Language, reason and education

Language as reason is the unifying theme of this collection of studies reflecting on Eddo Rigotti's scientific contribution as linguist and argumentation theorist as well as on his legacy as educator. The contributions span argumentation theory, linguistics, psychology, semiotics and communication sciences.

Language as reason represents the unifying theme of this multifaceted reflection on Eddo Rigotti's scientific contribution offered by his students and colleagues on the occasion of his seventieth birthday. Spanning argumentation theory, linguistics, psychology, semiotics and communication sciences, the volume reflects Rigotti's generous personality and his trajectory of semiotician, philosopher, linguist and specialist in argumentation studies. Language as an instrument of communication with semiotic peculiarities is considered at different levels in which it manifests traces of reason at work. This means considering how reality reveals itself by means of language and how the semiotic character of language structures is used by people to enable joint actions and change the natural and social world. Particularly in focus is the realm of argumentation, that is of those joint actions where people exchange reasons in various communities, fora and markets in view of understanding and practical deliberation. To argumentation Eddo Rigotti devoted all his research efforts in recent years, with a keen sense of its intrinsic educational value and a sincere care for fostering the development of the argumentative mind.

Autorentext

Giovanni Gobber studied Germanic and Slavic Linguistics. He is professor of German Linguistics and General Linguistics at the Catholic University of Milan. His research interests include the meta-theory of syntax, comparative functional linguistics and pragmatics. Andrea Rocci studied Italian Linguistics, Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis. He is associate professor of Language Sciences at the University of Lugano. His research interests include argumentation, the semantics-pragmatics interface, media discourse and financial discourse.

Inhalt

Contents: Lorenzo Cantoni/Stefano Tardini: Listening and silence in communication: reflections on two texts - Italo Carta: The evocative power of words - Sabine Christopher/Bruno Moretti/Elena Maria Pandolfi/Barbara Somenzi: Intercomprehension and receptive skills in Italian for enhancing the individual's multilingual repertoire in quadrilingual Switzerland - Sara Cigada/Sara Greco Morasso: Good reasons for good manners. An argumentative foundation of courtesy in Giovanni Della Casa's Galateo - Carlo Cipolli: The narrative structure of dreams - Marcel Danesi: Metaphors and metaforms: interconnecting language, culture and cognition - Frans H. van Eemeren: Analyzing contextualized argumentative discourse: strengthening the relationship between Rigotti's aspirations and pragma-dialectics - Maria Cristina Gatti/Andrea Rocci: Arguments for forgiveness. A pragmatic-argumentative note on apologies - Giovanni Gobber/Rudi Palmieri: Argumentation in institutional founding documents. The case of Switzerland's Foedus Pactum - Georges Lüdi: Do languages «really» exist or are they mere discursive constructions? - Fabrizio Macagno/Douglas Walton: Argumentation schemes and topical relations - Sabrina Mazzali-Lurati/Peter Schulz: Attention in context: from Ancient rhetoric to contemporary communication sciences - Guido Michelini: About the functions of the passive - Jacques Moeschler: Causality and non-iconic order - Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont/Stéphanie Breux/Sara Greco Morasso/Céline Miserez-Caperos: Children and knowledge-oriented argumentation. Some notes for future research - Louis de Saussure: Extending presuppositions to discourse: a tribute to Eddo Rigotti - Boris Uspenskij: A possible reflection of the painter (Jan van Eyck) in the Ghent Altarpiece - Jakob Wüest: Argumentation, causality and narrativity in Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean.