By focusing on a case study of institutional argumentation in the sector of data protection and t... more By focusing on a case study of institutional argumentation in the sector of data protection and transparency, this paper offers a view on the role of institutional argumentative discourse aimed at conflict prevention in public organizations. In particular, the context we are analyzing is that of a Swiss institutional role named Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC). Among other tasks, the person who serves as a FDPIC has the right to monitor data protection in the whole territory of the Swiss Confederation, with the possibility of issuing recommendations to subjects who are found in violation of the law on this matter. The FDPIC's role appears similar to that of ombudsmen; his or her recommendations are not binding for the parties, but they represent powerful argument-based warnings that serve the function of preventing escalation to a court proceeding. The specific nature of this type of recommendation is explored in this paper both at the level of a semantic–pragmatic analysis of the speech act “to recommend”, and at the level of argumentation. Integrating an argumentative level is necessary to fully explain the intended effect of this specific type of speech act of recommendation in this context. Argumentation is also advanced by the FDPIC to support his decision: by devising a comprehensive, convincing and well-structured argumentative discourse, the FDPIC pursues the ultimate pragmatic goal of preventing the emergence of conflicts between citizens and legal authorities.
In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important ... more In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important organizational change, argumentation typically involves multiple audiences, rather than a single and homogenous group, let alone an individual interlocutor. In such cases, an exhaustive and precise characterization of the audience structure is crucial both for the arguer, who needs to design an effective argumentative strategy, and for the external analyst, who aims at reconstructing such a strategic discourse. While the peculiar relevance of multiple audience is often emphasized in the argumentation literature and in rhetorical studies, proposals for modelling multi-audience argumentative situations remain scarce and unsystematic. To address this gap, we propose an analytical framework which integrates three conceptual constructs: (1) Rigotti and Rocci's notion of communicative activity type, understood as the implementation of an interaction scheme into a piece of institutional reality, named interaction field; (2) the stake-holder concept, originally developed in strategic management and public relations studies to refer to any actor who affects and/or is affected by the organizational actions and who, accordingly, carries an interest in them; (3) the concept of participant role as it emerges from Goffman's theory of conversation analysis and related linguistic and media studies. From this integration, we derive the notion of text stakeholder for referring to any organizational actor whose interest (stake) becomes an argumentative issue which the organizational text must account for in order to effectively achieve its communicative aim. The text stakeholder notion enables a more comprehensive reconstruction and characterization of multiple audience by eliciting the relevant participants staged in a text and identifying, for each of them, the interactional role they have, the peculiar interest they bear and the related argumentative issue they create. Considering as an illustrative case the defense document issued by a corporation against a hostile takeover attempt made by another corporation, we show how this framework can support the analysis of strategic maneuvering by better defining the audience demand and, so, better explaining how real arguers design and adapt their topical and presentational choices.
Compared to other domains of media discourse, economic-financial news contain a considerable amou... more Compared to other domains of media discourse, economic-financial news contain a considerable amount of speech acts regarding future events, in particular predictions. This can be explained by their specific institutional context, financial markets, where investors constantly seek to single out gain opportunities and to correctly assess their risk. One of the crucial factors making economic-financial predictions worthy of being considered in investment decisions is argumentation, in particular the extent to which the predicted proposition follows from a plausible and acceptable reasoning. Starting from a corpus of 50 articles of the Italian economic-financial press, we consider the inferential dimension of prediction-oriented arguments, focusing on the locus, i.e. the ontological relation on which the connection between the argument(s) and the predictive conclusion rests. All predictions found in the corpus were manually annotated with the software UAM Corpus Tool. For each of them we identified the source, which could be either the journalist him/herself or a third party, typically financial analysts or corporate actors. We distinguished mere predictive opinions from predictive standpoints, i.e. predictions for which the journalist advances one or more supportive arguments (either confirmatory of refutatory). For the latter category, we identified the locus referring to an adaptation of the taxonomy outlined by Rigotti (2009). The findings highlight in particular the following three interesting aspects: (1) in predictions, journalists reinforce their stance by plausible justifications, but weaken it at the same time by marking it as uncertain and/or by using reported speech or evidential means to reduce their responsibility for the predictive speech act; (2) the justification of a predictive standpoint, by the journalist or by third parties, is mostly based on loci of causality, in particular on the locus from efficient cause, the locus from final cause and complex forms of causality where the involvement of rational agents is implied but defocused; (3) moreover, journalists refer to the predictive opinions of experts or corporate insiders to activate the locus from authority, either by explicit argumentation or implicitly, by reporting speech from reliable sources. Our study suggests that the role of predictions in financial news is not so much that of giving any straightforward advice to investors, but rather that of providing chunks of sound argumentative reasoning, including both supportive evidence and rebuttals or refutatory moves, that the investor-reader might apply and combine in the highly uncertain context of financial markets. Overall, our findings shed light on how financial journalists fulfil the function of information intermediaries in finance.
