Arguing with oneself: the writing process as an argumentative soliloquy

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Journal of Argumentation in Context 5:1 (2016), 9–28. doi 10.1075/jaic.5.1.01zamissn 2211–4742 / e-issn 2211–4750 © John Benjamins Publishing Company

Arguing with oneselfThe writing process as an argumentative soliloquy

Marta Zampa1,2 and Daniel Perrin2

1Università della Svizzera italiana / 2Zurich University of Applied Sciences

Argumentation is generally conceived of as a dialogic activity between two or more participants. Nonetheless, it operates also at an intrapersonal level (Rocci 2005), in a soliloquy where protagonist and antagonist of the critical discussion are embodied in the same person. We argue this case by analyzing journalists’ argumentation about linguistic choices in newswriting processes. Empirically, we draw on data generated with progression analysis (Perrin 2003), in particular with cue-based retrospective verbal protocols. The data was produced by the jour-nalists under investigation when they, while watching video recordings of their text production processes, reconstructed and verbalized their decisions (Perrin 2011: 60). In the detail analysis, we focus on one editorial by an experienced jour-nalist of Corriere del Ticino, the main Italian-language newspaper in Switzerland.

Keywords: argumentative soliloquy, newsmaking, progression analysis, argumentum model of topics

1. Introduction

Journalism studies often consider newsmakers as creatures of habit, who do not reason much about their choices, but rather follow “patterns of established be-haviors” (Shoemaker 1991: 50) or their “nose” (Harcup 2009: 48). This is due to the fact that they are often more worried by practical constraints and attempt-ing to make as small an effort as possible, than willing to reflect upon the best course of action for achieving the institutional goals. Although it is undeniable that routinized behaviors are necessary for managing a job that is subject to huge time pressure and implies dealing with unexpected events “on a routine basis” (Tuchman 1974: 111), in line with current work in media linguistics and sociology (e.g., Clayman and Reisner 1998; Cotter 2010; Gravengaard and Rimestad 2011, 2014) we believe that routines explain only part of what happens in a newsroom.

© 2016. John Benjamins Publishing CompanyAll rights reserved

10 Marta Zampa and Daniel Perrin

We consider journalists “reflective practioners” (Schön 2007 [1983]), who criti-cally ponder on what they do and strive towards improvement of practices, both while writing and in other sites of news production. In this paper we focus on the writing process, and set out to prove our claim by investigating cue-based retro-spective verbal protocols from progression analysis (from now on, RVP), in which journalists account for their own writing activity while viewing a recording of the work they just completed (3.1). This constitutes an example of “reflection-on-ac-tion” (Schön 2007 [1983]), created in the framework of progression analysis in or-der to understand the “reflection-in-action” (ibid.) that takes place while writing.

The data analysis is conducted both in the perspective of progression analysis (4.2) and of argumentation theory (4.3). The latter is traditionally concerned more with reasoning in interaction between two or more participants than within one-self — an issue that is instead widely investigated in psychology (e.g., Billig 1996 [1987]; Vygotsky 1962 [1934]) and philosophy (Bakhtin 2006 [1935]; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 2010 [1958] mention Plato, Isocrates, Pascal, Schopenhauer and Mill). Nevertheless, some argumentation scholars devote their attention to decision-making processes in one’s mind (Rigotti 2005; Rocci 2005), to the ability of one person to be protagonist and antagonist of the same standpoint (Jacquette 2007) or to the comparability of self-deliberation and deliberation with others (Dascal 2005; Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 2010 [1958]). Still, to our knowl-edge, there is no corpus-based research on these issues apart from Sara Greco Morasso’s (2013) study of inner debate in migrant mothers. The present article contributes to filling this gap by reconstructing argumentation in real newswriting thanks to the RVP, an activity type that captures the soliloquy (“self-directed ar-gumentation”, Rigotti 2005: 94) occurring within oneself while making decisions.

The choice to analyze intrapersonal argumentation with the same models used for interpersonal argumentation (2), rests on a conception of thinking as dialogical, socially embedded and linguistic in nature (Larrain and Haye 2012; Perret-Clermont 2000; Zittoun 2006: 21–22) and presupposes that human be-ings are reasonable critics (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004: 2) also in their thoughts (Greco Morasso 2013: 60), so that “it is even possible for one person to assume the role of both protagonist and antagonist of one and the same standpoint and to conduct a dialogue intérieur by way of self-deliberation” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004: 120).

