Weigand -Argumentation; The Mixed Game.pdf

Argumentation (2006) 20:59–87

Springer 2006

DOI 10.1007/s10503-006-9000-4

Original Paper

Argumentation: The Mixed Game

Edda Weigand

Arbeitsbereich Sprachwissenschaft

Universita¨tMu ¨ nster

Fachbereich 9, Bispinghof 2B

Mu¨nster, D-48143

Germany

E-mail: weigand@uni-muenster.de

ABSTRACT: The paper introduces a new model of argumentation, the Mixed Game

Model, that no longer separates rule-governed competence from actual performance

but starts from human beings and their ability of competence-in-performance. Human

beings are able to orientate themselves in ever-changing surroundings and to negotiate

diverging views in argumentative action games. Argumentation is thus described as a

mixed game played by human beings according to principles of probability. These

principles include constitutive, regulative and executive principles. Constitutive Prin-

ciples focus on the basic components of the game, that is, action, dialogue, and

coherence as the interplay of diﬀerent communicative means. Regulative Principles

mediate between correlated human abilities and interests. Executive Principles guide

the sequencing of action according to cognitive strategies. The mixed game no longer

rests on pre-established harmony but describes performance as a non-equilibrial pro-

cess of negotiation that mediates between order and disorder and is based on the

integration of various parameters such as rationality, reason, persuasion and emotion.

How the model works is exempliﬁed by an analysis of part of a debate in the

European Parliament.

KEY WORDS: argumentation, competence-in-performance, dialogue, action games,

speech act theory, rationality, reason, emotion, persuasion, rhetoric

1. THE STATE OF THE ART

In the ﬁeld of argumentation research, the object-of-study ‘argumenta-

tion’ is either reduced to the lines of rationality and reason or it is

claimed to be a process of persuasion. In recent years, such a separa-

tion of rational thinking and persuasion has been unmasked as ‘Des-

cartes’ error’ by experimental neurological results (e.g., Damasio

2000). However, we do not even need neurology to recognize this

truth about human abilities. An unprejudiced look at human behav-

iour demonstrates that rationality and reason cannot be separated

from persuasion. Such an open look, not biased by tradition, requires

EDDA WEIGAND

us to say good-bye to classical models and to face the challenge of

integration in modern theorizing which is issued to science in general,

from cosmology to biology and the humanities, i.e. the challenge of

mediating between order and disorder, between general rules and

individual particularities. According to Prigogine (1997, p. 7), ‘science

is no longer identiﬁed with certitude and probability with ignorance...

We are observing the birth of a science that is no longer limited to

idealized and simpliﬁed situations but reﬂects the complexity of the

real world’.

The type of rational rhetoric based on argumentative logic is essen-

tially inﬂuenced by Toulmin’s book on ‘The uses of argument’ (1958)

even if Toulmin emphasises that it is not logical but practical reason

that counts in human life. In his recent book ‘Return to reason’, he

draws our attention to the turning point of modern theorizing with the

issue of ‘living with uncertainty’ (Toulmin 2001, p. 204): ‘The price of

living in the world of the pragmatists and the skeptics is the need to

acknowledge that our best-founded beliefs are still uncertain.’ However,

his concept of ‘practical reason’ or ‘balance of reason’ does not reach

real life but is limited by the norm of ‘a Reasonableness that combines

intellectual force in content with a moderation of manner’ (p. 21f.).

Moreover, it needs to be more closely linked to verbal interaction.

The persuasive type of New Rhetoric, mainly put forth by Perelman

(e.g., 1977), brings us a bit nearer to dialogue although it is again put

in syllogistic form. The claims and their arguments are not interac-

tively combined. Even if we stress the point of persuasion and the

adherence of the audience, we are still a long way from real dialogues.

The concept of the audience’s adherence remains within the scope of

the speaker who aims at adherence. Dialogue however means interac-

tion between speaker and interlocutor. Acting and reacting are the

minimal constituents of the dialogic action game. New Rhetoric there-

fore has to be freed from its monologic standpoint and be transformed

into a proper dialogic approach (cf. Weigand 1999).

