Steve Oswald
Biographic Data
| ID | 410634 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steve Oswald |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steve |
| FAMILY NAME | Oswald |
| SIGNATURE | OSWALD S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Fribourg |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5946-1691 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 38 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Approaching the Study of Argumentation from an Experimental Perspective
Are Insinuated Ad Hominem Arguments Rhetorically Effective? Yes, but Conditions Apply
Personal attacks, which might convey damaging accusations, can take either an explicit or an implicit form. When they are communicated implicitly, they are referred to as insinuations . Their implicit nature is said to allow speakers to evade responsibility, preserve their public image, or even conceal argumentative weaknesses. In previous studies, we found that insinuated ad hominem arguments supporting disagreement made speakers appear more per…
Steve Oswald: Pragmatique et rhétorique
Chercher l’efficacité perlocutoire (faire adhérer à une thèse, faire acheter un produit, ...) sans que la vérité ou la morale ne jouent un rôle décisif constitue-t-elle ce que d’aucuns nomment une manipulation ? C’est précisément parce qu’il s’intéresse aux mécanismes de l’adhésion à des thèses que Steve Oswald a tissé des liens entre sciences cognitives et rhétorique autour de cette notion. En se fondant sur les théories de pragmatique cognitive…
Steve Oswald: Pragmatics and rhetoric
Does the search for perlocutionary effectiveness (getting people to agree with a claim, to buy a product, etc.) without truth or morality playing a decisive role constitute what some call manipulation? Precisely because he is interested in the mechanisms of persuasion, Steve Oswald has woven links between cognitive science and rhetoric around this notion. Drawing on theories of cognitive pragmatics and work in psychology, this researcher goes off…
Norms of Public Argumentation and the Ideals of Correctness and Participation
Argumentation as the public exchange of reasons is widely thought to enhance deliberative interactions that generate and justify reasonable public policies. Adopting an argumentation-theoretic perspective, we survey the norms that should govern public argumentation and address some of the complexities that scholarly treatments have identified. Our focus is on norms associated with the ideals of correctness and participation as sources of a politi…
Pragmatic perspectives on disagreement
The introduction to this special issue provides an overview of the notion of disagreement in relation to argumentative practices and presents the rationale for investigating disagreement management in argumentative discourse from a pragmatic perspective. It describes how existing accounts of disagreement in argumentation have focused on limited instances of the phenomenon, both in terms of its pragmatic embedding (which has predominantly focused …
Rephrasing is not arguing, but it is still persuasive: An experimental approach to perlocutionary effects of rephrase
Rephrase is a pragmatically complex and persuasively appealing, yet still not systematically explored communication phenomenon. Evidence from corpus data indicates that speakers rephrase frequently in argumentative settings. In light of this empirical evidence, it is a tenable assumption that speakers (are perceived to) gain rhetorical advantages by rephrasing their own or someone else's contribution. In this paper, we present three experimental …
The Pragmatics and Argumentation Interface
It can be argued that linguistic aspects of argumentation have attracted scholarly attention ever since the foundation of rhetoric, which originally developed as the study of means of persuasion, and thus, to a fair extent, that linguistics plays an important role in the study of argumentation at large
Pragmatics for argumentation
The relationship between argumentation and language has recently attracted a great deal of attention through various publications in the field of argumentation studies (see e.g., Boogaart et al., 2021; Hinton, 2021; Oswald et al., 2018; Oswald et al., 2020). In this paper I propose a historical overview of this relationship by narrowing the scope of my inquiry onto the various ways in which argumentation studies, over the last 50 years, have draw…
The Pandemic of Argumentation
This open access book addresses the current phenomena of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the epidemic of misinformation using argumentation theory.
