Virtual communities as narrative processes

By facing the problem to describe the history of a virtual community as the sequence of events generated by its participants, a different perception of the meaning of communitywares emerges. This paper describes a proposal for a virtual community system based on the narrative process that supports the social evolution of the community

Annotation with adpositional argumentation:Guidelines for building a Gold Standard Corpus of argumentative discourse

This paper explains Adpositional Argumentation (AdArg), a new method for annotating arguments expressed in natural language. In describing this method, it provides the guidelines for designing a Gold Standard Corpus (GSC) of argumentative discourse in terms of so-called argumentative adpositional trees (arg-adtrees). The theoretical starting points of AdArg draw on the combination of the linguistic representation framework of Constructive Adpositional Grammars (CxAdGrams) with the argument categorisation framework of the Periodic Table of Arguments (PTA). After an explanation of these two frameworks, it is shown how AdArg can be used for annotating arguments expressed in natural language. This is done by providing the arg-adtrees of four concrete examples of arguments, which substantiate the four basic argument forms distinguished in the PTA. The present exposition of the fundamental tenets of AdArg enables the building of a GSC of argumentative discourse, that means an annotated corpus of texts and discussions of undisputable high-quality according to argumentation theory experts. Such a GSC should be conveniently annotated in terms of arg-adtrees, which is a time-consuming process, as it needs highly skilled annotators and human supervision. However, its role is crucial for developing instruments for computer-assisted argumentation analysis and eventual application based on machine learning natural language processing algorithms

More than<i> Relata Refero</i>: Representing the Various Roles of Reported Speech in Argumentative Discourse

Reported speech, or relata refero, although not always part of the argumentation tout court, can be an important element of argumentative discourse. It might, for instance, provide information on the position of another party in the discussion or function as part of the premise of an argument from authority. Whereas existing methods of representing argumentative discourse focus on arguments and their interrelations, this paper develops a method that enables the analyst to also include informative elements in the representation, focusing on reported speech. It does so by incorporating the notion of ‘voice’ into the representation framework of Adpositional Argumentation (AdArg). In particular, the paper explains how to formalize the constituents of this notion and illustrates its use in representing (1) an author’s report of the position of another party (including the supporting argumentation); (2) an author’s own position (including the supporting argumentation); and (3) source-based arguments such as the argument from authority, with an indication of the distance of the source from the author

More than Relata Refero: Representing the Various Roles of Reported Speech in Argumentative Discourse

Reported speech, or relata refero, although not always part of the argumentation tout court, can be an important element of argumentative discourse. It might, for instance, provide information on the position of another party in the discussion or function as part of the premise of an argument from authority. Whereas existing methods of representing argumentative discourse focus on arguments and their interrelations, this paper develops a method that enables the analyst to also include informative elements in the representation, focusing on reported speech. It does so by incorporating the notion of \u2018voice\u2019 into the representation framework of Adpositional Argumentation (AdArg). In particular, the paper explains how to formalize the constituents of this notion and illustrates its use in representing (1) an author\u2019s report of the position of another party (including the supporting argumentation); (2) an author\u2019s own position (including the supporting argumentation); and (3) source-based arguments such as the argument from authority, with an indication of the distance of the source from the author

Complex Arguments in Adpositional Argumentation

Adpositional Argumentation (AdArg) is a new method for annotating argumentative discourse that represents linguistic and pragmatic information in argumentative adpositional trees. In this paper, we explain how the representation of claims and individual arguments provide the building blocks for more complex argumentation structures. We illustrate the abstract trees representing the systematic possibilities of a claim (one statement), minimal argument (one conclusion, one premise), convergent argumentation (one conclusion, multiple premises), as well as serial argumentation, when the same linguistic material plays the double role of the premise of a given argument and the conclusion of a subargument

The Logic of the Arguer: Representing Natural Argumentative Discourse in Adpositional Argumentation

In this paper, we show how to represent natural argumentative discourse through Adpositional Argumentation, a uniform framework for expressing linguistic and pragmatic aspects of such discourse on various levels of abstraction. Starting from representing the utterer and the utterance, we expand to claims and minimal arguments, finally focusing on complex argumentation in three different structures: convergent (many premises), divergent (many conclusions), and serial (an argument whose premise is the conclusion of another argument). An innovative feature of the framework is that it enables the analyst to provide a granular description of natural argumentative discourse, thus letting the logic of the arguer dynamically unfold while the discourse is presented without enforcing any particular interpretation