In what follows, we first delineate the approach to soliloquy by argumentation theory and the analytical tools we apply (2). Then we explain how progression analysis works and especially what makes the RVP a powerful means to get “into the journalist’s mind” (3). Section 4 is dedicated to the analysis of an RVP, pre-ceded by a description of the corpus and of the media organization in which the data were collected (4.1). Finally, after having shown how similar argumentative


Arguing with oneself 11

reasoning is to be found throughout our corpus (4.4), we draw some conclusions, focusing in particular on the value added by progression analysis to the recon-struction of argumentation and by argumentation theory to writing research (5).

2. The perspective of argumentation theory

Arguing with oneself has been an object of interest to various scholars in argu-mentation theory. For the sake of brevity though, we here only summarize the works that are relevant for analyzing a soliloquy (2.1), and introduce the tools we apply for reconstructing the RVP (2.2).

2.1 Argumentative approaches to soliloquy

As mentioned in Section 1, we conceive of the soliloquy in Eddo Rigotti’s terms, i.e., as “reflexive discourse” or the process of “speaking to oneself ” (2005: 94). An argumentative perspective on soliloquy is provided by Andrea Rocci, who states that “from the point of view of argumentation, soliloquy appears as the human activity in which — so to speak — one works for persuading oneself ” (2005: 114). This definition underlines how, in a soliloquy, the same person takes up the role of protagonist and antagonist respectively. Both are agentive roles, the protagonist being “the carrier of the initiative” and the antagonist “the more or less critical receiver”, the kritès1 (ibid.: 101). Rocci thus argues that the antagonist performs a critical uptake, as he is rationally convinced and makes a decision accordingly.2

How can the connection between how debating with oneself and intersub-jective debate function be drawn? An interest for this link is found in Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca (2010 [1958]), who speak about argumenta-tion with oneself as “self-deliberation”, and claim that it can be better understood by analyzing argumentation with others. The process of self-deliberation is de-scribed as follows:

when a person is thinking, his mind would […] strive to assemble all arguments that seem to it to have some value, without suppressing any, and then, after weigh-

1. In Aristotelian terms, the judge of a discourse, who is in charge of evaluating it and acting upon it. This judge can be either a person, a group or some previous utterance of the arguer himself (cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric).

2. This approach well fits in the Goffmanian concept of speaker and hearer as complex entities (cf. Goffman 1981), as one person is at the same time the author of an argument and its ad-dressee.



ing the pros and cons, would decide on what, to the best of its knowledge and belief, appears to be the most satisfactory solution (ibid.: 40)

The link between deliberation within oneself and with others is further investigated by Marcelo Dascal (2005), who assumes that there are metonymic as well as meta-phoric relations3 between external debates and mental activities. Metonymic, be-cause inner debate is only one — and subservient — aspect of the debate going on “in foro externo” (ibid.: 44, emphasis in the original); metaphoric because inner de-bate is the target onto which some features of external debate are projected. In our case, the soliloquial argumentation reconstructed via RVP is metonymically part of newsroom discussions on a given issue (either an event to write about, or some practice to ameliorate), and metaphorically perceived and explained by the jour-nalist as a contrast between two opposite positions. Dascal further argues for the reasonableness of inner argumentation and its comparability to external argumen-tation by considering them both deliberation in Aristotelian terms, i.e., “the mental process through which an individual establishes his preferences and decides how to act”, aiming at leading “to rational persuasion in favour of one of the options” (ibid.: 52). At the intrapersonal level, deliberation coincides with self-controversy — as Greco Morasso puts it: “inner argumentative discussion oriented towards a model of reasonable resolution of disagreement” (2013: 62, emphasis in the original).

Finally, the concept of argument editing should be mentioned. Editing takes place between the generation of an argumentative move in the mind of the protag-onist and its public manifestation (Hample et al. 2009: 24). It consists in the pro-cess of deciding “to say or suppress a possible argument” (Hample and Dallinger 1990: 153), and then of making the move effective, void of face-threatening impli-cations for the arguer and the antagonist, relevant and truthful. Editing style varies from arguer to arguer, and is connected to the way one frames an argumentative situation (ibid.). What a journalist does when writing can thus be considered a way of editing his standpoints and arguments into a shape that suits the audience, protects his ethos and complies with the mandate of the news organization (cf. progression analysis’ perspective on writing phases in 4.1).

2.2 Tools for argumentative analysis

The RVP is here analyzed following pragma-dialectics (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004) and the Argumentum Model of Topics (Rigotti 2006; Rigotti and Greco Morasso 2009, 2010, in preparation — from now on AMT).

