2009). Pragmatic presupposition and complementation in classical Greek. In S. J. Bakker & G. C. Wakker (Eds.), Discourse cohesion in ancient Greek (pp. 21–40). Leiden: Brill (Amsterdam Studies in Classical Philology 16). Ker, J., & Pieper, C. (Eds.). (2014). Valuing the past in the Greco-Roman world. Leiden: Brill. Klooster, J. J. H., & Wessels, A. B. (Eds.). (forthcoming). Inventing Origins: The Function of Aetiology in Antiquity. Kroon, C. M. J. (2015). ‘Anchoring’ as a communicative device in Roman historiography: A discourse linguistic perspective. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/24059119/Anchor ing_as_a_communicative_device_in_Roman_historiography_a_discourse_linguistic_perspec tive. Kroon, C. M. J. (2017). Textual deixis and the ‘anchoring’ use of the Latin pronoun hic. Mnemosyne, 70, 585–612. Kroon, C. M. J. (2019). Communicative anchoring in Latin: Devices and strategies for common ground management [unpublished keynote at 20th ICLL, Las Palmas, 18 June 2019]. Loraux, N. (2006). The invention of Athens. The funeral oration in the classical city. New York: Zone Books (Transl. from the French 1981 original by Alan Sheridan; L’ invention d’ Athènes: Histoire de l’oraison funèbre dans la ‘cité classique’. Paris: Mouton). Moscovici, S. (1976). La psychanalyse, son image et son public. Paris: PUF (2nd rev. edition, first ed. 1961). Nijk, A. A. (2018). Iconiciteit als taalkundig anker. Lampas, 51, 312–325. Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1969). The new rhetoric: Treatise on argumentation. Notre Dame-London: University of Notre Dame Press [Engl. tr. of Perelman, C., & Olbrechts-Tyteca, L. (1958). Traité de l’argumentation. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.]. Perry, J. M., & Jamison, S. (1997). In the zone. Achieving optimal performance in business—As in sports. Chicago: Contemporary Books. Raubitschek, A. E. (1954). The new homer. Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 23, 317–319. Rotstein, A. (2016). Literary history in the Parian Marble. Washington DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. Retrieved from https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/6492.andrea-rot stein-literary-history-in-the-parian-marble. Sluiter, I. (1990). Ancient grammar in context: Contributions to the study of ancient linguistic thought. Amsterdam: VU University Press. Sluiter, I. (2015). Ancient etymology: A tool for thinking. In F. Montanari, S. Matthaios, & A. Rengakos (Eds.), Brill’s companion to ancient Greek scholarship (pp. 896–922). Leiden: Brill. Sluiter, I. (2017). Anchoring innovation: A classical research agenda, European Review, 25(1), 20–38. Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-review/article/divclasstitleanchoring-innovation-a-classical-research-agendadiv/EB4A06F32AA42EAE8F732 DF658687A42. Sluiter, I. (2018). Oud is het nieuwe nieuw: Een inleiding op anchoring innovation. Lampas, 51, 289–295. Stalnaker, R. (2002). Common ground. Linguistics and Philosophy, 25, 701–721. van Eemeren, F. H. (2019). Argumentative style: A complex notion. Argumentation, 33, 153–171. van Gils, L. (2016). Common ground in Latin discourse: Two case studies of narrative negation in Cicero and Vergil. In P. Pocetti (Ed.), Latinitatis rationes: Descriptive and historical accounts for the Latin language (pp. 763–779). Berlin-Boston: De Gruyter. Veszelszki, Á. (2017). Digilect: The impact of infocommunication technology on language. BerlinBoston: De Gruyter. Whitman, G. (2004). Phrases for lazy writers in kit form are the new clichés. Retrieved from ago raphilia.blogspot.com/2004/01/phrases-for-lazy-writers-in-kit-form.html.

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Ineke Sluiter is Professor of Greek at Leiden University. Her research focuses on ancient ideas on language (grammar, rhetoric, literary interpretation), and the use of value discourse in societal debates in Antiquity. She is the recipient of a 2010 Spinoza Award, and the PI of the research program ‘Anchoring Innovation’.

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If the material is not included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Drawing Attention to Information in Russian Argumentation: The Function of the Performative Expression Važno Podˇcerknut’ (“It’s Important to Emphasize”) Egbert Fortuin Abstract An analysis is provided of the construction važno podˇcerknut’, literally “it is important to emphasize”, in Russian academic discourse. It is argued that this construction, which can be seen as a performative, is a signal of the writer to the reader that a particular piece of information is important to take into account in order to correctly understand the standpoint of the writer or the information provided (or to be provided) by the author. The expression važno podˇcerknut’ can serve as an argumentative-rhetorical device which can serve to sustain a standpoint or argument in contexts where the speaker anticipates an incorrect inference of the author’s argument or standpoint. In some cases, važno podˇcerknut’ introduces an argument itself, in which case the author expects the reader not to accept its content. It is argued that the construction has a clearer argumentative function than the semantically similar construction važno zametit’ “it’s important to notice”. Keywords Argumentation · Stylistics · Semantics · Constructions · Russian · Academic texts

1 Introduction In this paper I will provide a semantic and argumentative analysis of the Russian performative construction važno podˇcerknut’. A literal translation of this expression is “it is important to emphasize”. The expression važno podˇcerknut’ is typically used in academic texts (in the so-called nauˇcnyj stil’, “academic style”) and in other similar genres which are associated with bookish and formal language. I will also briefly discuss its function in comparison to the oppositional construction važno zametit’, literally “it’s important to note”. I have not been able to find other treatments of these Russian expressions, even though Houtlosser (1995: 116–117) provides a

E. Fortuin (B) Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Boogaart et al. (eds.), The Language of Argumentation, Argumentation Library 36, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52907-9_14

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small discussion of similar constructions in Dutch within the framework of pragmadialectics. My analysis must be seen as a tentative first contribution to the study of the Russian argumentative expressions.

2 Form and Meaning of the Construction The construction važno podˇcerknut’, cˇ to X (“it is important to emphasize that X”) consists of three and sometimes four parts: (1) (2) (3) (4)

važno (“(it is) important”) podˇcerknut’ (“to emphasize”) cˇ to X (“that X”) optionally a dative pronoun mne/nam (“for me/us”).

I will briefly discuss the four elements of the construction. First, the form važno is a non-verbal predicative, which meaning in the construction can be paraphrased with “it is important”. It indicates that something is of significance and therefore worthy of attention. In some occurrences of the construction we also find forms expressing necessity instead of važno, for example sleduet/neobxodimo podˇcerknut’, cˇ to (“it is required/necessary to emphasize that”), or sometimes desire: xoˇcu podˇcerknut’, cˇ to (“I want to emphasize that”). These modal verbs or predicates all express the urgency to emphasize something. As such they can be seen as variants of the same abstract construction. A special variant with a modal form is nel’zja ne podˇcerknut’, literally “one cannot not emphasize”. This version of the construction expresses the idea of importance to emphasize something even more clearly than važno podˇcerknut’. Houtlosser (1995: 116) observes that in the comparable Dutch construction Ik benadruk dat (“I emphasize that”) it is quite natural to add modal verbs of necessity or desire but not verbs of possibility (? Ik kan benadrukken dat, “I can emphasize that”). Like in Dutch, in Russian the use of modal forms of possibility is very uncommon (mogu podˇcerknut’, cˇ to, “I can emphasize that”). Houtlosser does not explain this restriction, but it follows in a straightforward way from the function of the expression to indicate that it is essential that the reader takes the information provided in the subordinate clause into account. This idea of “urgency” is not in accordance with the meaning of possibility. As such, the element expressing importance, necessity or urgency is an inherent element of the construction. In the same vein, from a functional point of view, the construction also differs from instances where we only find a performative verb without an element such as važno, for example podˇcerknem, cˇ to (“we emphasize that’), or zameˇcu, cˇ to (“I note that”). Second, the predicative važno presupposes a valence which expresses what it is that is important. In the construction under discussion this valence is the (perfective) infinitive podˇcerknut’. The verb podˇcerknut’ literally means “underline” or “underscore (with a pen)”. In the construction under discussion we find a metaphorical meaning, where the author does not literally underscore a word (or sentence)

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because (s)he thinks this word is somehow important and needs extra attention, but instead the author points out that particular information needs extra attention. In the expression under discussion this meaning of the verb can be translated with “emphasize”, “stress”, “underscore”, etc.1 There are also similar expressions with other verbs, which form closely related constructions (važno + infinitive + cˇ to), namely: zametit’, otmetit’ (“notice”, “note”), ukazat’ (“point out”), napomnit’ (“remind”), ponjat’ (“understand”, “realize”). In my analysis I will briefly discuss the difference in function of važno podˇcerknut’ (“it’s important to emphasize”) as opposed to važno zametit’ (otmetit’) (“it’s important to notice”). This latter construction can be seen as an oppositional construction, that is, a construction expressing a very similar meaning, which nevertheless is associated with its own semantics. The difference in meaning between the constructions is therefore very subtle.2 The third part of the construction is a complement clause introduced by cˇ to (“that”), which functions as the object of podˇcerknut’ and which expresses what information needs to be emphasized.3 Finally, In Russian, the so-called “logical subject” of non-verbal predicates can be expressed by a dative (pro)noun, for example: nam važno podˇcerknut’ (lit. “for us it is important to emphasize”), but in most cases no dative pronoun is used in the construction, and the context in which the construction is used makes clear that the importance to emphasize something applies to everyone, even though it is also associated with the author (cf. “it is important for me now to emphasize”). In the Russian academic stylistic tradition, the use of impersonal constructions such as važno podˇcerknut’ is associated with a so-called “objective style” (see e.g. Demidova 2012: 14–15). In the construction under discussion, it is the author who expresses that it is important to emphasize something, even though, as I will discuss in the next Section, the message that is conveyed by the author is that the reader should pay attention to the given information. By choosing this more indirect way of presenting, the importance of 1 This

does not mean, however, that podˇcerknut’ is fully equivalent to English emphasize. This can be illustrated with the following Russian translation from an English original by George Orwell taken from the Russian National Corpus, where podˇcerknut’ is a translation of “add a remark”: Big Brother added a few remarks on the purity and single-mindedness of Comrade Ogilvy’s life. [George Orwell. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)]. Starxi Brat podqerknul, qto vs izn tovariwa Ogilvi byla otmeqena qistoto i celeustremlennost. [Dord Orull. 1984 (V. Golyxev, 1989)]. There are similar instances in the parallel corpus of the Russian National Corpus where a more neutral English verb of communication is translated with Russian podˇcerknut’. 2 In some cases, we do not find a perfective infinitive, but an imperfective infinitive: važno podˇcerkivat’. This construction is (based on the Internet and the Russian National Corpus) less frequent but is also used to express “It’s important to stress”, albeit with the characteristics of an imperfective infinitive. This means that the event is not conceptualized as a single fully complete bounded event (cf. “It is important to emphasize now, in this specific context”), but as a non-complete event which has a more general validity (e.g. “It is always important to emphasize”, “It’s important to keep on emphasizing”, etc.). 3 A variant of the construction occurs without a subordinate clause but with the pronoun èto (“that”), which has a deictic meaning: Èto važno podˇcerknut’ (“That is important to emphasize”). In that case the pronoun may either refer back to that what has been written before, or refer to what the author is going to write.

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the information is presented in a more objective manner, which further highlights its general importance.4 Another important feature of the construction is that it has a performative character in the sense of Austin, since by using it, the speaker does not merely express that it is important to emphasize something, but actually emphasizes something. To summarize, the construction važno podˇcerknut’ has a number of salient properties: – The construction važno podˇcerknut’, cˇ to X can be analyzed into three or four parts or “slots”. It has a number of variants (depending on the way the slots are “filled in”) that show more or less semantic similarities. – In the construction the role of the conceptualizer (speaker, author), i.e. the person who thinks that something is important, is usually left implicit. This presentation is meant to make the message more objective, in full accordance with the Russian academic style of writing. – Even though the verb “emphasize” refers to an action on the part of the speaker, the construction is used to trigger an action on the part of the addressee (“pay attention”). – The construction has a performative character, since by stating that it is important to emphasize something, the speaker does in fact emphasize the importance of the given information.

3 Methodology In order to determine the function of važno podˇcerknut’ (henceforth also sometimes abbreviated as VP) I looked for various examples (in their context) in the Russian National Corpus (RNC) and on the Internet. I searched for the exact phrase važno podˇcerknut’ in the RNC, which yielded 141 documents and 164 examples (sentences containing the expression). In addition, I looked for the same phrase on Internet. I examined several of these instances in order to find how the construction is used. The RNC provides the larger context of examples, but in some cases, the RNC did not provide enough information to understand the function of važno podˇcerknut’, and I looked for the whole context on the Internet. Unless the translation was already

4 In terms of the theory of subjectivity of Langacker (1987), the construction is more subjective than a corresponding construction with a subject and a verb that expresses the attitude of the speaker, for example Ja šˇcitaju, cˇ to važno podˇcerknut’ (“I think it is important to emphasize”). In the latter construction, the speaker is aware of his own role as perceiver, whereas in the case of the construction “It’s important to emphasize”, the role of the speaker is downplayed and left implicit (i.e. its interpretation is more “subjective”), exactly because it is presented as a point of view that does not depend solely on the speaker.

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provided by the RNC, I translated the sentences myself.5 In this paper I provide a qualitative analysis of the constructions under discussion.

4 Analysis of Važno Podˇcerknut’ (“It’s Important to Emphasize”) My analysis of the sentences and their context shows that the main function of važno podˇcerknut’ X can be formulated as follows: A signal (usually speaking of the writer to the reader) that a particular piece of information X is important to take into account in order to correctly understand a standpoint or an argument provided (by the author). By using važno podˇcerknut’ the author anticipates on possible incorrect, incomplete or absent conclusions or inferences of the reader.

From an argumentative perspective two main types of važno podˇcerknut’ can be distinguished, namely (i) instances where važno podˇcerknut’ anticipates an incorrect inference of the author’s argument or standpoint, and (ii) instances where važno podˇcerknut’ introduces an argument itself. In the latter case the author expects the reader not to accept the validity or the content of the argument.6 The function described here is partly reminiscent of the description provided by Houtlosser (1995: 116) for Dutch performative expressions such as Ik benadruk dat (“I emphasize that”) or Ik wijs erop dat (“I note that”) or their modalized counterparts. According to Houtlosser these performative expressions have the implicature in common that what the speaker says is relevant and that without the use of the expression the addressee would not realize this. As I will show, this is also true for the corresponding Russian expressions, even though there are differences between instances with “emphasize” and “note”. As I will show in Sect. 5, by using važno podˇcerknut’ instead of the comparable construction važno zametit’ (otmetit’) (“it’s important to note”), the author presents the information as even more important and urgent for the reader. In addition to that, Houtlosser provides examples of the Dutch constructions taken from oral discourse where the expression is used as a response to someone else. In the data studied by me, the construction is used in written texts where there is no dialogue. In a written text the expression važno podˇcerknut’ can be analyzed as a discourse marker as for example described by Schiffrin (1987) or Crible (2018), that is, a marker that reinforces discourse links and conversational coherence

5 In order to understand the function of the expressions studied by me, one has to grasp the meaning

and argumentation of the larger context and discourse of often quite technical sources. I have tried to study these contexts with as much attention as possible. 6 In some case I was not able to establish the exact argumentative function, and it may be that the expression does not clearly have an argumentative function. For such cases, the following description could perhaps be given: “A signal of the writer to the reader that a particular piece of information is important to take into account, for example as background information, or because its relevance will become apparent later.”.

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and that contributes to the writer-reader relationship.7 At the same time, the expression can also be analysed in terms of the theory of argumentation by Anscombre and Ducrot (1989) since the use of važno podˇcerknut’ is a way to reject an inference that is brought about in the discourse. I will now analyze some examples of važno podˇcerknut’ in more depth. Take the following sentence containing važno podˇcerknut’, where the author explicitly refers back to the term “relatively” used in the preceding sentence. Note that I first provide the Russian original and then provide the English translation; in both fragments the expression is given in boldface: (1) Poccicki glamyp vletc v pepvy oqeped ppodyktom konomiqecko cityacii, cloivxec v ctpane ppi ppezidentctve Bladimipa Pytina. B 2000-e gody poccicka konomika, zavicwa v ocnovnom ot cypevogo kcpopta, znaqitelno vypocla, a yclovi izni naceleni naqali poctepenno ylyqxatc. Po mepe togo qact poccin naqala ocenivat cvo izn kak otnocitelnogo blagopolyqny. Bano podqepknyt, qto blagopolyqie bylo imenno «otnocitelnym», tak kak, necmotp na doctatoqno vycokie potpebitelckie ctandapty to qacti naceleni (dopoga lektponika, impoptnye maxiny, poezdki za gpanicy), poccicka ppovinci octavalac po ppeimywectvy bedno. (Lapica Pydova. Glamyp i poctcovetcki qelovek //«Heppikocnovenny zapac», 2009). Russian glamour is primarily a product of the economic situation prevailing in the country under the presidency of Vladimir Putin. In the 2000s, the Russian economy, which mainly depended on commodity exports, grew significantly, and the living conditions of the population began to improve gradually. As a result of this, some Russians began to evaluate their lives as relatively positive. It is important to emphasize that the feeling of well-being was in fact “relative”, since, despite the rather high consumer standards of this part of the population (expensive electronics, imported cars, trips abroad), the Russian province remained mainly poor. (Larisa Rudova. Glamor and the post-Soviet man // ‘The untouchable reserve’, 2009).

The function of važno podˇcerknut’ can be analysed as follows. Note that throughout this chapter, I use the arrow to the right (⇒) as a symbol for važno podˇcerknut’, and in the case of važno podˇcerknut’, I indicate between brackets very briefly what the function is of this expression in the argumentation. I make use of the pragma-dialectical style of analysis (van Eemeren and Snoeck Henkemans 2016), in which 1. represents the standpoint and 1.1 the argument, and 1.1a,b,c etc. convey coordinatively compound argumentation8 : 1.

Russian glamour is primarily a product of the economic situation prevailing in the country under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, because 1.1a In the 2000s the Russian economy grew considerably, and 1.1b the living conditions of the population gradually improved. 7 It can also be seen as a “procedural” (instead of “conceptual”) expression in the sense of Blakemore

(see for example Wilson 2011, for a discussion of this distinction). for the concept of coordinatively linked argumentation van Eemeren and Snoeck Henkemans (2016: Chap. 5) and Snoeck Henkemans (1992). These are also sources for the concept of subordinate argumentation, which will be dealt with in example (6).

8 See

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[Nuance of 1.1b, i.e. anticipating possible criticism that not everybody did profit from the growth] The living conditions got better only in a relative way, since some parts of the population, in the province, remained poor.