Earnings conference calls (ECCs) have received considerable attention within accounting and finan... more Earnings conference calls (ECCs) have received considerable attention within accounting and finance studies which found that such voluntary disclosures provide investors with useful and relevant information. Starting from the hypothesis that argumentation is a crucial factor explaining the informational value of ECCs, we analyze the Q&A part of six ECCs focusing on the types of standpoints companies advance and on the types of questions analysts ask. We found that companies frequently justify evaluative and predictive standpoints. Analysts solicit these standpoints not by directly challenging managers, but by requesting opinions which create the occasion for argumentation or confirmation of plausible inferences.
In order to comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws, financial intermediaries are being enga... more In order to comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws, financial intermediaries are being engaged with unprecedented communicative activities, mainly oriented at detecting suspicious activities which must be reported to the Financial Intelligence Unit. The polysemous notion of ‘suspicion’ is pivotal to these communicative activities and needs to be clarified in order to establish to what extent argumentation is involved in their fulfillment. To this purpose, we apply the method of semantic analysis developed within Congruity Theory bringing to light the different semantic values of the verb ‘to suspect’ and its lexical derivates in a corpus of ordinary English; then we compare these meanings with the actual uses of this verb in the international and national AML laws. Amongst the numerous factors contributing to the polysemy of this word, we focalize on the difference emerged between an argumentative value of ’to suspect’ and another meaning in which suspicion is reduced to a mere hunch. This suggests that there exist different types of suspicion acts which are more or less argumentative. Interestingly, anti-money laundering international standards and some national implementations seem to admit suspicions at different argumentative degrees, entailing different levels of critical assessment expected from the financial intermediary. We also identify important implications for bank’s anti-money laundering activities deriving from the different semantic traits emerged in the analysis. We conclude the paper by eliciting from the outcome of the semantic analysis a number of questions that will guide the next steps of an ongoing research project in which Swiss banks’ AML practices are investigated from an argumentative perspective.
In questo contributo intendiamo mettere a fuoco la complessità semantica della nozione di ‘sospet... more In questo contributo intendiamo mettere a fuoco la complessità semantica della nozione di ‘sospetto’, presentando i risultati salienti di un’analisi presentata più nel dettaglio in altra sede (si veda Rigotti e Palmieri, 2014). Tale investigazione non è nata dalla passione erudita – del tutto legittima, peraltro – per l’esplorazione lessicale, ma da una ricerca interdisciplinare, finanziata dal Fondo nazionale svizzero, incentrata sulle argomentazioni con cui gli intermediari finanziari giustificano la segnalazione di attività sospette di riciclaggio o finanziamento del terrorismo. Al fine di contestualizzare l’indagine semantica qui presentata, inizieremo col presentare brevemente la tematica affrontata nel progetto di ricerca. In seguito, verranno esposti e discussi i risultati dell’analisi.
Il presente Working Paper raccoglie i contenuti delle relazioni e delle discussioni che hanno ani... more Il presente Working Paper raccoglie i contenuti delle relazioni e delle discussioni che hanno animato il primo evento pubblico organizzato dal LACoPS il 24 gennaio 2013 nell’Auditorium dell’Università della Svizzera Italiana a Lugano. Tema: “Il sospetto – anticamera della verità o catastrofe della fiducia?”. I relatori – Eddo Rigotti e Rudi Palmieri, Graziano Martignoni, Stiliano Ordolli, François Degeorge e Antonio Perugini – sono intervenuti affrontando alcune domande rilevanti nella sfera pubblica: “Quando si abusa del sospetto?” Come evitare il prevalere di una cultura del sospetto in un’epoca in cui tutti parlano di crisi di fiducia?”
