Sara Greco Morasso

Contextual frames and their argumentative implications: A case study in media argumentation:

By presenting a case study based on the argumentative analysis of news in the press, this article introduces and discusses strategic manoeuvring with contextual frames. Drawing on the linguistic notion of frame, I introduce the concept of contextual frame to refer to the news context, that is, the background against which a certain event is presented as a piece of news. I argue that newspapers and journalists make use of contextual frames in the apparently neutral genre of news reporting to propose specific interpretations of the facts at issue, which become the basis for explicit comments and editorials. To show how this works, I investigate in detail a case of newspaper coverage of a complex episode using the pragma-dialectical notion of strategic manoeuvring and the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) to analyse argument schemes. I show that, in the use of contextual frames, there is a prominent relation between presentational devices (the lexical choices that build up the frame) and topical potential; contextual frames provide the implicit material premises (endoxa) which are at the basis of argumentations through which newspapers interpret and comment on the news.

Parental discourse and identity management in the talk of indigenous and migrant speakers

This article integrates discursive psychology and argumentation studies to discuss the regularities identified in two sets of data – focus group discussions amongst indigenous Greeks residing in Central Northern Greece and interviews with non-indigenous women with children, resident in the greater London area. The initial regularity identified consisted of participants talking as parents and talking about children mobilizing the normative expectations of parenthood in voicing strong views about ‘others’ from ethnic, cultural and racial backgrounds other than those of the speakers. This seemed to function as a form of denial, identifying further regularities in the discursive strategies used by participants and in the lines of arguments developed. Furthermore, two themes emerged as commonplace in talking about ‘others’ in the lines of argument developed by participants – security/insecurity and hierarchies. These regularities are considered and the potentials of analysing discourse from two integrated approaches are discussed.

The Argumentum experience

How can argumentation skills be improved by engaging students in argumentative practices where they are helped to assume a healthy critical attitude, and provide reasons for their positions? What are the synergies of learning to argue and arguing to learn (see chapter “Argumentation and Learning,” B. Schwarz)? This paper originates from these questions, and relies on the experience of teaching argumentation at university level, in the framework of the Swiss Virtual Campus project Argumentum (http://www.argumentum.ch). After presenting the aim and structure of Argumentum, this study focuses on a specific experience of argument production and analysis, occurred in the pedagogical scenario of argumentation classes at master level, at the University of Lugano. Students were asked to assume a specific position within a debate inspired by a famous historical controversy. Two different tools for constructing and analyzing arguments (see chapter “Argumentation as an object of interest and as a social and cultural resource,” E. Rigotti and S. Greco Morasso) were introduced within this didactical experience, allowing a progressively more comprehensive approach to argumentative interventions, including the production of an argumentative intervention, and the analysis and evaluation of arguments. The online course Argumentum provided the technical platform for this exercise of argumentation. Finally, the paper elaborates on the lessons learned by this experience.