In this fragment we see how the author uses the expression to provide a nuance of an argument for her own standpoint given immediately before. By doing so, the author anticipates on possible criticism or misunderstanding on the part of the reader. As such, the use of the expression can be associated with the aim of the author to make the disagreement space smaller (see van Eemeren et al. 1993 for the term “disagreement space”). In this case this is done by explicitly elaborating on the author’s own words (“some Russians began to evaluate their lives as relatively positive”). In (1) važno podˇcerknut’ pertains to an argument used by the author, but it may also pertain to the standpoint itself. This is for example the case in (2), from a site called “The Blueprint for Canine Rabies Prevention and Control”: (2) Habldenie Bexenctva – to klqevo pokazatel dl ycpexa lbo intepvencionno ppogpammy. Ono vklqaet cbop cywectvennyx dannyx (1), oppedelet cityaci bexenctva v naqale ppogpammy, (2) otcleivaet i ocenivaet ppogpecc i vozdectvie ppogpammy, (3) cootvetctvenno kontpolipyet potencialnye zapaeni lde i (4) paccqitat ffektivnoct zatpat na mepy po kontpol. Ecli mepy nabldeni ne byli ppedppinty na mecte v naqale, to oni dolny byt vypolneny byctpo i ctpategiqecki. Bano podqepknyt, qto ffektivnoe pacppoctpanenie dannyx ne menee vano, qem ix cbop, t.k. to delaet vozmonym cvoevpemennoe ppovedenie analizov. Takie analizy mogyt vyvit izmeneni v cityacii c bexenctvom, nappimep, vcpyxki, tpebywie nemedlennogo vmexatelctva.9 Rabies surveillance is the key index for the success of any intervention programme. It involves the collection of essential data to (1) determine the rabies situation at the start of the programme, (2) to monitor and evaluate the progress and impact of intervention, (3) to manage potential human exposures adequately (4) to calculate the cost-effectiveness of control efforts and (5) to demonstrate absence and freedom of disease in a given area. If surveillance measures are not in place at the start, they must be implemented quickly and strategically. It is important to stress that efficient reporting of data is as important as its collection, so that timely analyses can be conducted. Such analyses may reveal changes in the rabies situation, such as outbreaks which require immediate intervention.

1. The success of the anti-rabies programme is based on the collection of data. ⇒ [Nuance of the standpoint, anticipating possible criticism that the advice given overlooks the importance of the dissemination of data] It is not less important to share (disseminate) the data. Note that in this case the link with the preceding context is not made explicit as in example (1), and has to be construed by the reader.10 Even though the author 9 https://caninerabiesblueprint.org/5-4-2-Pochemu-epidemiologicheskoe?lang=ru.

The translation is taken from the same website where an English version is given of the same text. 10 In most instances where the expression occurs within a text, the link with the preceding information is not made explicit, even though one can find instances such as v svjazi s ètim/ v ètoj svjazi važno podˇcerknut’ (“with respect to that/in this context it is important to emphasize”).

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does not explicitly refer back to the previous discourse as in (1), the use of VP in (2) is inherently related to the previous discourse. The author could have chosen to present the information differently, for example by immediately saying that both the collection and the dissemination of data are equally important. However, in this case the author presents the information in the order in which they occur in reality: first the author provides information about the collection of data, and then makes a remark about their dissemination, which can only occur after the collection, and which is claimed to be no less important. In all cases the use of VP helps the reader to better understand and follow the flow of the argumentation. Without the use of the expression the reader might miss the information conveyed by the complement clause of važno podˇcerknut’. As such, the use of VP functions as a warning signal. By using it, the speaker gives a signal to the reader to pay attention. In some cases, the information emphasized by the author functions not so much as a further elaboration or support of an argument or standpoint but as an argument itself. Consider the following fragment taken from an interview with a former cosmonaut: (3) [The author talks about the importance of training for the cosmonauts in order to prepare for their return to earth.] Bot kogda zavepxat vtopo polet ili tpeti, togda ye znat, qto vce-taki to nyno delat dl togo, qtoby vepnytc. A v pepvom polete qawe vcego kocmonavty cilno otxodt ot pekomendovanno ppogpammy i potomy vozvpawatc ne v camom lyqxem coctonii. I my vidim televizionnye kaptinki, kogda kocmonavtov vynimat i necyt na pykax. togo ne dolno byt. to ogpomny nedoctatok, do cix pop cywectvywi v ppaktike pilotipyemyx poletov. Oqen vano podqepknyt, qto pocledovatelnoe yveliqenie ppodolitelnocti poleta ctalo vozmonym potomy, qto my imeli xopoxy cictemy tekywego kontpol coctoni zdopov kocmonavtov. (Oleg Gazenko. Kocmonavt dolen octavatc qelovekom Zemli // «Hayka i izn», 2006). [The author talks about the importance of training for the cosmonauts during their flight in order to prepare for their return to earth.] And when they perform their second flight or their third, then they already know, that they really have to exercise in order to return to earth. But during their first flight cosmonauts most often do not follow the recommended program and therefore return to earth not in the best condition. And we see television images when the cosmonauts are taken out [of the spacecraft; author] and carried out. This should not be the case. This is a huge flaw, which still exists in the practice of manned flights. It is very important to emphasize that the consistent increase in the duration of flights only became possible because we had a good system for monitoring the state of health of the astronauts. (Oleg Gazenko. The astronaut must remain a man of the Earth // ‘Science and Life’, 2006)

This can be analyzed as follows, with the implicit elements given between brackets: (1. (1.1a 1.1a.1

Physical training in space for cosmonauts is very important.) Not obeying that leads to health problems.) Cosmonauts that do not train in space have to be carried out of the spacecraft.

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1.1b ⇒ [Extra argumentation anticipating non-acceptance of the justificatory power of argument 1.1a] It is only because of the monitoring of health of cosmonauts that people could spend longer periods in space. In this case the author uses oˇcen’ važno podˇcerknut’ (“it is very important to emphasize”) to further sustain his claim that cosmonauts should exercise, by anticipating a possible objection that the reader may have with regard to argument 1.1a’s justificatory power (“why would it matter that cosmonauts do not exercise; it is their individual choice”). The author provides an extra coordinative argument for his claim (physical training for cosmonauts is important to prepare them for their return to earth) by stating that good health (and monitoring of this) makes it possible to stay longer in space (1.1b), which is something that is important for the space program in general. Interestingly, in this case the argument (1.1b) is written down as a new paragraph. This is possible, because the use of the expression serves as a way to mark a new thread or move in the discourse and argumentation, while at the same time linking it to the previous discourse. It is precisely the performative character of the expression that contributes to the effect of a new move in the discourse and argumentation. This can be shown by omitting važno podˇcerknut’, or its English counterpart, which leads to a less coherent discourse; cf. (3) with the same fragment in (4) without važno podˇcerknut’: (4) … And we see television images when the cosmonauts are taken out [of the spacecraft] and carried out. This should not be the case. This is a huge flaw, which still exists in the practice of manned flights. The consistent increase in the duration of flights only became possible because we had a good system for monitoring the state of health of the astronauts….

Another example where važno podˇcerknut’ functions as an argument can be found in the following fragment, where važno podˇcerknut’ occurs with zdes “here”, which refers to the position in the text where the authors want to emphasize something: (5) Bolee ili menee ycpexnoe ppimenenie «klacciqeckix» apoionov ppi bponxialno actme bylo opicano neodnokpatno. My otmetim lix, qto leqebnoe dectvie cypepokcida ppi leqenii actmy vypaeno znaqitelno cilnee. to cvzano ne tolko c vozdectviem na peceptopy noca bolee vycokix, po cpavneni c apoionami, doz cypepokcida, no take c dectviem pepekici vodopoda, kotopa obpazyetc vdyxatelnyx pytx iz padikala O2•—. Zdec vano podqepknyt, qto lektpiqecki zapd apoionov i cypepokcida netpalizyetc ye v polocti noca i nocoglotke, dalxe kotopyx ti qacticy ne pponikat. B to e vpem lektpiqecki netpalna H2 O2 pponikaet v glybokie otdely dyxatelnogo tpakta. «Tpenipovka» bponxov i l gkix icqezawe malymi koncentpacimi H2 O2 povyxaet yctoqivoct tix opganov k dectvi vocpalitelnyx agentov, ppovocipywix bolezn. Obpazovanie H2 O2 iz cypepokcida okonqatelno pazvelo nayqny mif pocledovatele P. Beptolona o pponiknovenii otpicatelnyx apoionov v l gkie. (Poman Goldxten, Haym Goldxten. Cvei vozdyx, cypepokcid i zdopove // «Hayka i izn», 2009)

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E. Fortuin More or less successful application of “classical” aeroions in bronchial asthma has been described repeatedly. We only note that the therapeutic effect of superoxide in the treatment of asthma is much stronger. This is not only related to the effect on the receptors of the nose of higher doses of superoxide compared to aeroions, but also to the action of hydrogen peroxide, which is formed by the inspiratory pathways from the radical O2 •—. Here it is important to emphasize that the electric charge of aeroions and superoxide is neutralized already in the nasal cavity and nasopharynx, beyond which these particles do not penetrate. At the same time, electrically neutral H2 O2 penetrates into the deep sections of the respiratory tract. “Training” of bronchi and lungs with vanishingly low concentrations of H2 O2 increases the resistance of these organs to the action of inflammatory agents that provoke the disease. The formation of H2 O2 from superoxide ultimately dispelled the scientific myth of the followers of P. Bertolon about the penetration of negative aeroions into the lungs. (Roman Gol’dštejn, Naum Gol’dštejn. Fresh air, superoxide and health // ‘Science and Life’, 2009).

This example can be analyzed as follows: 1.

It is desirable to use superoxide instead of “classical” aeroions in the treatment of asthma. 1.1a The therapeutic effect of superoxide in the treatment of asthma is much more pronounced than that of aeroions. 1.1b ⇒ [Extra argumentation, anticipating non-acceptance of the justificatory power of argument 1.1a] The electric charge of both aeroions and superoxide is neutralized already in the nasal cavity and nasopharynx, beyond which these particles do not penetrate (i.e. both aeroions and superoxide are not harmful). In this example, VP anticipates a potential criticism addressing argument 1.1a’s justificatory power, i.e. that superoxide can be dangerous and thus would be a less desirable means in the treatment of asthma. In (3) and (5) we find coordinative compound argumentation, but there are also instances where VP introduces subordinative argumentation. This is for example the case in the following fragment. Note that in this fragment the Russian expression VP is a translation of English critically. I first give the original English fragment, and then the Russian translation (6) [Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Collins assesses the Coalition’s perception-management operations before, during and after Operation Iraqi Freedom and their implications for NATO.] It was surprising, even to PSYOPS [=Psychological Operations; author] practitioners, how often the term “PSYOPS” was used in military briefings and by the press during Iraqi Freedom. In recent military operations, there has been a tendency to blur connotations and meanings by using fuzzier terminology, avoiding terms like psychological operations and opting for what is deemed by some to be more acceptable expressions like “Information Operations” (INFO OPS). While the term “INFO OPS” might not have the hard edge, semantically, of the term PSYOPS, its increased use over the past five to six years and the vague interpretations of the term have sown the seeds of confusion within the ranks of military planners, to the point where the terms PSYOPS and INFO OPS seem synonymous. This can lead to embarrassing consequences. Because of its ambiguous nature, INFO OPS has become a convenient expression to characterise military functions that have hitherto defied attempts to pigeonhole them. Placing PSYOPS under the rubric of INFO OPS often leads to a reduction of PSYOPS’s importance. This undermines the direct access that PSYOPS practitioners need to the commander they are supporting to be effective.

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Of greater concern is that the press and the public have caught on to this word game, expressing concern about how the use of the term INFO OPS seems to be a deliberate attempt to allow PSYOPS to be used by politicians in order to manipulate domestic audiences to support weak, unpopular policies. This may be a case of military terminology being too clever by half. Critically [cf. it’s important to emphasize that], there is no connection between PSYOPS and public information activities aimed at global public opinion and home audiences, which seek to provide an accurate and truthful account of events. (Sir Timothy Garden, Tom Donnelly et al. In the wake of Iraq (‘NATO Review’) (2003)) [=Original English text] (…) Dl cpecialictov-ppaktikov PcO tim zatpydnetc ppmo doctyp k komandipy, neobxodimy im dl okazani emy ffektivno poddepki. Ewe bolxy ozaboqennoct vyzyvaet to, qto ppecca i obwectvennoct ctali take yqactvovat v to igpe v clova, vypaa opaceni o tom, qto icpolzovanie tepmina InO ppedctavletc ppednamepenno popytko pozvolit politikam ppiment PcO dl manipylipovani vnytpennimi ayditopimi c cel obecpeqeni cebe poddepki ppi ppovedenii clabo i nepopylpno politiki. Havepno, to tot clyqa, kogda voennym tepminam ppipicyvaetc bolxa, qem na camom dele, ctepen vozdectvi. Bano podqepknyt, qto net nikako cvzi medy PcO i detelnoct po infopmipovani obwectvennocti, nappavlenno na globalnoe obwectvennoe mnenie i vnytpennie ayditopii c cel dat toqnoe i ppavdivoe ocvewenie cobyti. ((ABBYY LingvoPRO]11 (2003)) [=Russian translation from RNC parallel corpus of the English text].

This fragment deals with the term “Information Operations” (INFO OPS), which is is often used as a euphemism for “PSYOPS” (Psychological Operations) in recent military operations. The military prefers the term “Information Operations” over “Psychological Operations” because it is vaguer, and can be used for a broader range of things. A negative side, however, of placing PSYOPS under the rubric of INFO OPS is that it leads to a reduction of PSYOPS’s importance, and that it undermines the direct access that PSYOPS practitioners need to the commander they are supporting to be effective. But there are even more important negative consequences of the use of the term “Information Operations” (INFO OPS) for Psychological Operations: the general public and the press have become suspicious and see it as a word game with the aim of allowing psychological operations to be used by politicians in order to manipulate domestic audiences to support weak, unpopular policies. This is, however, an incorrect perception of the general public, since “PSYOPS” (Psychological Operations) used by the military has nothing to do with operations aimed at the global public opinion. We can provide the following analysis of the argumentative structure, where 1.1.1 is a sub-argument for 1.1: 1.

11 The

Placing PSYOPS (Psychological Operations) under the rubric of INFO OPS (Information Operations) in not just problematic for PSYOPS practitioners within the military, but it is even more problematic that the press and the public express concern about how the use of the term INFO OPS seems to be

reference to “ABBYY LingvoPRO” points to the translation services of this company.

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a deliberate attempt to allow PSYOPS to be used by politicians in order to manipulate domestic audiences and to support weak, unpopular policies. 1.1 This may be an instance of military terms being attributed a greater degree of impact than they actually have [i.e. what the general public and the press think is incorrect; they attribute too much importance to the use of the term “INFO OPS” instead of “PSYOPS”]. 1.1.1 ⇒ [Further support for the argument; anticipating the possible non-acceptance of the content of 1.1] There is no connection between PSYOPS (on the one hand) and public information activities aimed at global public opinion and home audiences, which seek to provide an accurate and truthful account of events (on the other). In this case, by using važno podˇcerknut’ the author anticipates on readers who may be not inclined to accept the content of the argumentation in 1.1, and who might say that the general public and the press are right to be suspicious about the use of the term INFO OPS by the military. Just like važno podˇcerknut’ can introduce an argument rather than elaborate on an argument, it can also introduce a standpoint itself, rather than elaborate on a standpoint like in (2). This is for example the case in the following example with sleduet podˇcerknut’ (“it must be emphasized”). In this case the speaker uses the expression to emphasize that he does not agree with the common opinion about the attitude of the famous Russian psychologists Vygotsky (Vygotskij) and Luria towards psycho-analysis: (7) Boppeki yctovxemyc mneni ppaktiqecki vo vcex iccledovanix tvopqectva L.C. Bygotckogo i A.P. Lypi o pezko otpicatelnom otnoxenii L.C. Bygotckogo k pcixoanalizy i kpitike pcixoanalitiqeckix pabot A.P. Lypi, cledyet podqepknyt, qto L.C. Bygotcki, kak i A.P. Lypi, ppiznaval znaqenie ocnovnyx pcixoanalitiqeckix ide (celoctny, dinamiqecki podxod k liqnocti, yqet fiziologiqeckix i cocialnyx detepminant pazviti liqnocti, cootnoxeni vnexnego i vnytpennego, biologiqeckogo i cocialnogo, coznatelnogo i beccoznatelnogo, yqet otctypleni, clyqanocte ppi vyvedenii obwix zakonov i t.d.) v ppocecce fopmipovani obwepcixologiqecko teopii. Podtvepdeniem togo vletc napicannoe v 1925 g. covmectno A. P. Lypi i L. C. Bygotckim ppediclovie k knige 3. Fpeda. (. M. Glozman, T. B. Ctepanqenko. L. C. Bygotcki i A. P. Lypi: ictoki cotvopqectva (2004) // «Boppocy pcixologii», 2004.12.14) Contrary to the established opinion that can be found in almost all studies on the work of L.S. Vygotskij and A.R. Luria which focus on the sharply negative attitude of L.S. Vygotskij to psychoanalysis and the criticism of psychoanalysis by A.R. Luria, it should be emphasized that L.S. Vygotskij, like A.R. Luria, recognized the importance of the basic psychoanalytic ideas (a holistic, dynamic approach to the individual, taking into account the physiological and social determinants of personality development, the correlation between external and internal, biological and social, conscious and unconscious, taking into account exceptions in the development of general laws, etc.) in the process of formation of general psychological theory. Evidence for this is the preface to Freud’s book jointly written in 1925 by A.R. Luria and L.S. Vygotskij. (Ž. M. Glozman, T.V. Stepanˇcenko. L. S. Vygotskij and A. R. Luria: the origins of co-creation (2004) // ‘Questions of Psychology’, 2004.12.14).

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This example can be analyzed as follows: ⇒ [Stressing the validity of the standpoint, in the context of contrasting it with the common opinion] Both Vygotskij and Luria recognized the importance of the basic psychoanalytic ideas. 1.1 Evidence for this is the preface to Freud’s book jointly written in 1925 by A.R. Luria and L.S. Vygotskij. 1.

In this case the use of VP is inherently connected to the phrase “contrary to the established opinion”. By mentioning that other authors have a different opinion the reader might be inclined not to accept the author’s standpoint. The function of the expression VP in combination with “contrary to…” is to make this explicit and stress that the author’s opinion is in fact the right one. Another example in which važno podˇcerknut’ accompanies a standpoint of the author is (8). It differs from (7) because in this case važno podˇcerknut’ does not refer back to information or argumentation in the previous discourse. This is the case in (8) from a book on the civil war in Russia in the period 1918-1921. The expression važno podˇcerknut’ occurs at the beginning of a section, immediately after the title is given: (8) BO HA FEBPAL C OKT BPEM Bano podqepknyt, qto vona «belyx» ppotiv Covetckogo gocydapctva ne imela cel pectavpipovat Poccicky impepi v vide monapxii. to byla «vona Fevpal c Oktbpem»— ctolknovenie dvyx pevolcion.12 THE WAR OF FEBRUARY WITH OCTOBER It is important to emphasize that the war of the “whites” against the Soviet state was not intended to restore the Russian Empire in the form of a monarchy. It was “the war of February with October” – a clash of two revolutionary groups.

In this fragment the author uses važno podˇcerknut’ to take away a possible misunderstanding that the reader may have in understanding what the speaker is going to write and provides the necessary context to understand the following argumentation or information. More specifically, the author wants to take away the misunderstanding that the “whites” were a conservative group, and explicitly states that they were revolutionaries in their own way. This example has an “in medias res” kind of character, since the preceding section does not deal with the topic of the revolutionary status of the whites.13 In this case važno podˇcerknut’ introduces a standpoint of the speaker. That it is a standpoint is clear from the next sentence, which functions as an argument: 1.