Argumentation intervenes both in the management of the ordinary activities of an organization and... more Argumentation intervenes both in the management of the ordinary activities of an organization and during special circumstances that raise important and critical issues, such as when a crisis creates the exigence of defending the reputation and image of the institution. As a matter of fact, argumentation is at work in the establishment of the institution itself. The creation of an institution entails an argumentative speech act by which the rationale for such an institution is given. Indeed, institutions are not created by chance but in view of a purpose which represents their raison d’être. In this paper, we intend to explore more in depth such a constitutive function of argumentation by examining its role in the discursive acts that human beings perform in order to give birth to an institutional entity. As a case in point, we analyze the Foedus Pactum Helveticum, the 1291 Charter that is at the origin of the Swiss Confederation. We analyze the Foedus Pactum from a semantic-pragmatic point of view, interpreting this document as a complex connection of speech acts, which contribute to fulfill the overarching aim of the document, broadly corresponding to what the writer aims at doing to the reader (Rigotti 1993; Rigotti and Rocci 2001, 2006). From this perspective, we consider in particular the sequences fulfilling an argumentative function.
344 Rudi Palmieri 1. Introduction: Considering argumentation in the financial context It is now w... more 344 Rudi Palmieri 1. Introduction: Considering argumentation in the financial context It is now well-established within argumentation theory that, besides being affected by argumentation, the communication context significantly conditions argumentative discourse, and does it in many different ways and aspects, through all its constitutive dimensions (cf. van Eemeren 2010; Rigotti & Greco Morasso 2009b). This paper investigates how the argumentative situation affects arguers' strategic maneuvering, focusing particularly on the situational characteristics at ...
This volume systematically investigates the role of argumentation in takeover bids. The announcem... more This volume systematically investigates the role of argumentation in takeover bids. The announcement of these financial proposals triggers an argumentative situation, in which both the economic desirability and the social acceptability of the deal become argumentative issues for different classes of stakeholders (shareholders, employees, customers, etc.). The study focuses on the strategic maneuvers that corporate directors deploy in order to persuade their audiences while complying with precise regulatory requirements, designed to allow shareholders to make reasonable decisions. A conceptual reframing of takeovers as an argumentative context brings to light the different argumentative situations of friendly and hostile bids. The argumentative strategies that corporate directors adopt in the two situations are identified and analyzed on the basis of a corpus of takeover documents referring to offers launched in the UK market between 2006 and 2010. The argumentative reconstruction focuses in particular on the inferential configuration of arguments, which is accomplished by means of the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT). This kind of analysis enables capturing the inherently argumentative processes through which information becomes a relevant starting point for investment decisions.
By focusing on a case study of institutional argumentation in the sector of data protection and t... more By focusing on a case study of institutional argumentation in the sector of data protection and transparency, this paper offers a view on the role of institutional argumentative discourse aimed at conflict prevention in public organizations. In particular, the context we are analyzing is that of a Swiss institutional role named Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner (FDPIC). Among other tasks, the person who serves as a FDPIC has the right to monitor data protection in the whole territory of the Swiss Confederation, with the possibility of issuing recommendations to subjects who are found in violation of the law on this matter. The FDPIC's role appears similar to that of ombudsmen; his or her recommendations are not binding for the parties, but they represent powerful argument-based warnings that serve the function of preventing escalation to a court proceeding. The specific nature of this type of recommendation is explored in this paper both at the level of a semantic–pragmatic analysis of the speech act “to recommend”, and at the level of argumentation. Integrating an argumentative level is necessary to fully explain the intended effect of this specific type of speech act of recommendation in this context. Argumentation is also advanced by the FDPIC to support his decision: by devising a comprehensive, convincing and well-structured argumentative discourse, the FDPIC pursues the ultimate pragmatic goal of preventing the emergence of conflicts between citizens and legal authorities.