3. Metonymic relations are those between contiguous entities (part-whole, possessor-possessed, cause-effect, etc.). Metaphoric relations are those that bring together “a target and a source that belong to distinct domains or categories” (Dascal 2005: 47).



According to pragma-dialectics, argumentation takes place in a critical dis-cussion between a protagonist and an antagonist who “try to resolve a difference of opinion (that may be implicit) by testing the acceptability of the standpoints concerned” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004: 21). A model of an ideal criti-cal discussion is proposed as a normative counterpart and a descriptive tool for reconstructing argumentative discurse (ibid.). The AMT builds upon the pragma-dialectical reconstruction, by zooming on standpoint-argument connections and explaining the inference that makes them possible. A core notion in this approach is that of endoxa, i.e., “[those opinions] which commend themselves to all, or to the majority, or to the wise — that is or to all of the wise or to the majority or to the most famous and distinguished of them.” (Aristotle Topica I, 100b). Endoxa are part of the socio-cultural context of a critical discussion, and only by understand-ing it, it is possible to reconstruct argumentation properly. For this reason, the AMT traces out the endoxical premises of reasoning as well as the logical mecha-nism behind it, which is based on inferential relations valid independently from context. Such endoxical premises are usually implicit, unless they are object of dis-agreement. In newsmaking, they are often news values, i.e., criteria guiding news production, which are shared and interiorized in a community of newsmakers and among its audience.4

3. The perspective of progression analysis

In this third part, we introduce progression analysis as the method we apply for collecting data and investigating newswriting (3.1), and the sub-corpus of news-making processes and products we work on in this article (3.2).

3.1 Data collection

What exactly do authors do when they produce their texts? What are they trying to do, and why do they do it the way they do? Progression analysis captures mate-rial changes during writing, and writers’ mental reflections on these changes in particular and their situated practices in general. It enables researchers to collect and analyze data in natural contexts in order to reconstruct text production pro-cesses as a cognitively reflected activity in context.

4. The notion of news values is a much-debated one in journalism studies; due to length limita-tions we here only provide our understanding of it (on this issue, see Zampa 2015; Zampa and Bletsas — forthcoming).



The multimethod approach of progression analysis combines ethnographic observation, interviews, computer logging, and cue-based retrospective verbal-izations to gather linguistic and contextual data. The approach was developed to investigate newswriting and later transferred to other application fields of writing research, such as children’s writing processes and translation (Perrin 2013: 63). With progression analysis, data are obtained and related on three levels: a) the situation, b) the material activity, and c) the mental reflection of writing.

a. Before writing begins, progression analysis determines through interviews and observations what the writing situation is. Important factors include the writing task, the writers’ professional socialization and experience, and economic, institutional, and technological influences on the workplaces and workflows. In the research project underlying this article, data on the self-perception of the journalists investigated were obtained in semi-standardized interviews about their psychobiography, primarily in terms of their writing and professional experience, and their work situation. In addition, participa-tory and video observations were made about the various kinds of collabora-tion at the workplace.

b. During writing, progression analysis records every keystroke and writing movement in the emerging text with keylogging and screenshot recording programs (Perrin 2013: 256) that run in the background behind the word pro-cessors that the writers usually use, for instance behind the user interfaces of news editing systems. The recording can follow the writing process over sever-al workstations and does not influence the performance of the editing system. From a technical point of view, it does not influence the writers’ performance either, since it operates automatically and without changing the user interfaces of the editing software.

c. After the writing is over, progression analysis records what the writers say about their activities. Preferably immediately after completing the writing process, writers view on the screen how their texts came into being. While doing so, they continuously comment on what they did when writing and why they did it. An audio recording is made of these cue-based RVPs. This level of progression analysis opens a window onto the mind of the writer. The ques-tion is what can be recognized through this window: certainly not the sum of all (and only) the considerations that the author actually made, but rather the considerations that an author could have made in principle (Perrin 2013: 64). The RVP is transcribed and then encoded as the author’s verbalization of as-pects of his or her language awareness, writing strategies and conscious writ-ing practices. As doing an RVP strongly influences the writers’ the awareness,



this level of progression analysis is normally limited to one RVP per writer, at the end of the collaboration.

In sum, progression analysis allows researchers to consider all the revisions to the text as well as all electronic resources accessed during the production process; to trace the development of the emerging text; and, finally, to reconstruct collabora-tion at workplaces from different perspectives.