⇒ [Focussing the attention of the reader on the validity of the standpoint] The war of the “whites” against the Soviet state was not intended to restore the Russian Empire in the form of a monarchy.

12 http://knigi.link/russia-history/voyna-fevralya-oktyabrem-42922.html;

online version of: KaraMurza, Sergej. 2003. Graždanskaja vojna v Rosii (1918–1921) – urok dlja XXI veka. (Serija: Tropy praktiˇceskogo razuma.). Moscow: Èksmo. 13 Interestingly, the whole section reappears in a book by the same author from 2018 (Sovetskaja civilizacija “The Soviet civilization”), but now the construction does not appear after a title anymore.

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1.1

It was “the war of February with October” – a clash of two revolutionary groups. (1.1’ Both revolutionary group did not want to hold on to the monarchy.) Instances such as these with an “in medias res” character are very rare, and I did not find other examples in my corpus. I did encounter, however, examples in my corpus where I was not able to identify the argumentative function of the expression. This may be due to a lack of understanding on my side of the fragment within the larger discourse, but it may also be the case that authors sometimes use the expression without clear argumentative function, just emphasize that the information given by the author is important, or to keep the reader alert. The question can be raised whether such uses of the expression važno podˇcerknut’ can yield a fallacy. The study of the expression važno podˇcerknut’ has not revealed very clear contexts in which the construction is misused, for example by deliberately making the argumentation less transparent or otherwise flawed. In my opinion, the reason for this is that the function of the expression VP is to signal the attention of the reader to particular information which plays a part in argumentation, and providing a link with the preceding information.14 Whether or not the author wants to draw attention to something because the information is worthy of attention is primarily a subjective matter, and not something which can be a violation of general principles of argumentation. However, one way in which the expression can be misused is if the status of the information is not clear in the context. In such cases the use of VP becomes superfluous and does not seem to serve a clear communicative goal. One could argue that in such cases the speaker merely uses the construction to disguise a weakness in the argumentation. But one may also argue that such uses do not constitute a fallacy since the author uses the construction for stylistic reasons, for example to avoid repetition with other performative expressions like važno zametit’, as will be discussed in the next Section. No matter what the reason is, pointing out that some information is important and worthy of extra attention does not exempt the author from the obligation to explain why some information is important in the argumentation, and to make the link with the preceding context explicit. As such, the use of the construction in contexts where the link with preceding discourse is not clear could at least partly be considered a matter of flawed argumentation, i.e. as an infringement of the pragma-dialectical “language use rule” (rule 10) saying that “Discussants may not use any formulations that are insufficiently clear or confusingly ambiguous, and they may not deliberately misinterpret the other party’s formulations” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004: 195). At the same time, such use is perhaps typical of the more verbose style of Russian academic writing, which, in contrast to the Anglo-Saxon academic style, does not necessarily aim to help the reader to understand information in the simplest

14 Of course, the construction has its own lexical (“conceptual”) meaning, but this meaning is a clear description of its argumentative, “procedural” function, namely to emphasize important information in the discourse.

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way. Instead, the author may even deliberately make it hard for the reader, to let the reader work, or in some cases, to show the author’s learnedness.15

5 Oppositional Forms: Važno Zametit’ and Zažno Otmetit’ (“It’s Important to Notice”) The closest near-synonym (oppositional form) of važno podˇcerknut’ is the construction važno zametit’ (otmetit’) (“it’s important to note”). In order to understand the function of važno podˇcerknut’, it is interesting to find out what the difference is between these constructions, and why the author sometimes chooses one and sometimes the other. In order to determine the function of važno zametit’ (otmetit’) (“it’s important to note”), I looked in the RNC for examples of važno zametit’ (otmetit’) and their context to determine the function of this expression. There were 68 documents, containing 70 instances of važno zametit’, and 291 documents containing 351 instances of važno otmetit’. On the basis of these examples, I was not able to determine a difference in meaning between otmetit’ and zametit’, even though closer inspection might reveal a subtle difference in meaning. The examples I found seem to suggest that like važno podˇcerknut’, važno zametit’ (otmetit’) can also function as an anticipation to a possible incorrect inference of a standpoint by the reader. Such an analysis can be given for the following example which deals about the island Malta as a suitable place for Russian to live: (9) Ocobnki planipytc c yqetom ppivyqek lde c aktivnym obpazom izni. Zaxvatyvawie vidy i kpacivye cady c becedkami, bolxie bacceny, cayny, dakyzi, ozdopovitelnye klyby, ctadiony dl tennica, otdelnye kabinety dl paboty — obzatelnye detali ppoektipyemyx ob ektov. Ha teppitopii takix novoctpoek qactenko pazmewaetc pole dl golfa, gde igpoki mogyt nacladatc tim cpoptom v ymepennom zimnem klimate. Bano zametit, qto pomimo vcex cvoix ppelecte, Malta — velikolepnoe mecto dl polyqeni obpazovani. Hacelenie obwaetc na anglickom i maltickom. Cictema obyqeni pepenta malticami y angliqan. A kpome togo, cegodn ctpana ppetendyet na zvanie lyqxego mecta dl zykovyx kanikyl. (Ect li izn na Malte? (2004) // «Mip & Dom. Residence», 2004.03.15) Mansions are planned taking into account the habits of people with an active lifestyle. Spectacular views and beautiful gardens with pavilions, large swimming pools, saunas, jacuzzi, health clubs, stadiums for tennis, separate rooms for work – are the required details of the designed facilities. On the premises of such new buildings, there is often a golf course where players can enjoy this sport in a temperate winter climate. It is important to note that, in addition to all its charms, Malta is a great place to get an education. The population communicates in English and Maltese. The educational system was adopted by the Maltese from the English. And besides that, today the country 15 A reviewer pointed out that there might be a parallel with the style of some continental European

philosophers as described by Sperber (2010). It may very well be the case that the Russian academic style of writing is very much influenced by the German and French style of academic writing from the nineteenth century.

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E. Fortuin pretends to be the best place for a language vacation. (Is there life on Malta? (2004) // ‘World & Home. Residence’, 2004.03.15).

1. [Standpoint] Malta is a good place to live and to enjoy life. ⇒ [Anticipation of the inference that Malta is only a good place for fun] Malta is also a great place to study. Alternatively, one might argue that važno zametit’ functions as an argument to support the claim that Malta is a great place: alongside “great vacation and residential place” it is “a great place to get education.” In some instances, važno zametit’ signals to the addressee that the information that the speaker is going to provide is meaningful or relevant with respect to the previous information (cf. (8) given earlier with važno podˇcerknut’). This is for example the case in the following fragment where the expression is used in an answer to a question. In this case the function of važno otmetit’ can be parahrazed very roughly as “what I am going to tell you right now, is very relevant with respect to your question” (i.e., your presupposition is in fact incorrect): (10) Hackolko znaqitelen i yctoqiv ppitok inoctpannyx deneg, kotopy my ceqac vidim?«Oqen vano otmetit, qto kakix-to bolxix ppitokov co ctopony inoctpancev v naqale togo goda v poccickie akcii ne nabldaloc, — govopit lbek Dalimov, tpedep IK «Aton». (Evgeni Obyxova. Cvoego ne ypyctt // «kcpept», 2015) “How meaningful and stable is the influx of foreign money that we see nowadays?” “It is very important to mention that we did not witness any big influx in the Russian stocks from the side of foreigners in the beginning of this year”, says Èlbek Dalimov, a trader at Aton. (Evgenija Obuxova. They will make sure they are fine // Expert, 2015).

However, in many examples with važno zametit’ (otmetit’) the idea of correcting an incorrect inference is less clear, and važno zametit’ (otmetit’) has the character of a further elaboration on the previous information. This can be illustrated with some examples: (11) Bano ocobennoct naqala financipovani olimpickix mepoppiti v 2008 g. ctal ffekt nivelipovani ppovleni financovogo kpizica 2008-2009 gg. i ego pocledctvi dl teppitopii kpa. B celom odna iz naibolee yctoqivyx pegionalnyx cictem Poccii za cq t olimpicko ppogpammy ctpoitelctva polyqila dopolnitelnye ictoqniki financipovani pacxodov. Tem ne menee, v teqenie 2009 g. otmeqaloc cnienie bdetnogo financipovani pacxodov po pazdelam «iliwnokommynalnoe xozctvo», «Fizkyltypa i cpopt», «Hacionalna konomika» (v t.q. po podpazdelam «Tpancpopt», «Doponoe xozctvo, «Cvz i infopmatika »), «Zdpavooxpanenie» za cq t cobctvennyx ictoqnikov doxodov. Bano zametit, qto financipovanie tpancpopta i iliwno-kommynalnogo xozctva, ocobenno ob ektov v paone Coqi i na teppitopii cmenyx mynicipalnyx obpazovani, za cq t cpedctv kpaevogo bdeta ocywectvltc kak v vide ppmogo financipovani, tak i v vide cybcidi mectnym bdetam na pealizaci mepoppiti v pamkax kpaevo celevo ppogpammy. (Mockovcki gocydapctvenny ynivepcitet. Otqet № 1 o vlinii igp v pamkax ppogpammy “Iccledovanie vlini Olimpickix igp” (2009–2010))

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An important peculiarity of the initial financing of the Olympic events in 2008 is the effect of alleviating the consequences of the 2008–2009 financial crisis for the region. In general, one of the most stable regional systems of Russia gained supplementary finances due to the Olympic building programme. However, in 2009 a decrease in budget financing of expenses using own revenues could be observed of the following categories: “Housing and utilities”, “Physical culture and sports”, “National economy” (including “Transport”, “Roads”, and “Communications and IT”), “Health care”. It should be noted that financing transport and utilities from the regional budget resources, especially in Sochi and neighbouring municipalities, is carried out in the form of both direct investments and subsidies to local budgets in the framework of implementing the regional programme. (Moscow State University. Report № 1 on Games Impact in the framework of the programme ‘Olympic Games Impact – OGI (2009–2010)) [translation from RNC parallel corpus].

In example (11) the authors first mention that the financing of the Olympic events by the Russian government in 2008 had a positive influence on the financial crisis of the region due to the fact that the regions received extra funds for the Olympic building programme. However, they then also state that (probably as a result) in 2009 the regions themselves spend less money on a number of important areas connected to transport and utilities. After having given this information, they provide further information on how the regional government invested in transport and utilities, namely by direct investments and by subsidies to local budgets in the framework of implementing the regional programme. In this case, it seems, the expression važno zametit’ is used to provide further information without clearly anticipating incorrect inferences: 1. [Statement] In 2009 there was a decrease in budget financing using own revenues [instead of using revenues from the Olympic events in 2008] of the following categories: “Housing and utilities”, “Physical culture and sports”, “National economy” (including “Transport”, “Roads”, and “Communications and IT”), “Health care”. ⇒ [Further elaboration] Financing transport and utilities from the regional budget resources, especially in Sochi and neighbouring municipalities, is carried out in the form of both direct investments and subsidies to local budgets in the framework of implementing the regional programme. A similar non clearly argumentative instance can be found in the following fragment from the book “Russian weapons – war and peace”. The fragment deals with the formation of financial-industrial groups in the nineties in Russia: (12) Zatem k novo ctpyktype dobavltc financovye inctityty — ppede vcego banki, invecticionnye, ctpaxovye kompanii i t.d., a take analitiqeckie ctpyktypy, zanimawiec voppocami ctpategiqeckogo analiza. B ine 1995 goda c pykovoditelmi pepvyx poccickix financovoppomyxlennyx gpypp vctpeqalc Ppezident Poccii, pocle qego bylo ppinto pexenie o podgotovke novogo ykaza o popdke fopmipovani FPG, v kotopom qetko byl by ppopican mexanizm imenno fopmipovani financovo-ppomyxlennyx gpypp, a ne ppocto deklapipovany kakie-to ocnovopolagawie ppincipy ix detelnocti. Bano zametit, qto v coctav financovo-ppomyxlennyx gpypp mogyt vxodit ne tolko

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E. Fortuin poccickie ppedppiti, no i ppedppiti, naxodwixc v gocydapctvax blinego v dalnego zapybe. (Bopic Kyzyk. kcpopt — kpyl oboponki (ictopi, detelnoct, pepcpektivy) (iz knigi «Poccickoe opyie: vona i mip») (1997)). Then financial institutions are added to the new structure – first of all banks, investment and insurance companies, etc., as well as analytical structures dealing with issues of strategic analysis. In June 1995, Putin met the leaders of the first Russian financial and industrial groups, after which it was decided to prepare a new decree on the procedure for the formation of Financial Industrial Groups, in which the mechanisms for the formation of financial and industrial groups would be clearly specified, instead of just declaring the fundamental principles of their activities. It is important to note that the composition of financial-industrial groups may include not only Russian enterprises, but also enterprises located in the neighboring countries and in distant foreign countries. (Boris Kuzyk. Export – the wings of the defense industry (history, activity, prospects) (from the book ‘Russian weapons: war and peace’) (1997)).

If we analyze the argumentation provided by the author in such a way that it does not trigger the incorrect inference that new financial-industrial groups were exclusively Russian, the function of važno zametit’ is merely to further elaborate on the previously given information: 1. [Statement] Financial institutions were added to the new structure. ⇒ [Further elaboration] The composition of financial-industrial groups may include not only Russian enterprises, but also enterprises located in the neighboring countries in the far abroad. In many cases, though, it is difficult to objectively determine whether or not važno zametit’ anticipates on incorrect inferences. Consider for example the following fragment, which deals with the relationship between the Russian authors Nagibin and Solženicyn: (13) He oxladelo teploe qyvctvo y Hagibina k Colenicyny i v devnoctye. B ctate «Bez dyxovnocti nacii ne cpacti nam Pocci» on ppozoplivo opacaetc za cydby vepmontckogo izgnannika po ego vozvpawenii na podiny, vepno ppedpolaga, qto v Poccii ego det neponimanie i tpavl. Ckopee vcego, Alekcandp Icaeviq yvidel v Hagibine nekotopye tipiqnye qepty to «obpazovanwiny», kaky on poctno izobliqal v covetcko intelligencii. Bano zametit, qto cam Colenicyn cvoe izn i tvopqectvom vlet nam potpcawi ppimep celoctnocti: …. (Andpe Dydapev. pi Hagibin: komppomicc ili teppimoct? // «Cibipckie ogni», 2012) Nagibin’s warm feelings towards Solženicyn did not cool down even in the nineties. In the article ‘Without spirituality of the nation, we cannot save Russia’ he fears with insight for the fate of the Vermont exile when returning to his homeland, rightly assuming that misunderstanding and persecution await him in Russia. Most likely, Alexander Isaeviˇc [Solženicyn] saw in Nagibin some typical features of that so-called ‘academic education’, which he vehemently unveiled in the Soviet intelligentsia. It is important to note that to us Solženicyn himself is a stunning example of integrity because of his life and work: …. (Andrej Dudarev. Jurij Nagibin: compromise or tolerance? // ‘Siberian Lights’, 2012)

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In this case, one could argue, the author uses važno zametit’ to elaborate on the previous statement: 1. [Statement] Most likely, Solženicyn saw in Nagibin some typical features of that so-called “education”, which he vehemently unveiled in the Soviet intelligentsia. ⇒ [Further elaboration] Solženicyn himself is stunning example of integrity. One could, however, also argue that the function of važno zametit’ is to anticipate the possible inference that Solženicyn himself was also an example of the Soviet intelligentsia. Even though the difference in function between važno zametit’ and važno podˇcerknut’ is often difficult to determine, in many examples analyzed by me važno zametit’ has a less clear argumentative function than važno podˇcerknut’. The difference in function can further be illustrated by the following fragment, where both expressions are used: (14) Zametno bolxee koliqectvo pepexodnyx lementov cocpedotoqeno v ppoctyx okcidax i cmexannyx okcidax – xpinelx (tabl. 5), nekotopye iz nix, nappimep magnetit, ppicytctvyt v zemno˘i kope v zametnom koliqectve (≥0,1%). Heobxodimo otmetit, qto bolxie koliqectva pepexodnyx metallov cocpedotoqeny take v cylfidax, odnako zdec oni ne paccmotpeny. Ppi copoctavlenii qicla minepalov, ppivedennyx v tabl. 4 i 5, otqetlivo vidno cxodctvo c zakonomepnoctmi, kotopye obnapyenny ppi paccmotpenii ocobennocte˘i povedeni MOC, codepawix pepexodnye le menty. Imenno oni neobyqa˘ino cklonny k pepegpyppipovke, ppivodwe˘i k vydeleni metalla iz cilokcanovo˘i matpicy v fopme okcida. Bano podqepknyt, qto ne vce okcidy pepexodnyx lementov, ppicytctvywie v litocfepe, mogyt clyit podtvepdeniem ppedloenno gipotezy. Happimep, anataz i bpykit (TiO2 ) vxodt v coctav icklqitelno metamopfiqeckix popod, v to vpem kak pytil (TiO2 ) voznikaet v pezyltate ppoceccov vyvetpivani titanocilikatov v vepxnix clox zemno kopy. Takim obpazom, mono ppedpoloit, qto iz tpex ypomnytyx coedineni imenno anataz i bpykit vltc ppodyktami paccmatpivaemo pepegpyppipovki i potomy vklqeny v paccmotpenie. (Mixail Levicki. Metalloopganocilokcany i litocfepa // «Poccicki ximiqecki ypnal», 2002). A noticeable larger number of transition elements is concentrated in simple oxides and mixed oxides – spinels (Table 5), some of them, for example magnetite, are present in the earth’s crust in detectable quantities (≥0.1%). It should be noted that large amounts of transition metals are also concentrated in sulfides, but they are not considered here. When comparing the number of minerals listed in Table 4 and 5, we can clearly see a similarity with the regularities that were observed when considering the behavior of MOS (metallasiloxane) containing transition elements. They are extremely prone to regrouping, leading to the discharge of metal from the siloxane matrix in the form of oxide. It is important to emphasize that not all oxides of transition elements present in the lithosphere can serve as a confirmation of the proposed hypothesis. For

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E. Fortuin example, anatase and brookite (TiO2) are part of exclusively metamorphic rocks, while rutile (TiO2) occurs as a result of processes of weathering of titanosilicates in the upper layers of the earth’s crust. In that way, it can be assumed that of the three mentioned compounds it is anatase and brookite that are the products of the regrouping under consideration and therefore they are included in the review. (Mixail Levickij. Metalorganosiloxanes and lithosphere // ‘Russian Chemical Journal’, 2002).

