T HE A MSTERDAM A RGUMENTATION C HRONICLE

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1 Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric University of Amsterdam T HE A MSTERDAM A RGUMENTATION C HRONICLE V OL. 4, NO.1, DECEMBER 2007 Dear readers, It is our pleasure to send you the first issue of the fourth volume of the Amsterdam Argumentation Chronicle. Throughout its three years of existence the Chronicle has kept our former students, colleagues and friends, in the Netherlands and elsewhere, updated about the academic and educational activities that take place at the Amsterdam School of Argumentation. It is indeed rewarding for us to see that the number of subscribers to this newsletter continues to increase. It goes without saying that we are deeply grateful to all of you for your comments and suggestions and hope that you will enjoy reading the material that we have enclosed in this issue. With kind regards, Frans van Eemeren A picture of Lugano at sunset taken by Bart Garssen, one of the participants in the Amsterdam-Lugano Colloquium, on December 1 st 2007

2 2 Amsterdam Argumentation Chronicle In this issue Students about their programme Manoeuvring within pragma-dialectics By Halvor Berggrav 3 Voice from within Argumentation theory from an empirical point of view Interview with Bart Garssen 4 Career story Career By Evgeny Kovalishin 6 Work in progress The application of the pragma-dialectical framework to the analysis of argumentative moves on the macro-level By Kamila Debowska 7 Thesis summary Argumentative reality in defence of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation By Theodora Achourioti 8 Voice from without Persuasion research under the loop Interview with Daniel J. O Keefe 9 News 12 Book Publications of the Amsterdam School 15

3 3 Students about their programme STUDENTS ABOUT THEIR PROGRAMME Manoeuvring within pragma-dialectics by Halvor Berggrav Like students before me have made a point of in this column: the RAP programme tends to evoke reactions, both oneself s and others. Other people react with statements like Oh, I better not go into a discussion with you, then. One s own reactions are, needless to say, one s own subjective ones. I have had my bit of frustration. In my experience, the RAP programme hasn t been hard primarily due to the workload, but paradoxically due to pragma-dialectics being as thought through as it is. It seems to me that the stringency of the theory at the same time as constituting its strength is the issue that students sometimes negative reactions stem from. To be as stringent, normative and ideal as a critical discussion is, it necessarily and by definition will not fit with reality; and neither does it intend to. This took me some time to realise and accept. The topos, so to speak, of contrasting emotions and reason has been a recurrent theme of my scholarly work, of my philosophical thinking, and indeed of my life in general. It has given rise to an interest in the phenomenon of language, as this is a medium for both. During my first higher-level studies, in educational theatre at Oslo University College, I met acting and theatre performing for the first time as an adult. I found myself turning more and more away from the use of language towards physical expression and a focus on creating an emotional experience in the audience. Pathos and ethos got the upper hand of my communication so to speak. I have thought of this as losing my language in a way, not the actual use and capability, but the belief in its adequacy for expressing one s thoughts. During my bachelor s degree at the University of Oslo I regained parts of it, but the sense of incompleteness remained. Perhaps a sociology major and a rhetoric and communication minor illustrate this: the primacy of the social in general over language. The funny part is that what attracted me the most in sociology was the idea of how language and discourse constructs reality, and how language is used to express the world and the concepts in it. As always, it is not until one is finished that one truly sees one s interests and gains. In the case of being on the path towards regaining my language, at least one road led to Amsterdam, albeit not directly following up on the initial interest. This short exposition serves as a basis for my starting points in a discussion over pragmadialectics. There are many transitional factors that influence me however, as I went from Norway to Holland, from Oslo to Amsterdam, from UiO to UvA, from BA to MA, from one field to another, and lastly and on another level: from expectations to reality. Halvor Berggrav (Norway) is a student in the Research Master s programme Rhetoric, Argumentation Theory, and Philosophy (RAP). I came from an ex post facto, exploratory way of approaching studying, to a scientifically and theoretically stringent program and department, where everything seemed centred around one core. My questioning of the adequacy of language for instance, seemed if not irrelevant then out of the field in focus; and the same seemed to apply to what I later learned to be higher order conditions. Where were Bourdieu s social inequalities, where were the structural aspects of Foucault s discourses? Where was the conflict outside of the immediate discussion? The only thing I saw was a micro-interactionistic approach combined with notions from rational choice theory. Thus far during my period of studying in Amsterdam I have been given the chance to delve into several similar but diverse topics on my own. I have done analyses both in terms of the classical pragma-dialectical framework and of the latest strategic manoeuvring. But I have among other things also worked on reviewing approaches to the understanding of metaphors; on looking into the preconditions for public deliberation; and on a rhetorical analysis of a controversial newspaper oped concerning last year s Israeli-Lebanese conflict. In other words, it seems that I in fact have been working on both the relation between thought and language, on the structural aspects, and on a conflict (unfortunately) transcending language.