From the perspective of argumentation theory, however, the reactivity prob-lems related to RVPs require closer examination. The RVP is a peculiar activity type: as mentioned in Section 1, it is a case of reflection-on-action, where the jour-nalist gives an account of what he did and where the inner argumentative process that accompanied writing is brought to light. By providing this account, the jour-nalist also engages in “virtual dialectic” (Aakhus 2007: 14, emphasis in the origi-nal) with the researcher about his previous activity, a process that per se involves argumentative positioning. The researcher though is a non-responsive opponent, who is there only to “make the machine work” from a technical viewpoint. She is not expressing opinions or commenting on the journalist’s work or his explana-tions; but only triggers the writer’s account of his own thoughts, strategies and decisions. Nevertheless, it cannot be completely avoided that the journalist views her as a real interlocutor and, as a consequence, he reformulates and improves his explanations in order to back up his decisions (and perhaps also to sound convinc-ing). We are aware that, for this reason as well as because it is a recount a poste-riori, we cannot claim the RVP to be a precise depiction of the reflection-in-action that happened in the mind of the writer. Anyway, “incompleteness of description is no impediment to reflection” (Schön 2007 [1983]: 277), and this remains the closest we can get in accounts of real mental activities, where a more direct access is out of range (see Greco Morasso 2013: 65 for an analogous issue).

3.2 The Corriere del Ticino sub-corpus

The corpus our research is based on is one of the largest corpora of natural text production processes available (Perrin 2011: 1866). The present investigation draws on a sub-dataset of this corpus taken from the more recently added part, collected during the SNSF project (PDFMP1_137181), “Argumentation in news-making process and product” (2012–2015), at the main Italian-language newspaper in Switzerland, Corriere del Ticino.

Corriere del Ticino belongs to a non-profit foundation and pictures itself as committed to defend the Swiss institutions and independent from religious, ide-ological or economical constraints. It aims at being at the same quality level of the main Swiss newspapers in German, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, and in French, Le



Temps, and at differentiating itself from other Ticinese dailies. Furthermore, it is strongly influenced by Italian newspapers, in particular by Corriere della Sera.

The sub-dataset from Corriere del Ticino consists of 50 video-recordings and transcriptions of editorial meeting discussions; 25 days of loggings of writing ac-tivities on the screen (with an average of five hours a day); five RVPs of the writ-ing process; ten video-recordings and transcriptions of interviews5 with journal-ists; 35 newspapers; various video-recordings and transcriptions of discussions between journalists and colleagues, as well as of field research by the journalists working on an item.

4. Data analysis: the CAME case

In what follows, we introduce progression analysis’ reflection of the journalists’ effort to find balance between the contraints they face when writing (4.1). In Section 4.2 we analyze argumentatively some passages from the RVP of an expe-rienced journalist of Corriere del Ticino, MB, who writes an editorial on a speech by the British Prime Minister David Cameron (the CAME case), held on January 23rd, 2013.6 This speech concerns the British economic policy, in particular a ref-erendum (planned for 2015) concerning remaining in the European Union or not. Cameron’s condition for it is that United Kingdom’s interests as well as its diversity from other European countries are protected. The journalist picked the subject himself and had been thinking about it for a while, as the topic of the speech was more or less already public, but proposed it at the editorial conference only after Cameron actually performed the speech that day.

4.1 Analysis of the writing process

Data collected at Corriere del Ticino support the writing process model devel-oped through grounded theory in our former research projects on writing in the

5. Two types of interviews were conducted for each journalist: a frame interview at the very beginning of the collaboration, with the aim of collecting information about his background, his understanding of the journalistic profession and of the institution he works for; a review interview right after the RVP, in order to have him sum up what he had to do, wanted to do and actually did when writing the item.

6. cst_cdt_130123_0000_MB_cameron_verbal_1.docx. The original language of the RVP is Italian, translated into English by members of the team of the “Argumentation in newsmaking process and product” project. This case has also been analyzed in Burger and Delaloye (same volume) and in Zampa (2015). Part of the literature review is also featured in Zampa (2015).



workplace (Perrin 2013). In this model, writing in the workplace itself evolves as a helix of four key activities, embedded in twelve flanking activities of text produc-tion (Figure 1).

Reading source text

Goal setting

Text version

Text part

Formulation

Graphomotorics

Planning

Controlling

Handling tools environment | Handling task environment | Handling social environment

Finding the sources | Limiting the topic | Taking own positions | Staging the story | Establishing relevance for the audience

Monitoring

Comprehendingthe task

Reading own text

Implementingthe product

Figure 1. The dynamic system of situated text production (Perrin 2013: 151)

In a context view of the writing process, writing begins when writers understand and accept a text production task (comprehending the task) and ends when they send the results of their work along the production chain (implementing the product). At these main interfaces of professional writing, writers have to, for example, deal with time and space restrictions, editorial policies and organiza-tional workflows. In between, they handle tool environments, task environ-ments, and social environments. For example, they cope with computer crash-es, solve copyright problems and negotiate with clients, colleagues, and superiors.

