Cristina Corredor

El objetivo de este trabajo es preguntar si el uso argumentativo del lenguaje puede ser un recurso de persuasión no racional en la propaganda, en particular en el discurso político. Después de caracterizar brevemente la propaganda, sus efectos y las técnicas y recursos que emplea, se analizaran algunos fragmentos de discursos políticos con el fin de identificar el uso y la función que los argumentos cumplen en ellos. En el curso del estudio se constatará que la evaluación de los argumentos con fines propagandísticos requiere tener en cuenta tanto el contexto más amplio del discurso como el modo en que el público destinatario lo interpreta.

[PREPRINT, please do not quote] El propósito del artículo es presentar los principales conceptos e ideas de un enfoque interpersonal y social sobre la comunicación lingüística, y discutir algunos problemas que presenta. Trata de mostrar cómo ese enfoque logra poner de manifiesto y avanzar en el estudio y la investigación de aspectos importantes de la comunicación que otros enfoques en pragmática contemporánea han omitido o relegado. Este estudio previo permitirá preguntar en qué medida un enfoque clásico en el estudio de la pragmática del lenguaje como es la teoría de actos de habla, en particular en la versión originalmente propuesta por Austin (1962), puede dar cuenta de la dimensión interpersonal y social de la comunicación.

The aim of this paper is to offer an account of deliberative dialogues within the framework of an Austinian speech act theory. My analysis focuses on a characteristic aspect of deliberative dialogues, namely, turn-taking organization, with the aim of throwing some light on their interactional dynamics as a basis for collective action. The exploration tries to approach the issue by suggesting how and to what extent deliberation, as a dialogical argumentative practice, can be accounted for with the tools of speech act theory.

What type of speech act is a norm of action, when the norm is agreed upon as the conclusion of an argumentative dialogue? My hypothesis is that, whenever a norm of action is the conclusion of an argument, it should be analyzed as the statement of a norm and thus as a verdictive speech act. If the context is appropriate, and the interlocutors are sincerely (or institutionally) committed to their argumentative exchange and its conclusion, then this verdictive motivates and institutes a new one with the force of an exercitive. The interlocutors’ recognition and acceptance that the new illocution has been performed lends the norm its exercitive force.

This paper endorses a view of argumentation and arguments that relates both to a special type of speech action, namely, the performance of speech acts of arguing. Its aim is to advance an analysis of those acts that takes into account two kinds of norms related to their correct performance, namely, felicity conditions and objective requirements related to the “correspondence with the facts.” It assumes that the requirement that certain objective conditions be satisfied is among the set of felicity conditions of speech acts of arguing. Taking this into account helps clarify the position and role of warrants in the performance and assessment of these acts.

Within the Gricean framework in pragmatics, communication is understood as an inferential activity. Other approaches to the study of linguistic communication have contended that language is argumentative in some essential sense. My aim is to study the question of whether and how the practices of inferring and arguing can be taken to contribute to meaning in linguistic communication. I shall suggest a two-fold hypothesis. First, what makes of communication an inferential activity is given with its calculability, i.e. with the possibility to rationally recover the assigned meaning by means of an explicit inference. Secondly, the normative positions that we recognize and assign each other with our speech acts comprise obligations and rights of a dialectical character; but this fact does not entail nor presuppose an argumentative nature in language or speech. Both inferring and arguing are needed, however, in the activity of justifying and assessing our speech acts.

The article studies two especific forms of social interaction, linguistically mediated: promises and threats. Two pregnant theoretical accounts are to be considered here. Firstly, the analysis propounded within the framework of Game Theory, assuming an intentionalist account of human agency and an instrumentalist concept of rationality; and secondly, the attempt carried out by Speech Acts theorists. In the first case, it can be shown that the theoretical premisses are insufficient to offer a proper account of such basic forms of social interchange. This result gives indirect support, so it is argued, to the second theoretical framework considered. Yet some of the solutions offered seem to be also unsatisfactory. Reasons are given of why it is so, and an attempt of solution, within the same theoretical framework, is suggested.

The aim of this paper is to explore the viability of accounting for presumptions as a subtype of verdictives, within the framework of the Austinian approach to speech acts. The available set of felicity conditions is examined and worked out, in order to try and account in particular for a main feature of presumptions, namely, their function in shifting the burden of proof. In order to extend the Austinian framework as required, the notion of pragmatic presupposition accommodation is shown to be a useful device.

Here a critical revision is carried out of the intersubjectivist theory of meaning embodied in the Formal Pragmatics developed within the framework of the Theory of Communicative Action. According to very recent «internal» criticisms, only a version of H. Putnam's theory of direct reference can avoid the kind of meaning holism and linguistic relativism which assails Habermas' foundation of shared meaning on the intersubjective validity of a rule. A more detailed analysis of Putnam's views, as well as of the referred criticisms, shows that they in fact represent an unorthodox reading trying to conciliate Putnam's first functionalist theory with his second pragmatical Internal Realism. Finally it is concluded that only a quasi-Kantian view on the formal-pragmatical presuppositions underlying epistemic language use seems to offer an answer to the core de iure question: what makes it possible to justify validity for already constitued meanings in epistemic contexts.