discourse analysis argumentation theory and corpora. an integrated approach - by chiara degano -...

ARCIPELAGO EDIZIONI

Chiara Degano

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS, ARGUMENTATION THEORY AND CORPORA: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

This book presents an innovative framework for the study of argumentative discourse, proposing to integrate argumentation theory, and especially the pragma-dialectical approach intended to bridge the gap between logic and rhetoric, with discourse analysis, both in its traditional qualitative forms and in its more recent – but now well-established – corpus-assisted perspective. While the framework presented is suitable for application in research on vari-ous types of argumentative discourse deployed in public, private and pro-fessional settings, the focus here is on political discourse as an ideal arena to test the model. The book contains an ample methodological overview, and a series of case studies. Overall it provides a comprehensive view of how argumentation theory, discourse analysis and corpus linguistics can be put to use together to shed light on important areas of communication in the contemporary world.

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ARCIPELAGO EDIZIONI

Chiara Degano (PhD) is a Tenured Researcher in English Linguistics and Trans-lation at Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy. Her research is centred on dis-course analysis, which she has integrated with the quantitative approach of corpus linguistics and with aspects of argumentation theory. She is a member of ILIAS - International Learned Institute for Argumentation Studies, and CLA-VIER - Corpus and Language Variation in English Research Group.

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Chiara Degano

9547957888769

ISBN 978-88-7695-479-5

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS, ARGUMENTATION THEORY AND CORPORA: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

copertina progetto grafico Antonietta Pietrobon

Quaderni di Scienze del Linguaggio • 35

UniverSità iULM

Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione

Quaderni di Scienze del LinguaggioCollana diretta da Mario Negri

Comitato scientifico:Michael Crawford (School of Advanced Study, University ofLondon)José Luis García Ramón (Universität zu Köln)Giuliana Garzone (Università degli Studi di Milano)Nunzio La Fauci (Universität Zürich)Diego Poli (Università degli Studi di Macerata)Michele Prandi (Università degli Studi di Genova)Edgar Radtke (Universität Heidelberg)Giovanna Rocca (Università IULM, Milano)Francesca Santulli (Università IULM, Milano)

Segreteria: Manuela [email protected]

La collana, originariamente destinata ad accogliere contributi matu-rati all’interno dell’Istituto di Scienze del Linguaggiodell’Università IULM, nel corso del tempo ha assunto una nuovafisionomia parallelamente all’evoluzione delle strutture didattiche edi ricerca dell’Ateneo, aprendosi a contributi di studiosi provenien-ti da sedi diverse e diversificando altresì i temi e gli obiettivi deivolumi. Le questioni affrontate coinvolgono, come poli privilegia-ti, da una parte le scienze del linguaggio, nella loro complessità,dall’altra quelle dell’antichità, pur viste dalla prospettiva muoventedalla centralità della lingua. Esse rispecchiano l’intento di dare spa-zio tanto alla ricerca storica quanto all’analisi sincronica, con con-tributi ora specialistici ora più decisamente divulgativi, per rispon-dere da un lato ai bisogni della didattica e dall’altro all’esigenza disviluppare e diffondere la riflessione critica che impegna ormai daanni diverse generazioni di ricercatori.

I volumi pubblicati nella collana sono sottoposti a un processo dipeer review che ne attesta la validità scientifica.

Chiara Degano

DiSCoUrSe anaLySiS,argUMentation theory

anD Corpora

An Integrated Approach

Milano 2012

© 2012 Arcipelago EdizioniVia G.B. Pergolesi 12

20090 Trezzano su Naviglio (Milano)[email protected]

Prima edizione: ottobre 2012

ISBN 978-88-7695-479-5Tutti i diritti riservati

Ristampe:7 6 5 4 3 2 1 02018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012

è vietata la riproduzione, anche parziale, con qualsiasi mezzo effet-tuata, compresa la fotocopia, anche ad uso interno o didattico, nonautorizzata.

TABLE oF CoNTENTS

Chapter 1

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Chapter 2

Setting the stage: theoretical frame and methodological tools . . . 17

Chapter 3

Strategic manoeuvring in the confrontation and opening stage of the critical discussion: adaptation to the audience in UK TV electoral debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Chapter 4

Topical selection in TV prime ministerial debates: a corpus-based perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Chapter 5

‘Selling’ US National Security Strategy:a corpus-driven analysis of strategic manoeuvring . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

Chapter 6

Reshaping political space: negotiating premises in US reports onNational Security Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147

Chapter 7

Concluding remarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Bibliographic References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181

Referees’ Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195

Chapter 1

IntroductIon

this book draws together argumentation theory and dis-course analysis, two disciplines with good prospects for jointresearch and few occasions for contact. resting on the assump-tion that the agendas of the two disciplines share a substantialcommon ground, the volume sets the stage for an integrationof argumentation theory, mainly in the form of the pragmadi-alectical approach, and discourse analysis, both in its tradition-ally qualitative forms and in the less traditional, but now quitewell established, corpus-assisted variety. In this way the pos-sibility is explored of applying quantitative approaches to theanalysis of large quantities of argumentative discourse.

At a time when multidisciplinarity is a much cherishedvalue in the academic community, argumentation theory risksbeing somewhat confined within the niche of argumentationscholars and germane disciplines like philosophy and logic.this depends partly on the fact that the modern revival of in-terest for the topic originally stemmed from philosophers, mostnotably Perelman and olbrechts-tyteca and toulmin – eventhough their work was not immediately well-received in theirparent disciplines – and partly on the fact that scholars ap-proaching argumentation from other disciplines may feel dis-couraged by the long-standing tradition going back to classicalauthors of the like of Aristotle, and the wealth of relevantknowledge developed since then.

10 discourse Analysis, Argumentation theory and corpora

on the other hand, discourse analysis is inherently interdis-ciplinary, to the point that in some cases research grounded insuch a frame bends too eagerly towards neighbouring disci-plines like social sciences, or semiotics, losing in fact speci-ficity. In an attempt to strike a balance between the benefits ofcross-disciplinary ‘contamination’ and the needs of scientificrigour, this book approaches argumentation theory from theperspective of a linguist who has discourse analysis as a pointof departure, maintaining the text – as a discursive realization– at the centre of enquiry.

of all human activities performed discursively, argumenta-tion is one of the most fascinating, as by means of appeals toreasonableness one party engages in the attempt of convincinganother of something that is controversial, with the result ofthe dispute being determined mainly by the discursive abilitiesof the participants. to this end, a complex nexus of factorscome into play, pertaining to all the dimensions of discourse:the context in which a communicative event takes place, theparticipants’ roles and purposes, the conventions at work in thespecific field of activity (for example, generic conventions orrules determining which paths of reasoning are considered ac-ceptable), the coherence of reasoning itself, and finally the lin-guistic or, more in general, semiotic stuff of whichargumentative moves are made, i.e. the ‘text’ proper.

Furthermore, in its recent developments argumentation the-ory – and especially the pragmadialectical approach, which isamong the most influential and systematic contemporary per-spectives – includes within its theoretical scope also rhetoricalaspects, thus further extending the common ground betweenargumentation theory and discourse analysis. By pursuing theattempt of bridging the gap between logic (concerned with thecorrectness of reasoning) and rhetoric (geared to achieving ef-fectiveness), the pragmadialectical approach allows discourseanalysts to apply to argumentative discourse categories that are

part of their methodological background, generally fallingunder the rubric of interpersonal function (Halliday 1994), suchas the construction of the speaker’s and the receiver’s identity,but also forms of evaluation (Hunston/thompson 2001), whichreflect the stance of the speaker and at the same time positionthe audience.

the volume collects studies of political discourse – an idealground for testing the validity of the model thanks to its emi-nently argumentative nature associated with a highly sophisti-cated rhetorical drive – in which argumentative discourse isanalysed combining insights from discourse analysis and ar-gumentation theory. Apart from the first chapter, which has anessentially theoretical focus, and the conclusion, the chaptersof this book were originally conceived as self-standing studiesbut are all part of a research programme pursued by the authorover several years, pivoting on the combination of discourseanalysis and argumentation theory. thus they fit into an overalldesign and have been partly re-elaborated to guarantee coher-ence and readability.

the analysis contributes to confirming the author’s convic-tion that the benefit of an integrated approach to argumentationis twofold: on the one hand, argumentation theory provides dis-course analysts with a methodological scaffolding capable ofaccounting for the macro-categories of argumentation, thushelping identify and interpret the participants’ moves againsta model (what is called a hermeneutic function); on the otherhand, discourse analysis can enhance argumentation theory’sgrasp of real-life argumentative discourse, thus contributing totesting the theory and possibly suggesting adjustments to it,while offering categories for the analysis of more fine-graineddiscursive devices employed by the parties to enhance the co-gency and effectiveness of their reasoning.

chapter 2 presents the rationale for the project, making thecase for the integration of argumentation theory and discourse

1. | Introduction 11

analysis, drawing also a sketch of the background literature,and presenting methodological tools which will constitute ageneral frame of reference for the subsequent chapters. thechapter also contains a synthetic recapitulation of the pragma-dialectical approach in its extended form, which includes thenotion of strategic manoeuvring (i.e. the part of the theory thataccounts for the rhetorical component of argumentation). Spe-cial attention is devoted to the four-stage model of a typical ar-gumentative dialogue, which in pragmadialectics is calledcritical discussion (confrontation stage, opening stage, argu-mentation stage, and conclusion), illustrating, by means oforiginal real-life examples, how strategic manoeuvring takesplace at each stage. the point of introducing the pragmadialec-tical model is to provide the reader with a global understandingof it, which may then be relied on in the subsequent chapters,where reference is made to its categories. At the same time,such an overview makes it possible to assume reference to acomprehensive frame of analysis, even when individual as-pects of it are dealt with. Although single chapters may addressspecific traits of argumentative discourse, it is worth consid-ering that these are part of a broader communicative act whosevarious components are necessarily interrelated, even thoughthey are not all in the foreground. underlying this perspectiveis the conviction that a holistic approach, as opposed to a nar-rower focus on peripheral details disconnected from the biggerpicture, serves analytic efforts better.