On the Rhetorical Effectiveness of Implicit Meaning-A Pragmatic Approach
This paper explores the interface between pragmatics and argumentation by considering the impact of different types of implicit meaning on different types of rhetorical effects. On the rhetorical front and drawing on classical rhetoric but going beyond the Aristotelian rhetorical triangle (ethos, logos, pathos), the paper discusses an open list of rhetorical effects affecting speakers, audiences, messages and the conversational flow of interactio…
Insinuation is committing
Since insinuation - through which speakers implicitly convey negative ascriptions nonovertly (Bell, 1997) - is in theory plausibly deniable, many scholars who have tried to account for the phenomenon (e.g., Fricker, 2012, Bell, 1997, Bertucelli Papi, 2014) have concluded that insinuators cannot be taken to be committed to the content of what they insinuate. Against this classical view, Fraser (2001) and Camp (2018) consider that insinuation is co…
The Linguistic Formulation of Fallacies Matters: The Case of Causal Connectives
While the role of discourse connectives has long been acknowledged in argumentative frameworks, these approaches often take a coarse-grained approach to connectives, treating them as a unified group having similar effects on argumentation. Based on an empirical study of the straw man fallacy, we argue that a more fine-grained approach is needed to explain the role of each connective and illustrate their specificities. We first present an original…
Relevance and emotion
The ability to focus on relevant information is central to human cognition. It is therefore hardly unsurprising that the notion of relevance appears across a range of different disciplines. As well as its central role in relevance-theoretic pragmatics, for example, relevance is also a core concept in the affective sciences, where there is consensus that for a particular object or event to elicit an emotional state, that object or event needs to b…
Pragmatique cognitive, argumentation et perlocution
Cet article examine les liens qui existent entre la pragmatique (définie comme l’étude du sens en contexte) et l’étude de l’argumentation pour poser les bases d’une pragmatique de la perlocution. Traditionnellement dévolue à l’étude du sens illocutoire, dans la lignée de la théorie des actes de langage, la pragmatique a longtemps exclu l’acte perlocutoire de l’ensemble des phénomènes dont elle s’est donné pour tâche de rendre compte. Je tente ici…
What makes a straw man acceptable? Three experiments assessing linguistic factors
Understanding pragmatics
Biases and constraints in communication: Argumentation, persuasion and manipulation
When and how do we deal with straw men? A normative and cognitive pragmatic account
Constraining Context: A Pragmatic Account of Cognitive Manipulation
From interpretation to consent: Arguments, beliefs and meaning
This article addresses the relationship between understanding and believing from the cognitive perspective of information-processing. I promote, within the scope of the Critical Discourse Analysis agenda, the relevance of an account of belief-fixation sustained by a combination of argumentative and cognitive insights. To this end, I first argue that discursive strategies fulfilling legitimization purposes, such as evidentials (see Hart, this issu…
Towards an interface between Pragma‐Dialectics and Relevance Theory
This paper investigates the tentative compatibility of two pragmatic approaches, Pragma-Dialectics ( PD ) and Relevance Theory ( RT ). The development of pragmatics historically led to conceptions of communication that supplied answers formal logic approaches had trouble capturing. Within argumentation studies, PD took this pragmatic turn while at the same time pursuing a normative agenda. This gives evidence of an external approach to language (…
Pragmatics for argumentation
The relationship between argumentation and language has recently attracted a great deal of attention through various publications in the field of argumentation studies (see e.g., Boogaart et al., 2021; Hinton, 2021; Oswald et al., 2018; Oswald et al., 2020). In this paper I propose a historical overview of this relationship by narrowing the scope of my inquiry onto the various ways in which argumentation studies, over the last 50 years, have draw…
When and how do we deal with straw men? A normative and cognitive pragmatic account
What makes a straw man acceptable? Three experiments assessing linguistic factors
Understanding pragmatics
Insinuation is committing
