Now featuring in Lugano...

...Today at 14 the course "Logic and Formal Dialectic" held by Prof. Erik Krabbe will start in Lugano. PhD students from Lugano (Rudi Palmieri, Sabine Christopher-Guerra, Antonio Bova, Camilla Palmieri, Agatha Filimon, Marcio Monteiro, Gergana Zlatkova, Silvia De Ascaniis), Lausanne (Julien Grand), Amsterdam (Constanza Ihnen, Roosemary Pilgram, Lotte van Poppel) and Neuchâtel (Steve Oswald, Loise Bilat) will participate in the course.

Call for papers - Argumentative processes and communication contexts

Call for Papers
Studies in Communication Sciences – An International Journal
Thematic Section on:
Argumentative processes and communication contexts

Guest Editors: Eddo Rigotti and Sara Greco Morasso, Università della Svizzera italiana, Faculty of Communication Sciences, Switzerland

The relevance of the role played by argumentation in shaping the communicative practices occurring in different contexts and activity types is increasingly acknowledged. Argumentation is rooted in the contexts in which it takes place and is significantly determined by them: from social and political institutions to media discourse and journalism, from social and ethical debate to the economic and financial sphere, from health communication to the various domains of interpersonal interactions.
More specifically, argumentation, insofar as it fosters a reasonable management of disagreement and a critical attitude in the solution of conflicts of opinion and of interest, significantly conditions the quality of decision-making and of the building of consent in the communicative activities carried out in these contexts.
A thorough study of argumentative processes in different communication contexts cannot originate but from an interdisciplinary effort connecting the awareness of the proper dynamics of specific communication contexts with theoretical knowledge of the argumentative processes. Consequently, the thematic section of this issue of Studies in Communication Sciences intends to bring together two categories of researchers. The first, dealing with the structure and dynamics of a specific communication context and perceiving the significance of argumentation within this context, aims at adequately defining the role of argumentative processes. The second category, mainly concerned with argumentative strategies, intends to verify how such strategies are molded on and influenced by the communication context to which they are applied.

Article Format and Topics:
Articles in the special issue can have a length of up to 10 pages (2300 characters, with spaces, per page), including abstract, footnotes and references. Contributions can be in English, Italian, French or German. Each author receives 25 free bound reprints of his or her article. The list of possible communication contexts in which argumentative processes can be analyzed includes (but is not limited to):
• Public communication and political discourse
• Communication practices in different mass-media and new-media platforms (newspapers, internet discussions tools, newsgroups, etc.)
• Controversies in scientific communication
• Social debate
• Economic and financial discourse
• Interpersonal communication in different institutional environments (family, school, and others)
• Other significant communication contexts

Key Dates:
• Submission of Articles: August 20th, 2009
• Feedback from Reviewers: October 10th, 2009
• Final Version due: October 31st, 2009
• Publication of the Journal: December 2009

Contact Information:
For questions about the contents, please contact: eddo.rigotti@lu.unisi.ch or sara.greco@lu.unisi.ch
To submit your paper: info@scoms.ch
The Journal’s website (incl. notes for contributors) can be found at: www.scoms.ch

PhD announcement (personal message from your program coordinator...)

Gentili Signore,Egregi Signori,Abbiamo il piacere di annunciare che:

venerdì 27 marzo 2009 alle ore 10.30 in aula A 24

Sara Greco Morasso difenderà la sua tesi di dottorato dal titolo:

Argumentative and other communicative strategies of the mediation practice.

La giuria sarà composta da:Prof. Eddo Rigotti, Usi (direttore di tesi); Prof. Frans van Eemeren, Università di Amsterdam (membro esterno); Prof. Dr. Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont, Università di Neuchâtel (membro esterno); Presiede la difesa il Prof. Ivan Snehota.

Abstract

The success mediation is experiencing in several societal domains (Sander 1979; Moffitt and Bordone 2005) is mainly bound to the possibility that this practice offers to find a win-win solution that truly meets the parties’ interests (Princen 1992a; Menkel-Meadow 2005). This possibility is exclusively supported by communicative instruments and, specifically, by means of argumentation. In mediation, in fact, the parties are competent and responsible for the decision on the conflict, while the mediator not only intervenes as a third neutral, but he/she is also not held and not authorized to advance proper standpoints or arguments in favour of a specific outcome (van Eemeren et al. 1993): what he/she is in charge of doing is to stimulate parties to discuss reasonably, to motivate them to find a solution of the conflict, and to keep trace of their zones of agreement. Indeed, what the mediator properly does is helping the parties’ assumption of an argumentative attitude; in fact, in successful mediation, two conflicting individuals, entrenched in an escalating spiral of hostility, become co-arguers, able to tackle their differences of opinion by means of reasonable discussion.A relevant question becomes, thus, understanding how mediators can help and foster such a radical change in the parties’ attitude and how this actually contributes to the happy fulfilment of the mediation goal, namely to the resolution of the conflict.In order to answer this question, the present dissertation has been organized along two main research focuses.First, a comprehensive ontological framework of mediation conceived of as an interaction scheme (Rigotti and Rocci 2006) has been reconstructed. This framework allows considering all relevant factors and their relations in the context of the mediation script from its origin, namely some form of conflict (Yarn 1999), to its short-term and long-term outcomes. Its elicitation has required a conceptual analysis of mediation based on a reasoned interdisciplinary synthesis of different scientific approaches (see among others Wall, Stark and Standifer 2001; Herrman, Hollett and Gale 2006).Second, using this framework as a term of comparison, an argumentative analysis of mediation has been proposed, based on empirical evidence of a corpus of successful cases. The analysis shows how mediation encompasses a macro-text of argumentative discussions that allows the fulfilment of the pragmatic goal of conflict resolution. The mediator’s argumentative activity emerges, in particular, in relation to a wise management of the topical potential (van Eemeren and Houtlosser 2002). Mediators have a determinant influence in setting up the parties’ discussion, in particular in relation to the creation of an “argumentative space” based on a sound confrontation stage and to the analysis of the parties’ conflict and of the relationships it jeopardizes (in the opening stage). As the discussion proceeds, parties progressively manage it themselves, by assuming an argumentative attitude.A key to explain the parties’ change is constituted by the consideration of their interests. Some moves allowing to evoke interests, like presupposition accommodation (Greco 2003; Cigada 2008), have emerged in the analysis. In this way, the present research explains how, through argumentative means, mediators manage to focus on interests rather than on the parties’ claimed positions (Fisher, Ury and Patton 1991), not rarely discovering that these interests are not incompatible but even mutually inclusive.These outcomes represent actual advances in the theoretical understanding of mediation and in the investigation of the role played in this practice by argumentative processes. They also provide a basis to design aware conflict resolution interventions.

