Uloga emocija u argumentaciji na slučaju izbjegličke krize

Lovrić, Lukrecia Ana. (2016). Uloga emocija u argumentaciji na slučaju izbjegličke krize. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Phonetics. [mentor Kišiček, Gabrijela].

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to detect and evaluate the emotional arguments made in the case of the refugee crisis. The refugee crisis began in 2015, and according to estimates by the UN Refugee Agency, so far it has forced about a million people to flee to European countries. The crisis was followed through media statements, interviews, speeches and other forms of political and public discourse that were transmitted by domestic and foreign media in the period from September 2015 to the end of April 2016. The first part of the study represents a theoretical description of emotional arguments which include both traditional and contemporary approach on the matter. Except from the most common emotional arguments, typical fallacies are listed and briefly described as well. The second part of the study includes an analysis of emotional arguments based mainly on modern classification of fallacies by theorists such as Walton, Tindale, Cobi and Cohen, Hamblin and others. In evaluating their legitimacy various methods such as Gilbert’s modes of coalescent argumentation, Walton’s and Tindale’s critical questions, Johnson’s and Blair’s RSA criteria of informal logic and others have been taken into account. Since the topic is quite sensitive and inherently emotional, the research hypothesis was that emotional arguments will be widely used in the political and public discourse. The aim of the research was to ascertain what role the emotions have in the argumentation in the particular case of the refugee crisis; whether legitimate or fallacious emotional arguments were used more and with what purpose, as well as whether they were relevant for solving issues related to the refugee crisis. The ultimate goal of this research was to contribute to the better understanding of the emotional argumentation and to encourage further research and gathering of new facts in the field of emotional argumentation. The results of the research show that in the context of the refugee crisis emotional arguments were used very often. The fallacious emotional arguments were used more frequently than the legitimate ones. The most frequent emotional arguments were ad metum and ad misericordiam, often followed by fallacies such as slippery slopes, generalizations or biased statistics. Ad baculum, ad superbiam, ad hominem and other similar emotional arguments were also noticed in the selected examples. Since a clearly defined system of the evaluation of emotional arguments does not exist, in many cases it was difficult to determine whether the arguments were legitimate or fallacious.

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