4 4 Voice from within VOICE FROM WITHIN Argumentation theory from an empirical point view Interview with Bart Garssen Amjarso: As you might expect, my first question is who is Bart Garssen, first as a student and then as an academic? Garssen: When I started to study Dutch Language and literature in Amsterdam I did not have a welldefined idea of what I wanted to do: something with, texts, and linguistics. I did not know anything about argumentation and pragmatics. In my first year I got acquainted with speech communication and I liked it very much. We used a text book called Het Analyseren van een Betoog (The Analysis of Discourse), which is the first part of the Dutch version of Argumentation, Communication and Fallacies. I remember I liked that book a lot. It was a great introduction to argumentation and pragmatics. Since you first came here, has there been a lot of change in the way things work in this department with respect to both teaching and research? I think two things have changed: the students and the programme. When I was a student it was not obvious that argumentation theory and speech communication should be part of the curriculum of Dutch studies. This has disappeared altogether. Students do not question the usefulness of argumentation or speech communication. But also the curriculum changed for the better, both on the bachelor and the master level. There is much more coherence and classes follow up on each other in a very systematic way. You have collaborated with Bert Meuffels and Frans van Eemeren on an empirical project on ordinary arguers judgement of fallacies. How important is empirical research for argumentation theory? That depends on what the argumentation scholar is after. For building theories, constructing criteria, evaluating certain discussion rules, and for looking at certain fallacies empirical research is of little relevance. You can develop models and criteria without any recourse to empirical research, but if you want to know more about the relation between theory and practice, the way people argue in practice, then, of course, empirical research is Bart Garssen is lecturer in the Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric in the University of Amsterdam. His specialisations include argumentative writing and empirical research into fallacies and argument schemes. needed. What ordinary language users know about the theory, in what respects they have pretheoretical insights are also questions that can be answered empirically. And then there are of course more practical considerations that empirical research can help with, for instance in teaching argumentation, debate, writing, etc.: we would like to know what could be problematic for ordinary language users when you want to teach them argumentation. You have done some work on ordinary people s conception of argument schemes. What are the implications of your findings? I tried to figure out whether language users have some pre-theoretical ideas on argument schemes. So, I started from the three main types of argumentation schemes; the question was if ordinary language users have the same kind of concept when they argue: to what extent do ordinary language-users have an idea about the type of argument they are using? Or do they have an idea about the type of argumentation they are criticising? In other words: do they have a pretheoretical idea about the step from argument to standpoint? That question is very broad and cannot be answered with yes or no because there are all kinds of graduations. What I found was that people had a very good insight in the step from argument to standpoint, when it comes to criticising. Their criticisms of causal argumentation really differ from their criticisms of arguments from analogy. At the same time, the research shows that inspite of this pre-theoretical insight, it still makes sense to instruct people about argument schemes and critical questions.

5 5 Amsterdam Argumentation Chronicle Apart from the fact that fallacies with argument schemes (such as ad consequentiam) can be considered as derailments of strategic manoeuvring, what are the different ways in which the concept of strategic manoeuvring can relate to argument schemes? I actually think that a scheme fallacy like the argumentum ad consequentiam provides an excellent possibility of showing how manoeuvring in a specific context may derail. The ad consequentiam is a formal fallacy in the sense that if you use an argument by that form, it is fallacious. It is interesting, however, that you have a reasonable counterpart that seems to have the same form. In that respect, that kind of fallacy resembles the logical kind of fallacies like denying the consequence, which also has its reasonable counterpart, the modus tollens argument. So you can find reasonable counterparts for the original fallacy, but they are not the same. When an argument scheme is used in an incorrect way, the derailment is of another type. Now it is a matter of failing to answer critical questions. This is of course something that depends on the context or the activity type in which the argumentation occurs. Among your specialisations is argumentative writing, which is certainly very important for everyone who comes to study at the university. At the level of the University of Amsterdam, do you think that the argumentative writing programme is given the importance that it deserves? Of course it is, because we are responsible for that programme! I think we have good reasons to do this. First of all, if you want to have a writing course, that should be organised and taught by experts, i.e. by people who know about writing and argumentation. On our side of the picture, it is good that we are in the position to put the theory into practice and that we can show that what is developed in theory really works. I strongly believe that an academic writing course should focus on argumentation and on argumentative structures. In the end it is expected from students to justify their ideas not to just produce literature overviews. A last question: What are your future projects? We are in the process of finishing up the project about conventional validity of the discussion rules. The main result of this research project is that we know that ordinary arguers in general denounce unreasonable discussion moves. This raises of course a second question: how is it possible that in practice so many fallacies remain unnoticed, if ordinary arguers in principle find them unreasonable? In our research we used clear cases, but what makes fallacies in real life so hard to detect? The next question is therefore: how can you disguise unreasonable moves by way of special kinds of strategic manoeuvring and what kind of strategic manoeuvres are effective in disguising the unreasonableness of certain discussion moves? A second line of research focuses on strategic manoeuvring and general persuasive effects. This consists of finding out how different types of presenting argumentation in the broad sense - leads to persuasion effects. If you look at persuasion research that has been done so far, in my mind, not much attention has been paid to the circumstances in which a certain type of argumentation or presentation is effective. I think if we want to look at the persuasion process from a dialectical perspective much more is to be gained if we take strategic manoeuvring into account. This means that we not just look at the persuasiveness of certain forms, but focus on the circumstances in which certain forms are effective. For instance, the question is not whether standpoint deletion is more effective than explicitly stating the standpoint, but in which circumstances it can be effective.