In the inner circle of the writing process, four phases recur and overlap, each dominated by activities that contribute, at their specific levels, to the incremental production of the text. Goal setting typically focuses on the text as a whole. Planning focusses on sequences of text parts, such as paragraphs, and control-ling on the formulations under construction. Monitoring, in contrast, traces the results of the production process throughout all of the levels. Reading pro-cesses (source reading and product reading) interact with writing processes on various time frames and scales (from grapheme to text version levels).



The activities in the last five fields focus on the text product. By finding the sources, writers decide whose voices appear in a text. Practices include accessing and combining or omitting contradictory sources and their communicational of-fers. Practices of limiting the topic and taking their own positions include generating, picking up, broadening, or narrowing topics — and hiding or showing stance in a text. By staging the story and establishing relevance for the audience, writers decide which semiotic means are used in the dramaturgy of a text and what prior knowledge is required to understand it.

All activities of real-life writing can be coded in one or several of the 16 fields. Together, the fields cover an outer frame of interfaces to higher-level processes and environments, an inner circle of process-oriented writing activities and a set of activities with direct impact on the emerging text product only. The activities interact with one another and, of course, with environments of diverse ranges, such as workplaces and domains. Due to conflicting expectations in partly contra-dictory contexts (Ruhmann and Perrin 2002), such as catering to media markets and a public mandate at the same time, the journalists permanently have to solve conflicts while writing.

In the interest of the media enterprise, for example, they should achieve high impact at low cost (handling task environment) but in the public interest still address socially relevant topics in a nuanced way (establishing relevance for the audience). Further, they have to be ready every day to respond to the unex-pected (e.g., flexible planning) while working within rigid production structures (e.g., handling tools). Such conflicting demands lead to problems in balancing the basic practices of journalistic text production: the more one of the sixteen activities is realized, the fewer resources there are for other practices and expecta-tions. An illustrative, albeit construed example:

a. Optimizing factual recency and relevance by limiting the topic may re-sult in a highly elaborated approach to complex key issues that turn out to be hardly accessible to a larger audience. > b)

b. Optimizing accessibility to a rather uninformed audience, by establishing relevance for the audience, may result in focussing on text agents who know how to simplify problems and positions. > c)

c. Optimizing discursive authenticity by finding the sources may result in a democratically correct, but uninspired piece in which all relevant opinions are represented — and cancel one another. > d)

d. Optimizing author’s uniqueness by taking own position may result in prob-lems with genre conventions that, for the case of news in Anglo-American contexts, require separation of so-called facts and so-called opinion. > e)



e. Optimizing symbolic conventionality by staging the story according to genre conventions may result in excluding relevant facts and voices that do not fit into the dramaturgy of the genre. > a)

Such contradictory expectations and corresponding activities are the starting point for soliloquy, for example revolving around the issue of whether or not to include a quotation in an article (4.2.3).

4.2 Analysis of argumentation in the RVP

In this section, three occurences of soliloquial argumentation are analysed. In the first, the journalist decides to leave some information implicit because he relies on the audience’s background knowledge (4.2.1); in the second he justifies linguistic choices with the aim of keeping the audience’s attention high (4.2.2); in the third he ponders on inserting a quotation (4.2.3).

4.2.1 The journalist’s folk theory of endoxaThe journalist MB shows a complex ability to reflect upon language use and for-mulations that can affect the readers’ perception of what he is reporting. He con-sciously appeals to their knowledge of reality, in particular of Swiss politics and its relation to the rest of the world. Assumably without being aware of it, he for-mulates what can be named a folk theory of endoxa. In fact he speaks about “a series of schemes for the interpretation of reality”7 the writer can evoke in order to make the reader identify with the narrated event,8 and says that he is doing so in a subliminal way, without any need of arguing for it.9 MB thus calls “subliminal” a way of keeping the readers’ attention10 that is actually based on activating endoxa. The part of the British Prime Minister’s speech the journalist is elaborating at this point concerns the European Union’s ability to properly deal with the diversity of its members. This matter regards Switzerland too, a country that has chosen not

7. 0970–0971 because the average swiss he has a series of expectations inside/ and a giv- a series of schemes for the interpretation of reality

8. 0972 if you recall him these things; 0984–0985 and obviously this arouses a- a on the reader’s side/ an- an identification process

