The article discusses both the philosophical use and the stylistic-semiotic uses of the pair ‘den... more The article discusses both the philosophical use and the stylistic-semiotic uses of the pair ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation.’ A historical review reconstructs the development of the philosophical use from the medieval doctrine of denominatives to the work of J. S. Mill, while the origins of the stylistic-semiotic opposition are traced back to the Logic of Port-Royal and, again, to the work of J. S. Mill. Hjemslev's attempt at providing a general definition of the semiotic-stylistic use of ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’ in terms of a relationship between semiotic codes is discussed in detail. In its final section, the article discusses the logical relationship between the two uses of the distinction and the place of semiotic-stylistic connotation in an account of the semantic and pragmatic aspects of meaning.
PurposeThe article tackles the under-defined notion of communication in strategic communication r... more PurposeThe article tackles the under-defined notion of communication in strategic communication research and elaborates a taxonomy of semiotic processes, which distinguishes different types of communicative and signalling events. The purpose is to offer an improved analysis of the processes by which meaning emerges from strategic communication situations.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed taxonomy is based on a conceptual framework combining semiotics, linguistic pragmatics and signalling theory. Several real cases of strategic communication are analysed to exemplify the taxonomy.FindingsDifferent sub-types of signalling events are highlighted and explained. The communicative function of performed behaviours (i.e. when actions speak and do it louder than words) depends on how informative and communicative intentions are managed by the message source and inferentially interpreted by different receivers. It is suggested that the ways in which meaning is signalled can be best understood with an argumentative perspective that foregrounds the inferential processes of persuasion, interpretation and decision-making. The limitations of the transmission vs. ritual and the one-way vs. two-way theories of strategic communication are highlighted.Originality/valueThe article discusses strategic communication events with the under-considered perspective of communication theories in the fields of semiotics and pragmatics. Signalling phenomena are interpreted from a communicative viewpoint, emphasising the argumentative dynamics that constitute them.
Peter Cramer's 1 book on controversy as news discourse sets to explain how journalism shapes publ... more Peter Cramer's 1 book on controversy as news discourse sets to explain how journalism shapes public controversy in the modern industrial society and how it influences the experience of it by the mass mediated public.
This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the "epistemic" interpretations of the Itali... more This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the "epistemic" interpretations of the Italian modal verb dovere with the conditional tense, taking as a starting point the underspecified modal semantics of both the modal verb and the conditional form. The analysis focuses in particular on the difference between epistemic readings of dovere in the indicative and conditional moods. We observe a number of constraints imposed by the "epistemic" reading of the conditional form of dovere over argumentative sequences in discourse, which are not imposed by the indicative form. On this basis, we suggest that the "epistemic" reading with the conditional emerges as a pragmatic free enrichment after alethic or deontic saturation of the modal basis of dovere in a hypothetical frame, whereas with the indicative, the modal saturation is truly doxastic, implying a metarepresentation of speaker’s beliefs, and thus transforming dovere into an evidential for the concerned infe...
Argumentation and Inference: Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Argumentation, Fribourg 2017, 2017
This paper presents preliminary findings of the project "Analysing children's implicit argumentat... more This paper presents preliminary findings of the project "Analysing children's implicit argumentation". We propose to reconstruct implicit premises of children's arguments within adult-children discussions in different settings, using the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) for the reconstruction of the inferential configuration of arguments. We show that sources of misunderstandings are more often than not due to misalignments of implicit premises between adults and
When two-to six-year-old children contribute to argumentative discussion, how do they reason? Can... more When two-to six-year-old children contribute to argumentative discussion, how do they reason? Can Argumentation theory, a discipline that up to now has largely focused on adult expert productions, contribute to a psychological understanding of the child? And, in turn, can a close examination of children's argumentative moves contribute to the study of inference in argumentation? Our interdisciplinary research program ArgImp, at the crossroads of psychology, education and argumentation theory, tries to enrich these two lines of enquiry by conducting empirical studies with young children involved in argumentative activities and by analyzing them with models and methods borrowed from Argumentation theory (
This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the "epistemic" interpretations of the Itali... more This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the "epistemic" interpretations of the Italian modal verb dovere with the conditional tense, taking as a starting point the underspecified modal semantics of both the modal verb and the conditional form. The analysis focuses in particular on the difference between epistemic readings of dovere in the indicative and conditional moods. We observe a number of constraints imposed by the "epistemic" reading of the conditional form of dovere over argumentative sequences in discourse, which are not imposed by the indicative form. On this basis, we suggest that the "epistemic" reading with the conditional emerges as a pragmatic free enrichment after alethic or deontic saturation of the modal basis of dovere in a hypothetical frame, whereas with the indicative, the modal saturation is truly doxastic, implying a metarepresentation of speaker’s beliefs, and thus transforming dovere into an evidential for the concerned infe...