the following two chapters tackle squarely the notion ofstrategic manoeuvring applying it to the analysis of the primeministerial debates held in the united Kingdom for the firsttime on the occasion of the 2010 general elections. In particu-lar, chapter 3 deals with discursive devices used to adapt themessage to the audience, with special regard for the confronta-tion and opening stage of the critical discussion involving can-didates. If audience expectations are always an issue from a


rhetorical perspective, in tV debates this is all the more rele-vant, as the initiators of each round of the debate are membersof the audience, who open it with a question for the candidates.Such questions are never neutral, as they entail the point ofview of the questioner as to what is desirable or undesirable, apoint of view which might not coincide with the vision of thecandidate and his party. In his reply the candidate cannot dis-regard the projection of values implied in the question, lest herisk alienating the support of all those viewers who agree withthe questioner. At the same time, in some cases, committing tothe view expressed by the questioner would pose an issue ofinconsistency with party programmes or established views. Inlight of the above, strategic manoeuvring promises to be par-ticularly demanding and hence worth analysing as an extremecase of adaptation to the audience.

chapter 4 extends the analysis of strategic manoeuvring inthe uK electoral debates with a focus on the argumentationstage and particularly on the related aspect of topical selection.these two chapters dovetail also from a methodological pointof view, with chapter 3 resting on a qualitative approach, set-ting the context for the analysis of the debate, and chapter 4combining a qualitative and a quantitative perspective. Startingfrom insights gained incidentally during the close-readinganalysis required for chapter 3, recurrent argument schemescharacterizing each leader’s discourse have been tentativelyidentified. confirmation to the hypotheses thus formulated issought via quantitative analysis, thereby testing as well the vi-ability of a synergy between argumentation theory and corpuslinguistics. the chapter’s aim is not so much to reach conclu-sive results on the argumentative preferences of each candi-date, as rather to raise awareness on the opportunity, but alsothe limits, of applying corpus linguistics tools to the study ofargument schemes in large quantities of argumentative dis-course.


chapters 5 and 6 deal with a different genre in political dis-course, uS National Security Strategy reports, integrating qual-itative and corpus-based perspectives. these are documentswhich, unlike debates, are not so openly argumentative, com-bining an expository and a persuasive component, as they aremeant to lay before the congress the administration’s wide-ranging plans for security, addressing at the same time internalaudience and foreign interlocutors on the foreign policy direc-tion that the main world power intends to pursue. Such an in-formative aim is accompanied by a persuasive intent, though,geared towards gaining and maintaining domestic support.From a methodological point of view, these chapters are com-plementary to the previous two, adopting a corpus-driven ap-proach. If in chapters 3 and 4 a qualitative analysis was apreliminary step for the formulation of hypotheses to be testedagainst the corpus, here quantitative investigation precedesqualitative analysis, providing a convenient reliable ground ofcomparison for nSS reports produced under different Admin-istrations.

In particular chapter 5 compares strategic manoeuvring inthe reports issued under obama’s and Bush’s administration,employing keywords, collocations and frequency lists to ex-amine topical selection, thus partially shedding light also onstrategies of adaptation to the audience. Presentational choices,on the other hand, are addressed from a qualitative perspectivewhich makes it possible to consider levels of textuality beyondthe word or phrase. In this way a polarization is observed inthe two reports as far as text structure is concerned, with aprevalence of the expository component in Bush’s administra-tion nSS and of argumentation in obama’s, a difference thatcan be explained in terms of recourse to overt vs covert argu-mentation strategies.

chapter 6 investigates nSS reports from the point of viewof argumentation premises, an element touched on only tan-


gentially in the previous chapters. Adopting a short-term di-achronic perspective, which embraces the last three Presiden-cies, this final study focuses on the preliminary highlycontroversial definition (or redefinition) of the notion of secu-rity as a premise for argumentation proper in the nSS reports.At the heart of the controversy lies the representation of spacerelations, along the domestic/foreign dimension, as a cognitivebut also ideological category which plays a crucial role informing judgements on security policies, in a country wherethe Myth of Exceptionalism keeps calling the traditional inter-nal/external dichotomy into question.

Although for the sake of coherence only political discoursehas been taken into consideration, the frame of analysis pro-posed in this work has a broader application potential. As partof the same research interest that informs this book, the authorhas explored the possibility of integrating discourse analysisand argumentation theory in other contexts, including Interna-tional commercial Arbitration (degano 2010, 2012), corporateexternal communication (catenaccio/degano 2011) and theWeb’s multimodal environment (degano forth.a).


Chapter 2

SeTTing The STage

Theoretical frame and methodological tools

1. argumenTaTion, DiScourSe STuDieS anD corpuS linguiSTicS

The study of argumentation is unduly neglected in the realmof discourse studies and linguistics, at least as far as englishlanguage scholarship is concerned. With the exception of apractical interest in the teaching of argumentative writing anda few studies touching on it marginally in the frame of englishfor Special purposes, little research exists with an argumenta-tive focus in linguistics’ literature, nor are panels on argumen-tative discourse frequently scheduled in linguistic conferences.This is quite surprising as the points of contact between argu-mentation theory and discourse studies are of no little conse-quence. First and foremost in the deliberative process properof argumentative activities ‘truth’, or any form of agreement,is socially constructed and therefore linguistically mediated.1

1 Drawing on the classical dichotomy ‘argumentation vsdemonstration’, it is in the former that language plays a crucial role, whilein demonstration, the decisive role rests with facts, leaving for languageonly an ancillary role. This dichotomy reflects the traditionally accepted

This is very much in tune with the basic assumption of the con-structionist conception of language, shared by an important partof discourse studies, according to which language does not sim-ply reflect reality, but contributes to forging it: the same objector event named differently will lead to different representationsof it, with different consequences in language-external reality.2

Secondly, some approaches to the theory of argumentationare rooted in a discourse analytic frame, as is the case of prag-madialectics, which originates from normative pragmatics, andconceives of argumentation in terms of speech acts, an all toofamiliar notion to linguists.

a further element of contact lies in the importance given tothe influence of external factors, like purpose and context, oncommunicative events in both discourse analysis and somebranches of argumentation studies. linguistic traditions thatsee formal aspects of utterances as the result of factors – cog-nitive, functional or pragmatic – residing beyond the languageitself, which impose restrictions on the number of choices avail-able to the speaker, include text grammar (Werlich 1983), func-tional linguistics (halliday 1994) and genre-based approachesto the study of language for special purposes (Swales 1990,2004; Bhatia 1993, 2004). as for argumentation theory, a well-established concern is for how environmental conditions (e.g.the affordances of a Web discussion forum, as discussed in

18 Discourse analysis, argumentation Theory and corpora

opposition between logic, with its concern for truth and necessity wherebyall that is only plausible should be disregarded as false, and rhetoric, whoserealm is the non-compulsive, the credible, the plausible (perelman/olbrects-Tyteca 1969, 1-4).

2 examples to the point are the most cited difference between‘freedom fighter’ and ‘terrorist’, used with regard to similar practices towhich different ideological connotations are attached, or the extreme caseof the denomination chosen for the attacks of September 11: had they beendefined an ‘act of war’ (as opposed to an ‘act of terrorism’), insuranceswould have not refunded the damages (gobo 2008).

lewinsky 2010) influence argumentative practices, as is thecase of studies addressing design issues (aakhus/Jackson2005). a similar concern is at the basis of the recent pragma-dialectical interest for the analysis of argumentation in differentinstitutional contexts (van eemeren 2009).

There are also differences between discourse analysis andargumentation theory, especially as far as their scope is con-cerned. Discourse analysis aims to devise theories of languageuse which account for the interaction of formal and functionalaspects – or in other words, of code and context –, discourseitself being viewed as the result of several extra linguisticforces. Be it in public or private communication, people whoproduce utterances ‘have social, cultural and personal identities,knowledge, beliefs, goals and wants, and interact with one an-other in various socially and culturally defined situations’(Schiffrin 1994: 363). The scope of discourse analysis, there-fore, is mainly descriptive.

argumentation theory, on its part, is primarily normative, asit aims at giving a fair evaluation of argumentative discourse,with the ethical aim of improving the way people argue. in sodoing, it pursues the objective of fostering one of the most fun-damental practices in democratic societies, viewing appeals toreasonableness as the only possible alternative to the use offorce.

Such a difference, however, is not irreconcilable, in line ofprinciple. While discourse analysis does not generally take anormative stand, one of its threads, critical discourse analysishas an approach that can be considered ethical, aiming to shedlight on how the use of language contributes to creating ormaintaining social differences (cf. for example van Dijk [1991]on immigration discourse in the press) or how dominant ide-ologies inconspicuously ‘colonise’ fields of social activity, im-posing on them exogenous values which end up distorting theiroriginal character (cf. e.g. Fairclough on the marketisation ofeducation discourse [1993]). one of the basic assumptions of

2. | Setting the stage: theoretical frame and methodological tools 19

critical discourse analysis is that by analysing discourse, it ispossible to identify the mechanisms through which certain rep-resentations of reality achieve and maintain a dominant positionin society, failing to meet the critical scrutiny of public opinion.and if citizens are made aware of such mechanisms, abuses ofdiscourse by the elites can be resisted and challenged, with abeneficial effect for our democratic societies. it is precisely inthis ethically/societally-oriented drive that critical discourseanalysis and argumentation theory have a common ground, andit is not surprising that they have recently found a convergencein the work of Fairclough and Fairclough (2012) on politicaldiscourse, as well as in Žagar’s more focalized article on topoiand critical discourse analysis (2010). as for this book, eventhough it does not take a normative approach to argumentation– the reader will not find evaluations of arguments or indica-tions on how people should argue whatsoever –, the projectrests on the assumption that the analysis of argumentative dis-course can contribute to shedding light on how argumentationis enacted in (institutional) discourse, a precondition to raisecitizens’ awareness on how argumentation works, providingthem with critical (here in the sense of analytical) tools to takean informed position towards attempts of persuasion that areaddressed to them.

in light of the assumptions above, this book argues in favourof a systematic integration of discourse studies and argumenta-tion, presenting a series of studies that find their methodologicalframework in the synergy of these two disciplines. Further more,the qualitative approach of discourse analysis will be comple-mented with the quantitative drive of corpus linguistics, with aview to exploring the possibility of putting corpora methodologyto use for the study of argumentation.

corpora are collections of texts built according to externalcriteria set by the researcher on the basis of research require-ments, which are taken to be representative of the type of lan-guage (or discourse) one wishes to investigate. They are stored


in electronic format and are interrogated by means of dedicatedprogrammes functioning on a statistical basis.