6 6 Career story CAREER STORY Career By Evgeny (Gino) Kovalishin My first engagement with the department of Speech Communication and Argumentation theory was in 2004 when I came to UvA as an exchange student from Moscow State University, where I studied Dutch philology. And if UvA as such was more or less a conscious choice even because it s in Amsterdam where some people still speak Dutch, I can t say the same about the Argumentation theory whose connection with Dutch literature (the field of my study back then) was very loose, if was at all. But the good thing about studying Dutch philology in Moscow was that almost nobody from the study administration had any clue of what it meant in reality. Their idea was that it is equal to studying Dutch in any of its manifestations, and as a result I got a full carte blanche for my stay in Amsterdam, that is, I wasn t tied to any course whatsoever. Logically enough, I decided that doing a full time study similar to what I had studied in Moscow would be boring; I opted for something completely different and new. That was debating, or more precisely Argumentation and Discussion. The class was in Dutch and I was the only foreign student in the group. However, I felt so engaged in debating that even language difficulties did not make me give up. I must say that it was a challenge. By the time of going back to Moscow to obtain my MA degree I already knew I would return to Amsterdam. There were at least two good reasons: firstly, I fell in love with the city, and secondly I felt a little confused about argumentation. I understood that what I had seen was just a tiny part of it, and in order to salve my conscience I had to see the rest. And I got enrolled in DASA. That was a beautiful year of both study and pleasure, which led me to my second MA degree. I will not tell you about the programme, new friends, experiences etc. I will just say: I miss it all. But one year flew by and I had to come back to Russia again. This time not for studying but for The Big Life. I decided not to continue the academic career (and I still don t know if it s a right decision), but to try myself somewhere else. So, on returning to Moscow I was lucky to get at least 2 good job offers. This seemed to be a problem since both offers were completely different and very tempting. I had to choose between Evgeny (Gino) Kovalishin (Russia) graduated in August 2006 from the Master in Discourse and Argumentation Studies (DASA). Gazprom, the biggest gas company in the world, and the exhibition business with opportunity to travel all over the world (and get paid for it). But after a few weeks of interviews and meditation I decided that it would be boring. And I accepted some uncertain offer from the show business field. Why was it uncertain? Because I still cannot say what I am exactly, even after almost 1 year working. Some people say I m an executive producer, and I have to believe them. Because together with 20 more people we produce the best shows and events in Russia. You can think of Oscar Award in US we are doing the same kind of events in Moscow. And my task is to coordinate and direct everybody engaged, some 500 people if we are talking about a big project. My boss was charmed by my description of DASA, got it a completely wrong and decided to offer me a leading position in his company. He thought my communication skills would allow me to do the job better than others. And sometimes it is true. The fact is that this job requires more that average argumentation and communication abilities, especially when you have to explain somebody what to do and how to do it right. Especially if this somebody is Mick Jagger, Scarlett Johansson or, say, the CEO of Chanel or Cartier. I still don't know if communication with celebrities requires a special kind of argumentation, but sometimes to convince them is very difficult. So far I'm good in that.

7 7 Work in progress WORK IN PROGRESS The application of the pragma-dialectical framework to the analysis of argumentative moves on the macro-level By Kamila Debowska Since 2005 I have been conducting a qualitative research pertaining to argumentative discourse at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań (the School of English, the Department of Linguistic Semiotics). The study of the argumentative discourse was preceded by thorough examination of the most influential argumentation theories. The results of the study will be described in detail in my Ph.D. dissertation which will be completed in The research focuses on the study of natural discussions in which a conflict of opinions is externalised. The study is carried out on the basis of the recorded material of natural discussions held between English native speakers and an equivalent number of natural discussions held between Polish native speakers. In both cases the discussions are held among the speakers of similar educational and social background. The pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation is applied to the study of argumentative discourse. The model of critical discussion introduced by van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984,1992) serves as a tool for the analysis. The theoretical model provides a series of norms by which it can be determined whether a discussion is aiming at the resolution of a difference of opinions. The reason for preferring the pragmadialectical framework to the logical framework for evaluating argumentation in the study is twofold. First, it is assumed that pragma-dialectics offers a more appropriate framework for the analysis of natural discussions as it joins rhetorical, dialectical and pragmatic approaches in the analysis of the standards of reasonableness of arguers. The logical framework deals only with evidently true premises and logically valid inferences. Second, contrary to pragma-dialectics, formal logic and informal logic are not concerned with empirical investigation. Pragma-dialectitians carried out a comprehensive research that was concerned with the violation of the rules of rational conduct on the micro-level (van Eemeren, Garssen, Meuffels 2002: ). Kamila Debowska (Poland) is a PhD student in the Department of Linguistic Semiotics at Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland. The primary aim of the current study is to show that the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation may be adapted to the study of real-life discourse if implicated assumptions are taken into account while evaluating arguments in terms of their reasonableness on the macro-level. The secondary aim of the study is to show that complex relations between arguments, namely coordinatively compound argumentation, subordinatively compound argumentation, and multiple argumentation, contribute to the evaluation of arguments in terms of their reasonableness on the macro-level. The study proves that the implicated assumptions, namely the macroproposition of argumentation (van Dijk 1977), the gradual inference rule ( topoi of both the doxal type and the non-doxal type) of an argument (Raccah 1995) and the warrant of an argument (Toulmin 1969/2003, Freeman 1992, 2005), may validate the argumentative moves in which the balance between rhetorical and dialectical aims seems not be maintained on the micro-level. Thus, it is concluded that argumentative moves are not to be considered as derailments of strategic manoeuvring on the macro-level if the macroproposition of argumentation, the topoi of an argument and the warrant of an argument fulfil the speaker s commitment to the burden of proof incurred by the expression of the standpoint on the common propositional content.