9. 0973–0974 he without you arguing for them/ identifies with what you are saying; 0983 I don’t say it but I make them understand it subliminally

10. 0988 you keep him stuck to the text don’t you



to join the Union, but has tight economical relations with it.11 MB’s reasoning is a case of a non-mixed difference of opinion (i.e., a standpoint is confronted with doubt; see van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004: 119–120):

1 It is useful to quote this part of the speech (0969)1.1 by speaking about this topic, one keeps the reader stuck to the text (0988)1.1.1 Swiss citizens identify with the topic (0973–0974) 1.1.1.1 Swiss citizens realize that Switzerland is in the same situation, even

though it is not explicitly stated (0961, 0983) 1.1.1.1.1a Swiss citizens have “a series of schemes for the interpretation

of reality” (0970–0971) 1.1.1.1.1b if these schemes are evoked (0972)

The text he produces is an example of an enthymeme in Lloyd F. Bitzer’s under-standing. Bitzer states: “[the enthymeme’s] successful construction is accom-plished through the joint efforts of speaker and audience, and this is its essential character” (1959: 408). MB here feels entitled to leave some premises implicit be-cause he assumes that the readers possess the background information necessary to provide them themselves.

4.2.2 Keeping the attention of the audienceAnother issue MB addresses is the necessity to keep the readership’s attention high by underlining that what comes after is worth reading,12 although he has to make a summary of Cameron’s speech, full of quotations, which can be perceived as boring.13 Later on, he argues for a linguistic change he made in introducing the topic,14 because it better leads to some not exciting content.15 A further reformula-tion16 is justified as a rhetorical choice (and he indeed uses the Latin terms), serv-ing as both an excuse for the choice made (excusatio non petita) and an attempt

11. 0960–0962 mhm yes what is a bit the same situation/ in which we swiss are you understand/ therefore this part of the speech he makes is useful

12. 1415 so I tell the reader “it is worth being reported”

13. 1416 because otherwise he doesn’t go on reading twenty lines long; 1427 the boring stuff

14. 1420–1421 well “reported” I didn’t find it good/ so I put “closely examined” then

15. 1423 this seems to me a formula that is more-; 1425 that justifies eh

16. 1430 so “his answer be relevant”/ not “for switzerland too”/ but “for switzerland’s interests too”



to capture the audience’s benevolence (captatio benevolentiae).17 This rhetorical move is here necessary exactly because of the not appealing content.18

4.2.3 “We cannot harmonize everything”A third passage from the RVP consists of a live soliloquy by the writer who, while explaining to the researcher what he left out due to space limitations,19 wonders whether he should add a particularly significant quote.20 Earlier on, MB had ex-plained that usually he does not quote a lot, but in this case Cameron’s speech was far too relevant (“historic”, 0708) not to be extensively included in the editorial.21 He engages in a mixed difference of opinion, arguing for two opposite standpoints himself:22 I should include “we cannot harmonize everything” (1) and I should not include “we cannot harmonize everything” (2). The argumentation structure sup-porting them is the following:

1 I should include “we cannot harmonize everything” 1.1 it’s important (1235) 1.1.1 what the European Union wants from Switzerland is harmonizing

(1236–1237) 1.1.2 in the discussions between Switzerland and the European Union

there is exactly the issue of harmonizing (1239–1241)2 I should not include “we cannot harmonize everything” 2.1a “we cannot harmonize everything” is only one of many things I have not

been able to say (1227) 2.1b I cannot include everything (1231) 2.1b.1 I have no space left (1221–1224) 2.2 I did not manage to include it before (1232)

17. 1438–1439 therefore somehow it is an excusatio but/ it is a captatio at the same time

18. 1433–1435 this with respects to someone/ who is about to read something boring/ says ah I am interested so I; 1437 eh I spend these three minutes don’t I

19. 1221–1227 B: and here I realized/ that I got to the end of the text/ […]/ of the space/ there-fore here one need be do something/ I had to cut/ and I had not been able to say a whole range of things; 1230–1232 B: here this for example “we cannot harmonize everything”/ this is important but I cannot include everything/ I didn’t manage to say it and I don’t say it

20. 1238 I wonder whether this sentence here should be added

21. 0672–0676 I could have simply summarize it with my own words/but seeing the importance of this thing/ I’ve decided to do a job that I usually don’t do/ because it extends considerably the time/ and to include everything [the original text]

22. Indeed an instance of one person arguing for two sides of an issue as described by Jacquette (2007) and van Eemeren and Grootendorst too (2004: 120).



