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Standing Standpoints and Argumentative Associates: What is at Stake in a Public Political Argument?

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Abstract

In today’s ‘networked’ public sphere, arguers are faced with countless controversies roaming out there. Knowing what is at stake at any point in time, and keeping under control the contribution one’s arguments make to the different interrelated issues requires careful craft (e.g. Mohammed and Zarefsky, in Feteris, Garssen and Snoeck Henkemans (eds) Keeping in touch with Pragma-Dialectics. In honor of Frans H. van Eemeren. John Benjamins, Amsterdam, 2011). In this paper, I explore the difficulty of determining what is at stake at any moment of the argumentative situation and explore the challenge that that creates for examining the strategic shape of arguments. I argue that a meaningful examination of networked argumentative encounters requires that the boundaries of an encounter remain ‘fluid. In dealing with the fluid boundaries, I suggest to identify “argumentative associates” and “standing standpoints”.

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Notes

  1. Interestingly, Obama’s choice ended up playing against him in relation to yet another issue, namely his competence in tackling terrorist (issue iv). His refusal to use the term has been taken as a sign that he is ‘soft on terrorism’, costing him a significant deal, domestically among those who would have liked to see tougher policies.

  2. See the Atlantic (2017) for a “brief history of Trump's Feud with Sadiq Khan.

  3. This was another case of a taking the Mayor’s words out of context. In his statement, Khan had said that “its part and parcel of living in a great global city you’ve got to be prepared for these things, you’ve got to be vigilant, you’ve got to support the police doing an incredibly hard job”. While the Mayor’s point was that being prepared for terrorism is necessary as ‘part and parcel’ of living in a big city, the distortion alleges surrender and acceptance of terrorism in itself as ‘part and parcel’ of living in a big city.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Mark Aakhus, the participants of the regular ArgLab research colloquium of the NOVA Institute of Philosophy, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on an earlier version of this paper. This research has been supported by funds from the Institute of Philosophy at the FCSH NOVA, Universidade Nove de Lisboa as well as from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) grant PTDC/MHC-FIL/0521/2014.

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  1. ArgLab-IFILNOVA, NOVA FCSH, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Av. de Berna, 26, Edifício I&D, 1069-061, Lisbon, Portugal

    Dima Mohammed

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Mohammed, D. Standing Standpoints and Argumentative Associates: What is at Stake in a Public Political Argument?. Argumentation 33, 307–322 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-018-9473-y

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