The expression “it’s important to notice” is used to make a side remark about something that will not further be considered in the paper, whereas the expression “it’s important to emphasize” is used to point out that there are data (i.e. the mineral rutile) which do not corroborate the hypothesis. In this case, the writer does not merely make a side-remark, but anticipates possible criticism of the reader by modifying the research hypothesis. So, even though the difference in meaning and use between važno podˇcerknut’ and važno zametit’ is quite subtle, važno zametit’ seems to have a weaker argumentative function. This can be further illustrated by comparing instances of these two constructions. Take for example sentence (12), which can be compared with (2) with važno podˇcerknut’. This latter sentence is about the importance of not only the dissemination of data, but also the collection of data on rabies (“It is important to emphasize that the effective dissemination of data is no less important than collecting them…”). The reason why the speaker in (2) has chosen važno podˇcerknut’ and not važno zametit’ is probably that (s)he wants to emphasize the importance of dissemination, since neglecting this might lead to problems. Apparently in (12) the information that the composition of financial-industrial groups may include not only Russian enterprises, is seen as less urgent, perhaps because the reader is not expected to have drawn incorrect conclusions with respect to this, or because the information itself is felt to be of less importance. The difference between the two expressions can even be better illustrated by looking at a variant of the two expressions, namely the expression without važno (“important”). Take for example the following instance where the Russian translation (taken from the RNC) uses the expression sleduet zametit’ (“it should be noted”), even though the English original has no such counterpart: (15) English original: “Twenty-nine Ogden Place.” And her name? “Carrie Madenda,” said the drummer, firing at random. The lodge members knew him to be single. (Theodore Dreiser. Sister Carrie (1900)) Russian translation: – Ogden-ckvep, dvadcat devt. – A kak zovyt damy? – Keppi Madenda, — naobym otvetil Dpy. Cledyet zametit, qto v loe on byl izvecten kak xoloctk. (Teodop Dpazep. Cectpa Keppi (M. Bolocov, 1927)). Literal translation of the Russian translation: “Twenty-nine Ogden Place.” And her name? “Carrie Madenda,” said Drue, firing at random. It should be noted that the lodge members knew him to be single.

In this case the translator (author) has decided to use the expression sleduet zametit’ (“it should be noted”) to make explicit for the reader that (s)he is addressed

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with a side-remark about the character of the story. In this case it would probably be less suitable to use the expression sleduet podˇcerknut’ since this expression would place to much emphasis on the importance of the side-remark. The qualitative analysis conducted in this chapter can be supplemented with a small-scale quantitative analysis. My hypothesis is that važno podˇcerknut’ rather than važno zametit’/otmetit’ is used in contexts where an expected incorrect point of view on the part of the reader is anticipated by the author. My prediction is that if this is correct, važno podˇcerknut’ will be used more frequently with a negation in the subordinate clause than važno zametit’/otmetit’. After all, if the author explicitly rejects a possible conclusion that the addressee might draw based on the previous information, she needs to make use of a negation. Examples of such sentences with negation in the subordinate clause can be found in (2), (8), and (6). For instance, in example (2) we find the following structure: (1) The collection of data is important (1’) (but) the dissemination of data is no less important. In this case the possible incorrect inference (dissemination of data is less important) is explicitly negated by the author. In order to test the hypothesis, I searched in the RNC for instances of važno podˇcerknut’, važno zametit’ or važno otmetit’ (važno podˇcerknut’|važno zametit’|važno otmetit’). The data were presented in a random order, and in the first 50 instances I determined whether there is a negative element in the subordinate clause. The data are given in Table 1. Even though the data-set is quite small, the data show an association between negation and važno podˇcerknut’, and therefore a negative association between važno zametit’/otmetit’ and negation (Fisher exact; two-tailed, p = 0.04; Phi = −0.32). This might sustain the hypothesis given by me. To conclude this Section, važno zametit’ gives a further specification or elaboration of the information, in fact similar to that of an actual footnote in a text. Compared to važno podˇcerknut’ it often has a less clear argumentative function and the idea of correcting the ideas of the reader is either missing or less prevalent. This difference can be linked to the original meanings: • podˇcerknut’ (“emphasize”) means focus the attention of the hearer to a given piece of information by emphasizing it. • zametit’/ otmetit’ (“note”) means to point the attention to some (possibly new) peace of information such that it can be taken into account. In both cases, the verb itself expresses an action that is realized by the author (in contrast, for example, to English, it is important to realize, understand). Nevertheless, it could be argued that podˇcerknut’ more clearly presupposes an action on the part of the author than zametit’, since both the author and the reader might be said to Table 1 Negation in the subordinate clause with važno podˇcerknut’|važno zametit’|važno otmetit’

Negation

No negation

važno podˇcerknut’

7

9

važno zametit’/otmetit’

5

29

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note something.16 As such, in the case of podˇcerknut’ the attention to the information is more important and more urgent and plays a more crucial role in the argumentation. However, because the meanings of both constructions are so similar, I think it is usually possible to substitute one construction for the other implying a subtle difference in meaning. Further testing with native speakers is necessary to validate this claim.17 Such research might also compare Russian with other languages, where similar constructions can be used, to see whether its use and function is similar.

6 Conclusion I have a provided an analysis of the function and use of the Russian expression važno podˇcerknut’ “it’s important to emphasize”. I have shown that this expression often has an argumentative function to signal to the reader that a particular piece of information is important to take into account in order to correctly understand the standpoint of the writer or the information provided by the author. By using važno podˇcerknut’ the author anticipates possible incorrect, incomplete or absent conclusions or inferences of the reader. The expression važno podˇcerknut’ can sustain a standpoint or argument in contexts where the speaker anticipates an incorrect inference of the author’s own or someone else’s argument or standpoint. In some cases, važno podˇcerknut’ can also introduce an argument itself. In such cases the author expects the reader not to accept the validity or the content of the argument. As I have shown, the construction both refers back to information and argumentation given in the previous discourse, but at the same time also functions as a new move or thread in the discourse and argumentation. In some cases, however, the argumentative link with the preceding information is less evident and the expression is used to convey to the reader that a particular piece of information is important to take into account, for example as background information, or because its relevance will become apparent later. In this case važno podˇcerknut’ X only functions 16 This also explains why one can use the imperative zamet’te, c ˇ to (lit. “note that”, often used as “bear in mind that”), but not (along the same lines) the imperative podˇckernite, cˇ to (lit. “underline/emphasize that”). 17 Note that this substitution is not possible in sentences without complement clause:

(1) Vano zametit razliqie v spektrah pogloweni dl Hb i Hb02. (Internet) “It is important to note the difference in the absorption spectra for Hb and Hb02.” Similarly, it is not possible in sentences like the following, where the subject of the verb is not the author: (2) V razgovore vano podqerknut, qto Vy vladeete dostatoqnymi znanimi i umenimi, tehnologimi, specifiko danno raboty. “In a conversation, it is important to emphasize that you possess sufficient knowledge and skills, technologies, specific to the type of work.” (Internet; tips for a job-interview) Such sentences cannot be seen as actual examples of the construction under discussion.

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as a new move or thread in the discourse and argumentation. One could argue that such uses show features of flawed argumentation, even though a difference in the way Russian academic texts are structured as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon tradition must be taken into account as well. I have also shown that the function of važno podˇcerknut’ differs from that of the oppositional (near synonymous) form važno zametit’. This construction has a less clear argumentative function and serves as a signal that a further elaboration on the preceding information will be provided. I have provided a small-scale quantitative analysis which supports this hypothesis. Further research could focus on quantitative research, for example by comparing važno podˇcerknut’ to važno zametit’, or by studying a larger set of comparable expressions in Russian, for example various performative expression typical for Russian academic writing such as zameˇcu, cˇ to (“I remark that”), napomnim, cˇ to (“we remind that”), etc. Finally, an interesting topic for further research is the question of how Russian academic writing, stylistics and argumentation differs from English or Dutch academic writing, stylistics and argumentation, and what is the argumentative function of the use of performative verbs and constructions.

References Anscombre, J. C., & Ducrot, O. (1989). Argumentativity and informativity. In M. Meyer (Ed.), From metaphysics to rhetoric (Vol. 202, pp. 71–87). Synthese Library (Studies in Epistemology, Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science). Dordrecht: Springer. Crible, L. (2018). Discourse Markers and (Dis)fluency. Forms and functions across languages and registers. John Benjamins. Demidova, E. (2012). Stil…Stil’… Stil’. Uˇcebnoe posobie. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Prometej. Houtlosser, P. (1995). Standpunten in een kritische discussie. Een pragma-dialectisch perspectief op de indentificatie en reconstructie van standpunten (Dissertatie Universiteit van Amsterdam/Studies in language and language use 22). Amsterdam: IFOTT. Langacker, R. W. (1987). Foundations of cognitive grammar (Vol. I): Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Russian National Corpus. http://ruscorpora.ru. Russian National Corpus (RNC). https://ruscorpora.ru/old/index.html Schiffrin, D. (1987). Discourse markers and (Dis)fluency: Forms and functions across languages and registers (Pragmatics & Beyond New Series). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (1992). Analysing complex argumentation: The reconstruction of multiple and coordinatively compound argumentation in a critical discussion. Amsterdam: Sic Sat. Sperber, D. (2010). The Guru effect. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1(4), 583–592. van Eemeren, F. H., Grootendorst, R., Jackson, S., & Jacobs, S. (1993). Reconstructing argumentative discourse. Tuscaloosa/London: The University of Alabama Press. van Eemeren, F. H., & Grootendorst, R. (2004). A systematic theory of argumentation. The pragmadialectical approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. van Eemeren, F. H., & Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2016). Argumentation: Analysis and evaluation (2nd rev. ed.). New York/London: Routledge. Wilson, D. (2011). The conceptual-procedural distinction: Past, present and future. In V. EscandellVidal, M. Leonetti, & A. Ahern (Eds.), Procedural meaning: Problems and perspectives (pp. 3– 31). Bingly, UK: Emerald.

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Egbert Fortuin is an Associate Professor at Leiden University. He specializes in Russian linguistics and general linguistics. His research focuses on semantics, pragmatics and syntax. He has published extensively on verbal aspect, mood and modality, conditional constructions, the imperative, performative expressions, and the semantics of various constructions. He is editor of Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics (Brill).

Strategic Manoeuvring with the Expression “Not for Nothing” Henrike Jansen and Francisca Snoeck Henkemans

Abstract In English discourse one can find cases of the expression “not for nothing” being used in argumentation. The expression can occur both in the argument and in the standpoint. In this chapter we analyse the argumentative and rhetorical aspects of “not for nothing” by regarding this expression as a presentational device for strategic manoeuvring. First, we investigate under which conditions the proposition containing the expression “not for nothing” functions as a standpoint, an argument or neither of these elements. It is also examined which type of standpoint (descriptive, evaluative or prescriptive) and which types of argument scheme (symptomatic, causal or comparison) the expression typically co-occurs with. In doing so we aim to develop a better understanding of the role and effects of “not for nothing” when used in argumentation. Finally, we show that the strategic potential of “not for nothing” lies in its suggestion that sufficient support has been provided while this support has in fact been left implicit. Keywords Linguistic construction · Not for nothing · Litotes · Strategic manoeuvring · Stylistic device · Evading the burden of proof · Ignoratio elenchi · Disguised presentation

1 The article on which this chapter is based was published as Jansen, H. & Snoeck Henkemans, A.F.

(2020). Argumentative use and strategic function of the expression ‘not for nothing’. Argumentation, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-019-09509-8. H. Jansen (B) Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, 9515, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] F. S. Henkemans Department of Speech Communication Argumentation Theory, and Rhetoric, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Boogaart et al. (eds.), The Language of Argumentation, Argumentation Library 36, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52907-9_15

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1 Introduction In English discourse one can find the expression “not for nothing” being used in argumentation, emphasizing that there is a reason for something.1 This expression can be used both in arguments and standpoints, either in combination with an indicator of a standpoint (as in example (1) or with an indicator of an argument (as in example (2)), or without such an indicator (as in example (3)): (1) John is an expert. It is therefore not for nothing that they have asked him to give advice in this matter (2) John is an expert, since it is not for nothing that they have asked him to give advice in this matter (3) John is an expert; it is not for nothing that they have asked him to give advice in this matter. “Not for nothing” is mentioned by Schellens (1985: 102–103) as an expression typically co-occurring with “argumentation from explanation”. This type of argument can consist of reverse causal argumentation—reasoning from an effect (expressed in the argument) to the potential cause of that effect (expressed in the standpoint)—or of symptomatic argumentation (argumentation from sign) in which a known event, which is stated in the argument, is presented as presupposing the event stated in the standpoint. As Schellens notes, in many cases it is hard to decide which of the statements connected by “not for nothing” functions as the standpoint and which as the argument. The above examples (1–3) do indeed indicate this problem: when an indicator is absent, as in (3), both statements can be interpreted in both ways. This observation suggests that this expression has a strategic potential. In this chapter we aim to present an analysis of the argumentative and rhetorical characteristics of “not for nothing” by regarding this expression as a presentational device for strategic manoeuvring. In order to have a clearer picture of the role and effects of “not for nothing” when used in argumentation, we will first investigate, in Sect. 2, under which conditions the proposition containing the expression “not for nothing” functions as a standpoint, as an argument or as neither of these speech acts. Next, in Sect. 3, we will look more closely into the characteristics of the expression “not for nothing” when it is used in an argumentative context. To this end, we will examine which types of standpoint (descriptive, evaluative or prescriptive) the expression typically co-occurs with and whether it is limited to the kinds of argument schemes mentioned by Schellens (reverse causal argumentation, symptomatic argumentation). Finally, in Sect. 4, we will use the argumentative characterization of the expression “not for nothing” given in Sects. 2 and 3 to analyse its strategic potential as a discussion move. We will show that the strategic aspect of this expression lies in its suggestion that sufficient support has been provided while this support has in fact been left implicit. Our study fits in a line of research within the pragma-dialectical tradition aimed at discovering the strategic aspects of the stylistic design of argumentative discourse (van Eemeren and Houtlosser 1999a, 2002; van Eemeren 2010). The pragmadialectical concept of strategic manoeuvring is based on the presumption that in their

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discourse arguers try to reconcile the dialectical goal of being (or at least appearing) reasonable and the rhetorical goal of winning the discussion. Strategic manoeuvring refers to arguers’ attempts to meet both goals in an optimal way. Although quite some research has been carried out into the ways in which figures of speech, word choice and sentence structure can contribute to strategic manoeuvring (e.g. van Eemeren and Houtlosser 1999a, b, c and 2000a, b; Snoeck Henkemans 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2013; Zarefsky 2006; Snoeck Henkemans and Plug 2008; Tseronis 2009; Jansen 2009, 2011; Jansen, Dingemanse and Persoon 2011; Tonnard 2011; Boogaart 2013; van Poppel 2016; van Haaften 2019; van Haaften and van Leeuwen 2018), the study of the strategic aspects of specific linguistic constructions is a recent development (Jansen 2016, 2017); see also Fortuin (the chapter “Drawing Attention to Information in Russian Argumentation: The Function of the Performative Expression Važno Podˇcerknut’ (“It’s Important to Emphasize”)” in this volume), and Herman and Oswald (the chapter “Everybody Knows That There Is Something Odd About Ad Populum Arguments” in this volume).

2 Meaning and Functions of “Not for Nothing” in the Context of Argumentation 2.1 The Semantics of “Not for Nothing” According to the Collins Online English Dictionary, the phrase “not for nothing” has the following meaning: If you say that it was not for nothing that something happened you are emphasizing that there was a very good reason for it to happen (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/eng lish/not-for-nothing).

The same definition is given by the English Oxford Dictionaries (https://en.oxforddic tionaries.com/definition/nothing) and Macmillan English Dictionary for Advanced Learners (2002). In these definitions, the double negation in “not for nothing” is seen as an emphasizing device, an example of the figure litotes. Other definitions mention meanings that are more literal, in which “not for nothing” means “not without reason” or “for a reason”. An example is The Free Dictionary, according to which the expression cannot only indicate that there is a good (which they call “worthy”) reason but also just that there is a (specific) reason: For a specific or worthy reason (https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/not+for+nothing).

Idiomation gives the following definition, according to which “not for nothing” can be used not just to refer to the fact that there is a reason for something, but also a cause or a purpose: The idiom not for nothing actually means what’s about to be said or done is not to be said or done in vain; what’s about to be said or done has a cause, a purpose, a reason, or a use

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(https://idiomation.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/not-for-nothing/).

An exception to the argumentative use of “not for nothing”—indicating that there is a (good) reason for something—occurs in American English, where “not for nothing” is also idiomatically used as a hedging device: Used as an introductory phrase to indicate that the principle phrase which follows is intended neither to be commanding nor officious, but simply as friendly advice or constructive observation (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=not%20for%20nothing).

In this idiomatic use, “not for nothing” is often followed by a sentence starting with “but”. An example given by the Urban Dictionary of this idiomatic use is: Not for nothing, but you just bought the first iPad less than a year ago (https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=not%20for%20nothing).

Because of our focus on the expression’s argumentative use, we will not take this idiomatic use of the expression into account in our analyses.

2.2 The Pragmatics of “Not for Nothing” As we have seen, the expression “not for nothing” can be part of the standpoint or of the argument. In example (1) it occurs in the standpoint: (1) John is an expert. It is therefore not for nothing that they have asked him to give advice in this matter. In that case the sentence containing the expression can be paraphrased as (1a): (1a) It is therefore with good reason that they have asked him to give advice. In example (2) the expression occurs in the argument, as the indicator “since” makes clear. (2) John is an expert, since it is not for nothing that they have asked him to give advice in this matter. The sentence containing “not for nothing” can then be paraphrased as (2a): (2a) Since that is apparent from the fact/an indication for this is that they asked him to give advice. If there are no indicators of argumentation or standpoints present, in principle, the example is ambiguous (cf. Schellens 1985: 102–103). “Not for nothing” taken by itself does then not give enough information to decide which statement functions as the argument or as the standpoint, as in example (3): (3) John is an expert; it is not for nothing that they have asked him to give advice in this matter.

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In practice, though, it may become clear from the context which of the two sentences functions as the standpoint and which as the argument. If one of the two statements is clearly disputable in the context at hand, then that may be a clue that it is the standpoint. And if one of the statements contains information that the reader may be expected to know or accept already, or that is presented as if it is already acceptable to the reader, then that could be a clue that this statement could be the argument (Schellens ibidem: 103; Snoeck Henkemans 2001). Until now, we have looked at the expression “not for nothing” when it occurs in a complete sentence, which may then be either the argument or the standpoint. There is, however, also a different use of the expression, where it is not part of a complete sentence, but occurs on its own, in a coordinate clause, introduced by “and”. In this type of construction, “not for nothing” always forms part of the standpoint and the argument always follows the sentence containing “not for nothing” This is for instance the case in example (4): (4) Next month the National Health Service turns 70. The institution is greatly loved, and not for nothing. The fear of ill-health runs deep in most of us and is ineradicable; but the fear of not being able to afford treatment, which must haunt most of the world’s population, has been abolished in Britain—and for that inestimable benefit we have the NHS to thank. (https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/06/how-does-anyone-manage-to-navigatethe-maze-of-our-second-rate-nhs/). Here, “and not for nothing” both functions as part of the standpoint (the NHS is justly greatly loved) and serves as an announcement of the argumentation that follows in (the second part of) the next sentence: Standpoint: It is not for nothing [it is with good reason] that the NHS is greatly loved. Argument: Due to the NHS the fear of not being able to afford treatment has been abolished in Britain. The following overview can now be given of positions in which “not for nothing” may appear in two sentences, one of which could be the standpoint and the other the argument: 1. “Not for nothing” in the first sentence of the two sentences. 1a. In a whole sentence: (It is) not for nothing (that) X. (Since) Y 1b. In a clause added to the first sentence: X, and not for nothing. (Since) Y. 2. “Not for nothing” in the second sentence of the two sentences. 2a. X. (Since) (it is) not for nothing (that) Y 2b. Y. (So) (it is) not for nothing (that) X.

