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Although previous research has explored how L2 writers allocate their time and how time limits influence writing scores, many of these studies focus solely on final texts, providing only a partial understanding of the writing process. A more comprehensive investigation is essential for enhancing the construct validity of writing assessments. Drawing on empirical research on timed writing and on theoretical models of the writing process, this study explores how time constraints affect L2 learners' written texts and fluency behaviors. A total of 123 participants (60 high-intermediate and 63 advanced EFL learners) completed an argumentative writing task with keystroke logging software under either a 30-minute or 60-minute condition, and stimulated recalls were conducted with a subset. The texts were analyzed for syntactic and lexical complexity, fluency, and overall quality. Results indicate that time constraints did not significantly affect linguistic complexity or writing quality, although fluency behaviors differed across conditions. Time constraints thus affected learners' writing processes more than the linguistic quality of their texts. The core implication for L2 writing assessment is that, for test takers experienced with timed writing, shortening the time allotted to an argumentative task changes composing processes without compromising the product-based scores on which assessment decisions rest.

As automated writing evaluation (AWE) systems proliferate, it is important to assess them for the extent to which they serve an authentic formative assessment purpose. We developed eRevise as an AWE system to engage upper elementary students in text-based writing, receive automated feedback, and revise their essay based on that feedback. In past work, we presented a validity argument for a response-to-text formative assessment. Here, we replicate evidence for the mediational processes we identified with a second response-to-text formative assessment. Beyond replication, we expand the validity argument in several ways: We examine multiple writing outcomes to understand whether the relationships in the data generalize. We also explore patterns of relationships to better understand which students are most likely to benefit from eRevise . Furthermore, we expand the investigation from feature score improvement alone to also consider students’ conceptual development over time. Our findings provide further evidence for sociocultural mechanisms supporting students’ conceptual development of evidence use in writing. We discuss the implications of our findings for future design of eRevise and AWE systems, in general. We also discuss the need for a recursive process where our findings also contribute to refined theory development and design of future AWE systems. (1). Formative Assessment; (2) Argumentative Writing; (3) Adaptive Expertise; (4) Conceptual Change; (5) Validity Argument.

This article historicizes the emergence of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as an Islamic counterpublic in the U.S. public sphere prior to 9/11. The study analyzes how CAIR functioned as an Islamic counterpublic to contest entrenched Islamophobic rhetorics that positioned Muslims as collective threats to U.S. public safety. It highlights how CAIR performed counterpublic rhetorical moves by using oppositional interpretations to construct Muslim ethos and moral identities; coalitional rhetoric to highlight Muslims’ civic engagement; and world-making to advance new ways of seeing Muslims. The study provides a critical history to CAIR’s contemporary advocacy, contributing to scholarship on Islamic/Muslim counterpublicity.

This paper proposes an extension of Inference Anchoring Theory (IAT) that incorporates speaker-centered pragmatic phenomena: arguer identity, phatic speech acts, and emotive speech acts into the analysis of natural-language argumentation. While recent work has shown how ethos can be operationalized within IAT, the theory has not yet accounted for how pathos and phatic functions shape the dialogical conditions under which argumentative acts become felicitous. We argue that the felicity of phatic-maintaining, emotion-appealing, and emotion-expressing acts depends on the speaker’s perceived authorization, and that this authorization is conditioned by the identity projected through personality-based dispositions. We formalize these acts as additional illocutionary types within IAT and model how their acceptance or rejection influences the authorization of a subsequent act of arguing. A qualitative case study of the highest- and lowest-rated speakers in a competitive debate illustrates how differences in personality correspond to distinct patterns of phatic and emotive behavior, resulting in different evaluations of Perceived Argument Strength. The proposed extension provides a framework for analyzing how identity-sensitive authorization dynamics operate in dialogue and offers a foundation for future corpus-based and experimental research on the role of the arguer in argumentation.

