Crying Foul to Counter Questionable Tactics

How do crying foul strategies, such as accusing an opponent of trying to “terrify” into a decision, pressure arguers to argue well? I submit that they work by (1) making a norm determinate and (2) making manifest the badness of the tactic. I explain why they generate pressure to repair or abandon questionable tactics, particularly when the norms converge with those of a broader political culture

Evaluating Fear Appeals

I inquire into the issue of how to evaluate fear appeals. I propose modifications to Douglas Walton\u27s position in Scare Tactics: Arguments that Appeal to Fear and Threats that will help improve assessment of fear appeals in complex argumentation such as political discourse. Walton has argued for attending to the underlying practical inference structure involved in fear appeals as well as the type of dialogue in which they occur. I propose, first, that theorists understand the practical reasoning not in terms of an underlying inferential structure but rather as an account of how discourse strategies give fear appeals force; and, second, that theorists not deduce norms and standards from so-called dialogue types but rather explain how discourse strategies engage norms of argumentation that give fear appeals force. This approach generates a normative pragmatic theory of fear appeals that has more explanatory power than Walton\u27s theory, because it explains how discourse strategies agents actually use engage norms of argumentation and are therefore compelling. I submit that compelling fear appeals are designed to show addressees (1) risks to themselves of not carefully assessing the fearful circumstances and (2) risks to the arguer of misjudging whether circumstances merit fear

Norms of Forcibleness

If logic alone does not compel adherence to a thesis, must we conclude that the audience is irrational at worst or weak at best? I submit that a normative pragmatic perspective helps to explain cases of argumentation where logical or intellectual forcibleness alone is not sufficient for pressuring addressees to believe, consider, or do something. I argue (1) that a normative pragmatic perspective explains why argumentation foregrounding only logical forms may in some cases reasonably be expected to lack forcibleness and, in doing so, (2) that a normative pragmatic perspective offers a more complete account of norms of forcibleness than a logical perspective. To support these claims, I first overview a normative pragmatic account of forcibleness and then analyze and evaluate pragmatic forcibleness in Anna Howard Shaw\u27s ‘The Fundamental Principle of a Republic’. I focus on humor as a strategy and as comprised of strategies that create reasons for attending to her argumentation and believing her thesis

A Normative Pragmatic Model of Making Fear Appeals

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The published version is available from Project Muse: http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/philosophy_and_rhetoric/v044/44.3.innocenti.pdfHow do fear appeals generate persuasive force, or reasonably pressure addressees to act as the speaker advocates? Leading models of fear appeals provide partial answers to this question because they locate persuasive force primarily in internal states, such as addressees’ cognitions or emotions. Consequently, they omit key parts of rhetorical transactions such as the speaker, actual message design, and bilateral communication vectors. The normative pragmatic model proposed here provides a more complete account by describing persuasive force in terms of strategies speakers use to design fear appeals. Put simply, fear appeals are designed to (1) make manifest that the speaker has made a responsible assessment of potential fearful outcomes and how to address them; and (2) forestall criticism for poor judgment or fear-mongering. Persuasive force (1) is generated by message design features such as claiming that harmful consequences will occur unless addressees act as the speaker advocates, presenting grounds, and using intense language; and (2) is located in risks and commitments that these design features make manifest

Countering Questionable Tactics by Crying Foul

This is the author's accepted manuscript, made available with permission of the American Forensic Association.How do crying foul strategies, such as saying opponents are trying to "terrify" into a decision, pressure opponents to argue well? I submit that crying foul strategies work by making a norm determinate, and by making manifest the badness of the tactic and that the speaker is exercising forbearance. I explain why they generate pressure to repair or abandon questionable tactics, particularly when the norms they bring to bear in a situation converge with those of a broader political culture

Halting retreats to metadialogues

How can social actors halt retreats to metadialogues that involve nit-picking or unwarranted charges, and why can they expect the strategies to work? Krabbe (2003) has proposed a dialectical regulation designed to forestall or halt retreats from ground-level discussions to metadialogues: paying the costs of the metadialogue. I argue that this dialectical regulation deserves to be taken seriously because it is realistic and encompasses a range of strategies that ordinary social actors take as reasonable

Foiling Kamesian Belletristic Theory in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Scotland

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Advances in the History of Rhetoric on March 1st, 2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/15362426.2019.1569416.Two disciplinary stories that take place in mid-eighteenth-century Scotland omit an important plotline. One story is that university teaching of rhetoric transformed into belletristic criticism; another is that ideology and culture transformed to reorient rhetorical theorizing toward everyday practices by non-elites. Untold is a story of how familiar protagonists, such as Hugh Blair, clashed with antagonists, such as John Witherspoon, in the Church of Scotland. Telling that story from the antagonists’ perspective shows that they reflected on how rhetoric ought to be practiced to manage disagreement in a democratic institution, and used what amounted to Kamesian belletrism as a foil

The Persuasive Force of Political Humor

Political humor is ubiquitous in some contexts and forbidden in others, and yet scholars have described political humor as unreliable and attempts to control its meaning as futile. How do speakers design political humor to influence audiences, and why do they expect those designs to work? We argue that speakers design persuasive political humor by making visible their intent and undertaking obligations to act in accord with specific norms. We explain how designs constrain audiences from discounting the message as just a joke and create reasons to scrutinize arguments