Numerosi studi nell’ambito della ricerca in didattica della matematica hanno ormai da tempo evide... more Numerosi studi nell’ambito della ricerca in didattica della matematica hanno ormai da tempo evidenziato come esistano profonde connessioni tra apprendimento della matematica e dimensione linguistica. La presente dissertazione si pone sulla scia di queste ricerche: partendo dal presupposto che una visione integrata tra le due discipline rappresenti un fecondo terreno di indagine, viene presentata una ricerca interdisciplinare il cui obiettivo è indagare la testualità del libro di testo scolastico di geometria, mostrando al contempo la profondità di risultati che un approccio di ricerca interdisciplinare consente di raggiungere. La tesi è di natura cumulativa e si inserisce all’interno del progetto FNS Italmatica. Comprendere la matematica a scuola, tra lingua comune e linguaggio specialistico (progetto n. 176339), il cui intento è di indagare, da un punto di vista congiunto tra didattica della matematica e linguistica, le caratteristiche a più livelli di un corpus, denominato DFA-Ita...
Cahiers du Centre de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage
Journalists’ expectations concerning the way in which the audience will react to news strongly in... more Journalists’ expectations concerning the way in which the audience will react to news strongly influence their decisions in newsmaking. This article investigates the argumentative dimension of journalists’ anticipatory inferences in newsroom editorial conferences. In order to study journalists’ reasoning processes concerning audience uptake that lead journalists to publish a certain news instead of another or to publish a news in a certain way, we will use the Pragma-Dialectical framework at the interactional level and Argumentum Model of Topics at the inferential level. Through a case study, we will investigate the anticipation of the audience interest and the anticipation of the audience persuasion, showing how editorial conferences function as places of reflection in which certain kinds of standpoints are at stake and particular aspects of the audience uptake are anticipated.
Cahiers du Centre de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage
L’article présente une approche de l’étude du discours de la finance capable de relier l’articula... more L’article présente une approche de l’étude du discours de la finance capable de relier l’articulation pragmatique et rhétorique des textes, la définition des genres de discours et le fonctionnement social et institutionnel d’un vaste domaine d’activité humaine. Un modèle théorique du fonctionnement du discours en contexte social est présenté et appliqué à la reconstruction de la sphère financière et de son « système de genres ». Les articles de presse économique-financière offrent une courte illustration de la manière dont cette approche peut éclairer le fonctionnement pragmatique et rhétorique d’un genre particulier et l’analyse de textes individuels.
Didattica della matematica. Dalla ricerca alle pratiche d’aula, 2021
A partire dal corpus del progetto Italmatica. Comprendere la matematica a scuola, fra lingua comu... more A partire dal corpus del progetto Italmatica. Comprendere la matematica a scuola, fra lingua comune e linguaggio specialistico del Fondo nazionale svizzero, viene presentata un’analisi di esempi tratti dai libri di testo di geometria in lingua italiana della scuola primaria e secondaria di primo grado. L’analisi si basa sull’applicazione delle categorie di tipo retorico classico: inventio, dispositio ed elocutio, oggi afferenti ai domini degli studi linguistici, in particolare delle teorie dell’argomentazione. Attraverso l’analisi condotta, vengono evidenziate da un lato la profondità delle riflessioni che queste lenti teoriche consentono di raggiungere nello sviscerare un testo argomentativo di matematica, dall’altro la grande varietà di scelte possibili adottate dai libri di testo, che possono avere un effetto comunicativo sul lettore-studente.
This paper tackles outdated news about COVID-19 as a type of misinformation from an argumentative... more This paper tackles outdated news about COVID-19 as a type of misinformation from an argumentative perspective, focusing on the fact-checker Snopes. In rapidly changing information environments the circulation of outdated news can be highly detrimental causing risky behaviors. Such type of misinformation is difficult to pin down through fact-checking since encompassing different types of contents, motivations and channels. To fully understand this phenomenon we deem necessary to move away from a naïve view of fact checking to an argumentative one. But what are the argumentative configurations of outdated statements in the context of the current information ecosystem? To answer this question we rely on the distinction between upstream and downstream argumentation to anchor the kind of issues put forward by outdated statements. We then take as a sample all the news that have been rated as “outdated” and “miscaptioned” by Snopes during the pandemic and analyse the type of source, the se...