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Under what conditions can “not for nothing” in each of these cases be indicative of an argument or a standpoint? Case 1a The use of the expression “(it is) not for nothing (that) X” creates the expectation that a reason for X will be given (in the following sentence) or has just been given (in the preceding sentence). If there is no text prior to the phrase “It is not for nothing that X”, or no plausible reason has been given before the phrase occurs, the reader will expect that a reason will be given after the first sentence. This expectation comes true in example (5): (5) It’s not for nothing that sugar is being labelled the new tobacco in health circles. The statistics in relation to childhood obesity in Ireland are frightening. Onein-five Irish children (aged 5 years) are considered overweight or obese. While there are many causes, including more inactive lifestyles today, consuming too many calories in sweet treats and drinks is causing huge problems. (https://www.earlychildhoodireland.ie/work/operating-childcare-service/nutrit ion/the-lowdown-on-sugar/). Example (5) can be reconstructed as follows: Standpoint:It’s not for nothing [it is with good reason] that sugar is being labelled the new tobacco in health circles. Argument: Consuming too many calories in sweet treats and drinks is causing huge (health) problems. Subargument: One-in-five Irish children (aged 5 years) are considered overweight or obese. If “it is not for nothing that X” is found in the first sentence, this proposition may thus be taken to be the standpoint. Case 1b In case 1b, the coordinate clause containing “not for nothing” always introduces the standpoint. This may again be explained by the fact that the “not for nothing” clause functions as an announcement that a reason will next be given (or at least, that this might be expected) for the statement that precedes the “and not for nothing” phrase, as in example (4). Cases 2a and 2b If “not for nothing” appears in the second sentence, there are, as we have seen, two possibilities. If the first utterance can be interpreted as a reason, then the sentence with “it is not for nothing” functions as the standpoint. This is the case in example (6): (6) You see? Accidents can happen all too easily. It’s not for nothing that we tell you to wear a seatbelt! Farlex Dictionary of Idioms (2015).

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Standpoint: It’s not for nothing that we tell you to wear a seatbelt. Argument: Accidents can happen all too easily If, on the other hand, given the context it is likely that the first utterance functions as the standpoint, then the sentence containing “not for nothing” can be seen as a reason in its support. This is the case in example (7), where the context of the example makes clear that the standpoint has to do with the fact that antisemitism is still a real threat to the Jewish community in Britain: (7) Britain’s Jews are a success story. They are comfortable and well-integrated, confident that these days no area is closed off to them: individual Jews have reached the top in the law, politics, business, entertainment and academe. Yet they are not free of anxiety. Internal worries are bound to fill the in-tray of the new chief rabbi. [….] Jews sense danger from without too. Antisemitism remains real and present; not for nothing does every Jewish school in the country have a security guard on the door. (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/15/british-jews-success-story). Standpoint: Antisemitism remains real and present. Argument: Not for nothing does [an indication for this is that] every Jewish school in the country have [has] a security guard on the door.

3 Combinations of “Not for Nothing” with Types of Standpoints and Types of Arguments 3.1 Argument Schemes The cases of argumentation presented with “not for nothing” that have been discussed so far consist of two sentences, one of them containing the expression. Content-wise, in such argumentation it is always the case that the sentence without the expression provides a reason for the sentence of which the expression is part. This is regardless of whether “not for nothing” is part of the standpoint or whether it is part of the argument. The examples given in the introduction serve as an illustration. Both in (1) and (2) the fact that John is an expert is the reason that he has been asked to give advice: (1) John is an expert. It is therefore not for nothing [for this reason2 ] that they have asked him to give advice in this matter

2 We

acknowledge that the combination of “therefore” and “for this reason” in example (1) is a tautology. The tautology is less obvious or may even be absent if “for this reason” is replaced by “not without a reason” or “with good reason”, which are also translations of “not for nothing”. In Sect. 4 we argue that the tautology makes us think that “not for nothing” has a stronger meaning than merely indicating that a reason can be provided..

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(2) John is an expert, since it is not for nothing [for this reason] that they have asked him to give advice in this matter. The two sentences (1) and (2) have a similar content-relation connecting a reason and a consequence of that reason. At the same time they have a different epistemic (i.e. argumentative) relation, because in (1) the reason in the content-relation is expressed in the argument, whereas in (2) it is expressed in the standpoint. As a result, each of these argumentations is based on a different argumentation scheme. When “not for nothing” is part of the standpoint, the content-relation is identical to the epistemic relation. If a standpoint is introduced by means of “not for nothing”, as in (1), the expression indicates that there is a (good) reason for the standpoint being the case. This reason is provided in the argument. In these cases, the argumentation is based on a causal relationship, which is apparent in (1): that John is an expert has motivated other people to ask for his advice. So, in cases where “not for nothing” is part of the standpoint, that which is expressed in the argument can be regarded as having caused that which is expressed in the standpoint, which means that the argument scheme is of the prototypical causal type (i.e. reasoning from cause to effect). Take example (8), where the argument that Amazon practically invented online buying and created a customer-focused online sales empire functions as an explanation for the assertion that it is now one of the largest companies in the world: (8) Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, and not for nothing. It practically invented online buying, along the way creating a customer-focused online sales empire. (https://medium.com/@ejwalters/amazon-llp-1b721ed4baad). This argumentation is based on a line of reasoning saying that innovation and customer-focus can make a company big, which is a causal relation. In cases like (8), the (logical minimum of the) unexpressed premise can be read “[argument] causes [standpoint]”: Standpoint:

Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world, and not for nothing [for good reason]. Argument: It practically invented online buying, along the way creating a customer-focused online sales empire. Unexpressed premise: That Amazon practically invented online buying, along the way creating a customer-focused online sales empire resulted in the fact that it is now one of the largest companies in the world. When it is not the standpoint but the argument that contains the expression “not for nothing”, the epistemic argument-standpoint order is opposite to the content-related cause-effect order. This is due to the fact that the reason for the “not for nothing” sentence is provided in the standpoint. In these cases, the argumentation is of a symptomatic nature: the argument provides a sign/a symptom/an indication of the acceptability of the standpoint. Take example (9), in which the acceptability of the positive assessment of a café in Scotland is supposed to be indicated by the decision of the writer to choose this place for a golden anniversary:

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(9) Excellent food, wonderful ambiance. Not for nothing did we choose it for our golden anniversary. (https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/ShowUserReviews-g4833042-d3528610r358644577-Cafe_Circa_Abernyte-Abernyte_Perth_and_Kinross_Scotland. html). In this example the choice for a certain place to celebrate ones golden anniversary is presented as an indication of this place being perfectly suitable for such an occasion, i.e. having a wonderful ambiance and great food. The unexpressed premise of arguments like (9) can be read as “[argument] indicates [standpoint]”: Standpoint:

The food in this restaurant is excellent and the ambiance is wonderful. Argument: Not for nothing did [an indication for this is that] we choose it for our golden anniversary. Unexpressed premise: That we chose this restaurant for our golden anniversary indicates that it serves excellent food and has a wonderful ambiance. Regardless whether “not for nothing” is expressed in the standpoint or the argument, there is a typical use of this expression in which a typifying name or characterization is connected to something mentioned in the argumentation. Take example (10), where “not for nothing” is part of the standpoint and so is the typifying name, as the standpoint claims that it is not for nothing that Nuno Oliveira named Sl the aspirin for horses: (10) Sl will strengthen the horse’s hindquarters and releases weight from the more fragile front legs, So, it is not for nothing that Nuno Oliveira named Sl the aspirin for horses! (https://www.karoliina-koho.com/blogi/internship-in-academic-art-of-ridingand-straightness-training-with-ylvie-fros). Standpoint:

It is not for nothing [it is with good reason] that Nuno Oliveira named Sl the aspirin for horses. Argument: Sl will strengthen the horse’s hindquarters and releases weight from the more fragile front legs. Unexpressed premise: That Sl strengthens the horse’s hindquarters and releases weight from the more fragile front legs resulted in the fact that Nuno Oliveira named Sl the aspirin for horses. In cases like this a certain name is called an appropriate description of a person, an object, or a certain situation or phenomenon. This name is always provided in the sentence containing “not for nothing”, whereas the typified subject is mentioned in the other sentence being part of the argumentation. This kind of argumentation often goes together with another characteristic, i.e. that the characterization by a name originates from a source other than the speaker, i.e. from some or other authority. In (10) the authority is Nuno Oliveira—a 20th century Portuguese equestrian, horse trainer and dressage instructor, who inspired riders and trainers all over the world.

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In this typical, typifying use of “not for nothing” the expression can also be part of the argument. If that is the case, the typifying name is provided in the argument. An example is (11), where the acceptability of the standpoint that Andy Warhol was a pitiable heap of neuroses is supposed to be apparent from his nickname: (11) (…) what a pitiable heap of neuroses he [Andy Warhol] was. Not for nothing was he called Raggedy Andy. (https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2013/06/28/andy-warhols-gen ius-eccentricities-just-pop/2469423/). Standpoint: Argument:

Andy Warhol was a pitiable heap of neuroses. Not for nothing was [an indication for this is that] he [was] called Raggedy Andy. Unexpressed premise: That Andy Warhol was called Raggedy Andy indicates that he was a pitiable heap of neuroses. Examples (10) and (11) show that also in this typical use of “not for nothing”, the argumentation is causal when the expression is part of the standpoint and symptomatic when it is part of the argument. Our analyses in this section in terms of argument schemes partly confirm Schellens’ claim about the type of argument schemes co-occurring with the use of “not for nothing”, i.e. symptomatic and reverse causal argumentation. Co-occurrence with symptomatic argumentation is confirmed, also in Schellens’ description of this type of argument, in which he claims that in this argumentation the acceptability of the situation in the standpoint is presupposed by the known situation stated in the argument. Indeed, having chosen a certain restaurant for one’s anniversary presupposes that it is a good restaurant, and the name Ragged Andy presupposes that Andy has a neurotic character. The symptomatic argumentation that we identified in those cases could also be regarded as reverse causal argumentation, as will be argued below. Where our findings deviate from Schellens, however, is that our analyses show that the argumentation scheme is of the prototypical causal type when “not for nothing” is part of the standpoint. This deviation may be explained by the fact that Schellens only discusses an example of a case in which “not for nothing” is part of the argument. All our findings are in line with Schellens’ claim that instances of “not for nothing” when used in argumentation produce “argumentation from explanation” (1985: 102). Any example in the corpus that we studied can be read as an explanatory argument in which the reason announced by “not for nothing” functions as an explanation, regardless of whether this reason is stated in the standpoint or in the argument. The fact that John is an expert explains the fact that he has been asked for advice, regardless of whether “not for nothing” is part of the argument or part of the standpoint. It is therefore not surprising at all that the argumentation scheme changes when the reason (explanation) announced by “not for nothing” is part of the argument or part of the standpoint. After all, content-wise both situations convey an opposite direction of reasoning (from argument to standpoint or the other way around). Instead of analyzing cases where the reason is stated in the standpoint as symptomatic argumentation, an

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analysis as reverse causal argumentation would therefore also do in these cases. That a certain restaurant serves excellent food can be regarded as having caused people’s decision to celebrate their anniversary in that place. That Warhol was a neurotic person can be regarded as being the cause of his nickname. That these examples typically concern causality in terms of human motivation complies with Schellens’ comment that “with regard to argumentation from effect to cause the terms ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ are not necessarily limited to strict physical laws” and that “many argumentations based on sign can be characterized as interpretations of human behavior” (ibidem, our translation).

3.2 Types of Standpoints The expression “not for nothing” is always connected with a proposition that is descriptive in nature, i.e. referring to an empirically verifiable situation. The semantic content of such a sentence actually consists of two parts: (1) a descriptive part referring to a state of affairs in reality and (2) a qualification of this content by means of “not for nothing”. What does this mean for the characterization of the type of standpoint? In some examples “not for nothing” seems to provide the sentence with an evaluative flavour, i.e. when it can be translated as “justly” “or rightly”. For instance, the standpoint in example (5) can be understood to mean that sugar is rightly labeled the new tobacco, and in (4) it can be interpreted as saying that the National Health Service is justly greatly loved. On the other hand, however, such an evaluative understanding is not always possible, for instance in example (12), where the standpoint also contains the “not for nothing” expression: (12) It’s not for nothing that Ms. Yates testified as a private citizen. She’d already gone the way of Mr. Comey, dismissed by the Trump administration after 10 thankless days in office. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/12/opinion/canwe-get-back-to-sally-yates-for-a-minute.html. In example (12) it would be odd to say that Ms. Yates justly testified as a private citizen. What is meant in this example is that there is an explanation for her status as a private citizen: she was no longer in service. A translation as “rightly” or “justly” is also not possible in example (8), where the standpoint cannot be taken to mean that Amazon is rightly the largest company in the world. Instead, the only interpretation making sense it that it is understandable that this is the case. In these examples, “it is not for nothing” does not have another meaning than that a convincing explanation can be provided for the descriptive proposition. If “not for nothing” is part of a sentence functioning as an argument, the examples that were discussed so far show that both descriptive and evaluative standpoints are possible. See (11) for an example of a descriptive standpoint and (9) for an example of an evaluative standpoint. Prescriptive standpoints are not possible. Although (13) presents an example of a prescriptive standpoint and an argument containing “not

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for nothing”, a relationship between the standpoint and the “not for nothing” part of the argument is lacking: (13) You really should not work on your free day tomorrow! It is not for nothing that you have reduced your contract to four days a week. In (13) the prescriptive standpoint advising not to work on a free day only has a relation with the purely descriptive part of the argument, i.e. “you have reduced your contract to four days a week”, and not to the “not for nothing” part. After all, the advice not to work on one’s day off could never be the reason for a reduction of a contract. And this is only logical, because a prescriptive statement can never support a descriptive statement. This means that the reason hinted at in the “not for nothing part” is not provided in this little piece of argumentation and has been left implicit. A reason for a reduction of the contract could be, for instance, that the person addressed found that he had too little time for his hobbies or wanted to spend more time with his children. These reasons could function as subarguments supporting the “not for nothing” sentence in the example: Standpoint: Argument:

You really should not work on your free day tomorrow! It is not for nothing that you have reduced your contract to four days a week. Subargument: You wanted to spend more time with your children.

4 Strategic Potential of “Not for Nothing” In this section we will discuss some examples of strategic manoeuvring with “not for nothing”. All examples exploit the litotes meaning of the expression.3 “Not for nothing” contains a double negation and we argue that this marked stylistic design steers to a strong positive interpretation that goes beyond merely pointing out that there is a reason for the sentence containing this expression. Litotes constructions can get different interpretations varying from a meaning that is weaker than a straightforward positive formulation to one that is stronger. According to van der Wouden (1996: 6), a phrase like “It is not nothing” is truthfunctionally equivalent to both “it is something” and “it is everything”. The pragmatic interpretation of such a litotes is vague and, depending on the context, can be anything between “at least something” and “quite a lot”. Similarly, a weak interpretation of “not for nothing” in argumentation would translate to “for a reason” or “for some reason”, while the strong interpretation boils down to “for a very good reason”. While the rhetorical tradition associates litotes with a strong positive interpretation, linguists opt for the weaker interpretation, although they do acknowledge that litotes can occasionally lead to a strong positive interpretation via understatement (ibidem: 5). 3 Van

Poppel (2016) explores the rhetorical function of litotes in general and distinguishes two strategic functions of this figure of style: (1) downplaying one’s commitments, (2) preventing an antagonist from raising criticisms. Based on a different line of reasoning, both of these elements also play a role in the analyses that we present in this section.

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In our opinion “not for nothing” forms one of the occasions where litotes gets a strong positive meaning. This interpretation complies with meanings of “not for nothing” mentioned in the eminent dictionaries (see Sect. 2.1). That a weak interpretation yields a tautology in cases where a standpoint indicator is also present suggests a stronger interpretation as well (cf. note 1).4 The pragmatic, conventional meaning of “not for nothing” seems to be that the reason referred to is an obvious one and also that it is a sufficient justification of the sentence containing the expression. This makes “not for nothing” a strategic presentational device, because the suggestion of a self-evident and sufficient argumentative relationship can function as a means to withhold an antagonist from raising criticism. This strategic use of “not for nothing” may derail into a fallacy when only weak support is provided or if support is absent at all—some cases of which will be discussed below. A first opportunity for strategic manoeuvring offered by the use of “not for nothing” is leaving the standpoint implicit. In these cases, the sentence containing the expression suggests that it supports a certain (sub) standpoint, but readers or hearers have to reconstruct this (sub) standpoint’s content themselves. This provides strategic advantage to the arguer because hearers/readers are responsible for their own interpretation (cf. Zarefsky 2014: 208). Example (14) provides an example of such a manoeuvre: (14) When the Reading Eagle of Berks County (PA) published the July 17, 1952 edition of the newspaper where it was reported that Democrats felt certain President Truman could be swayed to change his mind about stepping aside to allow another to run for the office of President, it was said that Mrs. Truman had two motives for returning to Washington: The first was because she missed her husband when he was away from her, and the second was to be on hand if the call should come asking him to run for President again. The article read in part: As is well known, Mrs. Truman has been irrevocably opposed to another four years in what she considers a cruel kind of imprisonment. And not for nothing does the President refer to her as “the boss.” (https://idiomation.wordpress.com/2013/08/30/not-for-nothing/). In (14) a line of reasoning is suggested of which several elements have been left implicit. It is clear that the sentence containing “not for nothing”—i.e. “And not for nothing does the President refer to her as ‘the boss’”—has an argumentative function; this is clear, after all, from the expression itself. How this sentence relates to the other sentences in an argumentative way should be established by taking the content of the preceding sentences into account. The main standpoint that is defended but left implicit seems to be that it is unlikely that President Truman could be persuaded to serve yet another term. The main argumentation that the text offers for this standpoint is that (a) Mrs. Truman returned to Washington to be present in case her husband was asked to candidate himself for another term and (b) the knowledge that she considered 4 We

note that it is much easier to find actual examples of “not for nothing” combined with a standpoint indicator (“so”, “therefore”) than examples containing an argument indicator (“since”, “as”, “because”); we conclude this from a google search with combinations of these indicators with “not for nothing”.

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the White House as a cruel kind of imprisonment, meaning that she was against a positive response to such a request and would try to prevent her husband from giving a positive response to the request. The sentence containing “not for nothing” seems to be somehow related to this argumentation, but can only be connected through an intermediate step that was left implicit in the text, saying that in the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Truman it is she who takes all decisions. This intermediate step is an implicit sub-standpoint (1.1c) in this line of argumentation:5 (1) (It is unlikely that Truman could be persuaded to serve as President for another term) 1.1a

Mrs. Truman returned to Washington to be present in case her husband was asked to candidate himself for another term 1.1b She was against a positive response to such a request 1.1c (In this marriage it is Mrs. Truman who takes all decisions) 1.1c.1 Not for nothing does [an indication for this is that] Truman refer[s] to her as “the boss”. The strategic effect of this manoeuvre—of leaving the (sub) standpoint implicit— is that the arguer transfers responsibility for and commitment to the implicit (sub) standpoint to the addressees, because they have to reconstruct this content themselves. As a result, addressees may be more convinced, since they will reconstruct implicit elements in a way that makes the argumentation most convincing for them. Moreover, in this case the typical use of “not for nothing” by which a characteristic name is applied to something (see Sect. 3.1) even allows the arguer to deny commitment to the (sub) standpoint, were its content attacked. That is, in these typical cases in which a typifying name is related to another element expressed in the argumentation, it is never the arguer himself who applies the name. In these cases, the arguer always refers to or suggests another responsible source: either a specific person (like Truman in 14) or unspecified agents in a passive construction (as in 5 and 10). Were the arguer attacked for the inappropriateness or unfittingness of the name, he could always respond by saying that it is someone else who made up the name. The above comments do not necessarily imply that the strategic use of “not for nothing” is fallacious. If the context provides enough clues for the reconstruction of the implicit element, as in example (14), and if the implicit element is acceptable to the addressee, then there is just sound manoeuvring. The strategic function lies in the fact that it is questionable whether an addressee really takes the effort of reconstructing an implicit element or just assumes that sufficient argumentation is provided because of the presence of “not for nothing”. A fallacy arises when the context does not offer clues for the reconstruction and addressees are thus (verbally) hindered in their critical efforts, or when the reconstructed element is not part of generally shared starting points. A second opportunity for manoeuvring is leaving the argument implicit. In such cases, there is a (sub) standpoint that is presented with “not for nothing” while there 5 See

for the pragma-dialectical notation of complex argumentation van Eemeren and Snoeck Henkemans (2016).