Abstract A significant proportion of human reasoning is systematically biased, a fact that sits uneasily with argumentation theory’s methodological commitment to the principle of charity. Traditionally, the principle requires arguments to be reconstructed as plausibly and rationally as possible, which conflicts with the definition of cognitive biases as irrational. The aim of this paper is to show that we can and should integrate cognitive biases into argument reconstruction. Firstly, we demonstrate both the ubiquity and societal consequences of biased reasoning. We then articulate a trilemma for argument analysis: (i) exclude biased reasoning from reconstruction, (ii) redefine it as rational, or (iii) abandon the principle of charity. We argue that this trilemma can be resolved by adopting a nuanced understanding of charity that puts sufficient emphasis on the descriptive standard of accuracy alongside the normative standard of plausibility. By properly pursuing these dual aims, we can account for instances of biased reasoning in argument analysis in terms of the underlying mental states and processes. By taking the effect of the in-group bias in climate skepticism as an instructive example, we present one way of integrating cognitive biases into argument analysis by reconstructing instances of biased reasoning as arguments. The aim of such reconstructions is not to vindicate biased reasoning as epistemically sound, after all, but rather to make its justificatory structure transparent and discussable.

Becoming an AARP-designated “age-friendly'' state is a five-year project, and states who choose to do so, often create a website devoted to policy efforts and initiative updates. On these websites, visual rhetoric and writing play a central role in communicating with the public. These websites have implications for how aging is represented and who is included in this online space, both in photographs and in a website’s alternative text (alt text). To conduct my analysis, I selected three “age-friendly” state homepages and used a framework of text and image integration (Shriver, 1997) and accessibility (Horton & Quesenbery, 2013). My analysis revealed that “age-friendly” state pages must provide greater representation of what aging can look like and should include informative and useful alternative text. I also analyzed the Age-Friendly Minnesota site for the network of digital tools (Spinuzzi, 2015). Through this analysis, I found evidence of an ethos of transparency being developed through a large amount of content being made available online, including meeting videos, which captured both efforts to be accountable to the public and moments of adapting to technology. In giving users access to the unedited meetings, they gain access to the mundane and necessary coordination of technology as well as a greater understanding of the process for developing policy.

Following Gogan (2014), this article outlines how shifting emphasis from persuasion to participation as the desired “end” of public writing can help scholars, teachers, and students better conceptualize public rhetorical work. To better understand the range of “participation,” I argue that scholars and teachers might consider three separate-but-overlapping formulations of public writing participation: 1) participation as confronting—accessing and inhabiting places of institutionally-sanctioned rhetoric through agonistic presence, 2) participation as conditioning and coordinating rhetorical action and engagement within broader ecologies, and 3) participation as constructing and creating through future-building and the assembling of publics. To describe these formulations, I outline the rhetorical work of “copwatching,” the organized effort to monitor policing through video documentation and other routinized tactics. Functioning within the contemporary ecology surrounding police reform, copwatching’s diverse activities help illustrate the realities of public rhetorical work as forms of strategic participation across times and spaces.

Abstract In argumentation theory, loci - also referred to as topoi - are commonly viewed as abstract sources of inference that guide the invention of arguments. Within the Argument Model of Topics (AMT), loci are analysed as sources of inference underlying individual arguments. This paper extends said view by arguing that loci perform a discourse-directive function beyond the level of individual arguments. This function is understood in an analytical sense and refers to how loci orient argumentative interaction by indicating the inferential relations along which issues become arguable in particular ways, such as procedural conditions, goals, constrained choices, conceptual boundaries, or source evaluation. Situated at the meso-level of analysis, this function exceeds the micro-level reconstruction of individual arguments while preceding the identification of recurring argumentative patterns at the macro-level. This paper shows how the reappearance of premises in extended debates, when repeatedly connected to conclusions through the same loci , recurrently instantiates the same inferential relations that orient argumentative interaction. These recurrent inferential relations do not themselves constitute argumentative patterns, but repetition makes these relations empirically traceable across argumentative contributions before the stabilization of argumentative patterns. The analytical framework is illustrated by examples from the controversy of nuclear energy production.