Traditionally corpus linguistics has been employed to de-scribe language at the lexical and grammatical level, with aview to producing dictionaries and grammar books that reflectreal language usage, as opposed to formalized consolidateddescriptions that end up being far from authentic use(mcenery/Wilson 1996). parallel to this application, however,another approach has emerged, which integrates corpus linguis-tics tools with discourse analysis, following in the British tra-dition of Text analysis established by Firth (1957), and exertingits influence on scholars like halliday (1994) and Sinclair(1991, 2004).3

according to this view of linguistics, language phenomena– consisting of the inseparable unity of form and meaning – haveto be investigated in context, drawing insights from large quan-tities of authentic, attested data, and not from the intuition of thenative speaker, as generative grammar would have it (chomsky1957, 1965). Furthermore, due to the inseparability of form andmeaning, the object of investigation should be texts, and not iso-lated sentences, considering them also from the viewpoint oftheir interrelation with other texts in a given culture.

although corpus linguistics per se does not consider textsin their entirety – it is in fact disruptive of textual linearity,functioning principally at the local level of words, or words intheir immediate co-text – its tools can be bent towards text (anddiscourse) analysis, provided that the results of corpus searchare integrated with close-reading qualitative analysis. in thisway the micro and macro levels of discourse, accounted for re-spectively by corpus and qualitative analysis, can be profitablyput in mutual relation. at the same time, a corpus-based ap-proach allows to look at discursive phenomena across largequantities of texts, thus shedding light on recurrent features,


3 For a thorough treatment, cf. Stubbs (1996: 22-50).

trends, or other aspects which can be appreciated only by look-ing beyond single texts. corpus-based text analysis was firstpursued in a book-length project by Stubbs (1996), followedby numerous scholars (cf. among others, partington et. al. 2004,garzone/Santulli 2004, Baker 2006, Degano 2008).4

in recent times, seminal attempts have been made at extend-ing corpus-based methodology to the study of argumentationin the field of discourse analysis (reed 2006, Degano 2007,Žagar 2007, o’halloran/coffin 2004, mochales/ieven 2009,o’halloran 2009, mazzi 2007b), not failing to attract criticismby argumentation theorists (rigotti/rocci 2005). Scepticism ismainly due to the fact that while corpora allow to retrieve pat-terns, i.e. recurrent lexico-grammatical features, they divert at-tention from the text as a whole, to the detriment of thoseaspects of meaning which can only be grasped in their broadertextual and contextual dimension. This is a real risk unless acomplementing qualitative perspective is added.

The essays collected in this book try to strike a balance be-tween quantitative and qualitative analysis, considering themtwo poles of a methodological continuum, which offers the re-searcher the possibility of shifting emphasis on either of thetwo poles, depending on specific research purposes.

2. raTionale For The inTegraTion oF DiScourSe analySiS anD

argu menTaTion Theory

Why is a synergy between discourse analysis and argumen-tation theory desirable? in spite of their differences, the multi-farious approaches to the analysis of discourse (cf. Schiffrin et


4 For a comprehensive overview of the anglo-Saxon scenario seeFlowerdew (2011) and for a broader outlook see the proceedings of the2011 Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics conference organised bythe university of Birmingham.

al. 2001, alba-Juez 2009: 15) all engage with the analysis oflanguage in use,5 which cannot then be severed from the ‘pur-poses or functions which [linguistic] forms are designed toserve in human affairs (Brown/yule 1983: 1). When such pur-poses come down to an attempt at persuading someone by ap-pealing to their reasonableness, integrating the discourseanalytical perspective with a theory of argumentation can addto the thoroughness of analysis. an explicit call in such a di-rection has come also from argumentation scholar van rees(2007), who has made the case for joining argumentation theoryand discourse analytical perspectives, in the following terms:discourse analysis can provide argumentation theory with em-pirical data as to how argumentative discourse is organized andsingle arguments are produced and received by the participants,casting light also on “how and why the normative ideal goesawry in argumentative practice” (van rees 2007: 1462). Be-sides, discourse analysis can offer insights about how peoplecomply with the standards of reasonableness in real-life argu-mentation. on the other hand, argumentation theory allows dis-course analysts to make their investigation of argumentativediscourse more systematic, indicating them what they shouldbe looking for in the apparent chaos of real argumentation, andoffering a theoretical apparatus that helps them describe andinterpret phenomena which intuitively draw their attention, andin which their findings can be accommodated.


5 The expression ‘discourse analysis’ was introduced by harris (1952),a formalist, who designated by it the next level in language descriptionabove the sentence. Subsequently, this notion of discourse was challenged(chafe 1980) on the ground that utterances do not necessarily come assyntactically complete sentences, but the term spread to other approacheswithin the field of linguistics. Functionalists (e.g. Fairclough 1989)conceive discourse not as one level of meaning making, but as anencompassing concept referred to the use of language in pursuance ofcommunicative goals (alba-Juez 2009: 13).

3. DiScourSe analySiS anD argumenTaTion Theory: BackgrounD

contemporary approaches to the study of argumentation canbe seen as falling under three general traditions: logic, dialecticand rhetoric (cf. Zarefsky 2006: 399 and ff.). logic focuses onthe formal validity of arguments (i.e. arguments are evaluatedon the ground of their logical soundness), and is mostly uncon-cerned with real-life argumentation. Dialectic conceives of ar-gumentation as a dialogic practice, in which two partiesconsensually decide to solve a difference of opinion by meansof critical questioning of each other’s arguments, and the va-lidity of arguments derives from mutual agreement. in otherwords, arguments are accepted by the other party if they resistcritical questioning, but as is quite evident, such conditions areonly rarely met in ordinary argumentative practices, and the ap-proach remains then normatively oriented. rhetoric is mainlyconcerned with persuasion of an audience, irrespectively of anynormative concern, thus privileging a descriptive perspective.

of the three approaches, rhetoric is the one that understand-ably offers more points of contact between argumentation the-ory and discourse analysis: as stated earlier, like rhetoric,discourse analysis by and large takes a descriptive approach(with the exception of critical discourse analysis) and both areprimarily concerned with usage as opposed to normative mod-els. recent developments in dialectical approaches to argumen-tation theory, aimed at integrating a rhetorical component (cf.van eemeren/houtlosser 2002, van eemeren 2010), promise tooffer as many points of contact, while adopting at the same timea more systematic approach to the analysis of argumentativediscourse.

among works which have already explored the possibilityof a synergy between the study of argumentation and discourseanalysis, special mention must be made of those in the Frenchtradition. resting on a broad conception of it, the French schol-ars think that argumentation is pervasively present in discourse


in general, being not limited to a set of declaredly argumenta-tive genres (plantin 1996: 18, amossy/koren 2004, amossy2006, 2009), and on this ground argumentation is given prideof place in discourse analysis. in the words of antelmi and San-tulli (2012: 97),

it is however possible to avoid a sharp distinction between argu-mentative and non-argumentative texts, and to adopt the hypoth-esis of gradual differentiation, so that there exist prototypicalargumentative genres of discourse (deliberative, judicial, etc),which have an explicit persuasive goal, but there are also less ev-ident forms of argumentation, which do not imply the adoptionof explicit and/or stringent schemes.

incidentally, such a hypothesis is not necessarily in contrastwith the pragma-dialectical approach, where the issue ofwhether a text should be considered argumentative or not is re-solved by adopting the strategy of the “maximally argumenta-tive interpretation” (van eemeren et al. 2002: 43). Wheneverin doubt that an utterance might be simply a “remark or an ex-planation”, if there is a “realistic option” that it might in facthave an argumentative function, then it can legitimately betaken as argumentative. The French scholars’ main point, how-ever, is that argumentation should not be placed outside the dis-cipline of discourse analysis (no more, let’s say, than expositoryor descriptive text forms should), to constitute a field of its own.

a similar attitude seems to underlie the works of scholarswho, without taking explicit position on this contention, do notactually draw a rigid divide between argumentation and dis-course analysis. examples to the point are evangelisti’s workon clause relations in argumentative texts (1989) and on argu-ments as frames (1990), partington’s book-length study of thelinguistic aspects of political arguments (2003), or again the re-search of linguists who, drawing on the anglosaxon traditionof genre analysis (Swales 1990; Bhatia 1993, 2004), have in-vestigated forms of specialized discourse characterized by a


strong argumentative component. Within such a tradition, re-cent studies with a focus on argumentative discourse have beencarried out with special regard for legal texts (Stati 1998, San-tulli 2006, 2008, antelmi/Santulli 2009, mazzi 2007a, 2007b2010; Sala 2008, 2012, forth., garzone 2012) and academicdiscourse (Silver 2006, Bondi/Diani 2008, mazzi/Bondi 2009,mazzi 2012).

Besides these studies with a focus on openly argumentativegenres, another strand of research has addressed company dis-closures on corporate Social responsibility from an argumen-tative perspective, by virtue of the extent of controversyinherent in it. corporations’ engagement in argumentative ac-tivity with regard to their social responsibility is indeed mani-fold: they make the case for cSr before investors (catenaccio2011), and represent themselves as socially responsible in theface of implicit or explicit allegations to the contrary (Degano2009, catenaccio/Degano 2011).

incidentally, a peculiarity of most of these studies is thecombination of a qualitative and quantitative perspectives, put-ting the methodological tools of corpus linguistics to use.

as for argumentation scholars combining an argumentativeand a discourse analytical perspective, van rees (1995) showsthat the contributions to a critical discussion aim at resolving adifference of opinion, while at the same time responding to po-liteness concerns of face preservation (goffman 1955, 1959;Brown/levinson 1987), where face is a notion drawn frompragmatics, a fundamental discipline within the realm of lin-guistics. The same author published an article (2007) openinga special issue of the Journal of Pragmatics on argumentationin television talk shows, in which she reflects on the relation-ship between argumentation theory and discourse analysis, con-cluding that an integrated perspective is a reciprocal necessity.



