What is the role of arguments? Fundamental human rights in the age of spin
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Wolfgang Teubert
Abstract
In our Western democracies, parliamentary debates are seen less as a collaborative effort to achieve a shareable interpretation of an issue than a fight between contestants to be arbitrated by the media as the sole interface between text producers and text consumers. Arguments are no longer designed to convince or persuade. Rather the role of argumentation is twofold. By constant repetition, arguments construct ideological identity. But reformulations, permutations and recombinations of arguments can also give rise to gradual innovation. My illustration is the House of Commons debate of the Lisbon Treaty’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. That the argumentation we find in this debate is full of blatant repetition and void of any new aspects may be caused to some extent by the media industry’s growing grip on text production. Yet it also questions the role assigned to argumentation in our society.
Abstract
In our Western democracies, parliamentary debates are seen less as a collaborative effort to achieve a shareable interpretation of an issue than a fight between contestants to be arbitrated by the media as the sole interface between text producers and text consumers. Arguments are no longer designed to convince or persuade. Rather the role of argumentation is twofold. By constant repetition, arguments construct ideological identity. But reformulations, permutations and recombinations of arguments can also give rise to gradual innovation. My illustration is the House of Commons debate of the Lisbon Treaty’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. That the argumentation we find in this debate is full of blatant repetition and void of any new aspects may be caused to some extent by the media industry’s growing grip on text production. Yet it also questions the role assigned to argumentation in our society.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction: Rhetoric or how to integrate the different voices ix
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Part I. Rhetorical Paradigms
- Rhetoric in the Mixed Game 3
- The selection of agency as a rhetorical device: Opening up the scene of dialogue through ventriloquism 23
- Dialogic rhetoric, coauthorship, and moments of meeting 39
- The rhetoric of 'dialogue' in metadiscourse: Possibility/impossibility arguments and critical events 55
- Rhetoric and ethic of dialog: Can conditions of performance serve as excluding criteria? 69
- Common ground and (re)defanging the antagonistic: A paradigm for argumentation as shared inquiry and responsibility 83
- What is the role of arguments? Fundamental human rights in the age of spin 95
- Logical and rhetorical rules of debate 119
- Rhetoric in a dialectical framework: Fallacies as derailments of strategic manoeuvring 133
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Part II. Rhetoric in the Mixed Game: Communicative means, cultural values, and institutional games
- Strategic use of Korean honorifics: Functions of 'partner-deference sangdae-nopim' 155
- Irony as a rhetorical device in dialogic interaction 171
- Political rhetoric in visual images 185
- Sociological concepts and their impact on rhetoric: Japanese language concepts 195
- The rhetorical component of dialogic communication in Banks' annual reports 209
- Attention-influencing as a rhetorical strategy in German and Turkish Parliamentary debates 221
- Diatexts of media dilemmas: The rhetorical construction of euthanasia 235
- Recontextualization of concepts in European legal discourse 251
- A court judgment as dialogue 267
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Part III. Round table discussion: Concepts of rhetoric, dialogue and argumentation
- Round table discussion 285
- General Index 309
- List of Contributors 315
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction: Rhetoric or how to integrate the different voices ix
-
Part I. Rhetorical Paradigms
- Rhetoric in the Mixed Game 3
- The selection of agency as a rhetorical device: Opening up the scene of dialogue through ventriloquism 23
- Dialogic rhetoric, coauthorship, and moments of meeting 39
- The rhetoric of 'dialogue' in metadiscourse: Possibility/impossibility arguments and critical events 55
- Rhetoric and ethic of dialog: Can conditions of performance serve as excluding criteria? 69
- Common ground and (re)defanging the antagonistic: A paradigm for argumentation as shared inquiry and responsibility 83
- What is the role of arguments? Fundamental human rights in the age of spin 95
- Logical and rhetorical rules of debate 119
- Rhetoric in a dialectical framework: Fallacies as derailments of strategic manoeuvring 133
-
Part II. Rhetoric in the Mixed Game: Communicative means, cultural values, and institutional games
- Strategic use of Korean honorifics: Functions of 'partner-deference sangdae-nopim' 155
- Irony as a rhetorical device in dialogic interaction 171
- Political rhetoric in visual images 185
- Sociological concepts and their impact on rhetoric: Japanese language concepts 195
- The rhetorical component of dialogic communication in Banks' annual reports 209
- Attention-influencing as a rhetorical strategy in German and Turkish Parliamentary debates 221
- Diatexts of media dilemmas: The rhetorical construction of euthanasia 235
- Recontextualization of concepts in European legal discourse 251
- A court judgment as dialogue 267
-
Part III. Round table discussion: Concepts of rhetoric, dialogue and argumentation
- Round table discussion 285
- General Index 309
- List of Contributors 315