Abstract This paper offers a pragma-dialectical reconstruction of AI-authorship accusations directed at human discussants: the charge that a contribution is machine-generated or not attributable to a responsible participant. Such an accusation is best understood not as a factual label but as a meta-level procedural move. Introduced during the argumentation stage, it can shift the exchange from the merits of a standpoint to the discussant’s status and the admissibility of starting points, and under specified procedural consequences it triggers a nested opening-stage sub-discussion while leaving the original difference of opinion intact. The paper names the configuration in which discussant status, admissible commitments, and sufficiency thresholds are jointly reclassified procedural capture, and gives the conditions that mark it off from an ordinary personal attack or premise misuse. Its contribution is a symmetrical, default-governed repair protocol, with a warrant-filter for detector-based evidence, that restores critical testing of the original standpoint. The claim is normative rather than descriptive: the worked examples are analytic reconstructions.

This research uses a hypothetical case discussion to make students understand writing as a thinking and managerial decision-making process versus as a technical output–based task in the context of artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted writing. Using post-and-then-pre survey data and classroom experience of students, the study reports significant improvement in students’ awareness of contextual reasoning, critical thinking, and the limitations of generative AI tools. AI’s compliance orientation and lack of human judgement was critically analysed. This article highlights the importance of sequential use of AI with humans setting the context and critically understanding the problem before giving a prompt.

Abstract This paper advances a unified account of how argumentative influence can align with epistemic agency by reframing the distinction between invitational and persuasion rhetoric. Drawing on Foss and Griffin’s (1995) influential articulation of invitational rhetoric as grounded in equality, immanent value, and self-determination, I argue that invitational communication inherently positions addressees as reason receivers —agents capable of understanding, evaluating, and endorsing reasons through their own rational capacities. In such settings, perspective change, when it occurs, constitutes rational self-persuasion , an internal process grounded in the addressee’s judgment of the speaker’s reasons. Foss and Griffin contrast this with persuasion rhetoric, holding that persuasion aims to modify others’ attitudes and thereby risks producing compliance under influence through pressure amplified by unbracketed power differentials. I contend, however, that this criticism targets only a subset of persuasion: persuasion that is purely uptake-driven. Building on insights from Gearhart (1979), Tindale (1999), and contemporary persuasion theory (e.g., O’Keefe 2016), I defend the rational persuasion thesis, according to which a speaker’s intention to rationally persuade is the intention to have addressees persuade themselves by judging the speaker’s premises to be reasons they themselves have. When persuasion is so understood, the speaker’s intention is inherently aligned with epistemic agency and motivates the creation of rhetorical environments marked by safety, value, and freedom—conditions Foss and Griffin take to be distinctive of invitational rhetoric. I conclude that argumentation respects epistemic agency not by forgoing influence, but by aiming at rational self-persuasion, thereby distinguishing rational from merely causal forms of rhetorical efficacy.

Kristin D. Pickering’s Environmental Preservation and the Grey Cliffs Conflict: Negotiating Common Narratives, Values, and Ethos is a qualitative, ethnographic analysis of an environmental conflict...

Business communication pedagogy continues to debate the ways in which professional experience and theoretical training shape cross-cultural negotiation competencies. This study compares cultural intelligence (CQ) self-assessments and live simulation performance among 55 executive education participants and 79 university students from Mexico and Germany. Participants completed a CQ instrument before a multicultural HQ–subsidiary negotiation simulation. Students reported higher metacognitive, cognitive, and behavioral CQ but not motivational CQ. HQ teams outperformed subsidiary teams, and bilateral negotiations generated stronger performance than did presentations. The findings suggest that the simulation architecture influences which communication competencies are observable and rewarded.