In recent decades, the claim that ‘argument is a form of communica-

tion’ has been emphasised (Willard 1989, p. 12). There seem to be two

lines of approach to argumentation as dialogue, a more empirical,

conversational one, directed to performance, and a more theoretical,

rule-guided one, directed to competence. Kallmeyer’s ‘Gespra¨ chsrheto-

rik’ (1996) belongs to the empirical type insofar as it takes its method-

ological basis from Conversational Analysis which requires us to start

with recording and transcribing authentic dialogues (p. 10). Kallmey-

er’s ‘Gespra ¨ chsrhetorik’ represents more a programme, exempliﬁed by

a series of studies, than an elaborated theory. As a programme it

includes interesting guidelines that go beyond an exclusively formal

approach. The same is true of the ‘discourse analytic approach’ by

ARGUMENTATION: THE MIXED GAME

Jacobs and Jackson (1982) who also start from a collection ‘of a set of

naturally occurring arguments’ and proceed to constructing fruitful

hypotheses.

The theoretical type of approach, on the other hand, gives priority

to rules and structures (cf., e.g., Moeschler 1985; Plantin 1996; Cattani

2001; Stati 2002). An outstanding model in this regard is the pragma-

dialectic approach by van Eemeren and his group (e.g., van Eemeren

2001; van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004). Pragma-Dialectics com-

bines Aristotelian logic with categories of speech act theory. ‘Funda-

mental to a pragma-dialectical analysis is that it is based on a

‘mariage de raison’ between normative insights and descriptive insights

in the argumentative use of language’ (van Eemeren and Grootendorst

2004, p. 110). Even in analysing everyday conversation, the focus lies

on the reconstruction of a normative level, an underlying competence

of ‘critical discussion’. Rhetoric as strategic manoevring is included

(van Eemeren and Houtlosser 1999). The technique of reconstruction

can be considered as an attempt at reconciling the level of competence

with that of performance.

Dascal and Gross (1999) make another attempt at ‘reconciliation’

between competence and performance by combining Aristotelian rheto-

ric and Gricean pragmatics in an approach called ‘The marriage of

pragmatics and rhetoric’. It remains an exclusively theoretical

approach that is not exempliﬁed by naturally occurring examples.

On the other hand, successful performance is the object-of-study

within the tradition of practical philosophy. The sophists, for instance,

were aware of the fact that in performance ‘anything goes’, that the

inferior case can be made the superior one by using the right means

and strategies. Rhetoric of this type is still alive and proliferates in

numerous publications dealing with popular rhetoric which provide

recipes for all contingencies beyond any ethical restriction.

This short sketch of the state of the art in argumentation theory

highlights the basic question of how to bridge the gap between compe-

tence and performance, theory and practice, rationality and persua-

sion. Competence and performance are terms in theory, and we have

to ask ourselves whether the separation they imply is useful in order to

come to grips with the issue of modern theorizing, namely ‘living with

uncertainty’. I will address this issue from two perspectives, the

descriptive perspective of the Mixed Game Model (MGM) and the

normative perspective of Pragma-Dialectics (PD).

2. THE DESCRIPTIVE VERSUS THE NORMATIVE VIEW

Living with uncertainty does not mean that we are the victims of the

complex. On the contrary we are able to orientate ourselves in

EDDA WEIGAND

ever-changing surroundings. We use rules as far as they go, and we

orientate ourselves by means of principles of probability when rules

come to an end. There is no simple as such nor complex as such. The

central reference point are human beings and their abilities. It is our

competence-in-performance that enables us to master the complex. In

this respect I would like to recall what Martinet (1975, p. 10) told us

about the relationship between object and methodology, namely ‘not

to sacriﬁce the object’s integrity to methodological exigencies’. If the

object of the theory is human competence-in-performance, the meth-

odology has to guarantee its integrity, i.e. not to separate what is inte-

grated by human nature and learned or acquired capacities. A key

premise for a descriptive theory of the Mixed Game therefore is:

• MGM Describing actual behaviour must not contradict human

nature and learned or acquired capacities.