We verify that quadratic divergences stemming from gravitational corrections to QED which have be... more We verify that quadratic divergences stemming from gravitational corrections to QED which have been conjectured to lead to asymptotic freedom near Planck scale are arbitrary (regularization dependent) and compatible with zero. Moreover we explicitly show that such arbitrary term contributes to the beta function of QED in a gauge dependent way in the gravitational sector.
The aim of the paper is to show the potential of applying computational models of argument in the... more The aim of the paper is to show the potential of applying computational models of argument in the financial domain to the analysis of Earnings Conference Calls. We propose the formal description of ECC dialogue games: its locution rules and protocol. We also test its descriptive validity on an annotated corpus.
The aim of the paper is to show the potential of applying computational models of argument in the... more The aim of the paper is to show the potential of applying computational models of argument in the financial domain to the analysis of Earnings Conference Calls. We propose the formal description of ECC dialogue games: its locution rules and protocol. We also test its descriptive validity on an annotated corpus.
The article discusses both the philosophical use and the stylistic-semiotic uses of the pair ‘den... more The article discusses both the philosophical use and the stylistic-semiotic uses of the pair ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation.’ A historical review reconstructs the development of the philosophical use from the medieval doctrine of denominatives to the work of J. S. Mill, while the origins of the stylistic-semiotic opposition are traced back to the Logic of Port-Royal and, again, to the work of J. S. Mill. Hjemslev's attempt at providing a general definition of the semiotic-stylistic use of ‘denotation’ and ‘connotation’ in terms of a relationship between semiotic codes is discussed in detail. In its final section, the article discusses the logical relationship between the two uses of the distinction and the place of semiotic-stylistic connotation in an account of the semantic and pragmatic aspects of meaning.
PurposeThe article tackles the under-defined notion of communication in strategic communication r... more PurposeThe article tackles the under-defined notion of communication in strategic communication research and elaborates a taxonomy of semiotic processes, which distinguishes different types of communicative and signalling events. The purpose is to offer an improved analysis of the processes by which meaning emerges from strategic communication situations.Design/methodology/approachThe proposed taxonomy is based on a conceptual framework combining semiotics, linguistic pragmatics and signalling theory. Several real cases of strategic communication are analysed to exemplify the taxonomy.FindingsDifferent sub-types of signalling events are highlighted and explained. The communicative function of performed behaviours (i.e. when actions speak and do it louder than words) depends on how informative and communicative intentions are managed by the message source and inferentially interpreted by different receivers. It is suggested that the ways in which meaning is signalled can be best understood with an argumentative perspective that foregrounds the inferential processes of persuasion, interpretation and decision-making. The limitations of the transmission vs. ritual and the one-way vs. two-way theories of strategic communication are highlighted.Originality/valueThe article discusses strategic communication events with the under-considered perspective of communication theories in the fields of semiotics and pragmatics. Signalling phenomena are interpreted from a communicative viewpoint, emphasising the argumentative dynamics that constitute them.
Peter Cramer's 1 book on controversy as news discourse sets to explain how journalism shapes publ... more Peter Cramer's 1 book on controversy as news discourse sets to explain how journalism shapes public controversy in the modern industrial society and how it influences the experience of it by the mass mediated public.
This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the "epistemic" interpretations of the Itali... more This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the "epistemic" interpretations of the Italian modal verb dovere with the conditional tense, taking as a starting point the underspecified modal semantics of both the modal verb and the conditional form. The analysis focuses in particular on the difference between epistemic readings of dovere in the indicative and conditional moods. We observe a number of constraints imposed by the "epistemic" reading of the conditional form of dovere over argumentative sequences in discourse, which are not imposed by the indicative form. On this basis, we suggest that the "epistemic" reading with the conditional emerges as a pragmatic free enrichment after alethic or deontic saturation of the modal basis of dovere in a hypothetical frame, whereas with the indicative, the modal saturation is truly doxastic, implying a metarepresentation of speaker’s beliefs, and thus transforming dovere into an evidential for the concerned infe...