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is no argument supporting it. Just like cases with an implicit standpoint, cases with an implicit argument invite an addressee to reconstruct the implicit element him/herself. Again, this is strategic because it makes addressees themselves responsible for the content of the reconstructed element. An example of such a manoeuvre can be found in (15): (15) “This guy’s a liar,” Donald Trump said at a recent G.O.P. debate, pointing at Cruz. Trump thinks a lot of people are liars, especially politicians (Jeb Bush: “Lying on campaign trail!”) and reporters (“Too bad dopey @megynkelly lies!”). Not for nothing has he been called the Human Lie Detector. And not for nothing has he been called a big, fat Pinocchio with his pants on fire by the fact-checking teams at the Times, the Washington Post, and Politifact, whose careful reports apparently have little influence on the electorate, because, as a writer for Politico admitted, “Nobody but political fanatics pays much mind to them”. (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/03/21/the-internet-of-us-andthe-end-of-facts). In (15) the expression “not for nothing” occurs twice. Both sentences seem to function as standpoints. The first standpoint—“Not for nothing has Trump been called a Human Lie Detector”—is supported by the preceding sentences, i.e. the observation that Trump thinks that a lot of people are liars and the presentation of three examples in which he calls someone a liar. The information presented in these sentences functions as an explanation of Trump being called a liar. The second standpoint is “Not for nothing have the fact-checking teams at the Times, the Washington Post, and Politifact called Trump a big fat Pinocchio with his pants on fire”. The argumentation can be reconstructed as follows: 1. Not for nothing has [it is with good reason that] Trump [has] been called a Human Lie Detector 1.1 He thinks that a lot of people are liars, especially politicians and reporters 2. Not for nothing have [it is with good reason that] the fact-checking teams at the Times, the Washington Post, and Politifact [have] called Trump a big fat Pinocchio with his pants on fire (2.1) (He often lies/He is a big liar). The expression “not for nothing” indicates that there is a reason for standpoint 2. This reason must be something like the reconstructed support in (2.1), i.e. that Trump lies regularly, but such a reason cannot be found in the text. That a reason is absent, is disguised by the fact that standpoint (2) is part of a sentence that also contains information that does not belong to the standpoint (saying that the message that Trump is a liar does not reach a lot of people). A superficial reader could be misled by this other information and take it as support for the standpoint. Another reason to be misled and thus for not seeing the lack of support is the fact that the second

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standpoint contains a repetition of “not for nothing”. The repetition may suggest that the support provided for the first standpoint also holds for the second one.6 Whether this is a case of derailed strategic manoeuvring depends, again, on the difficulties an addressee has in reconstructing the implicit argument and whether this argument relies on a generally accepted starting point. In this case, it seems obvious that an argument is implied saying that Trump is a liar. However, it is not very likely that any antagonist will just accept this argument. In order to be more convincing, examples should have been provided of lies committed by Trump in the past. Because of this omission, this case could be considered as an instantiation of derailed manoeuvring constituting the fallacy of evading the burden of proof. This judgement is based on the consideration that the argumentation is presented as sufficiently supported (by means of “not for nothing”) while it is not. Apart from the “blunt” absence of argumentative support in (15), it can also be the case that an argument has been put forward indeed, but that this argument does not support the “not for nothing” part of the standpoint. An example is (16): (16) Not for nothing do many film people love the game [tennis]. “Confession: Before I loved movies, I loved tennis,” TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey said from the podium of the elegant Roy Thomson Hall before the “Borg/McEnroe” screening. He then showed off a pair of vintage white tennis shoes to go with his sleek dark tux. (http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-toronto-film-fes tival-tennis-movies-20170911-story.html). 1. Not for nothing do [it is with good reason that] many film people love the game [tennis] 1.1 TIFF artistic director Cameron Bailey said: “Confession: Before I loved movies, I loved tennis”. Artistic director Bailey’s “confession” only supports the assertion that there are many film people who love tennis. But the argument does not give a reason why film people love tennis, although the use of “not for nothing” does require such an explanation. The argument does therefore only partly support the standpoint, i.e. only the part without “not for nothing”. This is strategic because the expression “not for nothing” creates the expectation that a sufficient reason will be provided in the argument. A superficial reader may overlook the fact that the argument does not fully support the standpoint—a fact that is disguised by the combination of “not for nothing” and the fact that an argument is present indeed. We regard this as a case of derailed strategic manoeuvring in the form of irrelevant argumentation (or ignoratio elenchi). Apart from that, this specific example also contains an instance of the fallacy of hasty

6 One

could also argue that the fact that taken together these standpoints bring to light an inconsistency in Trump’s behaviour can make a reader even more negative about Trump: this person accuses other people of things he does himself. Hence one might even reconstruct an implicit main standpoint “Trump does not practice what he preaches”, which is supported by both of the formerly identified standpoints.

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generalization, because one example cannot justify the generalized statement that many film people love tennis.

5 Conclusion In this chapter we discussed the use of the expression “not for nothing” in an argumentative context. This expression can be used in a sentence functioning as a standpoint and in a sentence functioning as an argument. In both cases “not for nothing” indicates that there is a (very good) reason justifying the descriptive proposition that is combined with this expression. If “not for nothing” is part of the standpoint, this reason should be expressed in the argument, and the argumentation is causal in nature, i.e. reasoning from a cause in the argument to an effect expressed in the standpoint. If “not for nothing” is part of the argument, the reason should be expressed in the standpoint, which means that the argumentation is based on a reverse causal argumentation scheme or on a symptomatic one. The strategic potential of “not for nothing” particularly relates to the fact that it can be part of an argument but also of a standpoint, and that, as a result, the reason that this expression announces, can accordingly be found in either the standpoint or in the argument. On the one hand, the stylistic phrasing as a litotes with a double negation has the effect of suggesting that a very good, i.e. sufficient, reason is present. On the other hand, it may very well be the case that such a reason has been left implicit. This may result in cases containing an implicit (sub) standpoint or cases with an implicit (sub) argument. This is particularly strategic in a context where other argumentative moves are present, thus potentially misleading addressees who do not carefully check whether these other moves do indeed provide the announced reason. But even if addressees do reconstruct the reason themselves, this is strategic because they thus take the responsibility for the reconstructed standpoint or argument. The manoeuvring would derail into a fallacy under two conditions: (1) if addressees are verbally hindered in their efforts to reconstruct the implicit element, i.e. if the context does not offer clues for its reconstruction, and (2) if the implicit element does not belong to generally shared starting points.

References Boogaart, R. J. U. (2013). Strategische manoeuvres met sterke drank: Redelijk effectief? [Strategic manoeuvres with hard liquor: Reasonably effective?] In A. J. M. Janssen & T. van Strien (Eds.) Neerlandistiek in beeld (pp. 283–292). Amsterdam/Münster: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU/Nodus Publikationen. Collins Online English Dictionary. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english English Oxford Dictionaries. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. (2015). Huntingdon Valley, PA: Farlex. Idiomation (n.d.) https://idiomation.wordpress.com.

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Jansen, H. (2009). Legal arguments about plausible facts and their strategic presentation. In Ritola J. (Ed.), Argument cultures. Proceedings of the 8th OSSA Conference, June 2009 (pp. CD). Windsor, Canada: University of Windsor. Jansen, H. (2011). “If that were true, I would never have …” The counterfactual presentation of arguments that appeal to human behaviour. In F. H. van Eemeren, B. J. Garssen, D. Godden & G. Mitchell (Eds.), Proceedings of the 7th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (pp. 881–889 CD). Amsterdam: Sic Sat. Jansen, H., Dingemanse, M., & Persoon, I. (2011). Limits and effects of reductio ad absurdum argumentation. In H. Jansen, T. van Haaften, J. C. de Jong & W. Koetsenruijter (Eds.), Bending opinion. Essays on persuasion in the public domain (pp. 143–158). Leiden: Leiden University Press. Jansen, H. (2016). The strategic formulation of abductive arguments in everyday reasoning. In P. Bondy & L. Benacquista (Eds.), Argumentation, Objectivity, and Bias: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA), 18–21 May 2016 (pp. 1–10). Windsor, ON: OSSA. Jansen, H. (2017). “You think that says a lot, but really it says nothing”: An argumentative and linguistic account of an idiomatic expression functioning as a presentational device. Argumentation, 31, 615–640. Macmillan English Dictionary for advanced learners (2002). London: Macmillan Elt. Schellens, P. J. (1985). Redelijke argumenten: Een onderzoek naar normen voor kritische lezers. [Reasonable arguments: An inquiry to norms for critical readers] (Dissertation Utrecht University). Dordrecht: Foris. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2001). Argumentation, explanation and causality: An exploration of current linguistic approaches to textual relations. In T. Sanders, J. Schilperoord, & W. Spooren (Eds.), Text representation: Linguistic and psycholinguistic aspects. John Benjamins: Amsterdam/Philadelphia. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2005). What’s in a name? The use of the stylistic device metonymy as a strategic manoeuvre in the confrontation and argumentation stages of a discussion. In D. Hitchcock (Ed.), The uses of argument. Proceedings of a Conference at McMaster University: 18–21 May 2005 (pp. 433–441). Hamilton: Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2007). Manoeuvring strategically with rhetorical questions. In F. H. van Eemeren, J. A. Blair, C. A. Willard & B. Garssen (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (pp. 1309–1315). Amsterdam: Sic Sat. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2009). Manoeuvring strategically with ‘praeteritio’. Argumentation, 23, 339–350. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2011). The contribution of praeteritio to arguers’ strategic maneuvering in the argumentation stage of a discussion. In T. van Haaften, H. Jansen, J. C. de Jong & W. Koetsenruijter (Eds.), Bending opinion. Essays on persuasion in the public domain (pp. 133–143). Leiden: Leiden University Press. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2013). The use of hyperbole in the argumentation stage. In D. Mohammed & M. Lewi´nski (Eds.), Virtues of Argumentation. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA), 22–26 May 2013 (pp. 1–9). Windsor, ON: OSSA. Snoeck Henkemans, A. F., & Plug, H. J. (2008). Apologies for metaphors as a strategic manoeuvre in political debates. In L. Dam, L. Holmgreen & J. Strunck (Eds.), Rhetorical aspects of discourses in present-day society (pp. 102–117). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press. The Free Dictionary. https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com. Tonnard, Y. (2011). Getting an issue on the table: A pragma-dialectical study of presentational choices in confrontational strategic maneuvering in Dutch parliamentary debate. Dissertation University of Amsterdam. Alblasserdam: Haveka Tseronis, A. (2009). Qualifying standpoints. Stance adverbs as a presentational device for managing the burden of proof . Dissertation Leiden University. Utrecht: LOT. Urban Dictionary (n.d.). https://www.urbandictionary.com.

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van der Wouden, T. (1996). Litotes and downward monotonicity. In H. Wansing (Ed.), Negation: A topic in focus. Berlin: Mouton/De Gruyter. van Eemeren, F. H. (2010). Strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse (Argumentation in Context 2). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (1999a). Strategic manoeuvring in argumentative discourse. Discourse Studies, 1, 479–497. van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (1999b). Over zekere waarden: Een analyse van twee objectief waarderende standpunten. [On certain values: An analysis of two objectively evaluative standpoints]. Taalbeheersing, 21, 179–186. van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (1999c). William the silent’s argumentative discourse. In F. H. van Eemeren, R. Grootendorst, J. A. Blair & C. A. Willard (Eds.), Proceedings of the 4th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (pp. 168–171). Amsterdam: Sic Sat. van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (2000a). Rhetorical analysis within a pragma-dialectical framework: The case of R. J Reynolds. Argumentation, 14, 293–305. van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (2000b). De retorische functie van stijlfiguren in een dialectisch proces: Strategisch gebruikte metaforen in Edward Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick speech. [The rhetorical function of figures of speech in a dialectical process: Strategically used metaphors in Edward Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick speech.] In R. Neutelings, N. Ummelen & A. Maes (Eds.), Over de grenzen van de taalbeheersing (pp. 151–162). Den Haag: SDU Uitgevers. van Eemeren, F. H., & Houtlosser, P. (2002). Strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse: A delicate balance. In F. H. van Eemeren & P. Houtlosser (Eds.), Dialectic and rhetoric: The warp and woof of argumentation analysis (pp. 131–159). Dordrecht etc.: Kluwer. van Eemeren, F. H., & Snoeck Henkemans, A. F. (2016). Argumentation: Analysis, evaluation, presentation (2nd ed.). New York, London: Routledge. van Haaften, T. (2019) Argumentative strategies and stylistic devices. Informal Logic, 39(4), 301– 328. van Haaften, T., & Van Leeuwen, M. (2018). Strategic maneuvering with presentational devices: A systematic approach. In S. Oswald & D. Maillat (Eds.), Argumentation and inference: Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Argumentation, Fribourg 2017 (Vol. II, pp. 873–886). (Studies in Logic 76.) London: College Publications. van Poppel, L. (2016). Strategisch manoeuvreren met litotes. [Strategic manoeuvring with litotes] In D. Van De Mieroop, L., Buysse, R., Coesemans & Gillaerts, P. (Eds.). De macht van de taal: Taalbeheersingsonderzoek in Nederland en Vlaanderen (pp. 219–232). Leuven: Acco. Zarefsky, D. (2006). Strategic maneuvering through persuasive definitions: Implications for dialectic and rhetoric. Argumentation, 20, 399–416. Zarefsky, D. (2014). Rhetorical perspectives on argumentation. Selected essays by David Zarefsky (Argumentation Library) Vol. 24. Dordrecht: Springer.

Henrike Jansen obtained her Ph.D. with a dissertation on legal argumentation from a pragmadialectical perspective. She is an Associate Professor at Leiden University (the Netherlands), editor of the Dutch journal Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing, and member of the Steering Committee of the European Conference on Argumentation (ECA). In her research she approaches the study of argumentation from a linguistic angle. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans was an Associate Professor in the Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric at the University of Amsterdam until September 2019. Snoeck Henkemans is a specialist in the study of linguistic characteristics of argumentation. In 2007 she published a monograph on argumentative indicators in discourse, together with Frans van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser. Her recent research focuses on the role of stylistic devices in arguers’ strategic manoeuvrings and on the study of argumentation in the medical domain.

Everybody Knows that There Is Something Odd About Ad Populum Arguments Thierry Herman and Steve Oswald

Abstract In the wake of research on linguistic resources of argumentation (Doury, 2018; van Eemeren Houtlosser, & Snoeck Henkemans, 2007), this chapter considers the argumentative nature and rhetorical potential of the expression “everyone/everybody knows P”, which is likely to be used to fulfil a justificatory purpose in appeals to majority in the form of ad populum arguments (Godden, 2008). In this contribution, we draw on a rhetoric-pragmatic framework (Oswald & Herman, 2016) to identify the linguistic and cognitive underpinnings of argumentative resources in order to account for a range of persuasive effects in argumentation. There is something argumentatively odd about the expression “everybody knows that P” under consideration here. Since the epistemic modality encoded by the verb “to know” and the universal quantifier highlight that P is already known and shared, one could indeed wonder about the relevance of P as an argument: can an argument with little (if no) informative relevance serve a justificatory purpose? Since this seems to be the case, as the argument is widely used, we will show that the oddity can be explained away by looking at the pragmatic and rhetorical import of the expression. Keywords Ad populum · Pragmatics · Argumentation · Rhetoric · Majority appeal · Fallacy

T. Herman Institute of Communication and Cognitive Science, University of Neuchâtel, Rue Pierre-à-Mazel 7, Neuchâtel 2000, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] Faculté Des Lettres, University of Lausanne, Bâtiment Anthropole, Lausanne 1015, Switzerland S. Oswald (B) Department of English, University of Fribourg, Av. de L’Europe 20, Fribourg 1700, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 R. Boogaart et al. (eds.), The Language of Argumentation, Argumentation Library 36, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52907-9_16

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1 Introduction In his (2008) paper on common knowledge arguments, David Godden discusses the traditional distinction between non-fallacious appeals to shared knowledge and fallacious ad populum appeals. He observes that the grounds of the distinction are rather shaky, so much so that according to him “appeals to common knowledge are no different than appeals to popular opinion” (Godden, 2008: 123). He is even led to conclude that “appeals to common knowledge provide no better evidence for a claim than appeals to popular opinion and, as such, that appeals to common knowledge ought to be just as successful—or unsuccessful—as appeals ad populum” (2008: 102). Interestingly, Godden targets common knowledge arguments of the form “everybody knows P”. Without questioning his analysis, in our contribution we wish to consider the complex pragmatic import of this very expression, thereby exploring a largely understudied perspective on the argumentative and rhetorical implications of this particular argumentative resource. Specifically, we will show that linguistic pragmatic considerations on the meaning potential of this expression are necessary to assess its complex usage in argumentative settings. While the “ad populum appeal” is certainly amongst the most well-known argumentative schemes and/or fallacies, we agree with Jansen that “it has not yet received a great amount of attention in the literature” (Jansen, 2018: 425). It is telling in this respect that even though there is some debate on the fallaciousness of this scheme (Godden, 2008; Jansen, 2018), there is wide agreement around Walton’s rendition of the scheme’s structure: “everybody (in a particular reference group G) accepts A. Therefore, A is true (or you should accept A)” (see Jansen & van Leeuwen, 2019 for a synthesis; Walton, 1999: 200). This consensus may perhaps explain why informal logicians, who mainly regard this argument as normatively problematic, if not outright fallacious, have not paid extensive attention to it and why, as Jansen and van Leeuwen observe, “there has been hardly any research, however, addressing the question of how ad populum arguments do occur in actual discourses” (Jansen & van Leeuwen, 2019: 573–574). More recently, however, scholars coming from linguistics (such as Jansen, van Leeuwen and ourselves), who ground their analyses in actual examples of language in context, find that ad populum appeals are far more complex than the classical argument scheme approach might suggest. Our inquiry into argumentative discourse draws on a rhetoric-pragmatic framework. That is, we seek to explain how the use of linguistic devices may trigger persuasive effects in argumentative contexts, by formulating our explanations within a post-Gricean framework that was developed to account for the interpretative cognitive processes at play in communication (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). This framework is not a normative framework in the argumentative sense, since it is not meant to help us judge a priori the fallaciousness of a scheme; it is neither a merely descriptive framework, as it does not assist us in drawing a typology of different linguistic forms of the ad populum scheme. It is predominantly an explanatory framework, which we use to account for the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of discursive moves, stylistic designs or, in the present case, argumentative schemes. In terms of methodology,