8 8 Thesis summary THESIS SUMMARY Argumentative reality in defense of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation By Theodora (Dora) Achourioti Theories of argumentation are typically classified as being either descriptive or normative. Descriptive theories of argumentation take argumentative reality as their starting point and seek to unveil principles and rules that steer and determine argumentative practice. Normative theories take the opposite approach. They start from clear conceptualisations of what argumentation is and how it should ideally be conducted. These conceptualisations form the basis for the development of a theory that can subsequently be used to analyse and evaluate argumentative practice. The aim of this thesis was to challenge this polarizing distinction between normative and descriptive theories of argumentation, specifically in so far as the analysis and representation of argumentative reality is concerned. Due to its comprehensive and systematic appeal, I took the pragma-dialectical approach as an example of a normative theory of argumentation. It is true that the analysis and reconstruction of argumentation that pragmadialectics proposes is first and foremost motivated by the theory s normative objectives as they are realized in the ideal model of critical discussion. I tried to show, however, that the way the theory depicts argumentation is not necessarily far removed from ordinary practice. To this end, I distinguished three features that are central to the way argumentation is viewed from the pragmadialectical approach; I set out to ground these features in the pragmatics of argumentative discourse and show that they correspond to characteristics inherent in the practice of argumentation. First, I discussed the significance of reconstructing argumentation into the form of an assertive speech act, even though in real discourse arguments are not exclusively put forward by means of performing assertives. Here it was important to show that substantial pragmatic information is not necessarily lost in such a process of reconstruction. Quite the contrary; I claimed that there are independent reasons calling for an analysis in terms Theodora (Dora) Achourioti (Greece) is a PhD student in the department of Philosophy at the University of Amsterdam of an assertive, especially as far as the externalisation and specification of the commitments involved are concerned. Second, notwithstanding the variety and complexity of ordinary language use, I argued that argumentation can be identified as a speech act in its own right, alongside the other types of speech acts that ordinary language users perform. What is more, it is possible in argumentative activity to isolate and formulate accompanying conditions and presuppositions that cut across the different contexts in which arguments can be found to emerge. Finally, I stressed that a pragmatic analysis of argumentative reality should in no way be assumed to deny that argumentation is an intrinsically rational activity. This is because engaging in argumentation is in itself a normative endeavour, in the sense that arguers naturally seek to appeal to rational standards, even if only to maintain the image of doing so. In the end, I concluded that considerations regarding argumentative reality are just as relevant to a normative approach to argumentation as to a descriptively motivated one. This is because theories that aim at optimising the practice of argumentation are first and foremost in need of a fair understanding and representation of their object of study, if only to guarantee applicability of theory to practice.

9 9 Voice from without VOICE FROM WITHOUT Persuasion research under the loop Interview with Daniel J. O keefe Amjarso: Professor O Keefe, welcome to Amsterdam once again and to this interview. I would first like to know who Daniel O Keefe, the persuasion scholar, is. O Keefe: I became interested in studying persuasion when I was an undergraduate at the University of Illinois. After receiving my PhD, my first job was at the University of Michigan, and one of my first teaching responsibilities was a course in persuasion. I actually had a very broad undergraduate education and a very broad graduate education too, with courses in psychology and philosophy as well as in communication. So I was interested in lots of things, but persuasion has always been one of my main interests. Daniel J. O'Keefe is Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. His specializations include persuasion theory, metaanalysis of persuasion effects research, and argumentation theory. O Keefe is the author of Persuasion: Theory and Research. I have had the chance to look at your list of publications. You have been working on argumentation for almost as long as you have been working on persuasion. Argumentation was also one of the subjects I studied as a graduate and undergraduate student. I was a debater in high school, and as an undergraduate at the University of Illinois I was part of the debate team and took courses in argumentation as a natural corollary of that. And in fact one of the first courses that I taught at the University of Michigan was a course in argumentation. So right from the beginning there have been connections for me between argumentation and persuasion. You are a friend of the Amsterdam Argumentation School. How old is this friendship? My relationship with the Amsterdam School dates to 1993 when I received a letter from Frans van Eemeren, inviting me to be a keynote speaker at the third (1994) ISSA conference. I had not attended the first two ISSA conferences, but I had friends who had attended them who said that they were wonderful conferences and that I really had to go and then fortunately I was able to attend my first one under extraordinarily happy circumstances. I have come to every ISSA conference since then and have enjoyed an enduring friendship with the members of the Amsterdam School. Frans came as a visiting scholar at Northwestern University last year - just one example of our many opportunities for interaction. Now about meta-analysis: You have been the author of various meta-analyses of persuasion research concerning various persuasive message features. If I am not mistaken, your first ever meta-analysis dates back to What was the reason for starting this line of research and what kept you doing it? Anyone who teaches about any area of socialscientific research knows that one of the challenges is finding out what the research literature taken corporately shows about any given research question. That is, one of the challenges is that of synthesizing existing research. Most graduate training is quite appropriately directed at generating new findings by doing new studies, but the conclusions that one can draw from any single study are necessarily limited, and for that reason I came to be interested in problems of research synthesis how one can take a large number of studies and extract dependable generalizations from them.