This qualitative, triple case study reveals how policy reports function as enduring rhetorical resources beyond publication. Textual-intertextual analysis of three antimicrobial resistance reports—including 23 interviews and more than 700 related texts—illuminates how the reports enable subsequent persuasion by filling information gaps, supplying authoritative citations, and representing landmarks. Leveraging theories of circulation, recomposition, and extended delivery, the article offers heuristics to help writers design reports that better equip others to argue in policy contexts over time.

Abstract In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework to understand and examine the argumentative content in multimodal protest. Protests arise in public controversies when people are dissatisfied with the way institutions deal with problems in society, and when conventional routes for addressing these issues are deemed problematic, especially for the powerless. Protest typically involves not only verbal expressions, but also the use of images, and bodily performances. While protest and other forms of activism are extensively explored from various perspectives, its argumentative role is understudied. In this paper, we show that protest not only contributes to public controversies through intervention (e.g. social or cognitive pressure), but also through communication. The argumentative value lies in the (multimodal) communicative dimension of protest: we can understand protest as a communicative act that uses multimodal means to express disapproval about something and to advocate a remedy. We argue that protest contributes arguments to a public controversy by (1) expressing a core argument that addresses potential critical reactions to the claims intrinsic to any protest, and by (2) providing, what we call, proto-arguments, i.e. pieces of information that the audience can use to argue in support of the protest at future occasions. Using the case study of Extinction Rebellion’s highway blockades in the Hague in the Netherlands, we illustrate the pattern of the core argument of protest and three types of proto-arguments. By broadening the scope of argumentation, we invite argumentation scholars to take multimodal protest seriously.

Second language (L2) writers’ capacity to reason about language choices during revision is theoretically central to advanced writing development, yet few studies trace how this linguistic reasoning emerges in repeated feedback-revision cycles that integrate teacher and AI suggestions. This multi-case, longitudinal mixed-methods study examined how ten L2 learners enacted metalinguistic strategies and developed linguistic reasoning across a 12-week online Academic English program. Triangulated data sources included 1246 feedback revision episodes, pre-post reasoning-task responses, and semi-structured exit interviews. We operationalized linguistic reasoning as the processual construct of interest and treated metalinguistic strategies as observable indicators; reasoning responses were scored with a three-dimensional analytic rubric while revisions and interaction logs were coded thematically and by strategy. Results show a systematic shift from early, correctness-focused edits toward later revisions characterized by coordinated structural comparison, more explicit self-explanation, and integrative argumentation; composite reasoning scores increased, with the largest gains observed on depth of explanation. Process analyses identified recurrent patterns in which alternative-rich feedback coincided with comparison moves, partially divergent suggestions often coincided with more explicit self-explanation, and integrative argumentation involving discourse-level revision became more visible over time. Pedagogical implications are also discussed.

Existing scholarship abounds in pedagogical efforts to leverage the advantages of GenAI to support argumentative writing. Yet, these efforts have mainly positioned learners as consumers of GenAI feedback and support on writing, which is often associated with concerns of cognitive atrophy and metacognitive laziness. The emergence of AI-assisted vibe coding makes it possible for learners to play a more active role in creating personalized AI solutions. The repositioning of learners’ roles in relation to GenAI may induce deeper cognitive processing and greater metacognitive engagement. This article introduces AI-assisted vibe coding, a novel no-code development approach that enables learners as technology creators by designing and developing their own personalized argumentative writing tools. We present Base44, a full-stack, AI-powered platform that facilitates this process, and illustrate how students can leverage it to create personalized tools for addressing authentic argumentative writing challenges through concrete workflow examples. We explore the potential of integrating AI-assisted vibe coding into argumentative writing instruction, examine its limitations, and offer directions for future teaching practice and research.