4. conTemporary approacheS To argumenTaTion

So far, reference has been made to argumentation theory ingeneral. however, like all scientific paradigms, also argumen-tation theory is far from being monolithic. Since the end of1950s, when Toulmin (1969) on the one hand and perelmanand olbrechts-Tyteca (1958/1969) on the other started modernrhetoric, a wealth of approaches have developed.

a review of the modern approaches to argumentation theoryis well beyond the reach of this work as well as the author’scompetence, considering that much of the work on argumenta-tion is carried out in philosophical disciplines. For a book-length review one can see van eemeren et al. (1996).

Suffice here to mention by large strokes some among themost influential contemporary approaches6 to the study of ar-gumentation. These include formal (e.g. krabbe 1985,krabbe/Walton 2011) and semi-formal perspectives (amongothers, Walton 1984, van eemeren et al. 2007); informal logic(cf. Walton et al. 2008); the american communication andrhetorical study tradition, with its manifold branches (amongwhich Zarefsky’s work on political discourse, 2006, 2007); thelinguistic approach, with one fulcrum in the works of France-based scholars like carel (1992), carel/Ducrot (1999), plantin(1996, 1999, 2004), amossy (2006) and another in the lugano-based group coordinated by rigotti (e.g. 2005, rigotti et al.2006), and the amsterdam-based pragma-dialectical school(see further sections).

This book draws in particular on the pragma-dialectical the-ory of argumentation, which will supply analytical and heuristic

6 This synthetic recapitulation of contemporary approaches draws onvan eemeren’s keynote speech “argumentation Theory revisited: Somemajor Developments in the past Two Decades”, delivered at the BiennialWake Forest university conference Argumentation 2012, held in Venice(25-28 June).

categories through which the disorderly, countless variables ofauthentic persuasive discourse can be made sense of in the lightof a meaningful interpretative grid. among contemporary ap-proaches to the study of argumentation, pragmadialectics is theone which presents greater affinity with discourse analysis, fortwo main reasons. First, differently from formal approaches, itapplies theory to real-life uses of argumentation, and secondly,partly as an inevitable consequence of the former, aims to rec-oncile the logic component of argumentation with rhetoricalaspects, holding that in principle the parties involved in argu-mentative discourse will pursue effectiveness while “maintain-ing dialectical standards of reasonableness’ (van eemeren 2009:5), an effort subsumed under the label of “strategic manoeu-vring” (van eemeren/houtlosser 2002, 2006).

The following sections will sketch the elements of thepragma-dialectical approach which will be brought to bear inthe next chapters of the book.

5. The pragma-DialecTical approach

The pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation theorywas developed in amsterdam by van eemeren and grotendorst(1984, 1992, 2004) with the aim of providing a comprehensivetheory of argumentation, grounded in a solid theoretical frame-work, while at the same time capable of accounting for real ar-gumentative practice. The pragmatic component comes fromnormative pragmatics, “a kind of empirical discourse analysisorganized by normative theory” (Jackson 1998: 187), and restson the rationale that “the analysis of any communicationprocess begins with an idealized model of the discourse thatcan be compared with actual practices”. The purpose of such acomparison is twofold: it allows the researcher to test the the-oretical model against practice, possibly leading to adjustmentsin the theory, but at the same time it helps identify possible


faults in actual contexts of practice that prevent the achieve-ment of the communicative goal (ibidem).

normative pragmatics (cf. van eemeren 1990, Jackson 1998)is an approach to discourse analysis characterized by a combi-nation of descriptive and prescriptive goals. The descriptivedrive aims at studying language use in communication (hencethe pragmatic element), while the prescriptive drive sets out anormative model of how a specific form of discourse shouldideally be realized, which allows analysts to assess the practiceagainst a norm, with a view to spotting possible obstacles to theachievement of the communicative purpose in a specific con-text, as a prerequisite for removing them, thus eventually im-proving the practice.

in pursuance of such an ambitious programme, the pragma-dialectical approach was devised as a complex research project,which includes several components (van eemeren/grotendorst2004: 9-41). a philosophical component provides the basis fora suitable theory of reasonableness, which in the pragma-di-alectical approach acquires a procedural meaning: an exchangeof views in argumentation is reasonable if it complies with therules of a problem-solving discussion procedure. a theoreticalcomponent provides a model for such a problem-solving dis-cussion procedure, namely the pragma-dialectical model of a‘critical discussion’. The latter refers to “an argumentative ex-change of speech acts which is fully aimed at resolving a dif-ference of opinion in a reasonable manner” (van eemeren 2011:30). This is ‘pragmatic’ in the sense that “the moves the criticaldiscussion consists of have the form of speech acts”7 – with ref-


7 Drawing on Searle’s typology (1979: 1-29) van eemeren (2010: 11)mentions the following types of speech acts as relevant in a criticaldiscussion: assertive, commissive, directive and usage declarative speechacts, (the latter of which, not present in Searle’s repertoire, was introducedby ven eemeren and grotendorst 1984: 109-110).

erence to Searle’s (1969) and grice’s (1989) theory of speechacts – and ‘dialectical’ as it provides the rules for systematicallyconducting such a critical discussion by means of moves andcounter-moves. according to the pragma-dialectical-model, acritical discussion ideally proceeds through four stages (whichmay be realized explicitly or implicitly) – confrontation, open-ing, argumentation and conclusion, which will be discussedmore in details later on in this chapter. Furthermore, a set often procedural rules is devised which apply throughout the crit-ical discussion, and provides also a systematic basis for an orig-inal definition and categorization of fallacies, i.e. logical, moralor ethical mistakes.8 an empirical and an analytical componentput theory into practice, as real occurrences of argumentativediscourse are observed, from both a qualitative and a quantita-tive9 point of view, and analysed against the theoretical model,where the very notion of analysis presupposes that there issomething behind the more or less chaotic linguistic stuff ar-gumentative exchanges consist of, which can be tracked downif read through the filter of methodological instruments. Finallya practical component is geared towards the improvement ofargumentative practice in specific institutionalized contexts, in-cluding political, legal and (new)media discourse as well aspractices of negotiation in business communication.


8 Fallacies are not among the aspects of argumentative discourse dealtwith in this book. Suffice here to point out that while in classical andmodern approaches fallacies tend to be defined as logical, moral or ethicalmistakes, from a pragma-dialectical perspective they are proceduralmistakes, in that they violate the rules for a critical discussion.

9 here ‘quantitative’ is intended somewhat differently from the usemade in corpus assisted discourse analysis, to which this book sticks whenreference to quantitative methods is made. in the pragma-dialecticalresearch frame, ‘quantitative’ refers to empirical experimental research, inwhich the relevance of the model is statistically measured against the effectsof argumentation on the receiver (van eemeren 2010: 169).

6. The eVoluTion oF The pragma-DialecTical moDel:STraTegic manoeuVring

in its recent developments the pragma-dialectical approachto argumentation has been enriched with the notion of strategicmanoeuvring (van eemeren/houtlosser 2006, van eemeren2010), with a view to “bridging the gap” which, since ancientgreece, has traditionally divided dialectic and rhetoric.10 The-oretically, the gap can be bridged starting from a pragmatic con-ception of dialectic as ‘discourse dialectic’, i.e. “a theory ofcritical argumentative exchanges in natural discourse” (vaneemeren 2010: 89), as opposed to formal conceptions, whichare more closely oriented to formal logic. Discourse dialecticpresupposes an interest in real-life argumentation, where par-ticipants do not shy away from the pursuit of rhetorical effec-tiveness. Viewed from this perspective, rhetoric, conceived asthe “theoretical study of aiming for communicative and inter-actional effectiveness in discourse” (ibidem), is not necessarilyantithetical to dialectical standards. in other words, aiming forrhetorical effectiveness does not necessarily amount to a vio-lation of the dialectical rules and the dialectical and rhetoricalcomponents contribute each in its own terms to various degreesto the argumentative effort. in van eemeren’s words:

When argumentation is in the first place viewed as aimed at re-solving a difference of opinion on the merits, a perspective istaken that is primarily dialectical, and when the argumentation isin the first place viewed as aimed at achieving agreement by hav-ing the acceptability of the standpoint at issue agreed upon by theaudience, a perspective is taken that is primarily rhetorical (2010:89).


10 For scholars representing an exception to this dichotomical view ofargumentation and rhetoric, cf. van eemenren (2010: 83 and ff.).

Drawing on the classical tripartite distinction of rhetoric intotopics, audience orientation and stylistics, strategic manoeu-vring is construed as the resultant of three aspects, correspon-ding to the choices the parties involved in an argumentativediscourse make at the level of topic selection, adaptation to theaudience and linguistic devices employed to realize the formertwo aspects.

incidentally, the level of presentational choices is also theone which presents greater affinity with the agenda of discourseanalysis in general, i.e. to investigate how contextual factorsimpinge on the use of language.

7. The criTical DiScuSSion moDel

The overview of the general pragma-dialectical frame pre-sented in the previous section was in order, as this representsthe most important source of insights from argumentation the-ory in this book. however, not all of its components are dealtwith in the book, where special attention is devoted to strategicmanoeuvring throughout the stages of the critical discussion.

as anticipated, the notion of critical discussion refers to amodel which is meant to provide categories through which ar-gumentative exchanges can be systematically observed. Thismeans that the stages into which it is divided do not necessarilyfind a correspondence in real-life argumentation. Just as is thecase with communication at large, also in argumentative dis-course much is left implicit or occurs far more disorderly thanenvisaged in a model. its function is mainly heuristic, as it al-lows to break down the content of a discussion into steps whichare functionally relevant to the solution of a dispute, thus help-ing the analyst to connect all the relevant bits of discourse. inthis way, by means of a ‘reconstruction’ process (cf. vaneemeren et al. 1993) a structure emerges which is at the sametime more streamlined and more complete than the original dis-


course. Bringing in a fundamental concept of linguistics, theresult of the analysis is a much more coherent representationof the discussion going on, where only the fundamental partsare retained, and their role within the macro-scheme is disam-biguated, while at the same time, those parts which were leftimplicit in the original wording are made explicit.

The four stages will be briefly explained below.