10 10 Amsterdam Argumentation Chronicle In the case of quantitative social-scientific research, methods of meta-analysis quantitative research synthesis technique are a natural fit. Mathematical and statistical bases for these techniques are quite old, but it was not until the 1960s and 1970s that the techniques became widely known and more widely available. So during the 1980s I learned meta-analysis and began doing it. It has turned out that my own predispositions are ones that fit happily with meta-analysis. One of the biggest challenges in doing meta-analysis is being persistent in finding relevant literature; I m very persistent and I like working in libraries and tracking down obscure studies. So I turned out to be the kind of person who enjoys doing meta-analytic work. Does good persuasion research have to include attitude research? No. Persuasion inevitably involves changing the mental state of the receiver, but a variety of mental states can be relevant to persuasion. Attitude, that is, a person s general evaluation of an object or policy or behaviour, is often, but not always, the relevant mental state. For example, people often have positive attitudes towards exercising and they think it s a good idea, but they don t engage in regular exercise. For many people that s because they think that they don t have the ability to perform the behaviour the gym is too far away or they don t have the right equipment or they don t have enough time and so on. In a circumstance like that, a persuader s task is not to change people s attitudes because people already have the attitude that the persuader wants. Instead, the persuader s task is one of convincing people that they are capable of performing the behaviour, so in a situation like that the proximate success of a persuasive message will be assessed by indications that the person s self-efficacy, the person s perceived ability to perform the behaviour, has changed. How has persuasion research changed in the last fifteen years, that is, after the publication of the first edition of Persuasion: theory and research? Over the last fifteen years, it has mostly been more of the same, that is more research of the kinds with which we are familiar and research on theoretical perspectives of the sorts that we are familiar with. But there have been two notable more general theoretical developments. First, there has been over the last fifteen years increasing attention in some domains to what are sometimes called stage models of behavioural change. These are models that suggest that the process of changing someone s behaviour characteristically involves a sequence of more or less discrete stages. The best-known example of such a model is the so-called transtheoretical model, or the stages-of-change model, in which for example a smoker is said progressively first to not even think about quitting smoking and so is said to be in a precontemplation stage. Then next they are in a contemplation stage when they are thinking about quitting. Then there is a planning stage when they set a date to quit or they buy nicotine gum, followed by an action stage in which they have quit, at least for a time. And then ideally comes a maintenance stage where they have quit in a long-term kind of way. The idea is that how one persuades a person will be different depending upon which stage the person is in. That s one general theoretical development that you see especially in the study of health-related behaviours. And the other general theoretical development worth noting is the articulation of the unimodel of persuasion as a competitor to dual-process models of persuasion like the elaboration likelihood model and the heuristicsystematic model. The argument of the unimodel is that there are not really two distinct persuasion processes but simply one underlying process in which people reason from information to conclusions. Sometimes the information is about the communicator s expertise (commonly treated as a peripheral cue), and sometimes that information is the message s arguments (commonly seen as involved in central-route processing). But the suggestion is that there is only a single underlying process of reasoning and persuasion, not two different ones.

