The Epistemology of Anger in Argumentation

While anger can derail argumentation, it can also help arguers and audiences to reason together in argumentation. Anger can provide information about premises, biases, goals, discussants, and depth of disagreement that people might otherwise fail to recognize or prematurely dismiss. Anger can also enhance the salience of certain premises and underscore the importance of related inferences. For these reasons, we claim that anger can serve as an epistemic resource in argumentation

A Narrative Account of Argumentation

In this dissertation I attempt to accomplish three goals. The first goal is to develop a narrative account of argumentation. I show that storytelling serves as a legitimate mode of argumentation. I develop an account of narrative argument based on generalized features of narrative and a conception of argument that is rhetorical and in line with Charles Willards notion of argument as an interaction. I identify features of narrative argument that enable narrative to function as an argument and thus to provide reasons for a claim in the context of disagreement. As a result, I synthesize literatures on narrative and argumentation to provide a definition of narrative argument. The second goal of the dissertation is to argue for maintaining the narrative as a process without reconstructing the narrative into the dominant model of argument. In this part of the dissertation, I elaborate on the definition of narrative argument and argue that narrative argument must be understood as a process, and not as a product of argument. While the product view focuses on the form and structure of an argument as being linear, explicit, and containing premises and a conclusion, and treats arguments as things, the process view focuses on the whole act of arguing, thus highlighting the importance of the context of argumentation and the people involved. In support of this thesis, I show that reducing the narrative into premises and a conclusion is problematic because it deprives it of some of its persuasive force. Reducing the narrative into a product removes the real argumentpart of which is implicitfrom its context, its unique situation, and its complex social setting. The third goal of this dissertation is to develop an account of argument evaluation that is suitable for narrative argument understood as a process. I offer an account of how to evaluate narratives using the virtuous audience, combining theories of virtue argumentation and rhetorical audiences. In sum, this dissertation provides a definition of narrative argument, stipulates the conditions of narrative arguments that make them successful, and offers ways of evaluating the narrative while maintaining its form as a process

Civil Procedure as a Critical Discussion

This Article develops a model for analyzing legal dispute resolution systems as systems for argumentation. Our model meshes two theories of argument conceived centuries apart: contemporary argumentation theory and classical stasis theory. In this Article, we apply the model to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as a proof of concept. Specifically, the model analyzes how the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure function as a staged argumentative critical discussion designed to permit judge and jury to rationally resolve litigants’ differences in a reasonable manner. At a high level, this critical discussion has three phases: a confrontation, an (extended) opening, and a concluding phase. Those phases are the umbrella under which discrete argumentation phases occur at points we call stases. Whenever litigants seek a ruling or judgment, they reach a stasis—a stopping or standing point for arguing procedural points of disagreement. During these stases, the parties make arguments that fall into predictable “commonplace” argument types. Taken together, these stock argument types form a taxonomy of arguments for all civil cases. Our claim that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure function as a system for argumentation is novel, as is our claim that civil cases breed a taxonomy of argument types. These claims also mark the beginning of a broader project. Starting here with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, we embark on a journey that we expect to follow for several years (and which we hope other scholars will join), exploring our model’s application across dispute resolution systems and using it to make normative claims about those systems. From a birds-eye view, this Article also represents a short modern trek in a much longer journey begun by advocates in city states in and near Greece nearly 2500 years ago

The role of emotions and conflicting online reviews on consumers' purchase intentions

Drawing on dual-process theories, this paper explains how the systematic and heuristic information processing of online reviews with conflicting information can influence consumers' purchase decision making. The study adopts major assumptions of complexity and configuration theory in employing fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on 680 TripAdvisor users to test the complex interrelationships between emotions and the systematic and heuristic cues used in processing reviews. The results show that the systematic and heuristic processing of online reviews can produce independent impacts on consumer decision making. Both processing routes can interact with each other to affect the domination of one route over the other. In the case of a positive–negative sequence, consumers mainly follow a heuristic processing route. In the reverse sequence, consumers' concerns about the credibility of the reviews leads them to think more deeply (systematic processing) and actively evaluate both the argumentation quality and the helpfulness of the online reviews

What we hide in words: Value-based reasoning and emotive language

There are emotively powerful words that can modify our judgment, arouse our emotions and influence our decisions. This paper shows how the use of emotive meaning in argumentation can be explained by showing how their logical dimension, which can be analysed using argumentation schemes, combines with heuristic processes triggered by emotions. Arguing with emotive words is shown to use value-based practical reasoning grounded on hierarchies of values and maxims of experience for evaluative classification

Developing Critical Thinking with Rhetorical Pedagogy

The development of critical thinking skills is emphasized as a fundamental attribute of successful graduates (Ritchhart & Perkins, 2005; Willingham, 2008). Some critical thinking textbooks inform students to “see beyond the rhetoric to the core idea being stated” (Moore and Parker, 2009, p. 21); however, other scholars have begun to suggest that rhetoric is intrinsically interrelated to critical thinking and plays a pivotal role in everyday interactions (Saki, 2016). This paper explores the later