7.1. The confrontation stage

‘real or presumed confrontation’ is a necessary condition fora critical discussion (van eemeren/grotendorst 2004: 60), oth-erwise there would be no need for a defence of one’s opinion orposition. The confrontation stage is the one in which a differenceof opinion emerges between two parties. This can be mixed, iftwo parties are actively involved in the definition of opposingstandpoints, or non mixed, when only one party engages in thedefence of a standpoint and the other limits to raising doubtswithout championing the opposite point of view. at the sametime it can be single, if just one point is up for discussion, ormultiple if the points at issue are more than one. Besides, it canbe explicit or implicit. manoeuvring strategically at this stagecan be geared towards maximizing or minimizing the distancebetween the parties to the critical discussion, in relation to thedifference of opinion. The participant(s) may have an interestin maintaining the difference of opinion non-mixed, i.e. one inwhich the antagonist only raises doubts as to the validity of theprotagonist’s standpoint, and in this case he will try to formulatethe standpoint in such a way as to evade open criticisms, for ex-ample by placing on it an aura of reasonableness or commonsense. alternatively the difference of opinion can be presentedin such a way as to maximise the distance between the partiesto the discussion, a strategy which might be profitably put touse when the speaker decides that conveying uncompromisingconviction can serve him better than opting for a less openly


confrontational proposition. The point will be illustrated by con-sidering the following examples, taken from editorials:

(1) iSrael has sought to justify its military attacks on gaza bystating that it amounts to an act of “self-defence” as recognisedby article 51, united nations charter. We categorically rejectthis contention. (From The Sunday Times, January 11, 2009)

(2) much has been written about the subjugation of greece, thecradle of democracy, under a second german occupation. andmuch of it is nonsense. […] yet there is something to the crit-ics’ charges. For many countries, such as Spain, the eu hasbeen an anchor of democracy. But as the crisis persists […]the legitimacy of the enterprise will suffer. (europe against thepeople? efforts to save the euro cannot run against the will ofthe voters indefinitely, The Economist, nov 12th 2011)

in both cases persuasion is aimed at a third party, namelythe readers of the newspaper, but a direct antagonist is discur-sively constructed in the text. in (1) it is israel’s claim that ispresented as antithetical to that of the authors – a group of in-tellectuals who bought a space in the newspaper to make theirposition public –, while in (2) a difference of opinion arises be-tween the writer and some detractors of germany’s interferencewith greece’s national sovereignty, against the background ofthe current financial crisis threatening economic stability in theeuro zone. however, in (1) the gap between the writers and is-rael is presented as extremely wide, and therefore hardly rec-oncilable, while in (2) the writer’s position is not expressed infull opposition to the views of those who criticize germany’spolicy. only the most radical views are discarded as nonsense,thus appealing to a more sober audience.

7.2. The opening stage

if the confrontation stage is dominated by divisiveness,being the one in which the difference of opinion becomes


manifest, the opening stage is concerned with identifyingcommonalities between the parties, i.e. objects of agreement(perelman/olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 65 and ff.) which will thenbecome the starting points on which the subsequent attempt atresolving the dispute can rest. in van eemeren and groten-dorst’s words (2004: 60) this is the stage in which the partiestry to find out whether their “zone of agreement is sufficientlybroad to conduct a fruitful discussion” as it would be pointlessto try and resolve a difference of opinion absent a “mutual com-mitment to a common starting point” (procedural and/or sub-stantive). To exemplify this point, it can hardly be envisagedthat scholars negating the holocaust can engage in a profitable(critical) discussion on the causes that led to it, as they do notcommit themselves to the existence of the holocaust in the firstplace. or again, the absence of a common starting point on thehierarchy of values like individualism and collectivism is oneof the factors that make dialogue on human rights so difficultbetween Western and eastern cultures.

elements of commonality between the parties are to be un-derstood in procedural and/or substantive sense. proceduralstarting points limit the scope of acceptable contributions to thediscussion. Some of the procedural norms are determined onthe ground of the context: people embarking on a critical dis-cussion in an informal situation, for example, will have to com-ply with the norms of turn-taking governing mundaneconversation, while the participants to an institutional debatewill have to abide by stricter conventionalized norms withwhich they must be familiar beforehand. other proceduralnorms have a more general validity, such as the inadmissibilityof illogical reasoning or even recourse to coercion instead ofappeal to reasonableness. Substantive starting points, on theother hand, concern the common ground shared by the partiesin terms of representation of reality, values and beliefs. a majordistinction can be drawn between descriptive and normativestarting points, with the former referring to what perelman and


olbrechts-Tyteca subsume under structures of the real, and thelatter concerning the preferable (1969: 68), or values. however,it must be pointed out that when speaking about the real perel-man and olbrechts-Tyteca do not refer to an objectively givenentity, but rather to the representation of the real proposed bythe speaker (1969: 262).11 For this reason, in the category of de-scriptive starting points van eemeren includes facts, truths andpresumptions, i.e. all those objects of agreement that can besupposed to be universally12 shared, as opposed to objects ofthe ‘preferable’ (encompassing values, value hierarchies andloci, according to van eemeren, 2010: 110), which are in prin-ciple shared by particular audiences.

Strategic manoeuvring, and in particular adapting to theaudience in the opening stage aims, therefore, at tuning upwith the audience, identifying or negotiating a commonground between the protagonist and the antagonist. if startingpoints are identified correctly in the opening stage they willprovide “commitments the audience can be held to in the ar-gumentation and concluding stage” (van eemeren 2010: 110).Both procedural and substantial commitments can be explicit(e.g. concessions elicited/made in the opening stage), or im-plicit, conveyed by the context. in the latter case we talk about


11 an illustration to the point is provided by the same authors, who –discussing interpretation of discourse – state: “When isocrates has the sonof alcibiades say ‘everyone knows that the same man brought about thedestruction of democracy and the exile of my father’ he offers verifiablefacts, but the words mean: ‘my father’s exile was a political act ascondemnable as the destruction of democracy’. [...] although the statementseems only to concern facts, what it suggests is an evaluation”(perelman/olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 125).

12 The notion of audience as intended in perelman and olbrechts-Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric refers to a construction of the speaker definedas “an ensemble of those whom the speaker wishes to influence by hisargumentation (1969: 19).


“pragmatic commitments”, “pertaining to the argumentativesituation […] and the generally accepted commitments havingto do with the ‘normal’ (i.e. the real)”, otherwise called, afteraristotle, endoxa (defined as the views generally accepted in agiven culture).

While procedural commitments tend to remain implicit, sub-stantial ones are more easily made explicitly, if this suits strate-gic manoeuvring best. an example of both implicit and explicitsubstantial commitments comes from the initial scene of themovie “Thank you for smoking” (2005, directed by Jason re-itman), in which the protagonist, nick naylor, a lobbyistfronting the uS Tabacco organization, takes part in a talk showon the health damages caused by nicotine, end the responsibilitythereof of cigarette producers. in an unlikely (as well as falla-cious) attempt at defending the standpoint that tobacco compa-nies are not to be blamed for lung cancer in young smokers,facing a hostile audience, emotionally steered by the presenceof a 15 year old former smoker diagnosed with cancer, naylortries to establish with them a double object of agreement inorder to reduce the initial distance. The first one, resting purelyon pathos, consists in the assertive speech act “We can all agreethat there’s nothing more important than american children”,which earns the protagonist an immediate display of consent inthe audience, where commonality is discursively constructedby means of the explicit projecting clause we can all agree that.The second object of agreement, appealing to logos, is implicitand amounts to the endoxa that companies are after profit. rest-ing on this assumption, to which his audience would easily com-mit, the protagonist makes the case that cigarette companieswould not have an interest in causing the death of young smok-ers, as in this way they would loose customers.13

13 This reasoning is fallacious as the fact that companies have nointerest in young boys’ death does not warrant that young smokers will notdie. in particular this is an example of argumentum ad consequentiam,

in other cases, generally speaking in the majority of criticaldiscussions, however, the opening stage remains covert, as thecommon starting points are simply assumed to exist (vaneemeren 2010: 61).

7.3.The argumentation stage

in the argumentation stage, the protagonist puts forth his ar-guments in defence of his standpoint and at the same time re-jects the antagonist’s arguments, a procedure, the latter, that inmonologic discourse often takes the form of an anticipation ofpossible counterarguments, thus giving rise to a polyphony ofvoices (Bakhtin 1981).

pragma-dialectical analytical categories related to this stageconcern both the argumentation structure, which can be simpleor complex, depending on the number of arguments defendingthe same standpoint, and the schemes used to defend it.

as far as the structure is concerned (see van eemeren et al.2002: 63 ff), simple argumentation includes only one argumentin defence of a standpoint, while in complex argumentation re-course is had to more than one argument. These can be inde-pendent of one another, representing alternative lines of defencefor the same standpoint (multiple argumentation), interdepend-ent, if they have to be taken together to conclusively defend thestandpoint (coordinative argumentation), or hierarchicallystructured, when an argument is in turn supported by anotherargument (subordinated argumentation).

as for argument schemes, they concern the relation betweeneach argument and the standpoint it is meant to defend or reject.as Walton et al. point out (2008: 276) modern argument


which is unreasonable as “a descriptive standpoint (a standpoint whichrefers to a factual state of affairs in reality) is supported by an evaluativeargument in which a value judgement is expressed that points out to theundesired consequences to the standpoint” (van eemeren et al. 2009: 172).

schemes have their ‘historical forerunners’ in the classical con-cept of topoi, and particularly in aristotle’s notion of topics asconceived in the broadest frame of his theory of logical andrhetorical argumentation. aristotle used the term with two dif-ferent meanings. according to the first one, they are “searchformulas” (kienpointner 1997: 226) – or ‘points of view’ (Wal-ton et al. 2008: 278) – indicating how and where argumentscan be found, starting from commonly accepted opinions (i.e.endoxa), functioning as given premises. according to the sec-ond meaning, they are “warrants which guarantee the transitionfrom arguments to conclusion” (kienpointner 1997: 226), or inWalton’s words “principles of probable and plausible reasoningwarranting the passage from the premise(s) of an argument toits conclusions”. This second meaning is the one that seems toinform the pragma-dialectical conception of schemes.