Barbara Konat offers in Emotional Appeals in Argumentation an helpful synthesis of many years of research on emotional appeals in argumentation, notably the project "Computational Pathos", supported by the Polish National Science Centre, of which she was the principal investigator.Although the title unsurprisingly echoes, given the series in which the volume appears, the terminology of argumentation theory and of so-called fallacies of "appeals to emotion", the central concern of this 160-page book, published in 2025 in the Argumentation Library series, is more specifically-and more appropriately-the rhetorical question of pathos.The volume crowns the work carried out by the group behind the "Computational Pathos" project, but it also perfectly illustrates, through its alignment with contemporary research orientations, the renewal of the field that has become visible in recent years and that rests on at least three foundations.First-and this has become self-evident, although it still struggles to penetrate certain mindsemotions should not be reduced to fallacious appeals, but should be regarded as an integral part of the means of persuasion, inseparable from reason and comparable in this respect to the construction of self-image (ethos).Second, especially when a computational dimension is introduced, analyses and models need to be grounded in texts as they actually occur, rather than in fabricated, stylized, or simplified examples.Third, due attention must be paid to the emergence of innovative methods capable of investigating fields that were once largely inaccessible.The book, however, does more than testify to the modernity of its research agenda.Across three parts, it establishes a descriptive model for the analysis of pathos, moving, as the subtitle indicates, from Aristotle to generative artificial

The sonic aesthetics of technical communication have been underconsidered compared to their visual and textual counterparts. We highlight the aesthetic overlaps and contrasts between human-produced audio technical communication and Generative AI audio that mimics the aesthetic patterns of successful science communication podcasts, specifically Radiolab , while exploring the sonic dimensions of ethos, relatability, trust, and narrative. Applying close listening analysis, we explore two particular sonic aesthetic features: prosodic variation and shared conversational syntax. We argue prosodic range and shared syntax contribute to the aesthetics of either overarching agreeableness/certainty or confrontation/uncertainty, which in turn constitutes an orientation to scientific knowledge.

Abstract While Presidential debates present policy positions, they also construct group identities. This article asks how argumentative structures and linguistic choices work together to produce the “We” identity and “Them” identity that is characteristic of polarised political discourse. We analyse the 2024 Trump–Harris debate by integrating only argumentation schemes into the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) for its approach to argumentation. Three questions guide our analysis: how argumentation schemes construct in-group and out-group identities; how do lexical choices, analysed through DHA’s nomination strategy, construct in-group/out-group identities; and whether patterned relationships exist between scheme types and discursive strategies. Drawing on 24 reconstructed arguments and six in-depth analyses, we observe that ad hominem attacks and poisoning-the-well arguments tend to co-occur with predication and perspectivisation strategies, while arguments from consequences tend to co-occur with justification. We term these patterned relationships schematic affinities and offer the concept as a hypothesis warranting systematic investigation rather than a confirmed finding. Lexical devices, including terms that categorise actors as criminals, victims, or workers, reinforce the opposition that arguments establish. The framework demonstrates how argumentation theory and Critical Discourse Studies can inform one another, and it opens pathways for research on national identity formation, racism, and discriminatory discourse.

Abstract Experimental argumentation research allows researchers to test normative predictions from argumentation theory. In the domain of argument quality, for instance, numerous studies have supported the prediction that high-quality arguments should lead to better claim acceptance than low-quality arguments. These studies also examined factors moderating this effect, such as text length, and cultural background of the receiver. The current experiment adds another factor: incongruity between arguments. By presenting participants with arguments and counterarguments, they were put in a circumstance of incongruity, leading to higher elaboration of arguments and, therefore, to sensitivity to argument quality. Such sensitivity was found to be absent for French participants in an earlier study, but present for Dutch participants. The current study examined whether such sensitivity occurred for both national samples under the circumstance of argument incongruity. Dutch and French students ( N  = 544) indicated their acceptance of claims followed by statistical evidence and normatively strong or weak expert evidence, each of which served as argument in some cases and as counterargument in others. Analyses showed that normatively strong expert evidence was more persuasive than normatively weak expert evidence for Dutch participants, but that evidence quality did not affect claim acceptance for French participants. Implications for a cultural explanation for the French result are discussed.

