Journal Articles Pragmatics and Society Year : 2017

Emotional Positioning as a Cognitive Resource for Arguing: Lessons from the Study of Mexican Students Debating about Drinking Water Management

Abstract

This paper consists of a detailed analysis of how the participants in a debate build their emotional position during the interaction and how such a position is strongly related to the conclusion they defend. In this case study, teenage Mexican students, arguing about access to drinking water, display extensive discursive work on the emotional tonality given to the issue. Plantin's (2011) methodological tools are adopted to follow two alternative emotional framings produced by disagreeing students, starting from a common, highly negative, thymic tonality. Through the analysis of four parameters (distance to the problem ; causality/agentivity; possibility of control and conformity to the norms) we describe how the emotional dimension of schematization (Grize 1997) is argumentatively relevant. In authentic discourse, it is impossible to separate emotion from reason. The conclusion section discusses the implications for the design of argumentation-based pedagogical activities.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
POL_Revised2_072016-HAL.pdf (380.07 Ko) Télécharger le fichier
Origin Files produced by the author(s)

Dates and versions

halshs-01580439 , version 1 (21-02-2022)

Identifiers

Cite

Claire Polo, Christian Plantin, Kristine Lund, Gerald P. Niccolai. Emotional Positioning as a Cognitive Resource for Arguing: Lessons from the Study of Mexican Students Debating about Drinking Water Management. Pragmatics and Society, 2017, 8 (2), pp.323-354. ⟨10.1075/ps.8.3.01pol⟩. ⟨halshs-01580439⟩
393 View
121 Download

Altmetric

Share

More