Different approaches to argument schemes exist, yieldingdifferent classifications: classical rhetoric aimed at providingsystems of schemes meant as repertoires from which oratorscould select ready-made arguments. aristotle for example inhis Topics includes between 300-400 topoi, reduced in romanrhetoric to 20-30 (kienpointner 1997: 227). in modern argu-mentation theory, some classifications maintain such an orien-tation to exhaustiveness and precision, with the result ofproducing long and detailed, but hardly manageable repertoiresof schemes (cf. perelman/olbrechts-Tyteca 1969, Walton et al.2008). The following sub-sections will provide a synthetic re-capitulation of the most influential contemporary classificationsof argumentation schemes.

7.3.1. The new rhetoric: association and dissociation perelman and olbrechts-Tyteca divide argumentative sche-

mes – which they call ‘techniques’ – into two broad categories:arguments based on processes of association, and argumentsbased on processes of dissociation. Association schemes “bringseparate elements together and allow us to establish a unity


among them, which aims either at organizing them or at eva-luating them, positively or negatively, by means of one another”(ibidem: 190). These are further classified into i) “quasi-logicalarguments”, which depend on logical relations (e.g. contradic-tion, identity, transitivity)14 or mathematical relations (e.g. con-nection between the part and the whole, the smaller and thelarger, frequency, but also arguments by the probable);15 andarguments dependant on material elements, including ii) argu-


14 Schemes based on relations of contradiction, “try to show that thetheses one is disputing lead to an incompatibility” (perelman/olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 195). a relation of (complete) identity is typically found indefinitions (ibidem: 210), while relations of partial identity lie at the heartof the rule of justice, which requires giving identical treatment to beings orsituations of the same kind (ibidem: 219). also arguments of reciprocity –the pivots of diplomacy, operating from equal to equal (ibidem: 223) – reston relations of identity. in arguments by transitivity – lying at the basis ofsyllogistic reasoning (what aristotle called ‘enthymeme’), it is maintainedthat because a relations holds between a and b and between b and c it canbe inferred that it holds also between a and c (ibidem: 230).

15 Schemes depending on mathematical relations include argumentsbased on the inclusion of the part in the whole (what is true of the whole istrue of the part) and on the division of the whole into its parts (argumentsby division). The latter includes the dilemma (form of reasoning in which“two hypothesis are examined, with the conclusion that no matter whichone if them is chosen, the result is a statement, a course of action, whichamounts to the same thing in either case” (ibidem: 236). a variation of thedilemma consists in narrowing the scope of debate to two possible solutionsto a problem (both unpleasant) and arguing that one of them is the lesser oftwo evils (ibidem: 237). arguments by division presuppose that the sum ofparts equals the whole and that the situations which are being consideredexhaust the possibilities. When the parts or the possibilities are limited totwo, the speaker points out the absurdity of the adversary’s thesis and thenputs forth his own as the only remaining solution, as it is the case in thecommonly used problem-solution scheme.

under schemes resting on mathematical relations perelman andolbrechts-Tyteca encompass also arguments by comparison, in which oneor more object is evaluated against something else, with final deliberationresting in some way on a notion of ‘measure’(ibidem: 248).

ments based on the structures of the real16 and iii) relations es-tablishing the structures of the real, which comprise reasoningthrough the particular case17 and arguments by analogy.

loci falling under ii) aim to “establish a solidarity betweenaccepted judgments and others which one wishes to promote”(ibidem: 261), and include a. arguments depending on relationsof succession (sequential relation), i.e. arguments which unite aphenomenon to its causes or consequences (their most commonforms being the pragmatic argument, the argument from wasteand the slippery slope), and b. arguments of co-existence,18

which “unite two realities that are not on an equal level, one ofthem being more basic and more explanatory than the other”.among relations of co-existence, the fundamental one “connectsthe essence and its manifestations” (ibidem: 293).19


16 it must be rememberd that perelman and olbrechts-Tyteca conceiveof reality not as an objective entity, but as a representation of the realproposed by the speaker.

17 Depending on the function of the particular case we haveargumentation by example, in which the particular case is used to make ageneralization; by illustration, where the particular case provides supportfor an already established rule (ibidem: 357), and by model, in which theparticular case encourages (or discourages) imitation (ibidem: 368).

18 relations of co-existence are so denominated, not in order toemphasise the simultaneity of the terms, but to differentiate them fromsequential connections (ibidem: 293).

19 prototypical of this type of relation is the connection between oneperson and his acts, whereby a person’s acts are seen as a manifestation ofhis personality, with past acts forming the reputation a person enjoys. act-person interaction lies at the basis of the argument from authority, as “ituses the acts or opinions of a person or group of persons as a means of proofin support of a thesis” (ibidem: 305). conversely, other schemes functioningon the act-person relation are used to reduce the solidarity between act andperson (ibidem: 310 and ff.), that is to weaken their relation, as for examplewhen an opinion is attributed to a third party or to an unspecified impersonal“they”.

other argument schemes based on relations of co-existence draw aconnection between the group and its members, treating the members as

on the other hand, arguments based on processes of disso-ciation “have the purpose of dissociating, separating, disunitingelements which are regarded as forming a whole or at least aunified group within some system of thought (ibidem: 190).Two techniques are available to this end: breaking connectinglinks proper, whereby the arguer claims that elements whichshould be kept separate have unduly been connected, and dis-sociation. in the latter case the speaker, assuming the “originalunity of elements comprised within a single conception and de-signated by a single notion” draws a distinction between suchelements, thus modifying the concepts themselves (ibidem:412), by means of a redefinition process.

Drawing on perelman and olbrechts-Tyteca’s notion of it,van rees has further developed our understanding of dissocia-tion, defining it as an

argumentative technique that serves to resolve the contradictionsthat a notion that originally was covered by a single term and thatwas considered a unity, gives rise to. Dissociation resolves thesecontradictions by distinguishing various aspects within that no-tion, some of which are subsumed under a new denominator. Thenow reduced old notion and the new notion that has been split offare not equally valued, one is considered more important andmore central than the other; therein lies the source of argumenta-tive potential of the technique (van rees 2005: 54).

This procedural definition of dissociation highlights thatthree conditions have to be present to identify a dissociation(van rees 2005: 64):

1) from an existing conceptual unit, expressed by a singleterm, one or more aspects are split off; 2) through this operation


manifestations of the group (ibidem: 322), and between act and essence,when “events, objects, beings or institutions […] are consideredcharacteristic of a period, style, regime or structure” (ibidem: 327). alsothe notions of deficiency and abuse presuppose the notion of essence, which“expresses the normal way things occur” (ibidem: 328).

a contradiction or paradox is resolved because now a proposi-tion can be considered true in one interpretation of the originalterm and false in the other; 3) the reduced and the split off con-cept are assigned a different value.

among possible linguistic indicators of dissociation thereare expressions like distinction’, ‘difference’, ‘not the same as’,‘something else than’, ‘except’; negations, most notably thenegative adverb ‘not’, in particular when associated with theconjunction ‘but’, and reference to a value scale, such as ‘es-sential-incidental’, ‘central-peripheral’, ‘real-pseudo’, etc.

an example of real-life use of dissociation, can be found ina statement released by former italian prime minister SilvioBerlusconi’s lawyer, when faced by journalists who accused thepremier of inconsistency, for the introduction of a norm called‘legitimate impediment’ (in italian, legittimo impedimento). Thenorm, which applies to senior members of the government, al-lowed the premier, involved in a series of lawsuits, to avoid ap-pearing before the court if institutional commitments kept himfrom doing so. Such a provision spurred a row, as it was per-ceived as an unjustified privilege which granted some citizensa different treatment than the majority of citizens, thus runningcounter the principle that the law is equal for all. The lawyerreplied that the law is equal for all, but not necessarily its appli-cation (Guardian 7 oct 2009). in this way he attempted to solvethe contradiction pointed out by journalists, by splitting up fromthe original notion of law, two different notions: law itself, in-tended as the core concept, related to principle, and the appli-cation of law, intended as the more trivial mechanics of law. inthis way, the principle of equality is reaffirmed with regard tothe former notion and negated with regard to the second.

7.3.2. Walton: inductive, deductive and defeasible arguments. adopting a different perspective on schemes, Walton et al.

(2008), who provide a comprehensive treatment thereof, placeemphasis on the dialogicity inherent in the process of validating


an argument. Traditionally, argument validity was associatedwith logical validity, i.e. compliance within deductive reason-ing or inductive reasoning. in the former, (also referred to asmodus ponens or syllogism), if the party to whom the argumentis addressed accepts the premise, and the argument is valid,then he/she is logically bound to accept also the conclusion(Walton et al. 2008: 7-8). in the latter (inductive reasoning), astatistical conclusion is drawn from a set of data. Forms of rea-soning that did not comply with deductive or inductive reason-ing were considered fallacious. however, starting from theobservation that in many fields of activity arguments departingfrom such forms of reasoning were commonly accepted, as isthe case of arguments from expert opinion in courtrooms, or inscientific contexts, some scholars, among whom Walton(1996), started to make the case for the legitimacy of presump-tive, or defeasible, arguments. Such schemes, though not logi-cally binding, can still be reasonable, but the support theyprovide to the conclusion is only tentative, as it is up to the an-tagonist to ask critical questions testing the validity of the ar-gument before having to accept the conclusion (Walton et al.2008: 3). Defeasibility, then, lies in the provisionality of the an-tagonist’s commitment to (i.e. acceptance of) the argument putforth by the protagonist, which is due if the argument complieswith the requirements of an argument scheme and the premiseis acceptable, but can subsequently be retracted, should the pro-tagonist fail to answer one of the scheme-specific critical ques-tions asked (Walton et al. 2008: 9).

The example Walton (1996: 81) gives for a defeasible argu-ment is the following:

a ph.D. student, Susan, has spent more than 5 years trying to fin-ish her thesis, but there are problems. her advisers keep leavingtown, and delays are continued. She contemplates going to lawschool, where you can get a degree in a definite period. But thenshe thinks: “Well, i’ve put so much work into this thing. it wouldbe a pity to give up now”.