Since insinuation - through which speakers implicitly convey negative ascriptions nonovertly (Bell, 1997) - is in theory plausibly deniable, many scholars who have tried to account for the phenomenon (e.g., Fricker, 2012, Bell, 1997, Bertucelli Papi, 2014) have concluded that insinuators cannot be taken to be committed to the content of what they insinuate. Against this classical view, Fraser (2001) and Camp (2018) consider that insinuation is co…
Relevance and emotion
The ability to focus on relevant information is central to human cognition. It is therefore hardly unsurprising that the notion of relevance appears across a range of different disciplines. As well as its central role in relevance-theoretic pragmatics, for example, relevance is also a core concept in the affective sciences, where there is consensus that for a particular object or event to elicit an emotional state, that object or event needs to b…
From interpretation to consent: Arguments, beliefs and meaning
This article addresses the relationship between understanding and believing from the cognitive perspective of information-processing. I promote, within the scope of the Critical Discourse Analysis agenda, the relevance of an account of belief-fixation sustained by a combination of argumentative and cognitive insights. To this end, I first argue that discursive strategies fulfilling legitimization purposes, such as evidentials (see Hart, this issu…
The Pragmatics and Argumentation Interface
It can be argued that linguistic aspects of argumentation have attracted scholarly attention ever since the foundation of rhetoric, which originally developed as the study of means of persuasion, and thus, to a fair extent, that linguistics plays an important role in the study of argumentation at large
Biases and constraints in communication: Argumentation, persuasion and manipulation
Towards an interface between Pragma‐Dialectics and Relevance Theory
This paper investigates the tentative compatibility of two pragmatic approaches, Pragma-Dialectics ( PD ) and Relevance Theory ( RT ). The development of pragmatics historically led to conceptions of communication that supplied answers formal logic approaches had trouble capturing. Within argumentation studies, PD took this pragmatic turn while at the same time pursuing a normative agenda. This gives evidence of an external approach to language (…
Constraining Context: A Pragmatic Account of Cognitive Manipulation
From interpretation to consent: Arguments, beliefs and meaning
This article addresses the relationship between understanding and believing from the cognitive perspective of information-processing. I promote, within the scope of the Critical Discourse Analysis agenda, the relevance of an account of belief-fixation sustained by a combination of argumentative and cognitive insights. To this end, I first argue that discursive strategies fulfilling legitimization purposes, such as evidentials (see Hart, this issu…
Biases and constraints in communication: Argumentation, persuasion and manipulation
When and how do we deal with straw men? A normative and cognitive pragmatic account
Understanding pragmatics
What makes a straw man acceptable? Three experiments assessing linguistic factors
Pragmatique cognitive, argumentation et perlocution
Cet article examine les liens qui existent entre la pragmatique (définie comme l’étude du sens en contexte) et l’étude de l’argumentation pour poser les bases d’une pragmatique de la perlocution. Traditionnellement dévolue à l’étude du sens illocutoire, dans la lignée de la théorie des actes de langage, la pragmatique a longtemps exclu l’acte perlocutoire de l’ensemble des phénomènes dont elle s’est donné pour tâche de rendre compte. Je tente ici…
The Linguistic Formulation of Fallacies Matters: The Case of Causal Connectives
While the role of discourse connectives has long been acknowledged in argumentative frameworks, these approaches often take a coarse-grained approach to connectives, treating them as a unified group having similar effects on argumentation. Based on an empirical study of the straw man fallacy, we argue that a more fine-grained approach is needed to explain the role of each connective and illustrate their specificities. We first present an original…
Relevance and emotion
The ability to focus on relevant information is central to human cognition. It is therefore hardly unsurprising that the notion of relevance appears across a range of different disciplines. As well as its central role in relevance-theoretic pragmatics, for example, relevance is also a core concept in the affective sciences, where there is consensus that for a particular object or event to elicit an emotional state, that object or event needs to b…
The Pandemic of Argumentation
This open access book addresses the current phenomena of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the epidemic of misinformation using argumentation theory.
