2,448 research outputs found

    Towards modelling dialectic and eristic argumentation on the social web

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    Modelling arguments on the social web is a key challenge for those studying computational argumentation. This is because formal models of argumentation tend to assume dialectic and logical argument, whereas argumentation on the social web is highly eristic. In this paper we explore this gap by bringing together the Argument Interchange Format (AIF) and the Semantic Interlinked Online Communities (SIOC) project, and modelling a sample of social web arguments. This allows us to explore which eristic effects cannot be modelled, and also to see which features of the social web are missing.We show that even in our small sample, from YouTube, Twitter and Facebook, eristic effects (such as playing to the audience) were missing from the final model, and that key social features (such as likes and dislikes) were also not represented. This suggests that both eristic and social extensions need to be made to our models of argumentation in order to deal effectively with the social we

    The inventions of Sir Thomas Urquhart

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    Perhaps the most famous – or notorious – practitioner of baroque prose in the Scottish literary ‘canon’ is Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty (1611-1660). Urquhart was seen by contemporaries as primarily a humorous writer, a reputation he has sustained, and it is clear from his later critical reception that an element in this reputation derives from his perceived linguistic inventiveness. This inventiveness is suggested by his presence in the top thousand of cited sources in OED. This chapter argues that Urquhart, though undoubtedly egregious in his deployment of Latinate usages in baroque prose, was by no means alone among his contemporaries. Indeed, it seems certain that his first readers, while undoubtedly amused by his writings, would have seen his outputs as not only within a specific prose tradition but in dialogue with numerous contemporary trends in religious, philosophical and scientific thinking. Contemporary readers may well have laughed; but the cognoscenti would also, surely, have discerned alongside the humour the serious and current issues and concerns that informed Urquhart’s ‘curious’ writings. The chapter demonstrates that there are now productive ways of aligning philological research and the historical study of the social networks of the kind with which Urquhart so evidently and profoundly engaged

    Three Monstrosities of Information

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    This article discusses three of my books and the types of information monstrosities they present

    Actants, Agents, and Assemblages: Delivery and Writing in an Age of New Media

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    This dissertation redefines the rhetorical canon of delivery by drawing on interdisciplinary theories of technology and materiality, including hardware and software studies, assemblage theory, and actor-network theory. Rhetorical theorists and composition scholars have correctly equated the technological medium with delivery, but also have focused exclusively on the circulation of symbolic forces rather than the persuasive agency of technology itself, thus eliding the affordances and constraints posed by technological actors at the non-symbolic levels of hardware, software, protocol, and algorithms. I establish a historical precedent in classical theorists such as Demosthenes, Cicero, and Quintilian that acknowledges their understanding of the role of nonhuman actors in rhetoric. In contrast to contemporary views of an active human subject using a passive technological object to achieve a communicative aim, I extend these classical understandings of materiality by articulating a vision of technological agency where rhetorical agency and delivery are equally distributed across human and nonhuman actors and assemblages. This account of delivery enables rhetorical scholars to study how material artifacts and writing technologies circulate, transform, and affect rhetorical consequences as they enter into various associations and shape emergent political publics. Through new media case studies from activist newsgame designers and algorithmic art, I establish a form of multimodal public writing that reconceives of political community building in networked spaces as a process that necessarily involves the consideration of procedural, protocological, and algorithmic rhetorics and literacies. By examining how delivery occurs through a complex ecological and material milieu, I define a more nuanced theoretical framework that allows rhetoricians and composition theorists to more productively address the various non-symbolic aspects of digital rhetoric and nonhuman agency that increasingly serve as a condition of possibility for the ways we learn to write and communicate toda

    The Art of Finding Arguments

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    Kienpointner (1997) showed how the ancient status theory and the Aristotelian theory of topics are partsof an art of argument invention that selects premises to be used in a chain of argumentation from a database of premises accepted by the audience a speaker is trying to persuade. He showed how pursuit of this art of finding arguments, although discredited in the Enlightenment, has recently has been taken up again by argumentation theorists. In this paper it is shown that with the recent advent of computational argumentation systems in artificial intelligence, a technology is now available to help an arguer to find arguments that support her claim, and to refute counter-arguments opposing her claim

    Constructing a Periodic Table of Arguments

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    The existing classifications of arguments are unsatisfying in a number of ways. This paper proposes an alternative in the form of a Periodic Table of Arguments. The newly developed table can be used as a systematic and comprehensive point of reference for the analysis, evaluation and production of argumentative discourse as well as for various kinds of empirical and computational research in the field of argumentation theory

    Ecologies of Practice in Musical Performance

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    This article presents an ecological model of musical performance drawn from the field of Gibsonian Ecological Psychology and the techniques of Actor-Network Theory as explicated by Bruno Latour and others. Citing a wide body of empirical research, it is argued that musicians and their musical instruments exist in an ecological relationship at the level of embodied gesture. Furthermore, it is proposed that every act of musicking amounts to a construction of a network of actors that define an “Ecology of Practice,” a thick description more fully encompassing the complexities of musicking than traditional notions of performance practice.Cet article présente un modèle écologique de l’interprétation musicale inspiré du champ de la psychologie écologique gibsonienne et des techniques de la théorie de l’acteur- réseau telle que définie par Bruno Latour et d’autres. Sur la base d’un large corpus de recherche empirique, il avance que les musiciens et leurs instruments existent dans une relation écologique au niveau du geste incarné. En outre, il propose que chaque acte consistant à jouer de la musique corresponde à la construction d’un réseau d’acteurs qui définissent une « écologie de la pratique », description dense qui englobe plus pleinement les complexités du fait de jouer de la musique que les notions de pratiques performancielles

    When conventional procedures are no longer the rule for application: design as a discipline opens up to new possibilities

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    This paper discusses the development of the prototype application ‘LabanAssist’. It looks at the design rationale used for the creation of what is fundamentally a system for recording dance knowledge on a score, as identifiable and replicable signs and symbols. A system made necessary because the conventions of other established disciplines, such as engineering and computer science practices, were no longer considered to be effective alone, in facilitating the production of well-designed cultural artefacts (Calvert, Fox, Ryman, & Wilke, 2005; Ebenreuter, 2005). It is important to ask how can we understand design as a discipline amongst other fields of study with longstanding conventions and traditions and if the discipline of design offers effective ways of thinking about the creation and art of making products or services for the enhancement of the human experience? Is design a discipline because it adheres to existing and established rules of interdisciplinary knowledge from which it draws, or is it a discipline in its own right that as a significant field of intellectual development utilizes interdisciplinary knowledge as a basis for creativity and invention?” While there is no simple answer to these questions, the design approach adopted for the development of the prototype application ‘LabanAssist’ offers a working example in which the central theme of grammar, or more particularly the rules of a language, depart from the conventional use for its practical application. This application is one in which a literal understanding of grammar is no longer seen as an adequate basis for the generation of dance knowledge expressed via symbolic writing systems. Instead, this research focuses on the way in which the figurative aspects of language can be represented in the design of an interface to orient user thinking and facilitate the generation of diverse movement compositions. Keywords: Labanotation; Grammar; Literal; Figurative; Tropes; Poetic Constructs; Broad Terms; Interface.</p
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