ABSTRACT Pinto notes, in effect, that for your change of mind induced by a use of an argument to count as being persuaded by the argument, you must perform the inference that is invited. How is it determined what inference is invited by one’s use of an argument advanced to persuade someone of the conclusion? This essay uses the notion of an inference claim. It highlights how invitations to inference count as meta-argumentation, drawing on Aikin and Casey. Also, the essay shows how an invited inference accords with Mercier and Sperber’s notion of inference featured in their account of argumentative reasoning.

ABSTRACT Against the backdrop of globalization, the increasing diversity of languages and cultures has underscored the pressing need for cross-cultural comprehension and effective communication. This article stands at the junction of argumentation theory and translation studies, exploring their interrelationship. Using the “Hao Bridge Debate” as a case study, the article adopts a rhetorical perspective to explore the challenges of conveying ideas across linguistic and cultural barriers. By analyzing varied translations and interpretations of the debate, considering source language expressions within their historical and cultural contexts, this article discusses the multifaceted challenges faced by translators in bridging linguistic and cultural gaps and emphasizes the inherent deviations in translations. Moreover, this article examines the impact of cultural elements, such as metaphor interpretation and utilization in argumentation, influencing argument transmission and comprehension. This research also illustrates the importance of rhetoric to translation in the study of argumentation, which has further implications for understanding cross-cultural argumentation.

Abstract Twentieth century innovations in reasoning about health and medicine (randomized clinical trials, systematic reviews, and a growing list of other inventions) have dramatically changed what counts as good argumentation within this domain. Though these new forms are often highly specialized and highly technical, they are gradually becoming “norms of public argumentation” (Zenker, et al., 2024), spreading from esoteric discussion among medical scientists into other discourses (including interpersonal exchanges between doctors and patients). This pattern is not limited to health and medicine but affects so many domains that it has become ubiquitous in contemporary argumentative discourse. But innovations aimed at improving reasonableness, when successful, can disrupt preexisting normative frameworks. They can undermine and supplant prior bases for inference, abruptly change standards for argument criticism, and require adoption of different rules for argumentative engagement. The study reported here concerns the volatility that surrounds these innovations in a case study of debate over a controversial treatment for a controversial disease. Close examination of the debate from a normative pragmatic perspective shows much greater normative complexity than has been acknowledged within contemporary argumentation theory, including unexpected volatility in norms that arguers themselves must somehow manage.

This study assesses whether the linguistic choices that Van Haaften and Van Leeuwen identified in the so-called ‘Van Gelder’ court case (as reported in a.o. Journal of Argumentation in Context 10(1), 97-120, 2021) have empirically demonstrable argumentative effects. This case revolves around proceedings that Yuri van Gelder brought against the Dutch Olympic committee, given his removal from the Olympic gymnastics final due to misbehaviour. Van Haaften and Van Leeuwen’s analysis demonstrates that the lawyers used a variety of linguistic choices in their pleas that are argumentatively instrumental for defending their position: Van Gelder’s lawyer uses a series of linguistic choices that serve to minimise the reprehensibility of Van Gelder’s behaviour and paint him as a victim, while the Dutch Olympic committee lawyer’s linguistic choices maximise the reprehensibility of the behaviour and frame Van Gelder as solely responsible for his situation. 209 participants read either an original or a manipulated fragment of one of the pleas and evaluated the reprehensibility of Van Gelder’s behaviour, his responsibility for the situation and their agreement with the judge’s decision (which favoured the Dutch Olympic committee). Results suggest that whether participants had read the original or the manipulated plea did not affect their evaluations. The content of the pleas did matter, however, as participants who read the plea by the Dutch Olympic committee lawyer were more negative about Van Gelder than those who had read Van Gelder’s lawyer’s plea. While the topical selection choices thus do seem to affect readers’ evaluations, our linguistic manipulations of the argumentative moves may have been too subtle to make a difference.

Ancient Greek rhetoric gave rise to and contributed to the (initial) development of many terms that even today attract the interest of philosophers and rhetoricians round the globe. Among those terms is logos, perhaps most characteristically described by Aristotle in his Rhetoric. But Aristotle is not the sole ancient Greek representative of rhetoric who considered the term. In this essay, I explore how selected ancient Greek figures—i.e. the Sophists, Socrates, Plato, and a few others—understood logos in the context of rhetoric. I assert that, despite some differences, they essentially viewed the term similarly, as connected to discourse involving argumentation intended to exert influence for socio-political or philosophical purposes.

Abstract This essay posits itself against higher education's ethos of FOMO regarding Generative AI. Instead, the authors propose Move Slow and Build Community, an ethos that conceptualizes teaching as relationship-based intellectual work, and they explore how this ethos guided an interdisciplinary community of practice experimenting with Gen AI in writing courses.

This article revisits the mid-century medical debate over the “treatment” of transsexualism in the U.S., summarily represented in the most cited essays on transsexualism at the time. The article leverages the stasis point of those medical debates—is transsexuality a product of the psyche or the soma?—as a singularly rich site for rhetorical inquiry arguing that this case demonstrates that stasis has both substance and a rhetorical form that determines the limits of what is accepted as a legitimate argument within any debate. The ultimate aim of this essay is twofold: one, to add to the rhetorical history of transsexuality with regard to medicalization and, two, to demonstrate how the decision of medical professionals to not allow sex-change surgery as a legitimate treatment to transsexual patients had much to do with the rhetorical association of site of malady/site of treatment and little to do with scientific evidence.

Nurturing the ability to argue is of great importance in science education, despite students often encountering cognitive and emotional barriers. The aim of this study was to examine the quality of argumentation and the issues raised by secondary school students when they are asked to respond to structured argumentation tasks. We chose topics from two different socio-scientific issues of varied perceived relevance to students’ daily lives: the sale of fast food in school canteens (Group 1) and the addition of antibiotics in animal feed (Group 2). The study involved 249 high school students aged 14–16, in Poland. A total of 139 participants took part in an intervention about fast food, and 110 in an intervention about the use of antibiotics. Data were collected in the form of written arguments developed by students as part of a structured teaching intervention. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to process and analyze the data. On average, students’ arguments scored higher on the topic of antibiotic use on animal feed. Qualitative content analysis of the students’ arguments identified four thematic groups: (1) personal aspects revealing personal meanings, values, and defence mechanisms; (2) scientific aspects revealing substantive knowledge; (3) socio-cultural aspects revealing economic, sociological or cultural aspects; (4) nonsensical or incoherent arguments. A topic related to students’ personal decisions and perceived to be closest to their lives and daily experience (eating fast food in the school canteen) more often prompted arguments indicating cognitive defence, by denying the harmfulness of fast food and emphasizing possible advantages or appealing to the right to choose. Based on this finding, we discuss the need for defence mechanisms to be considered in pedagogical designs for the teaching of argumentation.

Abstract: Writing amid the overthrow of the French Bourbon monarchy, Mary Wollstonecraft in An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution (1794) undertakes her own radical rethinking of established hierarchies, specifically those between rational "conviction" and passionate "persuasion" as they pertained to larger debates about how to influence collective opinion and action. Responding to British and French Enlightenment rhetorics and to French political oratory, Wollstonecraft posits the deep integration of reason and passion in the language of influence as much by the performance as by the precepts of her text. She also considers how such language necessitates and engenders deliberation about its compatibility with the public good. If French Revolution resembles the Vindications by its animus against the rhetoric of (often veiled) self-interest, it simultaneously attests to, and consequentially retheorizes, the role of rhetorical persuasion in the service of democratic contestation and change.

