The use of antithesis and other contrastive relations in argumentation

This paper presents a study of use of the rhetorical figure of antithesis and other contrastive relations in several modern-day environmental science policy journal articles on issues of food security, climate change, and water resource management. The articles present the conflicting perspect...

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Main Author: Nancy L. Green
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IOS Press 2023-02-01
Series:Argument & Computation
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.3233/AAC-210025
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author Nancy L. Green
author_facet Nancy L. Green
author_sort Nancy L. Green
collection DOAJ
description This paper presents a study of use of the rhetorical figure of antithesis and other contrastive relations in several modern-day environmental science policy journal articles on issues of food security, climate change, and water resource management. The articles present the conflicting perspectives of environmentalists and engineers, i.e., the view that nature should be preserved and protected versus the view that it should be engineered to solve human problems. The main contribution of this paper is a taxonomy characterizing argumentative uses of contrastive relations in these articles based on our semantic/pragmatic interpretation of text including, in some cases, discourse coherence relations. The number of examples and the breadth of the taxonomy is indicative of the key role of contrastive relations in argumentation in this genre. This investigation is a necessary step towards comprehensive computational approaches to detecting antithesis and other contrastive relations and to identifying their argumentative roles.
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spelling doaj.art-c7aff31b2a094ab3bb9ac9d258627cb42023-03-24T09:48:02ZengIOS PressArgument & Computation1946-21661946-21742023-02-0114111610.3233/AAC-210025The use of antithesis and other contrastive relations in argumentationNancy L. Green0University of North Carolina Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 27402, U.S.A. This paper presents a study of use of the rhetorical figure of antithesis and other contrastive relations in several modern-day environmental science policy journal articles on issues of food security, climate change, and water resource management. The articles present the conflicting perspectives of environmentalists and engineers, i.e., the view that nature should be preserved and protected versus the view that it should be engineered to solve human problems. The main contribution of this paper is a taxonomy characterizing argumentative uses of contrastive relations in these articles based on our semantic/pragmatic interpretation of text including, in some cases, discourse coherence relations. The number of examples and the breadth of the taxonomy is indicative of the key role of contrastive relations in argumentation in this genre. This investigation is a necessary step towards comprehensive computational approaches to detecting antithesis and other contrastive relations and to identifying their argumentative roles.https://doi.org/10.3233/AAC-210025
spellingShingle Nancy L. Green
The use of antithesis and other contrastive relations in argumentation
Argument & Computation
title The use of antithesis and other contrastive relations in argumentation
title_full The use of antithesis and other contrastive relations in argumentation
title_fullStr The use of antithesis and other contrastive relations in argumentation
title_full_unstemmed The use of antithesis and other contrastive relations in argumentation
title_short The use of antithesis and other contrastive relations in argumentation
title_sort use of antithesis and other contrastive relations in argumentation
url https://doi.org/10.3233/AAC-210025
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