This critical discussion ends in a successful concluding stage, as MB convinces himself by the force of the arguments supporting standpoint 1 that the quote “we cannot harmonize everything” should be included.

We will now go more into depth with the analysis of this passage by applying the AMT to reconstruct the relation between each standpoint and an argument supporting it. Let us first consider the inference that justifies not including the quote “we cannot harmonize everything” from the argument 2.2, “I did not man-age to include it before” (Figure 2):

Endoxon: changing an article that is ready for publication has the undesirable side e�ect of being time and energy-con-suming (and including a quote in an article means changing the article)

Data: – MB’s article is ready for publication– “we cannot harmonize everything” is not included in the article

First Conclusion/Minor Premise: including “we cannot harmonize everything” has an undesirable side e�ect

Maxim: if the action X brings about undesirable side e�ects, X should be avoided

Locus from the �nal cause

Final Conclusion: including “we cannot harmonize everything” should be avoided

Figure 2.

The reasoning works as follows: if changing an article that is ready for publication has the undesirable side effect of being time and energy-consuming (and includ-ing a quote in an article means changing the article) (endoxon), and MB’s article is ready for publication (a precondition for doing the RVP) and he did not manage to include “we cannot harmonize everything” before (data), then including “we cannot harmonize everything” has an undesirable side effect (first conclusion). This first conclusion becomes the minor premise of a topical syllogism, whose major premise is “if an action X brings about undesirable side effects, X should be avoided”. This leads to the conclusion that including “we cannot harmonize every-thing” should be avoided. The maxim is derived from a subtype of the locus from the final cause that can be labelled “from side effects to abstaining from action”.



This inference sheds light on the journalist’s economical way of managing work, which leads him instinctively to avoid investing more time than necessary in reviewing his piece. This would thus provide evidence for the common place of the journalistic tendency to minimize effort mentioned in Section 1. MB though goes a step further, eventually making up his mind to change the text, as the Y-structure in Figure 3 shows (zooming on the inferential relation between 1 and 1.1).

Endoxa:– including important information in an article is a news value of Corriere del Ticino– avoiding to engage in time and energy- consuming activities is a journalistic habit– ful�lling news values is an higher goal than going along with habits

Data:– including “we cannot harmonize everything” means including important information– not including “we cannot harmonize everything” means avoiding to engage in a time and energy-consuming activity

First Conclusion/Minor Premise: including “we cannot harmonize everything” meansful�lling an higher goal than not including it

Final Conclusion: the action of including “we cannotharmonize everything” should be undertaken

Maxim: if action X allowsreaching an higher goal thanaction Y, and either X or Y can beundertaken, X should be undertaken

Locus from the �nal cause&

Locus from alternatives

Figure 3.

If including important information in an article is a news value of Corriere del Ticino, avoiding to engage in time and energy-consuming activities is a journalistic habit, and fulfilling news values is an higher goal than going along with habits (en-doxa); including “we cannot harmonize everything” means including important information, whereas not including “we cannot harmonize everything” means en-gaging in a time and energy-consuming activity (data); then including “we cannot harmonize everything” means fulfilling an higher goal than not including it (first conclusion). By combining the latter with the maxim “if action X allows fulfilling a higher goal than action Y, and either X or Y can be undertaken, X should be



undertaken” (taken from the loci from the final cause and from alternatives), the final conclusion follows that the action of including “we cannot harmonize every-thing” should be undertaken.

This example of contrasting standpoints gives us the chance to deal with the hierarchy of goals to pursue, which implies “neglecting any minor incompatible goal” (Rigotti and Greco Morasso 2009: 24). In fact, MB here is evaluating a past decision and eventually modifying it by countering a news value of Corriere del Ticino and a professional habit. In this particular instance of decision-making, he realises that the importance of the message conveyed by the quote (hinting at similarities between the UK and Switzerland,23 as in the excerpt considered in 4.2.1) should be given priority over the routine of not changing an article that has already been sent to print. When facing the choice between inserting the quote or not, MB combines the loci from alternatives and from the final cause. In fact, among a given choice of alternatives the one must be chosen that fulfils the higher goals of an institution.

4.3 Generalization across the corpus

Argumentative reasoning can be traced out in all RVPs in our corpus. In general, the challenges journalists have to face everyday, the constraints they are subject to and the goals they strive towards are similar. Nevertheless, we observed that the concrete concerns they are confronted with and the strategies they apply are quite differentiated.