Research on conditional reasoning has long debated whether human rationality is best captured by logicist accounts or by pragmatically oriented approaches such as Relevance Theory, which highlight contextual and communicative factors. While the former predict reliable adherence to logical schemata (e.g., Modus Ponens and Modus Tollens), experimental evidence consistently reveals systematic deviations, such as endorsement of invalid inferences. The latter view attributes such patterns not to irrationality, but to pragmatic expectations that guide interpretation. This study contributes to this debate by examining how logical validity and pragmatic congruency jointly shape the evaluation of conditional arguments. We report two experiments employing a 2 × 2 factorial design. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated conditional syllogisms framed in the standard 'if/then' format. Results showed that pragmatic violations slowed responses and, crucially, facilitated detection of logical invalidity, without hindering performance on valid arguments. Experiment 2 reformulated the same arguments using the Periodic Table of Arguments to replace 'if/then' conditionals with lever-based structures. Here, participants exhibited a generalized tendency to resist conditional inference, resulting in improved rejection of invalid arguments but reduced recognition of valid ones. Across both studies, pragmatic congruency alone did not predict accuracy, but interactions between pragmatic expectations and logical form systematically influenced evaluations. Taken together, the findings suggest that pragmatics does not override logic but modulates its accessibility: violations of pragmatic expectations invite deliberation. At the same time, semantic scaffolding, such as explicit 'if/then' cues, supports deductive reasoning. We propose that natural argumentation depends on this interplay, highlighting the need for situated accounts of logos.

Previous research in argumentation has closely examined distortions of the opposition—particularly the straw man—and has recently provided some experimental evidence on their effects on persuasive outcomes. However, comparatively little empirical attention has been given to the inverse practice of faithfully reformulating an opponent’s contribution. The effects of accurate and inaccurate representations on speaker ethos and perceived reasonableness also remain underexplored. This paper addresses these gaps through three pre-registered experimental studies comparing accurate reformulation, misrepresentation, and no reformulation of the opposition. Experiment 1 assesses the impact of these practices on perceived trustworthiness using a six-item, 7-point semantic differential scale. Experiment 2 examines judgments of reasonableness using a scale repeatedly employed in pragma-dialectical effectiveness research. Experiment 3 measures persuasiveness at both the attitudinal and behavioral intention levels. Participants read a series of pre-tested argumentative exchanges between two speakers in a charitable-giving context. Results show that, in the cases examined, misrepresenting the opposition negatively impacted both trustworthiness and reasonableness judgments, addressing concerns that adhering to dialectical standards may diminish rhetorical success.

The paper investigates whether contradictory arguments are less likely to be noticed when they are expressed implicitly rather than explicitly. It builds on the fact that—in natural language productions—contradictions are often not logical but rather—lato sensu—pragmatic in nature. The study presents an experiment using ecological and slightly modified material. In a Facebook post, Italian journalist Selvaggia Lucarelli conveyed two contradictory arguments through implicatures, presuppositions and vague expressions. This text was presented to experimental subjects: half read the original version, while the other half read a version in which the implicit content had been made explicit. Their responses to specific questions indicate that the contradiction is more easily noticed when it occurs between explicit assertions rather than between arguments that must be at least partially inferred. A strong effect is observed in relation to age and education differences among the groups. These results may provide experimental insight into the conditions under which argumentation flawed by contradictions may still achieve its intended effect, as if the contradiction were not present.

We address postpandemic student stress by exploring the integration of mediated-reflexivity assignments to foster positive communication and enhance well-being. The three-part assignment—student reflection, instructor feedback, and final student response—builds on critical reflexivity and positive communication principles. Findings suggest that this assignment improves student engagement, retention, and critical thinking. Students reported a deeper understanding of course concepts and improved real-life application. Instructors benefit from connecting personally with students, adjusting lesson plans based on reflections, and fostering an inclusive, supportive classroom environment. The technique offers a scalable, flexible approach to enhance student learning and well-being.