Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing. Jaargang 29

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Abstracts Volume 29 no.3 2007

Daniel O'Keefe
Northwestern University, USA
Persuasive Effects of Strategic Maneuvering: Some Findings from Meta-Analyses of Experimental Persuasion Effects Research

ABSTRACT: Meta-analyses of the persuasive effects associated with various strategic maneuvers are reviewed. Both maneuvers that involve alternative ways of presenting a given argument or set of arguments (e.g., gain-framed versus loss-framed appeals) and maneuvers that involve presenting different sets of substantive arguments (e.g., one-sided messages, which provide only supporting arguments, versus two-sided messages, which both present supporting arguments and discuss opposing arguments) are found to make relatively little difference to persuasiveness; across eight different maneuvers, the average effect size corresponds roughly to a correlation of .07. Thus although there is little reason to fear that superficial presentational variations will deeply affect persuasive success, there is similarly little reason to hope that substantive argumentative variation will have dramatic effects.

KEYWORDS: persuasion, meta-analysis, strategic maneuvering

Bert Meuffels
Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Strategic Maneuvering in empirical perspective

ABSTRACT: In this article two closely related claims are tested that are derived from what can be called ‘the model of strategic maneuvering’: (1) the reasonableness conceptions of ordinary arguers are to a large extent in agreement with the pragma-dialectical norms for critical discussion, and (2) ordinary arguers regard discussion moves convincing only if they regard these moves as reasonable. After a short overview of the model of strategic maneuvering is given the empirical data are presented that are relevant for these two claims.

KEY WORDS: argumentation, pragma-dialectics, strategic maneuvering, an empirical interpretation of the model of strategic maneuvering, empirical persuasion effect research

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Jos Hornikx
Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands
How good are language users in selecting persuasive evidence?

ABSTRACT: Argumentation theorists have formulated normative, critical questions that can be used to judge the quality of argumentation. In recent studies, such a normative approach towards argument quality (what should be persuasive?) has been compared with descriptive approaches (what is persuasive?). In this study, a similar comparison between expected and actual persuasiveness is made, using lay people as judges. In particular, the argument quality of different evidence types is studied. The question is addressed as to how good lay people are at selecting persuasive evidence. An answer to this question is provided by comparing the actual persuasiveness of evidence types in Hornikx and Hoeken (2005) with the expected persuasiveness of the same evidence types, which is investigated in the current study. Dutch and French participants ranked statistical, anecdotal, causal, and expert evidence in terms of their expected persuasiveness for eight different claims. Both cultural groups expected statistical evidence to be the most persuasive type of evidence to other people, followed by expert, causal, and anecdotal evidence. A comparison of these rankings with the results of Hornikx and Hoeken (2005) reveals that lay people are quite good at selecting persuasive evidence: How relatively persuasive they expected evidence types to be, often corresponded with their actual persuasiveness.

KEYWORDS: actual persuasiveness, argument quality, evidence, experiment, expected persuasiveness

Anneke de Graaf, José Sanders, Hans Beentjes and Hans Hoeken
Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands; Free University Amsterdam, The Netherlands
The role of identification in narrative persuasion

ABSTRACT: Stories can influence their readers' attitudes and opinions. This article investigates whether reader identification with characters in the story plays a role in this process of narrative persuasion. Identification is a combination of connections readers can have with characters, such as empathy, sympathy and perceived similarity. Two versions of one story were written in which two characters had conflicting interests. The story was told from the perspective of one character in one version and from the perspective of the other character in the other version. Perspective was expected to have an effect on identification with both characters, which in turn was expected to influence the acceptance of attitudes that were implied by the characters. The versions of the story were administered to two groups of respondents (N = 60). Results showed that empathy with the characters was influenced by the perspective from which the story was told. Readers also accepted attitudes more that were implied by the character whose perspective they had read. However, this effect was not mediated by empathy.

KEYWORDS: narrative persuasion, identification, empathy, perspective

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Frans Van Eemeren, Bart Garssen and Bert Meuffels
Universiteit van Amsterdam, The Netherlands
The conventional validity of the pragma-dialectical discussion rules

ABSTRACT: In this paper an overview is presented of the most salient research results that were gathered for a comprehensive empirical research project on the ordinary arguer's opinion about fallacies. In total 24 fallacies were studied in this project which lasted ten years Subsequently the theoretical and practical implications of the research results are discussed. Finally, the questions is answered to what extend these research results are indicative of the conventional validity of the pragma-dialectical discussion rules.

KEYWORDS: fallacies, pragma-dialectics, reasonableness, empirical research, conventional validity