34.1891, Calls: Panel: Rationality in Discourse. Universalist and Contextualized Views

Wed Jun 14 23:05:02 UTC 2023

LINGUIST List: Vol-34-1891. Wed Jun 14 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.1891, Calls: Panel: Rationality in Discourse. Universalist and Contextualized Views

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Date: 14-Jun-2023
From: Helmut Gruber [helmut.k.gruber at univie.ac.at]
Subject: Panel: Rationality in Discourse. Universalist and Contextualized Views

Full Title: Panel: Rationality in Discourse. Universalist and
Contextualized Views

Date: 20-Oct-2023 - 23-Oct-2023
Location: Zhejiang International Studies University, China
Contact Person: Helmut Gruber
Meeting Email: helmut.k.gruber at univie.ac.at

Linguistic Field(s): Discourse Analysis; Pragmatics

Call Deadline: 15-Jul-2023

Meeting Description:

Panel organized by Helmut Gruber (helmut.k.gruber at univie.ac.at) ,
Martin Reisigl (martin.reisigl at univie.ac.at) , Jürgen Spitzmüller
(juergen.spitzmueller at univie.ac.at) during the Second International
Conference on Discourse Pragmatics, held online between October,
20-22, 2023.
Since decades, rationality has been viewed as a cornerstone of
linguistic-pragmatic theories of communicative action. Both in
Habermas’s theory of communicative action (derived, among others
things, from speech act theory) and in Grice’s intentionalist theory
of meaning, the presupposition of rationality of conversationalists
plays a central role. For Habermas (1981), rationality is “built in”
into human language, as communicative action can always enter the
realm of rational argumentative discourse as soon as one interlocutor
questions a validity claim of a speech act another interlocutor has
uttered. Conversationalists then put forward rational arguments until
they reach a consensus which is based on the “unforced force” of the
better argument. For Grice (1975) rationality is at the core of
cooperation (and thus a foundation for his famous cooperation
principle) and a pre-requisite for calculating implicatures. As both
theories claim universal applicability as theories of human linguistic
action, they view rationality as a universal characteristic of the
human mind.
On the other hand, rationality has also been critically challenged in
philosophy, anthropology, and sociolinguistics. In this context, it is
construed as a “post-Enlightenment” or “Western” construct which is at
best to be culturally contextualized, if not taken as an ideology that
misguides how people ground their actions (for the debate, cf. Hollis
& Lukes 1982; Tambiah 1990) and which bespeaks a problematic
“denotationalist” approach to language (Silverstein 2014). From this
perspective, rationality is not to be taken as a universal, but as a
contextualized dimension, as a product rather than as a prerequisite
of discourse. The pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation also
takes a contextualist viewpoint on issues of rationality when it
assumes that any consensus that may be reached in an argumentative
exchange of opinions remains context-bound and cannot be regarded as a
universal agreement (e.g. Van Eemeren, Grootendorst, Snoeck Henkemans
1996: 94-97). Feminist and gender theoretical perspectives also
question universalistic concepts of rationality and revise them at
least to the point that – according to them – a strict and binary
opposition of rationality and emotionality is not tenable.
As a sort of synthesis of these opposing positions, some researchers
have pointed out that rationality is also, or even primarily, a
communicative resource upon which conversationalists can draw during
concrete communicative events. Specific contributions (or
contributors) to a conversation can be claimed to be “rational” or
“irrational” at a certain point of an interaction, specific actions
can be said to occur for “rational” reasons within specific contexts
only. Under this participants’ perspective, the question arises
whether conversationalists communicate “rationally” in all situations.
These first order (participants’) orientations towards what counts as
rational in a certain context of situation might not necessarily and
always coincide with conceptions of the above mentioned second order
(theorists’) conceptions of universal rationality.
Such “struggles over rationality” do not only occur in local
interactions. Often, they are also at the core of larger-scale
discourse (or Discourse). Recent debates about “scientific arguments”
(in the context of the pandemics or climate change), “alternative
facts” or “counter-theories” are cases in point. Here, “rationality”
transforms into a social value or commodity, a fact that is of major
interest to (meta-)pragmatic inquiry (who claims to be “rational” and
how?).

Call for Papers:

Our panel aims at bringing together research and researchers whose
work deals with one or several of the above mentioned and/ or
additional perspectives on rationality and who are interested in
bringing various perspectives together in order to exchange results
and identify congruities and incongruities which might stimulate
mutual intellectual fertilization and further research.

Abstracts (max. 300 words including references) should be sent per
e-mail to all three organizers not later than July, 15 2023.

Notification of acceptance: July, 30 2023.

Organizers:
Helmut Gruber (helmut.k.gruber at univie.ac.at)
Martin Reisigl (martin.reisigl at univie.ac.at)
Jürgen Spitzmüller (juergen.spitzmueller at univie.ac.at)

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