Ad hominem in disguise: strategic manoeuvring with direct personal attacks.

• Author: Garssen, Bart
• Position: Essay

INTRODUCTION

When language users are confronted with clear cases of violations of rules for critical discussion they consistently judge these discussion moves as unreasonable. This is the main conclusion of the comprehensive empirical project on the conventional validity of the pragma-dialectical rules for critical discussion carried out by van Eemeren, Meuffels and me (2009). Overall, the respondents in this study believed that fallacious discussion moves were indeed unreasonable while non-fallacious discussion moves were regarded as reasonable. This especially goes for violations of the pragma-dialectical freedom rule, such as the abusive ad hominem fallacy (or the direct personal attack) in which the addressee is portrayed as uninformed, ignorant or even bad or stupid. In the experiments time and time again we found that language users denounce direct personal attacks. The alternative explanation that these moves are mainly seen as unreasonable because they are highly impolite was ruled out: by way of a number of operations we could safely deduce that our respondents denounced the ad hominem fallacy because of its argumentative unreasonableness, not because of its impoliteness (van Eemeren, Garssen, & Meuffels, 2007).

The tests in this study were constructed with one question in mind: to what extent are ordinary arguers in agreement with the theoretical norms of critical discussion? The study was not about recognizing fallacies and the factors that facilitate this recognition. The focus in the study was on the opinions of the respondents about certain moves. It was therefore pertinent that all fallacious messages were clear cases of rule violations and that they were presented in a relatively simple context.

From this comprehensive study we can safely conclude that language users denounce the abusive ad hominem. The question arises why this fallacy occurs so often in oral and written argumentation and, at the same time, why the abusive fallacy remains undetected so often by listeners and readers? What factors make the personal attack look less unreasonable in some contexts? An analysis of the argumentum ad hominem from the perspective of strategic manoeuvring may be help in answering this question. In this paper I intend to take a look at the formal characteristics of the abusive ad hominem and to compare this fallacy with legitimate personal attacks.

THE ABUSIVE AD HOMINEM AS A VIOLATION OF THE FREEDOM RULE

In the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation the argumentum ad hominem is seen as a fallacious discussion move that is made at the very beginning of a discussion, the confrontation stage. In the confrontation stage the parties involved in the discussion establish that there is a difference of opinion: a standpoint is advanced by one party and questioned by another. Resolving the difference of opinion on the merits can only be reached if the difference of opinion has been fully brought to light. Therefore, the dialectical goal of the confrontation stage is to further the expression of differences of opinion (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992, p. 107). This means that the speech act of putting forward a standpoint cannot be subject to special preparatory conditions with respect to the status or position of the speaker nor with respect the to the propositional content of the speech act involved. The same goes for the speech act of questioning a standpoint. These restrictions come to light in the freedom rule designed for the confrontation stage: "Discussants may not prevent each other from advancing standpoints or from calling standpoints into question" (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 2004, p. 190).

The freedom role can be violated in a number of ways. The first type of violation occurs when a discussant imposes certain restrictions on the standpoint that may be advanced or called into question. In this type of violation restrictions as to the content of the standpoint are imposed. The second type of violation occurs when a discussant denies the opponent the right to advance a standpoint be or she would like to advance or to criticize the standpoint be or she would like to criticize. In doing so the discussant infringes the opponent's personal liberty by denying the right to advance a standpoint or to criticize it. This can be seen as an attempt to eliminate him or her as a serious partner in the discussion (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992, p. 108).

The direct personal attack is a rule violation that belongs to...