Argumentation and Inference: Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Argumentation, Fribourg 2017, 2017
This paper presents preliminary findings of the project "Analysing children's implicit argumentat... more This paper presents preliminary findings of the project "Analysing children's implicit argumentation". We propose to reconstruct implicit premises of children's arguments within adult-children discussions in different settings, using the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) for the reconstruction of the inferential configuration of arguments. We show that sources of misunderstandings are more often than not due to misalignments of implicit premises between adults and
When two-to six-year-old children contribute to argumentative discussion, how do they reason? Can... more When two-to six-year-old children contribute to argumentative discussion, how do they reason? Can Argumentation theory, a discipline that up to now has largely focused on adult expert productions, contribute to a psychological understanding of the child? And, in turn, can a close examination of children's argumentative moves contribute to the study of inference in argumentation? Our interdisciplinary research program ArgImp, at the crossroads of psychology, education and argumentation theory, tries to enrich these two lines of enquiry by conducting empirical studies with young children involved in argumentative activities and by analyzing them with models and methods borrowed from Argumentation theory (
This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the "epistemic" interpretations of the Itali... more This paper proposes a semantic analysis of the "epistemic" interpretations of the Italian modal verb dovere with the conditional tense, taking as a starting point the underspecified modal semantics of both the modal verb and the conditional form. The analysis focuses in particular on the difference between epistemic readings of dovere in the indicative and conditional moods. We observe a number of constraints imposed by the "epistemic" reading of the conditional form of dovere over argumentative sequences in discourse, which are not imposed by the indicative form. On this basis, we suggest that the "epistemic" reading with the conditional emerges as a pragmatic free enrichment after alethic or deontic saturation of the modal basis of dovere in a hypothetical frame, whereas with the indicative, the modal saturation is truly doxastic, implying a metarepresentation of speaker’s beliefs, and thus transforming dovere into an evidential for the concerned infe...
Numerosi studi nell’ambito della ricerca in didattica della matematica hanno ormai da tempo evide... more Numerosi studi nell’ambito della ricerca in didattica della matematica hanno ormai da tempo evidenziato come esistano profonde connessioni tra apprendimento della matematica e dimensione linguistica. La presente dissertazione si pone sulla scia di queste ricerche: partendo dal presupposto che una visione integrata tra le due discipline rappresenti un fecondo terreno di indagine, viene presentata una ricerca interdisciplinare il cui obiettivo è indagare la testualità del libro di testo scolastico di geometria, mostrando al contempo la profondità di risultati che un approccio di ricerca interdisciplinare consente di raggiungere. La tesi è di natura cumulativa e si inserisce all’interno del progetto FNS Italmatica. Comprendere la matematica a scuola, tra lingua comune e linguaggio specialistico (progetto n. 176339), il cui intento è di indagare, da un punto di vista congiunto tra didattica della matematica e linguistica, le caratteristiche a più livelli di un corpus, denominato DFA-Ita...
Cahiers du Centre de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage
Journalists’ expectations concerning the way in which the audience will react to news strongly in... more Journalists’ expectations concerning the way in which the audience will react to news strongly influence their decisions in newsmaking. This article investigates the argumentative dimension of journalists’ anticipatory inferences in newsroom editorial conferences. In order to study journalists’ reasoning processes concerning audience uptake that lead journalists to publish a certain news instead of another or to publish a news in a certain way, we will use the Pragma-Dialectical framework at the interactional level and Argumentum Model of Topics at the inferential level. Through a case study, we will investigate the anticipation of the audience interest and the anticipation of the audience persuasion, showing how editorial conferences function as places of reflection in which certain kinds of standpoints are at stake and particular aspects of the audience uptake are anticipated.
Cahiers du Centre de Linguistique et des Sciences du Langage
L’article présente une approche de l’étude du discours de la finance capable de relier l’articula... more L’article présente une approche de l’étude du discours de la finance capable de relier l’articulation pragmatique et rhétorique des textes, la définition des genres de discours et le fonctionnement social et institutionnel d’un vaste domaine d’activité humaine. Un modèle théorique du fonctionnement du discours en contexte social est présenté et appliqué à la reconstruction de la sphère financière et de son « système de genres ». Les articles de presse économique-financière offrent une courte illustration de la manière dont cette approche peut éclairer le fonctionnement pragmatique et rhétorique d’un genre particulier et l’analyse de textes individuels.
Didattica della matematica. Dalla ricerca alle pratiche d’aula, 2021
A partire dal corpus del progetto Italmatica. Comprendere la matematica a scuola, fra lingua comu... more A partire dal corpus del progetto Italmatica. Comprendere la matematica a scuola, fra lingua comune e linguaggio specialistico del Fondo nazionale svizzero, viene presentata un’analisi di esempi tratti dai libri di testo di geometria in lingua italiana della scuola primaria e secondaria di primo grado. L’analisi si basa sull’applicazione delle categorie di tipo retorico classico: inventio, dispositio ed elocutio, oggi afferenti ai domini degli studi linguistici, in particolare delle teorie dell’argomentazione. Attraverso l’analisi condotta, vengono evidenziate da un lato la profondità delle riflessioni che queste lenti teoriche consentono di raggiungere nello sviscerare un testo argomentativo di matematica, dall’altro la grande varietà di scelte possibili adottate dai libri di testo, che possono avere un effetto comunicativo sul lettore-studente.
This paper tackles outdated news about COVID-19 as a type of misinformation from an argumentative... more This paper tackles outdated news about COVID-19 as a type of misinformation from an argumentative perspective, focusing on the fact-checker Snopes. In rapidly changing information environments the circulation of outdated news can be highly detrimental causing risky behaviors. Such type of misinformation is difficult to pin down through fact-checking since encompassing different types of contents, motivations and channels. To fully understand this phenomenon we deem necessary to move away from a naïve view of fact checking to an argumentative one. But what are the argumentative configurations of outdated statements in the context of the current information ecosystem? To answer this question we rely on the distinction between upstream and downstream argumentation to anchor the kind of issues put forward by outdated statements. We then take as a sample all the news that have been rated as “outdated” and “miscaptioned” by Snopes during the pandemic and analyse the type of source, the se...
We verify that quadratic divergences stemming from gravitational corrections to QED which have be... more We verify that quadratic divergences stemming from gravitational corrections to QED which have been conjectured to lead to asymptotic freedom near Planck scale are arbitrary (regularization dependent) and compatible with zero. Moreover we explicitly show that such arbitrary term contributes to the beta function of QED in a gauge dependent way in the gravitational sector.
The aim of the paper is to show the potential of applying computational models of argument in the... more The aim of the paper is to show the potential of applying computational models of argument in the financial domain to the analysis of Earnings Conference Calls. We propose the formal description of ECC dialogue games: its locution rules and protocol. We also test its descriptive validity on an annotated corpus.
The aim of the paper is to show the potential of applying computational models of argument in the... more The aim of the paper is to show the potential of applying computational models of argument in the financial domain to the analysis of Earnings Conference Calls. We propose the formal description of ECC dialogue games: its locution rules and protocol. We also test its descriptive validity on an annotated corpus.
- Explores the role of modal expressions as argumentative indicators by using the Italian modal s... more - Explores the role of modal expressions as argumentative indicators by using the Italian modal system as a case study.
- Uses predictions/forecasts in the business-financial daily press to investigate the relation between modality and the context of argumentation.
- A specialist research monograph that could simultaneously provide background information and be used as an inspiration or methodology guide for PhD students.
This book addresses two related questions that have first arisen in Toulmin’s seminal book on the uses of argument. The first question is the one of the relationship between the semantic analysis of modality and the structure of arguments. The second question is the one of the distinctive place, or role, of modality in the fundamental structure of arguments. These two questions concern how modality, as a semantic category, relates to the fundamental structure of arguments. The book addresses modality and argumentation also according to another perspective by looking at how different linguistic modal expressions may be taken as argumentative indicators. It explores the role of modal expressions as argumentative indicators by using the Italian modal system as a case study. At the same time, it uses predictions/forecasts in the business-financial daily press to investigate the relation between modality and the context of argumentation.
The book provides an introduction to an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that can be called "gl... more The book provides an introduction to an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that can be called "global linguistics" (GL). GL emerges to tackle the ever-growing phenomenon of intercultural communication (IC) in today's world of international contacts. The specific aim of GL is to look at the form and contents of dialogues among speakers of different cultural backgrounds who will use a "default language" or koiné (usually English) to interact, in order to detect communication breakdowns at various levels of "depth", as well as the opportunities for developing sound intercultural communication practice. The book includes an accessible presentation of fundamental questions concerning languages and language use. Among the questions addressed are the universal design features of languages, the connection between language and conceptual systems, how people use language to coordinate their actions and interact in a variety of social contexts, and the place of language in a semiotic view of culture. The volume also addresses how language, context and culture shape the way in which we argue a point and try to persuade other people, and why intercultural argumentation is both necessary and risky.Global Linguistics: An Introduction describes fundamental notions in linguistics and cognate fields and is thus well-suited for use as a textbook in courses dealing with IC in general. At the same time, the book is of general interest to scholars in linguistics and communication studies, as it places particular emphasis on theoretical models such as argumentation theory and conceptual metaphor theory, which are generally not presented in textbooks on language and IC.