For example, one of the main concerns is formulating the title. Experienced journalists, such as MB or the financial news journalist PZ, focus on transmit-ting the right message in a concise and incisive way. In contrast, less experienced newsmakers are more worried about fitting in the given space (like RC, a young reporter from the cantonal news desk) or catching the reader’s attention (like TG, from the cultural news desk).

Getting the message properly through to the audience is a major interest in general. In this case, the level of experience acquired might be the cause for the clear difference in the complexity of argumentation the journalist includes in his article. MB in fact has in mind a multilayered readership and aims at conveying different messages at the same time: the lay reader will grasp information on what Cameron said in his speech, whereas the reader who knows about politics will get the parallelism between the British and the Swiss relation to the EU. In contrast,

23. This corresponds to Allan Bell’s (1991: 157) news value of meaningfulness “the cultural fa-miliarity and similarity of one country with another”, made explicit by MB’s mention of the reasons why the quote is important (1236–1237; 1239–1241).



PZ tries to avoid every double meaning and possible misunderstanding, striving towards providing the whole significant information. This is related to the impact financial news might have on the investors’ behavior, thus unambiguity must be placed before all other news values. In yet another case, RC says that her main issue is clarity, up to the point that she tends to be “didactic” (1174) towards the readership.

What influences the strategies that journalists adopt? Although this aspect still has to be investigated in detail, from corpus analysis two factors emerge that affect decision-making in the writing process: the desk the journalists work for, and the stage in their careers (Perrin 2013: 174). On the one hand, each desk imposes a different production speed and addresses primarily different readers. On the other hand, more experienced journalists have already developed and tested newsgath-ering and wording strategies and therefore can focus on subtler communicative strategies. Such a generalization is possible in the framework of grounded theory (e.g., Perrin 2013: 181–188) by comparing data from the Corriere del Ticino sub-dataset with those collected at the Swiss French- and German-language public television in the project “Idée Suisse: Language policy, norms, and practice as ex-emplified by Swiss Radio and Television“ (SNSF NRP 56, 2005–2008). The Corriere del Ticino data confirm the findings of the previous project and at the same time strengthen them, as they feature the identified newsmaking practices too.

5. Conclusion

This paper provides studies on intrapersonal argumentation with empirical evi-dence of how arguing with oneself is played out and apprehended by the arguer. Relying on a case study from a corpus of newswriting processes, we have shown that journalists justify their decisions through argumentative moves comparable to those listed for interpersonal argumentation in pragma-dialectics (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004: 62–68). On the one hand, in accounting for how he made decisions while writing, MB advances and defends standpoints against an imag-ined antagonist who doubts their validity. For example, in 4.2.1 he justifies the de-cision to quote a given part of Cameron’s speech to make the readers identify with the topic he is writing about, whereas in 4.2.2 he argues for his rhetorical choices as expedient to keep the audience’s attention. On the other hand, in 4.2.3 he makes a decision on the spot, which consists of the argumentative moves of advancing contradictory standpoints on an issue, and eventually accepting one of them by virtue of the arguments supporting it.

By means of argumentative reasoning, the writer solves conflicts of reacting to contradictory expectations in complex multi-stakeholder settings. In approaches



from writing research, this phenomenon has long been discussed as conflicts within repertoires of writing strategies and practices. In approaches from commu-nication and media studies, the negotiations of partly contradictory news values have been foregrounded. In-depth analyses by means of the AMT can add empiri-cal evidence to both research lines and contribute to connecting the dots between two disciplines investigating newswriting as their intersection field. In addition, this analysis supports the claim that journalists are reflective practitioners who, by means of reflection-on-action (in our case, the RVP), can bring to light their strategies of reflection-in-action (in the writing process).

With all due circumspection, we can assume that more experienced journal-ists tend to apply more sophisticated soliloquial strategies, combining elaborated argumentation with a complex and dynamic conceptualization of context. Such hypotheses, generated in empirically saturated writing research, have to be tested in further analyses.

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Authors’ addresses

Marta ZampaZurich University of Applied SciencesSchool of Applied LinguisticsInstitute of Applied Media StudiesTheaterstrasse 15c8401 Winterthur Switzerland

[email protected]

Università della Svizzera italianaInstitute of Argumentation, Linguistics and SemioticsVia Buffi 13CH-6904 LuganoSwitzerland

[email protected]

Daniel PerrinZurich University of Applied SciencesSchool of Applied LinguisticsInstitute of Applied Media StudiesTheaterstrasse 15c8401 Winterthur Switzerland

[email protected]

http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/225510




Arguing with oneself: the writing process as an argumentative soliloquy

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