The argument put forth by Susan in a process of self-delib-eration can tentatively be accepted, as it correctly applies a rec-ognized argument scheme (a form of argument from waste) andappears reasonable. however, vis-à-vis the situation of uncer-tainty as to future developments, the implicit conclusion [i’drather complete my thesis than going to law school] might haveto be withdrawn or modified if new data become available (e.g.if Susan’s supervisor unexpectedly opts for an early retirement,thus further protracting the completion of the thesis). The pos-sibility of further complications could be contemplated by ask-ing critical questions for the argument from waste, i.e. 1) isbringing about [the aim] possible? and 2) forgetting past lossesthat cannot be recouped, should a reassessment of the cost andbenefits of trying to bring about [the aim] from this point intime to be made? (Walton et al. 2008: 326).

having included defeasible arguments in the list of accept-able schemes, Walton et al. (2008: 348 and ff.) propose a clas-sification system for argument schemes divided into three maincategories. i) Reasoning, encompassing different “kinds of se-quences in which there is a chaining of inferences, such thatthe conclusion of one local inference becomes a premise forthe next one”, includes besides deductive and inductive reason-ing also practical reasoning (e.g. argument from conse-quences…), abductive reasoning (e.g. argument from sign), andcausal reasoning (e.g. argument from cause to effect, slipperyslope argument…); ii) Source based arguments depend on thecredibility of the source and include argument from position toknow (e.g., argument from expert opinion, from witness testi-mony), argument from commitment, arguments attacking per-sonal credibility and arguments from popular acceptance;finally under the heading Applying rules to cases (iii), thoseschemes are grouped which apply some general rule to a spe-cific case, the validity of which rests on how well the rule fitsthe case. These comprise, among others, arguments from ex-ample, analogy and precedent.


7.3.3. pragma-dialectics: arguments based on symptomatic,analogy and causal relations.

The pragma-dialectical approach to schemes seems to sac-rifice precision for the sake of manageability, reducing mostargumentative schemes to three main types of argumentation,which include subtypes, based respectively on a symptomaticrelation, a relation of analogy and a causal relation, includingas a variant of the latter pragmatic argumentation (roughly cor-responding to the practical argument in Walton et al. 2008).also in the pragma-dialectical approach each scheme is asso-ciated with critical questions, which are specific to eachscheme (see van eemeren et al. 2002: 96 and ff.). For the pur-poses of the critical discussion model, getting a globaloverview of the structure of argumentation permits to tellwhether a standpoint has been sufficiently defended, whileidentifying schemes linking single arguments to the generalstandpoint allows to test their resistance to potential criticism(van eemeren 2010: 12).i) Symptomatic arguments. argumentation based on a symp-

tomatic relation, which can be considered roughly tanta-mount to perelman and olbrechts-Tyteca’s connectionbetween essence and its manifestations, rests on the follow-ing scheme:

y is true of XBecause Z is true of Xand Z is symptomatic of y

and an example of it can be found in the following letter to theeditor:20

(3) iT iS noT surprising that David miliband has relied on theFood Standards agency (FSa) on the quality of organic food


20 This letter to the editor is courtesy of giuliana garzone.

(organic food is no better, says minister, news, last week).Flying in the face of the science which the FSa purports to up-hold, it disregards the research — for example the work fromGlasgow and Liverpool universities, which showed substan-tially higher levels (68.2%) of Omega 3 fatty acids in organicmilk compared with conventional milk, and a more favourableratio of Omega 3 to Omega 6 fatty acids. There is other infor-mation showing higher levels of vitamins and lower levels ofpesticides — nobody knows the true risks as nobody has testedthe safety of the use of multiple chemicals on food crops —the so-called cocktail effect. (Times, letter to the editor)

in this case, the standpoint that organic food (X) is healthier(y) than normal food is defended by the argument that it con-tains better nutrients and fewer pesticides (Z), which is per seconsidered symptomatic of being healthier (y):

ii) Argumentation by analogy. in argumentation based on a re-lation of analogy, reasoning follows the scheme

y is true of XBecause y is true of Zand Z is comparable to X

again, an example of such scheme is provided by a letter tothe editor, in which the hypothesis of a conspiracy (X) behindlady Diana and Dody al-Fayed’s death is rejected (i.e. is con-sidered false [y]) on the ground that other conspiracy theoriesbehind the deaths of celebrities in the past (Z) turned out to befalse (y):

(4) The Sunday Times today publishes the personal testimony ofmohanned al-fayed, in which he takes issue with the officialaccount of the death of Diana, princess of Wales. The ownerof harrods, the london Store and the father of the princess’lost love, Dodi al-Fayed, clearly believes that he and his familyare the victims of an establishment plot that embraces the po-litical classes, the security forces and the media.


We sympathize with him for his loss but we do not believe hisconspiracy to be true. The deaths of glamorous figures havealways provoked conspiracy theories. president Johnkennedy’s assassination and marilyn monroe’s death werefollowed by outrageous allegations. once the evidence wasmade public, however, a fair-minded examination robbed theconspiracy theory credibility. most people now have little dif-ficulty believing kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman,lee harvey oswald, and that monroe died of a drug overdose.(Times, letter to the editor)

iii) Causal arguments. Finally, the scheme of causal argumen-tation is as follows:

y is true of X Because Z is true of X and Z leads to y

Drawing again on the movie Thank you for smoking dis-cussed above (section 7.2) the main argument used against thetobacco corporation is based on a relation of causality: the in-surgence of lung cancer (y) in smokers is blamed onto ciga-rettes (X) – and by extension onto the tobacco corporation – onthe ground that cigarettes contain nicotine (Z), and nicotinecauses cancer (y).

a subtype of the causal argument scheme, the pragmatic ar-gument consists in arguing that a certain action should be taken(or avoided) as it produces a certain effect, and such an effectis desirable (or undesirable), resting on the following scheme:

act X is desirable/undesirableBecause X leads to consequence yand consequence y is desirable/undesirable

a particularly interesting example of this scheme can befound, again, in the movie Thank you for smoking, where themain character (nick naylor, a lobbyist for the Tobacco cor-


poration) has to convince the former protagonist of the marl-boro advertisements, now dying of lung cancer and leading apersonal campaign against the tobacco corporation, to acceptmoney in exchange for his silence. in a spectacular example ofmanipulation, nick naylor, suggests that the marlboro manshould accept (X) the money – which would then be used toset up a Foundation against cigarettes – so that he could pub-licly denounce the bribery attempt on the part of the tobaccocorporation (y), thus bringing further discredit onto them (de-sirable).21

This latter example provides also the opportunity of fo-cussing on strategic manoeuvring in the argumentation stage,and particularly on presentational devices, which will be dealtwith separately in the next section.

7.3.4. Strategic manoeuvring in the argumentation stageThe choice of one scheme over another depends on factors

which to a certain extent fall beyond the scope of strategic ma-noeuvring, resting in the first place on the factual data available.however, whenever different lines of defence are available, theselection of one over the others can be accounted for by con-siderations on which is deemed more effective in relation to theintended audience and context.22

in the example under discussion, strategic manoeuvring atthe level of topic selection translates into the recourse to thepragmatic argument over other viable alternatives. in line of


21 The manoeuvre is in fact manipulative as naylor’s addressee cannotsee the lobbyist’s real intention, which is of convincing him to accept themoney in exchange of his silence. This point will be further commented onwhen discussing adaptation to the audience.

22 The importance of possible alternatives to the selection made by thespeaker is also at the basis of discourse analysis, whose fundamentalquestion is why, of all the ways a message can be expressed, a certainformulation is chosen, or in other words, in what way the chosen form suitsbest the intention of the speaker.

principle, the same communicative purpose could have beenpursued by means of an argument based on analogy, for exam-ple, making the case that the man should take the money be-cause other people in the same situation have accepted aredress. or again, by means of symptomatic argumentation, ar-guing that opting for a certain redress over an uncertain successin a win-hard campaign against tobacco giants is a sign ofgreater intelligence. Such strategies, though, would have beenless effective in terms of audience adaptation, as none of thembuilds on a starting point shared by the marlboro man. naylor’sargument, instead, leverages on the man’s rage as an object ofagreement and on that ground convinces him to consider thepossibility of accepting the money, if only for the purpose ofdelivering an image blow to the tobacco corporation, thus re-ducing the man’s initial resistance. had the protagonist sug-gested a more self-oriented desirable consequence, he wouldhave certainly met the antagonist’s hostility, as made clear bythe marlboro men’s reaction guessing the content of the suit-case “my dignity ain’t for sale”.

Finally, as far as presentation strategies are concerned, thespeaker’s real intention is for money to speak for itself: the sug-gestion that former marlboro man take the money only to bendit to his own cause is just an expedient that naylor employs towin the man’s attention and make him suspend his judgement.in fact, with the pretext of showing the man how to stage, infront of the TV cameras of a popular talk show, his outrage atthe Tobacco corporation’s attempt to buy his silence, naylorempties the case containing the money on the floor, counting onthe perlocutionary effect of the mound of banknotes to wet theappetite of his addressee, thus inducing him to accept the offer.

7.4. Fourth stage: the Conclusion

a critical discussion reaches a conclusion when one of theparties has conclusively defended or rejected the standpoint. if


two parties defend different lines of action, and eventually eitherof them prevails, that is an example of a conclusion. in our ex-ample, the marlboro man ends up accepting the money, and notwith a view to decrying the behaviour of the Tobacco corpora-tion, but for himself and his family – having given in at the sightof the money scattered on the floor – thus adjudicating the dis-pute to the protagonist. other examples can be found in editori-als ending with what van Dijk (1995/1996) calls a pragmaticconclusion, or with a re-statement of the initial standpoint,whose validity is taken as conclusively defended by the forego-ing reasoning. often, however, the conclusion remains implicit,or is not reached at all, as is the case when two parties maintaineach their original conviction. in other cases the conclusion isdeferred, as in product or political advertising, where the suc-cess of the protagonist is determined by the effect produced onthe audience. or again, the conclusion may be decided by athird party, as in court cases, or all the contexts in which an ar-bitrator is called to decide over a dispute.