11 11 Amsterdam Argumentation Chronicle At the ISSA conference of 1994, you talked about ways in which dual models of persuasion and argumentation theory can benefit from one another. How much, in your opinion, have argumentation scholars and persuasion scholars learned from each other in the last ten years? Well, the relationship between argumentation and persuasion is a kind of curious one in the sense that, broadly put, the two enterprises have different purposes. The characteristic interest of an argumentation scholar has to do with normative considerations about advocacy and decision making, what makes for better and worse arguments or argument procedures, whereas the paradigmatic persuasion researcher is interested simply in persuasive effectiveness, independent of normative worth. So the two enterprises, in a sense, have only a tangential connection to one another and yet it s possible for each to potentially benefit from one another. For example, argumentation provides considerable mechanisms for thinking systematically about argument-related features of messages, conceptual equipment that persuasion researchers characteristically lack. And insofar as facts about what makes for more or less successful persuasive appeals are relevant to considerations of the design of normatively ideal argumentation systems, then obviously persuasion research has something to contribute to argumentation studies. For example the teacher who is excellent at the give-and-take of discussion and asking probing questions but is terrible at giving a well-organized lecture should not teach lecture classes, but should try as far as possible to teach using the kind of discussion-oriented method that works best for that teacher; the teacher who is great at the organized lecture but not so good at running discussion should teach in a way that exploits that strength. So there is no one method of teaching that would be suitable for everyone. Teachers ought to reflect on the kinds of teaching experiences they have had that might give them insights into their own strengths and weaknesses and so give them a sense of how to arrange instruction in the most effective ways for their students. How important is argumentation theory for students curriculum at Northwestern University? Argumentation studies has long been and continues to be one of my department s great strengths. We have a very long history of excellence in argumentation studies, and both for undergraduate and graduate students there is first-rate instruction in argumentation. In fact, a general argumentation class is required for undergraduate majors in communication studies at Northwestern. The person who usually teaches that class is David Zarefsky, a top-flight argumentation scholar and a terrific teacher and an ISSA keynote speaker in Apart from being a distinguished scholar, you have all the way through also been a distinguished teacher. The number of teachingrelated awards that you have won since 1978 leaves no doubt about that. So what makes for a good teacher in your opinion? What makes for a good teacher will vary from one person to another. There are some general common characteristics: good teachers will be knowledgeable and enthusiastic about their subject matters, for example. But beyond that I think that what makes for good teaching is the teacher s recognizing his or her strengths and weaknesses and organizing instruction in ways that exploit one s strengths and protect one s weaknesses. What is Daniel O Keefe going to do next? Many of my future projects involve meta-analysis of persuasion effects research. I am interested especially in some questions of how adaptation of appeals to the audience s values can make for differences in persuasiveness. Jos Hornikx and I have recently collaborated on a meta-analysis looking at the effects of consumer advertisements adapting their appeals to the cultural values of the audience, the idea being that appeals that invoke the audience s cultural values ought to be more persuasive than ads that do not. There are a number of these sorts of audience-adaptation message variations that are of considerable interest for future meta-analysis.

12 12 News NEWS Second NWO conference on the persuasive effects of strategic manoeuvring takes place in Amsterdam The second NWO conference was held in the Tropenmuseum (Tropical museum) in Amsterdam on May 25, The theme of this conference was the persuasive effects of strategic manoeuvring. During this one-day conference speakers and commentators discussed, from a qualitative and quantitative empirical perspective the persuasive effects of various strategic manoeuvres that occur in argumentative discourse. The speakers at this conference were Corina Andone, Hans Hoeken, Manfred Kienpointner, Piere Livet, Bert Meuffels and Daniel O Keefe. The commentators were Bilal Amjarso, Bart Garssen, Sara Greco Morasso, Dima Mohammed, Peter Schulz and Yvon Tonnard. OSSA Conference held in Windsor, Canada The Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation held its bi-yearly conference from 6 to 9 June, 2007, in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. The theme of this year s conference was Dissensus and the Search for Common Ground. Keynote speakers of the conference were Michael A. Gilbert (Philosophy, York University), Dale Hample (Communication, Western Illinois University), Christian Kock (Rhetoric, University of Copenhagen). The Amsterdam School was represented at this conference by Theodora Achourioti(Contextdependence and the defining of logical fallacies), Bilal Amjarso(Persuasiveness from a pragmadialectical perspective), Frans van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser (Dialectical profiles and indicators of argumentative moves), Eveline Feteris (The pragma-dialectical reconstruction of teleological-evaluative argumentation in complex structures of legal justification), Duncan Harkness (Applying argumentation theory to cultivate academic common ground), Henrike Jansen (Common ground, argument form and analogical reductio ad absurdum), Erik Krabbe (Predicaments of the concluding stage), Jan Albert van Laar (In other words: Confrontation manoeuvring with the formulation of standpoints), Vesel Memedi (Resolving deep disagreement: a case in point), Dima Mohammed (activity types and the account of arguers empirical aims), José Plug (Analyzing and evaluating argumentation in parliamentary debates), Agnès van Rees (Dialectical and rhetorical effects of dissociation), Francisca Snoeck Henkemans (Manoeuvering strategically with praeteritio: manifestations and effects of pseudo-omissions) and Assimakis Tseronis (Evaluating qualified standpoints). IPRA conference held in Göteborg The 10 th International Pragmatics conference was held in Göteborg, Sweden, from the 8th till 13 th of July, The conference that had as its main theme Language data, corpora, and computational pragmatics, is an initiative of The International Pragmatics Association (IPRA), an international scientific organization devoted to the study of language use, established in Pragma-dialectics had a separate panel at the conference, coordinated by Frans van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser: Manoeuvring strategically in argumentative confrontations. Participants in this panel were Corina Andone (Accusations of inconsistency in political interviews), Frans van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser (Strategic manoeuvring in argumentative confrontations), Jan Albert van Laar (Characterizing ways of confrontational manoeuvring), Marian Pijnenburg (Presenting a standpoint in somebody else's words), Francisca Snoeck Henkemans (Manoeuvring strategically with rhetorical questions), Assimakis Tseronis (What does it mean to qualify a standpoint?) and Yvon Tonnard (An effective presentation. The relation between the three aspects of strategic manoeuvring). 23rd World IVR Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy held in Poland 23rd World IVR Congress of Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy was held at the Jagiellonian