Scienze della comunicazione: Cosa fanno i laureati della facoltà luganese? Dove nasce questa scie... more Scienze della comunicazione: Cosa fanno i laureati della facoltà luganese? Dove nasce questa scienza, tra le più antiche e attuali? Parla il decano, Andrea Rocci Intervista a cura di Claudio Mésoniat
Il Potere del Discorso: Retorica e Pragmatica Linguistica ('The Power of Discourse: Rhetoric and ... more Il Potere del Discorso: Retorica e Pragmatica Linguistica ('The Power of Discourse: Rhetoric and Linguistic Pragmatics') is a book about the relationship between rhetoric and linguistic pragmatics. The choice of the subject itself would suffice to commend the boldness of Venier's attempt, given the breadth of the intellectual enterprises being compared and then connected, their fuzzy borders, and the chronological gulf of more than two millennia that separates the beginnings of rhetoric from the writings that are considered seminal for the birth of pragmatics. Moreover, Venier laudably decided to write a concise book, something which calls for an iron resolve in deciding what to include and what to leave out. Thus, the discussion is firmly centered on the legacy of the Rhetoric of Aristotle in relation to the work of three major modern classics:
IPRA 2007 10th International Pragmatics Conference– …, Jan 1, 2007
Pragmatics Conference Göteborg -9th July 2007 2 Why are we particularly interested in financial n... more Pragmatics Conference Göteborg -9th July 2007 2 Why are we particularly interested in financial news?
The paper discusses a type of destructive argument where the targeted viewpoint is refuted thanks... more The paper discusses a type of destructive argument where the targeted viewpoint is refuted thanks to an analogy between its propositional content and a non-factual state of affairs. The analogy can be either same-domain or figurative. The paper proposes an analysis in terms of the Argumentum Model of Topics, showing that these refutations draw their force from the recognition of an incongruity in the content of the argument which is found to be equally applicable to the content of the refuted viewpoint. Depending on the nature of the refuted standpoint, the incongruity can be ontological, practical or moral-social. Nonfactual analogical refutations are found to have a deductive force. Yet, they are redundant when they are accompanied by arguments targeting directly the incongruity in the standpoint.
This paper presents preliminary findings of the project [name omitted for anonymity]. This interd... more This paper presents preliminary findings of the project [name omitted for anonymity]. This interdisciplinary project builds on Argumentation theory and developmental sociocultural psychology for the study of children’s argumentation. We reconstruct children’s inferences in adult-child and child-child dialogical interaction in conversation in different settings. We focus in particular on implicit premises using the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) for the reconstruction of the inferential configuration of arguments. Our findings reveal that sources of misunderstandings are more often than not due to misalignments of implicit premises between adults and children; these misalignments concern material premises rather than the inferential-procedural level.
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Papers by Andrea Rocci
- Uses predictions/forecasts in the business-financial daily press to investigate the relation between modality and the context of argumentation.
- A specialist research monograph that could simultaneously provide background information and be used as an inspiration or methodology guide for PhD students.
This book addresses two related questions that have first arisen in Toulmin’s seminal book on the uses of argument. The first question is the one of the relationship between the semantic analysis of modality and the structure of arguments. The second question is the one of the distinctive place, or role, of modality in the fundamental structure of arguments. These two questions concern how modality, as a semantic category, relates to the fundamental structure of arguments. The book addresses modality and argumentation also according to another perspective by looking at how different linguistic modal expressions may be taken as argumentative indicators. It explores the role of modal expressions as argumentative indicators by using the Italian modal system as a case study. At the same time, it uses predictions/forecasts in the business-financial daily press to investigate the relation between modality and the context of argumentation.
Intervista a cura di Claudio Mésoniat
applicable to the content of the refuted viewpoint. Depending on the nature of the refuted standpoint, the incongruity can be ontological, practical or moral-social. Nonfactual analogical refutations are found to have a deductive force. Yet, they are redundant when they are accompanied by arguments targeting directly the incongruity in the standpoint.