8. STraTegic manoeuVring anD DiScourSe analySiS

From a discourse analytical perspective, the first two aspectsof strategic manoeuvring – topical selection and audience adap-tation – pertain to the context, i.e. language-external factorswhich can be analysed only by taking into consideration whothe participants are, and what motives they have for entering acritical discussion in a given context of situation (halliday1994). The third aspect, presentational choices, concerned as itis with formal as opposed to substantial issues, is the one towhich discourse analysis can make the greatest contribution.Besides, if all the aspects are meant as closely knit to eachother, and are artificially distinguished only for the sake ofanalysis, presentational choices are still less severable from theother two, considering that it is through discursive choices that


the former two aspects are concretely realized. argumentschemes have to be filled with a content which is linguisticallymediated, and adaptation to the audience is likewise achieveddiscursively. For this reason presentational choices will begiven particular attention in the next section.

The fundamental role of presentation, already recognized inclassical rhetoric, is acknowledged also in perelman and ol-brechts-Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric, where chapter Three iseloquently titled ‘presentation of data and form of the di-scourse’. Significantly, the two authors warn that effective pre-sentation, defined as one that “impresses itself on the hearer’sconsciousness”, should not be conceived as the purely formalart of good speaking and writing, separated from the substanceof discourse. in other words purely formal aspects, intended asstylistic structures and figures – which are nonetheless addres-sed in The New Rhetoric –, cannot be studied in isolation fromthe purpose of argumentation (1969: 142), a position that is par-ticularly in tune with the discourse-analytical perspective in ge-neral, and more specifically with the pragmatic viewpoint.

8.1. Linguistic structures associated with argumentation

among linguistic structures, perelman and olbrechts-Tytecapoint out some which are particularly relevant for argumenta-tion, as they are invested with an evaluative23 potential. Theseinclude:

negative forms, as they position the speaker antitheti-cally with regard to someone else’s stance. in the au-thors’ words “a negation is a reaction to an actual orvirtual affirmation by someone else” and on the same


23 in fact the authors use the expression ‘affective value’. here i drawon the subsequent notion of evaluation as systematized by hunston andThompson (2001).

definition there seems to rely Werlich, in his TextGrammar of English (1983), when identifying in a ne-gated statement the thematic text base of argumenta-tive text types. other categorizations within the fieldof linguistics include negatives in the frame of poly-phony, seizing in such structures a dialogic element(martin/White 2005, garzone 2012);

coordination and subordination, with the relative con-junctions and connectors/adverbs, since the choice oftreating propositions as coordinated or subordinatedoften depends on evaluative considerations, or moreprecisely on “the hierarchy of the admitted values (pe-relman/olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 156). and according tothe two authors subordination (as opposed to coordina-tion), seems to be the norm, at least in cognitive terms.To make the point, perelman and olbrechts-Tyteca usethe following example: the two propositions “i met yourfriend yesterday” and “he did not mention you” couldbe joined by the conjuction and, but the normal inter-pretation would in most situations be “although he hadthe opportunity, your friend did not mention you”,which reveals an expectation frustrated by the events.in argumentative discourse subordination seems evenmore prevalent, to the extent that the two scholars de-clare the hypotactic construction “the argumentativeconstruction par excellance”, as it “creates frame-works” (1969: 158) that reveal the position of the spea-ker;

modalities, intended in the strict technical sense, includeassertive modality, “the unmarked option in argumen-tation”, and the interrogative, which is a modality ofconsiderable rhetorical importance, as “a question pre-supposes an object to which it relates and suggests thatthere is agreement as to the existence of this object” (on


this aspect cf. also levinson [1983: 181-184] on que-stions as presupposition triggers). The injunctive mo-dality (typically expressed by the imperative), on theother hand is not persuasive at all, as its force rests onthe authority of the speaker, and neither is the optativemodality (e.g. may he succeed!), which is similar to theinjunctive, when it expresses a prayer or a supplication(1969: 158-160);

use of tense, with the past that stands for facts, thus ad-ding factuality to a representation, while the present isused for “the universal, the law, the normal”, as well asto enhance the feeling of presence (1969: 160. on a si-milar note cf. Benveniste’s dichotomy ‘histoire vs dis-cours’, 1966);

pronouns, with particular emphasis placed on the oppo-sition between the impersonal ‘one’ which is “oftenused to put forth a standard” while decreasing the spea-ker’s responsibility and ‘i’, which expresses subjecti-vity (1969: 161).

a further element that all these structures have in commonis, as acknowledged by the same authors, that they contributeto the modulation of modality (meant here in its broadestsense), expressing certainty, possibility and necessity of a pro-position (1969: 163), which all in all is also referred to as epi-stemic evaluation (hunston/Thompson 2001). curiously, thelist above does not mention other linguistic devices performingthe same function, like modal verbs, but also metadiscursiveelements like it- projecting clauses (such as ‘it is necessarilythe case that’ and ‘it is possible that’).

Discourse analysts draw similar lists of linguistic featuresthat are relevant for the purposes of their analysis (amongothers see van Dijk 2001, Fairclough 2001), most of which canbe put to use when analyzing presentational choices in argu-mentation. excluding items already mentioned in perelman and


olbrechts-Tyteca’s list, the following devices can be singledout from the works of different authors representing differentstrands of research on discourse:

lexis, the most obvious area, as the selection of wordswith a positive or negative connotation is the first clueto the speaker’s attitude;24

syntactic relations within the sentence, most of whichcan be subsumed under the transitivity system (halliday1994), devised as a comprehensive model to grasp choi-ces made by language users for representing reality. itbasically analyses utterances in terms of who does whatto whom, in what circumstances, the basic assumptionbeing that representation of reality is never neutral andthe linguistic selections made indirectly express thestance of the speaker/writer. Special regard is had forthe type of subject (active agents, experiencers, abstractforces, impersonal subjects), the objects and the proces-ses which put them into a relation, in terms of type ofprocess (the main distinction being material vs relatio-nal) and diathesis (active or passive);

inferences, i.e. implicit contents vehiculated by an ut-terance without being overtly codified (grice 1975).These include both conventional and conversational im-plicatures, and presuppositions;

textual features, above all mechanisms of cohesion and


24 a similar point is made by perelman and olbrechts-Tyteca (1969:149) when they affirm “in general, an indication of the argumentative intentis given by the use of a term representing a departure from ordinarylanguage”, immedialtely qualifying their statement with the followingcaveat: “in actual fact there is no neutral choice – but there is a choice thatappears neutral (broadly speaking, a term that passes unnoticed may beconsidered ordinary)”. incidentally, this latter statement is in line withpositions expressed by scholars concerned with the study of ideology (cf.Stuart hall 1982), who have deeply influenced discourse studies, andparticularly their critical strand.

coherence (De Beaugrande/Dressler 1981). it can be thecase that simply by juxtaposing propositions furthermeanings can be conveyed, whose product is more thanthe sum of the propositional contents (see for examplemautner 2008, clark 2006). intertextuality, referred to“the ways in which the production and reception of agiven text depend upon the participants’ knowledge ofother texts” (De Beaugrande/Dressler 1981/2002, ch.iX) is another potentially meaningful factor. For exam-ple, a feature article published in the Time magazine onthe increasing consensus for (extremist) rightwing par-ties in europe carried the title: the march of the far-right(Time 1 aug 2009). Without explicitly judging this stateof affairs dangerous or drawing an explicit parallel bet-ween contemporary right-wing movements and past to-talitarian regimes, the headline activates in the readeran intertextual reference to another event, commonlyknown as the march on rome, which opened the wayto the fascist dictatorship in italy in 1922. a similar me-chanism is exploited later on in the article (p. 23), wherein the proposition “over the years, far-right fortuneshave surged, only to ebb as the parties have shot them-selves in the jackboots [emphasis added] with internalfeuds and rickety organization” the idiom ‘shootingoneself in the foot’ has been manipulated with a viewto evoking the image of the SS uniforms;

cognitive macro structures, such as text-genres. Spea-kers have expectations about the purpose of differentgenres, which can however be bent to achieve differentpurposes. an example to the point is pharmaceuticalgiant novartis’ bending of the Question & answer web-page, a genre which is conventionally meant to providepractical information, to the exquisitely argumentativeeffort of defending their reputation against potential da-


mage produced by a dispute with the indian governmentover patents and access to drugs for poorer people (ca-tenaccio/Degano 2011).

9. concluDing remarkS

The chapter has presented the rationale for the combinationof argumentation theory and discourse analysis, intended bothin its traditional qualitative approaches, and in its quantitativecorpus-assisted strands, and has provided a description of themethodological tools that will be employed in the subsequentchapters of the book. Special attention has been devoted to thepragma-dialectical notion of strategic manoeuvring across thefour stages of the critical discussion model, with the convictionthat the analytical accuracy provided by such a model, associa-ted with the concern for the rhetorical component of argumen-tation is what makes this approach particularly attractive for adiscourse analyst working on argumentative forms of discourse.

The next chapters will put the methodological frame towork, presenting a series of case studies focused on politicaldiscourse in which the viability of the frame itself is tested. Theresults thus obtained, apart from shedding light on areas of po-litical discourse that are under-investigated from a linguisticperspective, will hopefully make the case for the methodologi-cal synergy proposed in the book.

Future research may follow two directions: on the one handa more sophisticated adaptation of corpus linguistics tools tothe study of argumentation could be pursued, furthering in-sights into the use of indicators to retrieve items worthy of at-tention for argumentation analysts, or exploring the potentialof corpus annotation for aspects of argumentation extendingwell beyond the lexico-grammatical level. or, again, devisingways of corpus interrogation which make the analysis less de-


pendant on the backing of qualitative analysis, assessing forexample, on a statistical basis, the reliability of potential indi-cators of argumentation.

on the other hand, further research may adopt other perspec-tives of discourse analysis, such as multimodal analysis(kress/van leeuwen 2006) – to explore argumentation in mul-timodal environments, notably the web – or genre analysis, al-lowing to study argumentative discourse from the point of viewof the conventional move structure associated with specific ac-tivity types in institutional contexts.

Whatever approaches are combined, caution must be takenlest the specificities of each contributing discipline be watereddown to the point of losing any heuristic value. To this end, theresearcher should limit him/herself to what his competence inthe ‘borrowed’ field allows him/her to do. an even better optionwould be a collaboration between scholars with complementingbackgrounds, a scenario which i hope this book may contributeto making possible.


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