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therefore, our research questions have to do with explaining rhetorical effectiveness—and, crucially, not fallaciousness. For this, we (i) observe the specific interpretative procedures triggered by different pragmatic phenomena in their context of occurrence and (ii) attempt to account for their rhetorical impact by formulating explanatory hypotheses (which are in turn available for experimental testing). While this analysis is not designed to determine whether a given argument is fallacious or not, it may however reveal a posteriori whether the move is to be considered as contextually misleading, fallacious or deceptive. This paper reports on the theoretical underpinnings of our approach,1 which consists in offering explanatory insights about the different ways in which “everybody knows P” may be an effective rhetorical move, with the help of naturally occurring examples used for illustrative purposes. We will accordingly show that different usages of “everybody knows P” trigger clear differences in meaning that should be relevant to argumentation scholarship on common knowledge arguments—also known as majority arguments. In particular, this preliminary investigation yielded two crucial observations. The first relates to an issue of reference. We will show that it is necessary to address the issue of whether the universal quantifier “everybody” is actually used to denote everybody—i.e., the totality of people. We will defend that this is not usually the case in public discourse (media and political discourse) and assess the rhetorical implications of this feature, while remaining prudent about the possibility of a universal usage in more private contexts. The second observation is that different types of propositional contents are likely to fill the variable P, in the expression “everybody knows P”. In principle, the verb “to know” introduces issues related to knowledge and should, ipso facto, only scope over facts/states of affairs. Therefore, in “everybody knows (fact) P”, we should infer that the corresponding state of affairs is already known and that the expression is there only to remind us of it, at the time of utterance. Nevertheless, we will see many examples in which the expression is used to introduce a personal opinion, which, by definition, cannot be a piece of widespread knowledge, as in the following example: (1) “[…] Everybody knows that the fall is the best freaking season of the year.”2

Jansen discusses a similar idea when she distinguishes descriptive from prescriptive standpoints to conclude that “ad populum arguments supporting a descriptive standpoint are always fallacious”, while adding that “this judgement does not hold for a prescriptive standpoint” (Jansen 2018: 435). While example (1) does not defend a prescriptive standpoint but an evaluative one, both would count as opinions from 1 The

exploratory nature of this contribution, which aims to illustrate how a rhetoric-pragmatic framework may be instrumental to mapping and accounting for existing usages of the expression “everybody knows P”, explains that we set out to collect different argumentative usages instead of constituting a large and systematically organized corpus around this particular expression. In other words, in this phase we are not aiming for a quantitative analysis, but for a qualitative illustration of usages in different communicative situations or genres. This in turn establishes a preliminary frame for further empirical and experimental investigations. To this end, we thus collected 28 examples from Internet websites, Twitter accounts and online newspapers. 2 https://thestir.cafemom.com/being_a_mom/215294/thoughts-every-mom-about-fall.

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our point of view. Hence, it is particularly relevant to recall Jansen’s conclusions on the difference between appeals in our investigation. From this possibility, and against this background, a simple question emerges: does the use of the expression “everybody knows P” generate different rhetorical and argumentative effects depending on whether P represents an opinion or a state of affairs? Answering this question would require us to be able to assess whether the speaker who asserts “everybody knows fact P” sincerely considers that the fact is known—and thus only reminds her audience of it through the expression—or knows that the fact is actually not well-known or even unknown.3 A similar requirement would hold for an assessment of the expression in cases where P denotes an opinion: does the speaker put forward any grounds, like a doxa, or can we legitimately consider that she knows that P is likely to be controversial? The problem with these questions is that we obviously do not have access to a speaker’s private mental states. However, we do have access to the utterance as well as to the contextual assumptions needed to interpret it and the immediately adjacent co-text. If we go back to example (1), for instance, we see that its co-text clears any doubt we might entertain about the presence of disagreement, and therefore about the nature of P. What the complete example, reproduced in (2) below, indeed shows, is that processes of intensification such as calling people who mourn the summer “suckers” or qualifying fall as a “the best freaking season” visibly indicate the speaker’s awareness that P is controversial: (2) “Now, I know some people will mourn the loss of long summer days with bright sunshine tanning their shoulders. These people are suckers, because everybody knows that fall is the best freaking season of the year.”4

This small observation shows that the scope of quantification and the nature of P are definitely relevant dimensions to be addressed by any account of majority arguments, and that furthering our knowledge of this particular linguistic resource of argumentation requires a deeper examination of its pragmatic specificities. Through the examination of some important pragmatic features of (and constraints bearing on) the use of the expression “everybody knows P”, we will thus illustrate the usefulness and relevance of considerations on meaning construction and interpretation for the study of argumentation. Our paper will be articulated around a discussion of the two abovementioned features, namely the denotational scope of the quantifier on one hand and the nature of P on the other. Section 2 will discuss processes of pragmatic enrichment, reference assignment and denotational scope in terms of their rhetorical impact on the use of the expression “everybody knows P”. Section 3 will in turn discuss central issues regarding the propositional content P that the expression features, and show that depending on its nature, different rhetorical effects can be generated. In our conclusion (Sect. 4), we take stock of our findings and insist on the 3 In this paper we take the terms “speaker” and “writer” to be interchangeable in the sense that both

are responsible for a (respectively spoken and written) utterance, that is, an act of enunciation. We therefore ask the reader for some indulgence when we refer to authors of written statements as speakers throughout the paper. 4 https://thestir.cafemom.com/being_a_mom/215294/thoughts-every-mom-about-fall.

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usefulness of linguistic pragmatics in the study of argumentation, as an entry point into the rhetorical impact of linguistic choices.

2 Issues of Reference Assignment and Denotational Scope In this section, we discuss issues of reference assignment and quantification scope regarding the interpretation of the expression “everyone/everybody knows P”. These considerations lay the grounds for an assessment of its strategic and rhetorical usages, building on the idea that since it rarely denotes what it literally refers to, it must be used for alternative purposes—and presumably rhetorical ones.

2.1 Is “Everybody” Really Everybody? Pragmatic Enrichment in Processes of Reference Assignment The expression “everybody knows P” is somewhat odd, as, in most cases, it precisely does not denote everybody. Let us illustrate this with a fact that can be taken to correspond to a universal piece of knowledge: (3) Everybody knows that the Earth is round.

The universal quantifier “everybody”, barring any particular context, cannot possibly denote the entire set of people living on the planet, if only because the proposition “the Earth is round” is in fact doubted by some, among which, most famously, members of the Flat Earth society, and some four-year-olds.5 However, few people would object to the acceptability of (3) on these grounds. It appears, therefore, that the expression “everybody knows P” is a form of rhetorical amplification or intensification. With this in mind, and in order to describe its rhetorical role(s), we nevertheless need to consider whether the expression always bears this intensifying feature. It turns out that there are particular contexts of use in which the piece of knowledge denoted by P is indeed known by everybody (more specifically, by all the members of the set of people denoted by “everybody”). These are thus contexts in which no intensification is taking place. Take the following (forged) example: (4) As everybody knows, I have resigned last week. I want to stress here how lucky I consider myself to have been able to count on all of you in these last years.

Uttered by an employee in a staff meeting, it is unlikely that (4) serves any intensifying purpose, since only her colleagues, close friends and family can reasonably be expected to know she has resigned. In fact, this non-intensifying reading is rendered possible through a mechanism of pragmatic enrichment (Carston 2002, 5 https://theflatearthsociety.org/home/.

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2010), whereby the extension of the referring expression is specified and narrowed down to a limited set of individuals following considerations of relevance. In the case of (4), this set would presumably consist of all of those who are being addressed by the speaker during the meeting. Because the scope of the quantifier in the expression is narrowed down to such a “countable” extent, it appears that no intensification can take place through the use of the quantifier in this context: “everybody”, in this case, means “everybody who is listening to this utterance as it is being produced”. What this brief analysis shows is that the interpretative relevance of the utterance is crucially not to be found in the exact number of people denoted. The role that the expression “everybody knows P” can instead be taken to fulfil is the depiction of a reality that is shared by the set of employees who are being addressed on this occasion. In that sense, this short analysis of the pragmatic features of the expression reveals that it serves to reactivate and bring to the fore a piece of knowledge that is already shared. Now, if what is left in the expressive potential of the expression “everybody knows P” is reduced to the reactivation of previously shared knowledge, one could then ask why a speaker would take the trouble of phrasing it with the universal quantifier. In particular, one could wonder how (4) would be any different from (5): (5) As you know, I have resigned last week. I want to stress here how lucky I consider myself to have been able to count on all of you in these last years.

Even if (5) also functions as a way of reactivating a piece of already shared knowledge, the expression “as you know” is still relatively ambiguous in terms of its denotation. While it can of course denote the totality of people present, it does not exclude the possibility that a very small minority still ignores that the speaker has resigned, even though this unknowing minority might be quick to pragmatically accommodate the new piece of information at the time of utterance. By contrast, in “everybody knows P”, the possible existence of a minority who was unaware of the speaker’s resignation seems to be excluded from the denotation, since “everybody”, by definition, selects, well, every member of the set denoted. In other words, we can consider that “everybody knows P” makes the fact that P could not be ignored salient—and in that sense, it alludes to the possibility that P was previously discussed or even the object of debate. With this expression, the speaker may thus signal that she has delivered a piece of prominent information, and this is where the rhetorical potential linked to the denotation of the expression may very well be taken to lie. Now, since our investigation targets mostly public discourse, one could think that (4) is irrelevant to our purposes. Yet, we argue that the meaning potential just described (i.e., reactivation of already shared knowledge and presentation of said knowledge as prominent) could be preserved independently of the context of utterance. More to the point, we contend that it could very well compete with the role played by the inherent intensification of the expression in public contexts. This is perhaps even the core of a rhetorical strategy through which a speaker only pretends to recall an unanimously shared piece of knowledge when in fact she is distorting reality and going for an ad populum argument.

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2.2 Rhetorical Advantages: Intensification Issues Switching back to open contexts in which interpretative processes of pragmatic enrichment do not allow to clearly single out a well-defined set of denoted referents, it seems quite clear that the rhetorical advantages of the expression “everybody knows P” in those contexts have to do with the rather obvious fact that it is a form of exaggeration of reality. If we now focus more deeply on the possible denotations of the expression, we need to distinguish three possibilities. The first is that the expression is used to denote occurrences in which “everybody”, ceteris paribus, is very likely to represent a large majority of (if not all the) people in a given context. In such cases, this constraint on meaning would strategically amount to a form of excusable hyperbole. This is the case in (6), for instance, where the speaker’s epistemic stance on the fact that the piece of knowledge she provides is widely shared approximates certainty. This is signalled by the use of a proverbial form, typically reserved to convey shared doxas: (6) When you’re at war, speaking to the enemy is strictly verboten because, as everybody knows, loose lips sink ships.6

The second denotational option is that “everybody” refers to a minority of people. In that case, the rhetorical gap is far too big to bridge to hope to be persuasive—and in that case, we need to question the rhetorical effect of an all-encompassing expression which patently fails to accurately represent reality. In example (7) below, concerning the Mueller investigation on the relationship between then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia in the 2016 election, it seems that this gap is particularly important: (7) “I [Donald Trump] think that the probe is a disaster for our country,” Trump told reporters in Helsinki on Monday. “There was no collusion at all. Everybody knows it.”7

If indeed everybody knew that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia, Mueller’s investigation would not only be pointless, but it would also not be, tout court. Moreover, not only does the majority of people ignore whether there was any collusion or not, but we can even imagine that no one, except perhaps the people concerned by the alleged facts, truly knows whether there was any collusion or not, since the investigation was still ongoing and had not reached any conclusions at the time of utterance. The fact that it is obviously and demonstrably unlikely that everybody knows that there was no collusion seems to be highly problematic if we want to consider that the appeal to common knowledge is to serve here, and in similar contexts, any kind of justificatory purpose regarding P. The third possible denotational option concerns cases where the addressee cannot be sure whether P is true or false: 6 https://gvwire.com/2018/07/19/say-it-aint-so-devin-has-congress-turned-you-into-a-fat-cat/.

Note that our interpretation would be different in a different context. The proverbial form, in this American example, comes from a well-known American propaganda slogan during World War II. The speaker makes it clear that this cultural background should in any case be shared by the whole community. 7 https://www.vox.com/2018/7/16/17576624/trump-putin-meeting-russia-witch-hunt.

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(8) “Everybody knows that Russia meddled in our elections”.8

Let us imagine that we are in a position to suspect that P is true in (8). This brings us close to example (7), with the difference that in this case the events described in (8) are already present in the public sphere, because they have been relayed by several sources who appear to be in a position to know.9 Let us further imagine that we have only heard about these allegations, but that we had neither the time nor the willingness to examine them in detail; instead, we only know that a non-negligible amount of people, or even a majority, stands for (8). We venture that in this case, the hyperbolic nature of “everybody knows P” is still active, but that it will additionally fulfil an ad populum role in case our lack of investment in the personal investigation of the issue pushed us to trust what many people—people who are likely to be well informed—are said to know. A side-effect of this scheme is that it allows the speaker to evade the burden of proof.10 Indeed, if the vast majority, if not “everybody”, thinks that P is the case, it becomes irrelevant to provide evidence for P. There is thus an “obviousness” effect, which might be considered as fallacious, but which could serve as a reasonable strategy we could adopt to admit facts that we cannot validate ourselves for lack of time or competence. From this cursory discussion of the processes of pragmatic enrichment behind the use of the expression “everybody knows P”, it appears that its rhetorical potential strongly depends on what we take the expression to denote (see Sect. 2) and on whether we take its intensifying nature to be relevant or not. Summing up, we have argued that: (i)

in usages in which the scope of denotation is clearly identifiable, the rhetorical advantage of the expression “everybody knows P” is to make P a piece of prominent information

(ii) in usages where the denotational scope is unclear or uncertain, it serves to intensify P (iii) it might appear to be argumentatively weak—in terms of its justificatory power—when it is clear that a small minority, and crucially not everybody, despite what the speaker says, holds P to be true (but see our reinterpretation of the rhetorical advantages of example (7) in Sect. 3.2 below).

Accordingly, we have illustrated how properly pragmatic processes of meaning interpretation –specifically, here, those involved in reference assignment—are intimately linked with the rhetorical and argumentative potential of this expression. The results of this analysis testify to the usefulness of considering linguistic issues in the 8 https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/08/politics/haley-on-putin-and-trump-meeting/index.html. 9 The Joint Statement of the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National

Intelligence on Election Security, which represents 17 intelligence services, stated the following on October 7, 2016: “The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.” Available at: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joint-statementdepartment-homeland-security-and-office-director-national. 10 We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out and for allowing us to clarify that establishing the truth of the conclusion of the ad populum argument might not always be its rhetorical purpose, even if it structurally does so.

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identification of the rhetorical potential of argumentative moves. In what follows, we pursue this line of inquiry to support the idea that processes of denotation are not the only component of meaning that may influence such potential, as the epistemological and evidential nature of the proposition said to be commonly shared is also likely to contribute to rhetorical effectiveness.

3 What Is It, After All, that Everybody Knows? In this section we reflect on the nature of P in the expression “everybody knows P”. From an epistemological point of view, the possibility of expressing that everybody knows a state of affairs seems quite straightforward. Here we want to consider, further, whether it is possible for P to express an opinion, and, if so, whether this can have rhetorical impact. From an evidential perspective, we then wonder whether it is rhetorically significant to present P as a known fact or to attempt to present it as a known fact when it is actually unknown. And finally, from the perspective of disagreement, we investigate whether differences in terms of whether P is presented as an accepted or controversial opinion are rhetorically significant.

3.1 Is P a Fact or an Opinion? The study of reasoning and argumentation, in our view, needs to take into account the epistemological nature of the information that is justified, as justifying an opinion is not the same as justifying a fact—which is incidentally part and parcel of any discussion meant to distinguish argument from explanation (Herman, 2015). However, things are not entirely straightforward when it comes to the expression “everybody knows P”. There can indeed be a measure of confusion, owing to the ambiguity of the verb to believe, which can mean to admit an opinion as well as to believe in the existence of a fact/state of affairs. This is typically not an observation that has been made in the literature on arguments appealing to common knowledge. Godden, for instance, in relaying a widespread distinction between appeals to shared knowledge and appeals to popular opinion, does not make any such distinction since he takes the conclusion of both arguments to be identical (Godden, 2008: 106–107): (9) Basic form of appeal to popular opinion (bandwagon) It is widely held among S that P Therefore, P is true Basic form of appeal to common knowledge It is widely known among S that P Therefore, P is true

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At the risk of weakening this account, we argue that while in cases in which P is presented as a state of affairs the conclusion drawn by Godden above is admissible, when P is an opinion (the bandwagon case in (9)), further qualification seems to be in order. Walton makes a distinction in his already mentioned “pop scheme” (Walton, 1999: 200): “Everybody (in a particular reference group G) accepts A. Therefore, A is true (or you should accept A)” (italics are ours). “You should accept P” is not as universal as “P is true” and it seems important to us to highlight the difference, somewhat in the spirit of Jansen’s distinction between descriptive and prescriptive standpoints (2018, see Sect. 1 above). Indeed, it seems to us that when standpoints defend an opinion (i.e., evaluative or prescriptive standpoints), the conclusion should not be “P is true”, but instead “you should accept P”. The difference, in our view, comes from the difference of epistemological status between facts and opinions. The truth of facts can be objectively established with specific methods (measurements, scientific procedures, etc.) and is independent, as it were, of anyone’s thoughts about it. The truth of opinions, however, cannot be established by objective procedures, because opinions rely on value judgements, which cannot be, by definition, universal. In other terms, while the reality denoted by an opinion may turn out to be acceptable, it is only so for a given set of people, whereas if the utterance of a fact happens to correspond to an actual state of affairs, it should be obvious to and accepted by everyone. Opinions, unlike states of affairs, are not assessed in terms of truth or falsity, but in terms of agreement or disagreement. The bandwagon appeal is therefore an invitation to consider that the opinion expressed by P needs to be included in an already shared doxa by virtue of the fact that “everybody” agrees with it. In this sense, when P is an opinion, “everybody knows P” invites the addressee to be part of the in-group by sharing an opinion. The alternative would instead involve being stigmatised as a member of an out-group who refuses to acknowledge an opinion that is shared by the majority, sometimes to the point of being considered to be universally shared. Whereas the verb to believe syntactically requires (and is semantically compatible with) the selection, as grammatical arguments, of NPs which can both encode opinions and state of affairs, the verb to know, which we focus on, can only semantically select facts. Examples (3) to (8) are thus more compatible with true/false judgements about states of affairs than with evaluations formulated in terms of agreement/disagreement. However, this is not true of example (1) and of example (10), for instance: (10) The 90th Academy Awards will take place Sunday, airing live on ABC from the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California. But as everyone knows, the best part of the star-studded event is the pre-Oscars red-carpet coverage.11

Whether we seriously take the evaluative opinion about the “best part” of the event being the red-carpet coverage to be exaggerated or not, to hold that such is the case is presented in (10) as an opinion, and, what is more, an opinion that is 11 https://www.newsweek.com/oscars-2018-red-carpet-live-stream-when-and-where-watch-celebr

ity-arrivals-825005.