13 13 Amsterdam Argumentation Chronicle University in Krakow, Poland, from the 1st till the 6 th of August, The theme of the conference was Law and Legal Cultures in the Twenty First Century. Eveline Feteris and Harm Kloosterhuis coordinated a special Workshop aimed at discussing the various approaches and dimensions of legal argumentation and interpretation. In this workshop researchers from different backgrounds, such as argumentation theory, legal theory and legal philosophy, who represented different countries and legal systems, were invited to present a paper on the topic of legal argumentation and interpretation. Frans van Eemeren and Bart Garssen guest lecturers at the University of Sao Paolo On August the 15 th, Frans van Eemeren and Bart Garssen held lecturers on argumentation and critical discussion at the faculty of letters and Human Sciences at the University of Sa Paolo, Brazil. During the lectures, Frans van Eemeren and Bart Garssen talked about the basic principles of argumentation and strategic manoeuvring, argumentative discussion in various types of discourse. The lectures were organised by Professor Lineide Salvador Mosca and Professor Ademar Ferreira. Frans van Eemeren guest-lecturer at the Catholic University of Valparaiso On August 20 th, 2007, Frans van Eemeren gave a lecture at the Catholic University of Valparaiso in Valparaiso, Chile. The lecture, entitled Fallacies as derailments of strategic manoeuvring, addressed the way the concept of strategic manoeuvring, developed by Frans van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser, has contributed to a more refined pragmadialectical evaluation of fallacies in argumentative discourse. Conference on Argumentation, Communication and Fallacies held at Andres Bello University in Chile On August 22th, 2007, the deparment of Cultural Extension of the Andres Bello University in Santiago in Chile organised a conference in honour of Frans van Eemeren. Van Eemeren s contributions were on the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, the notion of critical discussion, and the rules of critical discussion and fallacies. Frans van Eemeren guest professor at the Valle University in Colombia Frans van Eemeren was from the 19 th till the 21 st September guest lecturer at the Valle University in Cali, Colombia. During these three days Frans van Eemeren gave a series of lectures on perspectives on the study of argumentation, fallacies as violations of the rules of critical discussion, analysis and evaluation of argumentative discourse, dialectics and rhetoric and the concept of strategic manoeuvring, fallacies and strategic manoeuvring, and on argumentative indicators and unexpressed premises. Frans van Eemeren and Bart Garssen lecture at the Catholic University of Chile On August 21 st, 2007, Frans van Eemeren and Bart Garssen were guest lecturers at the faculty of Philosophy of Catholic University of Chile in Santiago. The title of the lecture given by Frans van Eemeren was Pragmadialectics: reasonableness in critical discussion and in strategic manoeuvring. The lecture given by Bart Garssen was on the analysis and evaluation of argumentative discourse. Lotte van Poppel appointed as teacher/phd student As of September 1 st Lotte van Poppel is teacher/phd student in the department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric. Her appointment consists of 40% teaching and 60% research. Among the courses that she is teaching are Intercultural Communication (in Dutch) and an Introduction to Communication and Argumentation (in Dutch).