In contrast to the MGM, Pragma-Dialectics leaves competence and

performance separate at two levels and tries to ‘reconcile’ them by

‘reconstruction’. This key term, as I see it, has a double sense. On the

one hand, it is used for ‘reconstructing the implicit argumentation that

one needs to understand in order to grasp the message conveyed’ (van

Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004, p. 114f.). In this sense it aims at

understanding and implies a separation of what is explicitly said and of

what is to be inferred. What is separated here, however, is integrated

by human nature. Speaking and implying are integrated abilities used

as communicative means, verbal and cognitive ones, in the mixed

game. We simply mean more than we say. On the other hand, if it is

not ‘possible to reconstruct the communicative act in question as an

implicit or indirect speech act, adhering to the Communicative Princi-

ple and the rules of language use’, reconstruction is meant as ‘a trans-

formation in the interest of reasonableness’ based on the ‘normative

background of a pragma-dialectical analysis’. In this sense, reconstruc-

tion ‘converts what is empirically possible into what is normatively

desirable for the sake of reasonableness’.

The term ‘reconstruction’ thus has a descriptive and a normative

face. It is meant as an ‘effort to describe argumentation as it is, but

with respect to an image of how it should be’ (van Eemeren et al.

1993, p. xi):

• PD Describing actual behaviour includes the reconstruction of

norms of reasonableness.

In my view, however, a theory cannot make descriptive and norma-

tive claims at the same time. It is basically this normative claim that

distinguishes PD from the MGM. Reconstruction of norms is to be

considered a technique of theory not of life. In life we know norms,

we do not have to reconstruct them. They can however not be

ARGUMENTATION: THE MIXED GAME

conceived of as an innate part of human nature. Whether we keep to

them is up to us. In contrast to the descriptive view, which is based on

human nature, the normative view claims a speciﬁc way of behaviour

as it should be, the way of what is called ‘critical discussion’.

Even if ‘norms of critical discussion’ in PD are meant to be instru-

mental, not ethical norms, they are not only formal conventions but

rely on a speciﬁc ideological background. In this respect we also have

to tackle the issue of ethical norms. Much as I agree with claims for a

human civilized behaviour, ethical claims are beyond the reach of a

descriptive theory and can only be added as an appeal or recommen-

dation. It is true that we can assume that human beings have an

awareness of such norms – and that makes up the framework of a

normative theory – but it is equally true that their actions do not al-

ways comply with these norms – and that makes up the framework of

the mixed game. A normative theory is legitimate as such, i.e. as a the-

ory that serves as a benchmark for evaluating practice or performance.

Such a benchmark cannot be gained by empirical analyses of perfor-

mance. It has to be set up either by norms justiﬁed by some underly-

ing ideology or by collective acceptance. It is these norms we refer to,

for instance, in speech acts of reproaching such as you are always very

late. In the same way ‘reasonable’ or ‘civilized’ behaviour can be

called upon in institutional settings. A diﬀerent benchmark is set up

by the criterion of ‘eﬀective’ action in everyday life or in institutions.

Over and above norms, it is personal or institutional interests that

determine what is considered to be ‘eﬀective performance’.

The descriptive model does not set up norms of ‘good’or‘reasonable’

behaviour. It distinguishes between diﬀerent ways of behaviour, among

them what could be called civilized behaviour which can be expected and

even demanded by everyday and institutional conventions. Conventions

however are not yet norms. A descriptive model describes human action

and behaviour. Insofar as human beings consider conventions to be

norms and feel obliged to keep to them, the theory has to include this

technique of accepting norms as a technique of orientation. Here we

have arrived at the point where PD and the MGM meet: norms become

guidelines of behaviour that have to be included in the MGM by describ-

ing them, i.e. not by claiming them to be fulﬁlled. Techniques of orienta-

tion in general are thus to be described as principles of probability that

are based on rules, conventions, norms and individual inferences as well.

Ethics as a normative discipline is however excluded.

To sum up: It is mainly two issues that have to be focused on in

descriptive research on argumentation, the dialogic issue of a consis-

tent speech act theory of dialogue and the integrational issue of a new

way of theorizing that goes beyond separating levels and starts with

the complex of the ‘mixed game’ from the very outset.

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