1. Martin Hinton University of Łódź Accents 2017
Accents of Persuasion
Martin Hinton
University of Łódź
Accents 2017

2. Argumentation and Accents. Possible Shoehorn alert!

3. But Seriously…
Accents have always been part of the study of rhetoric, and one of Aristotle’s original list of sophistical refutations was the fallacy of ‘Accent’, which refers to how the pronunciation of a word or phrase can be used to alter its meaning – the accent is not part of the argument structure itself.

4. Multi-modal argument
Recent research has developed the idea of multi-modal argumentation. This began with Visual Arguments, then Narrative Arguments, and now even Sound Arguments. These modes are not a way of dressing up the argument, they present the argument itself – as premise, warrant, evidence or conclusion.

5. Sound Arguments Groarke and Kišiček – ECA 2017
Sound functions in argumentative discourse
1 – to announce or surround a message
2 – as evidence for a conclusion, as basis for an inference, a key component of an argument.
Their conclusions:
Auditory cues and inferences profoundly influence what we believe
Words and sentences play a relatively narrow role determining our beliefs and attitudes
We need a broad, multimodal perspective on argument (that recognizes verbal, visual and auditory evidence)

6. Groarke 2015
To take some examples, intonation, emphasis and other prosodic elements play an essential role in determining when spoken sentences are statements or questions and have one of a variety of different meetings. Imagine a situation in which I say that someone is Croatian and back this standpoint with the claim that she has a Croatian accent... If I need to back this first claim, I may say ‘She said this:’ and play you a recording of a message she has left on my phone… Here the ingredients of the audio recording r are words, but it is important that I have indicated the mode of arguing as oral because pronunciation and other prosodic elements are key ingredients of the evidence put forward. In a case such as this, a purely written account of these words would miss the point... In other cases of oral argument, pronunciation, enunciation, pause, prosody, volume, stress and accent may carry significant argumentative meaning. One might in view of this develop an account of an oral mode of arguing which recognizes these elements as important ingredients of argument…

7. What we don’t mean

8. The argument here, that poor language skills may be costly, so you should improve them, is exemplified using a pronunciation/listening mistake, but the accent of the speaker is not itself part of the argumentation being used. I’m talking about something like this…

9. VW Happy Office Worker Ad

10. Argument Structure
P1. Only one member of staff is happy. P2. That person drives a VW. Conclusion: Driving a VW makes people happy. Evidence for P1 – He speaks with a Jamaican accent, despite not being Jamaican. The accent is a representation of his happiness, not his origin.

11. 2nd Argument Structure
P1. The office staff are initially unhappy. P2. After driving in the car, the staff are happier. Conclusion: Riding in a VW makes people happy. Evidence for P2 – They start to speak with a Jamaican accent. The inference is warranted by the assertion that a Jamaican accent is a sign of happiness, not (necessarily) of being from Jamaica. The cause/effect conclusion is justified by the genre and narrative conventions.

12. Polaner All Fruit Jelly

13. Polaner – take two

14. Argument Structure
P1. Sophisticated people refer to the product as All Fruit. P2. Unsophisticated people refer to it as jelly. Conclusion: Sophisticated people can see that this product is no ordinary jelly. Evidence for P1 and P2 – the accents of the speakers. A southern US accent is not sophisticated. It stands for ignorance and unrefined taste, not geography.

15. Grey Poupon

16. Why am I telling you this?
Philosophers have long paid little attention to how things are said, focussing only on the propositional content – this is a sign things are changing. Argumentation theorists are closely involved with the development of AI. Only through the study of human reasoning can machines be taught to understand and replicate it. If accent and other prosodic features are recognised as being part of argument content, YOU may be needed to help programmers train software, not just to understand what words were said, but what the way of saying them means. Not as pragmatic content, but as part of human reasoning.

17. Thank you for your attention!