14 14 Amsterdam Argumentation Chronicle The title of the research project that Lotte van Poppel will work on as a PhD student is Strategic manoeuvring with pragmatic argumentation in persuasive texts in institutional contexts. Van Poppel will focus on the stylistic characteristics of pragmatic argumentation in argumentative texts in a medical context. Van Poppel will conduct this project under the supervision of Frans van Eemeren and the cosupervision of Eveline Feteris. Lotte van Poppel graduated in August 2007 from the Research Master Rhetoric, Argumentation Theory and Philosophy (RAP). The title of her Master thesis is Manoeuvring strategically with litotes. Roosmaryn Pilgram appointed as teacher/phd student On September 1 st Roosmaryn Pilgram was appointed as teacher/phd student in the department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric. The appointment consists of 40% teaching and 60% research. As a teacher, Roosmaryn Pilgram teaches, among other things, Academic writing (in Dutch). As a PhD student, she is working within the project Persuasive effects of strategic manoeuvring of the ASCA research programme Argumentation in discourse. Pilgram s part in this project consists of qualitative and quantitative research aimed at identifying soundness conditions for strategic manoeuvres involving material starting points. Pilgram s PhD project will be supervised by Frans van Eemeren and co-supervised by Bert Meuffels. Roosmaryn Pilgram graduated in August 2007 from the Research Master Rhetoric, Argumentation Theory and Philosophy (RAP). The title of her Master thesis is Material Starting Points. Constanza Ihnen appointed as PhD student On September 1 st Constanza Ihnen was appointed as a PhD student in the Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric. Her research project is a four-year term ( ) sponsored by ASCA. The primary aim of her project is to develop instruments for the pragma-dialectical reconstruction and evaluation of discussions in the legislative process that are sensitive to the institutional and political context of their occurrence. Such instruments are to be designed on the basis of a careful study of the institutional preconditions for strategic manoeuvring in two parliamentary settings: the British and the Spanish parliaments. Ihnen will carry out this research under the supervision of Frans van Eemeren and the co-supervision of José Plug. Constanza Ihnen graduated last August from the Research Master Rhetoric, Argumentation Theory and Philosophy (RAP). Her thesis was entitled Analysing and evaluating ways of strategic manoeuvring advanced at the argumentation stage within institutionalised argumentative activity types. Arguments from authority in the Chilean parliamentary debate on the New Civil Marriage Law (1997/ ), a case in point. ALED Conference 2007 held in Colombia The Seventh Latin-American Conference on the study of discourse took place from the 17 th to the 21 st of September in Bogota, Colombia. The conference is an initiative of the Latin American Association for the Studies of Discourse (ALED), together with the National University of Colombia and Francisco Jose de Calda Distrital University of Bogota. The conference attracted more than 400 scholars active in the field of discourse studies. Among keynote speakers were Frans van Eemeren, Teun van Dijk and Theo van Leeuwen. Frans van Eemeren participated also in the Argumentation and Education panel. In his paper van Eemeren proposed the pragmadialectical theory as an instrument for analysing argumentative discourse. Gordon Mitchell appointed as Deputy Director of the Mathew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies at the University of Pittsburgh Gordon Mitchell has been appointed as Deputy Director of the Mathew B. Ridgway Center for International Security Studies at the University of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.

15 15 Book publications of the Amsterdam School In 1993 Mitchell was an exchange student in the Discourse and Argumentation Studies programme (DASA). He is currently associate professor of debate in the department of communication at the University of Pittsburgh. His research focuses on public argument, rhetoric of science, and social movements. In 2007 he received the Outstanding Article Award (for Team B Intelligence Coups ) at the National Communication Association, Political Communication Division. Participants in this year s instalment were Bilal Amjarso, Corina Andone, Frans H. van Eemeren, Eveline T. Feteris, Agatha Filimon, Bart Garssen, Giovanni Gobber, Sara Greco-Morasso and Sarah Bigi, Fabrizio Macagno, Bert Meuffels, Dima Mohammed, Sara Montanari, Camilla Palmieri, Rudi Palmieri, H. José Plug, Eddo Rigotti, Andrea Rocci, Sara Rubinelli and Peter Schulz, Yvon Tonnard and Jean Wagemans. Third NWO conference on strategic manoeuvring in institutionalised contexts takes place in Amsterdam The third NWO conference was held in in Schuilkerk De Hoop in Amsterdam, on October the 26 th, During this one-day conference speakers and commentators exchanged views regarding the various ways in which arguers manoeuvre strategically in resolving their differences of opinion in institutionalised contexts. Participants who presented a paper were Isabela Ietcu Fairclough, Eveline Feteris, Thomas Goodnight, Sally Jackson, Erik Krabbe, Dima Mohammed, Peter Schulz and David Zarefsky. Comments were given by Bilal Amjarso, Corina Andone, Bart Garssen, Marcin Lewinski and Yvon Tonnard. In addition to these commentators, some speakers also commented on papers. The Amsterdam-Lugano Colloquium held in Lugano The eighth edition of the Amsterdam-Lugano Colloquium was held in Lugano on the 30 th of June and the 1 st of December, The Colloquium, which has become a tradition of close academic collaboration between the research group on argumentation of the Institute of Linguistics and Semiotics of the University of Lugano, led by Eddo Rigotti, and the Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric of the University of Amsterdam, led by Frans H. van Eemeren, is mainly devoted to the presentation of current theoretical and applied research in argumentation theory. BOOK PUBLICATIONS OF THE AMSTERDAM SCHOOL Eemeren, F.H. van & Garssen, B.J., Guest editors. (2007). Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing (Themanummer Empirisch Argumentatie-onderzoek), 29, 3. Eemeren, F.H. van & Houtlosser, P., Guest editors. (2007). Argumentation (Special issue on perspectives on strategic manoeuvring), 20, 7. Eemeren, F.H. van & Grootendorst. (2007). Argumentación, Comunicatión y Falacias. Una Perspectiva Pragma-Dialectica. (transl. C. Lopez and A.M. Vicuna). 2 nd ed. Santiago, Chili: Ediciones Universidad Católica de Chile. Eemeren, F.H. van, Houlosser, P. & Snoeck Henkemans, A.F. (2007). Argumentative Indicators in Discourse. A Pragma- Dialectical Study. Dordrecht etc.: Springer. (English version of Argumentatieve Indicatoren in het Nederlands). Eemeren, F.H. van, Blair, J.A., Willard, Ch. A., Garssen, B.J., Eds. (2007). Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA). Amsterdam: Sic Sat.