Abstract
While we acknowledge the inadequacy of the standard treatment of fallacies (see Hamblin 1970, p. 12) when it comes to assessing the normative dimension of argumentation, we suggest that its definition of fallacious arguments sheds light on another issue of interest to argumentation scholars, namely rhetorical effectiveness. Specifically, we contend that this definition contains a fundamental intuition regarding the way fallacies are processed: if fallacies are misidentified as valid (or acceptable/reasonable/unproblematic) arguments, then it means that their fallaciousness remains undetected. This, in itself, justifies an inquiry into how they manage to remain undetected, which is what this chapter sets out to do by drawing on a cognitive pragmatic account of meaning. Chiefly, our task will be to explain how successful fallacies constrain evaluation so as to bypass or withstand critical testing. This involves the formulation of argumentative messages which strengthen the content of the fallacy to make it epistemically stronger and cognitively easy to process and/or weaken potential or actual refutations on the same two dimensions (epistemic strength and ease of processing). In a nutshell, our contribution (i) develops the rationale for envisaging rhetorical effectiveness in terms of foregrounding and backgrounding processes, (ii) explains how the linguistic choices made in fallacious arguments may decisively constrain cognitive processes and in particular evaluative processes, and (iii) illustrates these phenomena through a discussion of naturally-occurring examples of fallacious argumentation.
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Notes
- 1.
By rhetorical effectiveness, we mean any type of influence that the argument might have on the addressee and that is consistent with the speaker’s persuasive intentions.
- 2.
Sperber and Wilson define the notion of cognitive environment as follows: “A cognitive environment of an individual is a set of facts that are manifest to him” (Sperber & Wilson, 1995, p. 39). We use this characterisation to denote quite loosely the set of information that an individual knows and is capable of bringing to consciousness.
- 3.
- 4.
Let us note, in passing, that we assume that this happens on the condition that the content of the argumentation has some minimal degree of plausibility in the addressee’s cognitive environment. If the addressee outright rejects the content as being false, or if he simply does not understand it, then accessibility considerations in principle become irrelevant.
- 5.
- 6.
According to the author, “The conversations and dialogue in this book are taken verbatim from FBI reports, the Karpis transcripts, contemporary news articles, and the memories of participants.” (Burrough, 2004, preface). Following this disclaimer, we presume that the dialogue under analysis here has taken place in real life, even if beyond the author’s declaration, we have no guaranteed way of ascertaining that it has indeed been reproduced verbatim.
- 7.
Script available at https://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Public-Enemies.html, last accessed 27.03.2019.
- 8.
The answer to this question is obviously and unquestionably a very trivial ‘yes’.
- 9.
The reference to her gender—and, implicitly, to the associated stereotype of inferiority—could function as an additional constraint designed to increase the chances that Sheriff Holley takes on the presupposition and responds to it in a way that makes her admit that her prison is safe. This is all Piquett needs to conclude that there are no grounds whatsoever to transfer Dillinger.
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Oswald, S., Herman, T. (2020). Give the Standard Treatment of Fallacies a Chance! Cognitive and Rhetorical Insights into Fallacy Processing. In: van Eemeren, F., Garssen, B. (eds) From Argument Schemes to Argumentative Relations in the Wild. Argumentation Library, vol 35. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28367-4_4
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