On the Rhetorical Effectiveness of Implicit Meaning-A Pragmatic Approach
This paper explores the interface between pragmatics and argumentation by considering the impact of different types of implicit meaning on different types of rhetorical effects. On the rhetorical front and drawing on classical rhetoric but going beyond the Aristotelian rhetorical triangle (ethos, logos, pathos), the paper discusses an open list of rhetorical effects affecting speakers, audiences, messages and the conversational flow of interactio…
Insinuation is committing
Since insinuation - through which speakers implicitly convey negative ascriptions nonovertly (Bell, 1997) - is in theory plausibly deniable, many scholars who have tried to account for the phenomenon (e.g., Fricker, 2012, Bell, 1997, Bertucelli Papi, 2014) have concluded that insinuators cannot be taken to be committed to the content of what they insinuate. Against this classical view, Fraser (2001) and Camp (2018) consider that insinuation is co…
Rephrasing is not arguing, but it is still persuasive: An experimental approach to perlocutionary effects of rephrase
Rephrase is a pragmatically complex and persuasively appealing, yet still not systematically explored communication phenomenon. Evidence from corpus data indicates that speakers rephrase frequently in argumentative settings. In light of this empirical evidence, it is a tenable assumption that speakers (are perceived to) gain rhetorical advantages by rephrasing their own or someone else's contribution. In this paper, we present three experimental …
The Pragmatics and Argumentation Interface
It can be argued that linguistic aspects of argumentation have attracted scholarly attention ever since the foundation of rhetoric, which originally developed as the study of means of persuasion, and thus, to a fair extent, that linguistics plays an important role in the study of argumentation at large
Pragmatics for argumentation
The relationship between argumentation and language has recently attracted a great deal of attention through various publications in the field of argumentation studies (see e.g., Boogaart et al., 2021; Hinton, 2021; Oswald et al., 2018; Oswald et al., 2020). In this paper I propose a historical overview of this relationship by narrowing the scope of my inquiry onto the various ways in which argumentation studies, over the last 50 years, have draw…
Steve Oswald: Pragmatique et rhétorique
Chercher l’efficacité perlocutoire (faire adhérer à une thèse, faire acheter un produit, ...) sans que la vérité ou la morale ne jouent un rôle décisif constitue-t-elle ce que d’aucuns nomment une manipulation ? C’est précisément parce qu’il s’intéresse aux mécanismes de l’adhésion à des thèses que Steve Oswald a tissé des liens entre sciences cognitives et rhétorique autour de cette notion. En se fondant sur les théories de pragmatique cognitive…
Steve Oswald: Pragmatics and rhetoric
Does the search for perlocutionary effectiveness (getting people to agree with a claim, to buy a product, etc.) without truth or morality playing a decisive role constitute what some call manipulation? Precisely because he is interested in the mechanisms of persuasion, Steve Oswald has woven links between cognitive science and rhetoric around this notion. Drawing on theories of cognitive pragmatics and work in psychology, this researcher goes off…
Norms of Public Argumentation and the Ideals of Correctness and Participation
Argumentation as the public exchange of reasons is widely thought to enhance deliberative interactions that generate and justify reasonable public policies. Adopting an argumentation-theoretic perspective, we survey the norms that should govern public argumentation and address some of the complexities that scholarly treatments have identified. Our focus is on norms associated with the ideals of correctness and participation as sources of a politi…
Pragmatic perspectives on disagreement
The introduction to this special issue provides an overview of the notion of disagreement in relation to argumentative practices and presents the rationale for investigating disagreement management in argumentative discourse from a pragmatic perspective. It describes how existing accounts of disagreement in argumentation have focused on limited instances of the phenomenon, both in terms of its pragmatic embedding (which has predominantly focused …
Approaching the Study of Argumentation from an Experimental Perspective
Are Insinuated Ad Hominem Arguments Rhetorically Effective? Yes, but Conditions Apply
Personal attacks, which might convey damaging accusations, can take either an explicit or an implicit form. When they are communicated implicitly, they are referred to as insinuations . Their implicit nature is said to allow speakers to evade responsibility, preserve their public image, or even conceal argumentative weaknesses. In previous studies, we found that insinuated ad hominem arguments supporting disagreement made speakers appear more per…
Philosophy (17 works) · Epistemology (14 works) · Linguistics (13 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Computer Science (12 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (12 works) · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition (12 works) · Argumentation theory (11 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Sociology (8 works)