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strengthened by “everyone knows”. We can reasonably expect, at the very least, the organisers of the event not to share this opinion and thus it is easy to recognise that the assertion is infelicitous because it fails to adequately cover the range of possible referents expressed by the universal quantifier. The appeal to popular opinion can therefore play a persuasive role by strengthening what is presented as a widespread doxa. Yet, we argue that the reporter’s personal involvement with respect to the truth of the opinion, marked by the subjective adjective “best”, reduces the power of the ad populum appeal. This is because the reporter openly discloses that she offers a personal view on the issue, which, as a result, allows us to expect her to defend it if challenged. We are therefore not in a situation where the speaker provokes potential readers, as in example (1), in which the speaker intensified the controversial nature of her utterance. How speakers endorse the opinions they convey should thus also be part of our exploration of the rhetorical effects of majority arguments. Example (11) illustrates a different, but related, feature of “everybody/everyone knows P”: (11) And so the care package wrangle begins because, as everyone knows, the government has not made enough money available for this in successive budgets and the impact is always on the NHS.12

Here, the opinion seems to be less overtly endorsed by the speaker, given the absence of evaluative adjectives, among other indicators. The proposition expressed is nevertheless still akin to an opinion the speaker commits to and we can moreover suppose that general agreement with it is not given: the government, for one, would probably disagree with the journalist’s description. That this is indeed an opinion can be justified by the insertion of the clause “I find that” before the proposition (Gosselin, 2015)13 —and to resort to Freeman’s classification, the evaluative nature of this proposition would make it an interpretation (Freeman, 2005). We note, however, that the absence of explicit commitment indicators, and, what is more, the explicit presence of an indicator of universal commitment (“everyone knows”) encourage us to think (i) that the author considers that this opinion is uncontroversial, (ii) that we accordingly need to consider it as already shared and (iii) that its mention here fulfils a mere recalling function. Through examples (1), (10) and (11), we see that an analysis of the expression “everyone/everybody knows P” and of the resulting ad populum appeal cannot do without the immediate co-text of the occurrence. Only by considering the latter can we identify its rhetorical potential. In (1), it realises an overtly endorsed polemical move, in (10) it functions as an appeal to share a belief to which the speaker overtly commits but that she knows to be controversial, and in (11) it seems to be used 12 https://www.bournemouthecho.co.uk/newS/16064612.meet-some-of-the-most-misunderstoodpeople-in-the-uk-why-the-nhs-needs-managers/. 13 “I find that the government has not made enough money available for this in successive budgets and [that] the impact is always on the NHS” does indeed seem to correspond to an opinion. By contrast,??“I find that I am a human being” (barring stylistic or ornamental rhetorical effects) seems rather odd, and thus would suggest that “I am a human being” is not an opinion.

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as an appeal to share a belief by obfuscating the fact that it is an opinion and by misrepresenting it as an already known and undisputable state of affairs. What this brief discussion on the epistemological and discursive nature of P in the expression “everybody knows P” (i.e., whether P is an opinion or a state of affairs) shows, is that (i)

appeals to shared opinions and appeals to shared facts are not equivalent

(ii) the former may try to appear as the latter in an attempt to escape refutation (iii) the co-text, and thus considerations on meaning, are fundamental to assess the rhetorical potential of the expression “everybody knows P”.

It furthermore emerges, from a rhetorical viewpoint, that the advantage of illegitimate appeals to common knowledge, when they disguise an opinion as a fact, might be to increase the epistemic value of the proposition P by trying to mislead the addressee into considering that P is already known—when in fact it is not.

3.2 Is P Presented as a Known Fact or as an Unknown Fact? When the expression “everybody knows P” is used to represent a state of affairs, one could imagine, a priori, that the function of the utterance is merely to recall said state of affairs; this would in turn obliterate the argumentative nature of the expression, since in that case it is not used to provide any support to the claim. The difference between merely recalling shared knowledge and a case where a more or less widely shared fact is used in a premise to infer the truth of the conclusion changes everything: as such, this premise, presumably supporting the conclusion “it is true”, could be described as a petitio principii whose conclusion fails to carry any informational import. As previously mentioned, we need to analyse the co-text of the expression in order to find out whether the speaker excludes specific members from the set of recipients of said shared knowledge. Going back to example (7), the expression “everybody knows it” is blatantly false and plays no recalling function whatsoever. Instead, it is used to discredit the Mueller investigation as well as the means deployed to carry it out by suggesting that its outcome is reputedly already known. Here, the lack of referential relevance of the universal quantification in the argument acts as a trigger to seek its relevance elsewhere. We contend that the path to establishing the argument’s relevance transits through the reconstruction of a specific argumentative inference and we thus interpret this example as follows: an investigation, whose result is already known by everyone, is carried out; a known fact does not require an investigation; therefore, this investigation is useless. In that sense, “everybody knows” is not so much used to increase the certainty of what the investigation will surely show, according to Trump, namely the absence of collusion, but instead seeks to discredit a ridiculous investigation whose conclusion will only state the obvious. There is actually more to example (7), since such a conclusion about the absurdity of the world does not seem to be relevant enough, given the political context and

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Trump’s sustained presence in (online) media. It would in fact be quite easy to draw on the strong intertextual potential of Trump’s message to identify an argument by analogy along the following lines: we continue to carry out investigations about non-existent facts; in a witch-hunt, people investigate non-existent facts; therefore, I [Donald Trump] am the victim of a witch-hunt.14 By conveying that he finds it ridiculous to maintain a pointless and useless investigation, Trump thus indirectly argues that there is a witch-hunt targeting him. In this case, “everybody knows P” should be pragmatically enriched as “everybody with good sense”—i.e., those who think that Donald Trump is innocent—(see Sect. 3.1 above).15 Even if this refers to a statistical minority, and even if the facts have not yet been established, Trump plays on the already obvious character of the state of affairs he mentions, which is reinforced by the use of “everybody knows”. Trump’s tweet, reproduced in example (12), seems to implement a similar strategy: (12) As everybody knows, but the haters & losers refuse to acknowledge, I do not wear a “wig”. My hair may not be perfect but it’s mine.16

If wearing a wig is subject to debate, that means that the referring expression “everybody knows” manifestly fails to denote the totality of people, and thus that it fails to appropriately describe reality. It would indeed be completely irrelevant to utter (12) or to simply talk about the wig issue if, in the first place, it was obvious to everyone that Trump does not wear a wig. Interestingly, the effect of the appeal to popularity seems to us twofold in this example. Not only does it attempt to present as true something that many people could legitimately doubt, but it also reinforces the obviousness of a state of affairs that is presumably known, thereby ridiculing the hating minority who would refuse to admit an obvious fact. We are thus led to venture that in cases in which “everybody knows P” blatantly fails to include “everybody”, in addition to appealing to popular opinion in order to increase belief in the truth of P, the speaker also attacks those who doubt P—as an ad personam attack of sorts. Example (13) highlights another feature of the expression “everybody knows P”: (13) But as everybody knows, the name Cristiano Ronaldo brings plenty of marketing, sponsorship and merchandise opportunities—and Juventus are already reaping the early rewards.17

In this case, the state of affairs is reputedly shared by everyone and, moreover, a personal attack on those who would doubt it nevertheless seems out of the picture. Here, the speaker recalls a known premise to inform us that Juventus is already reaping the benefits of their latest addition to the team, despite the cost of the transfer. 14 Trump

repeatedly used the expression “witch-hunt” to denote the Mueller investigation in his tweets. 15 Note here as well how the pragmatic enrichment of the referring quantifier is crucial for the success of the rhetorical strategy. 16 https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/327077073380331525. 17 https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/juventus-sold-over-half-a-million-cristiano-ronaldo-shi rts-first-24-hours.

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One could thus wonder about the relevance of mentioning that “everybody knows” it. But an interesting observation emerges from the deletion of the expression: if we delete it, and assuming that P is indeed widely known, the sentence becomes completely trivial. This makes us hypothesise that the expression “everybody knows P” serves to weaken the triviality of the sentence and to acquit, in an anticipatory move, the speaker of recalling such trivialities. Of course, such a move reinforces the fact that P is shared evidence through presupposition; if we assume the speaker knows this, then there is no ad populum appeal regarding the truth of P. The ad populum effect, instead, would be to prevent doubt regarding P. We will come back to this shortly in our discussion about whether opinions are inherently more open to disagreement than facts. Let us now consider a last pair of examples in our exploration of the way P is presented (as known vs. unknown): (14) At first, the first-person voice appeared to read as the Palace’s social media monitor’s voice as everybody knows Royals don’t have Instagram accounts.18

Since we are not familiar with the British context behind the occurrence of this utterance, it is hard for us to ascertain whether the mentioned state of affairs (“Royals don’t have Instagram accounts”) is obvious or not. What we observe, however, is that the expression “everybody knows” recalls a fact that seems to be known—and that is easy to accommodate in case it is not. Indirectly, this furthermore takes part in the construction of an ideological group representation according to which no addressee is supposed to ignore the fact that Royals do not have Instagram accounts. Reliance on in-group membership, used for rhetorical purposes, is present in many examples, and so is the counterpart construction of out-group membership. In this sense, when the appeal to popularity expressed in “everybody knows P” is not likely to increase belief in P, it still serves to exert some pressure on those members of the audience who ignore or doubt P by giving rise to the possibility that they are out-group members. This is also the rhetorical strategy deployed in example (15), in which those who would doubt the importance of digital money would be negatively categorised as ignorant on such important financial matters: (15) As everybody knows, digital money is now receiving a lot of attention in the financial world, and this is something that definitely has a repercussion on trading markets and such.19

To sum up, our analysis of whether P is presented as known or not shows a range of rhetorical possibilities. When “everybody knows P” introduces a widely known state of affairs, it serves (i)

to recall it

(ii) to make its obviousness or its trivial nature manifest (iii) to construct a piece of knowledge as shared among in-group members 18 https://grazia.com.au/articles/proof-the-young-royals-need-their-own-instagram-accounts/. 19 https://globalcoinreport.com/ripple-xrp-tron-trx-others-on-yahoo-finance/.

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(iv) to trigger some threat towards those members of the audience who would ignore the fact and thus would be counted among members of the out-group. And no one wants to be in the out-group.

3.3 Is P Presented as a Manifestly Shared Opinion or as a Manifestly Controversial Opinion? Recall that in example (1), which establishes fall as the “best freaking” season, the opinion expressed by P was clearly controversial. In (16), something related seems to be happening, since the referring expressions (“mysterious creatures”) and the allusion to Faust contribute to the expression of a sarcastic attitude: (16) Getting more from these mysterious creatures [the celebrities] can be difficult, but, as everyone knows, offering them publicity in exchange for tiny little bits of their souls is a trade-off that works time and time again.20

Here, “as everyone knows” preserves all the features of hyperbole; however, this appears to be so obvious that the expression, to us, struggles to fully integrate the argumentative dimension typical of appeals to popularity. The point of the argument here is probably thus not to persuade the audience, since, in any case, P is presented as already shared and known. (16) differs from (1) in that it remains silent about the possible presence of disagreeing addressees, or of people with a different opinion. It therefore seems that the point of the rhetorical strategy is not to “increase the mind’s adherence to the theses presented for its assent”, in Perelman & OlbrechtsTyteca’s words (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969: 4), and that a separate explanation should provide reasons for the presence of the expression in this example. Our hypothesis is that it has to do with irony (or sarcasm): the speaker seems to criticise the vanity of celebrities that are willing to do just about anything to gain media exposure. Under this view, “as everyone knows” increases the pathetic, yet obvious, behaviour of celebrities. In a nutshell, the appeal to popularity in (16) is meant to reduce the likelihood of P being disputed more than to increase the likelihood of P being accepted. We take considerations such as these to be decisive if we are to resolve the oddness of the expression “everybody knows P” in a given argumentation. Recall here the issue we set out to explore at the beginning of this contribution: since both the epistemic modality encoded by the verb to know and the universal quantifier converge in highlighting that P is already known and shared, what is the argumentative relevance of P? Can an argument with little (if no) informative relevance serve any justificatory purpose? At this point we would like to answer these two questions with two new challenging questions: what if this particular type of argument was not always meant to justify P? What if, instead, it was meant to reduce the likelihood that the audience calls P into question in order to dissipate doubt? 20 https://www.avclub.com/jennifer-lawrence-finally-subjects-herself-to-a-lie-det-1823459567.

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Let us have a look at example (17), where an ironic usage of the expression aptly illustrates this particular rhetorical effect: (17) And as everybody knows, all those anti-gun rallies and marches are phoney and paid for by the two Georges (Soros and Clooney) who want the American people disarmed in order to…you know, something.21

Here the speaker is calling out adversarial opinions by highlighting their unshakeable certainties and suggesting (with the use of something) that these are vague, if at all sensible. To be clear, the speaker embodies a liberal viewpoint and, through irony, denounces a conservative one. In the example, the speaker is thus obviously not suggesting that P is true—quite the contrary. We observe that the use of “everyone knows”, perhaps by virtue of its hyperbolic dimension, seems to be particularly fitting in such an ironic context, and that the appeal to popularity, given its propensity to make P indisputable, can precisely be used to ground the dissociative attitude that is one of the necessary conditions of irony (Wilson & Sperber 2012). While in (17) the ironic speaker does not seem to commit to P, such is not the case of British TV host Graham Norton in the following example: (18) “There’s a bloody mindedness about it. Some sort of Brexit is going to happen even though at this point everyone knows it’s a bad idea. I do think there’s something very British and just well, ‘I said I was hungry enough to eat my foot so I’m going to eat my foot’.”22

Again, the obviousness effect introduced by Graham Norton here seems to be meant to mock any attempt to refute his opinion—which is certainly an indirect way of increasing the adherence to the—main claim, namely, that Brexit is a bad idea. But while the opinion introduced by “everybody knows” is manifestly controversial and does not trigger shared agreement, we contend that its rhetorical purpose resides in taking advantage of universal quantification to target potential adversaries who disagree with P by ridiculing them. It therefore seems that “everyone knows P” should be treated more like an ad personam attack targeting those who doubt P than like an appeal to popularity meant to reinforce the likelihood of P. Donald Trump’s frequent use of the expression is also symptomatic of this strategy: (19) I am totally opposed to domestic violence, and everybody here knows that. I am totally opposed to domestic violence of any kind, everyone knows that, and it almost wouldn’t even have to be said. So, now you hear it, and you all know it.

Through the repetition of “opposed to domestic violence” and of the universal quantifier, Trump underlines the uncontroversial nature of both his opinion and the debate around it. Yet, we think it is unlikely that Trump will persuade anyone that he is opposed to domestic violence through this argument: rather, we contend that 21 https://gregfallis.com/category/stupid-fucking-people/. 22 https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/graham-nortons-brexit-britain-everyone-knows-its-a-bad-

idea/.

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what the argument performs is an immunising move meant to prevent doubt and to ridicule anyone who would call what he says into question. Do we get a similar effect when the opinion introduced by “everyone knows” is not openly controversial? It seems we do not. In the examples below, it appears that “everyone knows” is rather used to support premises than to truly give weight to the conclusion. We do, however, find again the idea that P is reputedly shared: (20) As everyone knows, beer is a staple of neighborhood bars, and Small Change doesn’t disappoint, regardless of your personal poison.23 (21) You know, I wish it would be [done] today but as everybody knows, federal government moves slow, the state government moves slow, but the federal government moves slower.24

In these cases, it seems that “everyone knows P” mostly serves to recall and perhaps stabilise some doxa. Of course, by the mere utterance of (20) and (21), a speaker will exert pressure on anyone in disagreement with P to adhere to P, but we cannot determine with any certainty that this possibility is seriously entertained by the speakers in these examples. Their goal is presumably not to make the audience accept P, but to rely on P’s obviousness to justify that the bar Small Change does not disappoint beer lovers (in (20)) and that it was not possible to go faster in any way in (21). In other words, it is far from obvious that “everybody knows opinion P” functions as a canonical appeal to popularity.

4 Everybody Knows/Should Know that This Investigation Is not Over To sum up our investigation devoted to appeals to common knowledge formulated with the expression “everybody knows P”, it is time to take stock of our different observations and to delineate how they fit in the current landscape of the study of argumentation. We started this exploration by first discussing the referring potential of the expression, as language users work it out through the pragmatic enrichment of reference assignment and denotational scope. In case the set denoted by “everybody” is clearly identifiable, it turns out that the rhetorical import of the expression is to reactivate a shared piece of information, which is therefore presented as prominent—and thus as epistemically advantageous. In case “everybody” in the extensional set cannot be reasonably expected to know P, we get illegitimate uses of this argumentation scheme. This allows the speaker to make P appear to be uncontroversial, even in cases in which she is unable to ascertain that. The rhetorical advantage of an ad populum appeal of this kind, thus, is to take advantage of the expression’s propensity 23 https://www.riverfronttimes.com/foodblog/2018/03/01/small-change-brings-that-planters-

house-magic-to-a-benton-park-dive. 24 https://www.wtok.com/content/news/Plans-to--488313741.html.

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to apply to already shared information to, quite simply, propagate bullshit (Frankfurt 2009). Therefore, by examining who “everybody” can reasonably be taken to refer to, we have shown that linguistic processes as basic as reference assignment are of rhetorical significance. We then tackled the epistemological and evidential nature of the expression “everybody knows P” in order to gain descriptive power over its usages. The examples we analysed indeed allowed us to ground a distinction between instances where P denotes a fact and instances where P denotes an opinion and thus to highlight that co-textual and contextual considerations are crucial when it comes to assessing the rhetorical workings of the expression. When dealing with propositions denoting states of affairs (or facts), our analysis shows that “everybody knows P” seems to function as a device meant to recall widespread information and as a polarising device meant to exploit mechanisms of in-group and out-group membership construction, with resulting pressure to accept P. When it is used to denote opinions, we submit that “everybody knows P” draws on the evidential and epistemic properties of widespread information to immunise P from being called into question. In other words, in these cases the expression is used as a defensive strategy: instead of giving us reason to accept P, it gives us reason not to doubt P. We hope to have shown that a pragmatic investigation of the meaning potential of “everybody knows P” can significantly contribute to our knowledge of appeals to common knowledge, and in particular to our knowledge of their rhetorical features. Of course, many other directions of research devoted to the relationship between argumentation and language remain open for this type of argument: we are thinking in particular of the nature of the verb that the speaker chooses to formulate her appeal to common knowledge. Saying that everybody knows something might be quite different from stating that everyone agrees with something, in evidential terms, since the latter might suggest the existence of a poll, while the former typically might not. More broadly, we hope to have illustrated the usefulness of a linguistic viewpoint (and starting point) in the study of argumentative phenomena. Argumentation scholarship, in recent years, has witnessed a sustained interest in the relationship between argumentation and language (see Oswald, Herman, & Jacquin, 2018 for an overview). For nearly two decades now, efforts coming from within mainstream approaches to argumentation have contributed linguistic and stylistic investigations that have indeed allowed the discipline to grow, notably through the development of the pragma-dialectical concept of strategic manoeuvring (van Eemeren, 2010; van Eemeren & Houtlosser, 2006; van Haaften, 2017; van Haaften & van Leeuwen, 2018). We like to think of the work presented here as an attempt at contributing to the study of the rhetorical dimension of argumentation with the tools of linguistic pragmatics.

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