Seminar / Conference – Prof. Jan Renkema

Prof. Jan Renkema will be at USI to visit ILS (Institute of Linguistics and Semiotics) and will give a 6-hour seminar on his last book "The texture of discourse. Towards an outline of connectivity theory" (forthcoming, John Benjamins).

Even though this seminar offered by ILS is not part of Argupolis Program, all Argupolis and other PhD students are invited to attend it. To participate, please contact Prof. Andrea Rocci.

Seminar program:
Monday, 16 March – 3.30-5.30 pm – Room A24 – The Connectivity Model
Tuesday, 17 March – 3.30-5.30 pm – Room A24 – The interpretation of discourse relations
Monday, 23 March – 3.30-5.30 pm – Room A24 – Starting the analysis

Besides this seminar, Prof. Renkema will give the conference "Improving the Quality of Governmental Documents: A Combined Academic and Professional Approach".
Wednesday 18 March – 1:30 pm – room A31.

Krabbe's course details are online

COURSE ANNOUNCEMENT

Erik Krabbe's course (Logic and Formal Dialectic) description is online on www.argupolis.net. The description also includes the pre-readings indications

Publications - announcement

Marcelo Dascal (Tel Aviv University) suggested us some relevant readings:



http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=CVS%206

http://www.springer.com/philosophy/history+of+philosophy/book/978-1-4020-8190-3

http://www.springer.com/philosophy/history+of+philosophy/book/978-1-4020-8667-0

Recently, an international colloquium was held at the University of Tel Aviv, where the two volumes on Leibniz were presented and discussed.

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE 7th ISSA CONFERENCE

From June 29 to July 2, 2010, the 7th Conference on Argumentation of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA) will be held at the University of Amsterdam. The aim of the conference is to draw together scholars from a variety of disciplines that are working in the field of argumentation theory.

The keynote speakers are:

Maurice Finocchiaro (University of Nevada, Las Vegas)

James Klumpp (University of Maryland)

James Freeman (Hunter College, City University of New York).

The planning committee of the 7th ISSA Conference invites presentations of original,

non-published work on argumentation. Argumentation theorists, (informal) logicians, discourse analysts, communication scholars, rhetoricians, legal scholars, and other scholars involved in the study of argumentation are all encouraged to take part.

Anyone who wishes to present a paper can submit an abstract in English to the planning committee by sending an e-mail attachment to issa-fgw@uva.nl. Abstracts (ca. 250 words), prepared for blind refereeing, must be submitted in Word no later than November 1, 2009. All abstracts should be accompanied by a separate file in which the author indicates his/her research interests and provides a list of key publications on argumentation. Please include your surname and "issa abstract" in the subject entry of your e-mail message.

Among the conference themes are:

Argument schemes

Argumentation structures

Fallacies

Theoretical issues

Argumentative strategies

Argumentation and stylistics

Ethos and pathos in argumentation

Analysis of controversies

Argumentation in debate

Persuasion research

Interpersonal argumentation

Visual argumentation

Religious argumentation

Argumentation and epistemology

Argumentation in the media

Argumentation in a medical context

Argumentation in a legal context

Argumentation in a political context

Further information on the 7th ISSA Conference is available at: http://www.hum.uva.nl/issa. The address of the planning committee is: Frans H. van Eemeren, University of Amsterdam, Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric, Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB Amsterdam, email: issa-fgw@uva.nl.

Some pictures...

THE DOCTORAL PROGRAM ARGUPOLIS HAS BEEN INAUGURATED

The inauguration module of the doctoral program Argupolis (http://www.argupolis.net/) has been held in Lugano from January 8 to 20, 2009. More than 20 PhD students from Switzerland, from the Netherlands and from other countries have taken part in the courses and in the interdisciplinary dialogue on argumentation in context.

Four courses were part of this inauguration module: “Context, dialogue and cognition” held by Michèle Grossen (University of Lausanne); “Argumentation as a situated practice” held by NathalieMuller-Mirza (University of Lausanne); the first part of “Fundamentals of argumentation theory” taught by Frans H. van Eemeren and Bart Garssen (University of Amsterdam); and “Instruments of semantic analysis” by Eddo Rigotti and Andrea Rocci (Università della Svizzera italiana). PhD students participated in cross-tutoring and discussions.

On the first day, the Argupolis doctoral program was opened by a welcome speech by the President of the Università della Svizzera italiana, Piero Martinoli.

The courses were held in Lugano at the Hotel Colorado.