In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important ... more In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important organizational change, argumentation typically involves multiple audiences, rather than a single and homogenous group, let alone an individual interlocutor. In such cases, an exhaustive and precise characterization of the audience structure is crucial both for the arguer, who needs to design an effective argumentative strategy, and for the external analyst, who aims at reconstructing such a strategic discourse. While the peculiar relevance of multiple audience is often emphasized in the argumentation literature and in rhetorical studies, proposals for modelling multi-audience argumentative situations remain scarce and unsystematic. To address this gap, we propose an analytical framework which integrates three conceptual constructs: (1) Rigotti and Rocci's notion of communicative activity type, understood as the implementation of an interaction scheme into a piece of institutional reality, named interaction field; (2) the stake-holder concept, originally developed in strategic management and public relations studies to refer to any actor who affects and/or is affected by the organizational actions and who, accordingly, carries an interest in them; (3) the concept of participant role as it emerges from Goffman's theory of conversation analysis and related linguistic and media studies. From this integration, we derive the notion of text stakeholder for referring to any organizational actor whose interest (stake) becomes an argumentative issue which the organizational text must account for in order to effectively achieve its communicative aim. The text stakeholder notion enables a more comprehensive reconstruction and characterization of multiple audience by eliciting the relevant participants staged in a text and identifying, for each of them, the interactional role they have, the peculiar interest they bear and the related argumentative issue they create. Considering as an illustrative case the defense document issued by a corporation against a hostile takeover attempt made by another corporation, we show how this framework can support the analysis of strategic maneuvering by better defining the audience demand and, so, better explaining how real arguers design and adapt their topical and presentational choices.
Compared to other domains of media discourse, economic-financial news contain a considerable amou... more Compared to other domains of media discourse, economic-financial news contain a considerable amount of speech acts regarding future events, in particular predictions. This can be explained by their specific institutional context, financial markets, where investors constantly seek to single out gain opportunities and to correctly assess their risk. One of the crucial factors making economic-financial predictions worthy of being considered in investment decisions is argumentation, in particular the extent to which the predicted proposition follows from a plausible and acceptable reasoning. Starting from a corpus of 50 articles of the Italian economic-financial press, we consider the inferential dimension of prediction-oriented arguments, focusing on the locus, i.e. the ontological relation on which the connection between the argument(s) and the predictive conclusion rests. All predictions found in the corpus were manually annotated with the software UAM Corpus Tool. For each of them we identified the source, which could be either the journalist him/herself or a third party, typically financial analysts or corporate actors. We distinguished mere predictive opinions from predictive standpoints, i.e. predictions for which the journalist advances one or more supportive arguments (either confirmatory of refutatory). For the latter category, we identified the locus referring to an adaptation of the taxonomy outlined by Rigotti (2009). The findings highlight in particular the following three interesting aspects: (1) in predictions, journalists reinforce their stance by plausible justifications, but weaken it at the same time by marking it as uncertain and/or by using reported speech or evidential means to reduce their responsibility for the predictive speech act; (2) the justification of a predictive standpoint, by the journalist or by third parties, is mostly based on loci of causality, in particular on the locus from efficient cause, the locus from final cause and complex forms of causality where the involvement of rational agents is implied but defocused; (3) moreover, journalists refer to the predictive opinions of experts or corporate insiders to activate the locus from authority, either by explicit argumentation or implicitly, by reporting speech from reliable sources. Our study suggests that the role of predictions in financial news is not so much that of giving any straightforward advice to investors, but rather that of providing chunks of sound argumentative reasoning, including both supportive evidence and rebuttals or refutatory moves, that the investor-reader might apply and combine in the highly uncertain context of financial markets. Overall, our findings shed light on how financial journalists fulfil the function of information intermediaries in finance.
Earnings conference calls (ECCs) have received considerable attention within accounting and finan... more Earnings conference calls (ECCs) have received considerable attention within accounting and finance studies which found that such voluntary disclosures provide investors with useful and relevant information. Starting from the hypothesis that argumentation is a crucial factor explaining the informational value of ECCs, we analyze the Q&A part of six ECCs focusing on the types of standpoints companies advance and on the types of questions analysts ask. We found that companies frequently justify evaluative and predictive standpoints. Analysts solicit these standpoints not by directly challenging managers, but by requesting opinions which create the occasion for argumentation or confirmation of plausible inferences.
In order to comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws, financial intermediaries are being enga... more In order to comply with Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws, financial intermediaries are being engaged with unprecedented communicative activities, mainly oriented at detecting suspicious activities which must be reported to the Financial Intelligence Unit. The polysemous notion of ‘suspicion’ is pivotal to these communicative activities and needs to be clarified in order to establish to what extent argumentation is involved in their fulfillment. To this purpose, we apply the method of semantic analysis developed within Congruity Theory bringing to light the different semantic values of the verb ‘to suspect’ and its lexical derivates in a corpus of ordinary English; then we compare these meanings with the actual uses of this verb in the international and national AML laws. Amongst the numerous factors contributing to the polysemy of this word, we focalize on the difference emerged between an argumentative value of ’to suspect’ and another meaning in which suspicion is reduced to a mere hunch. This suggests that there exist different types of suspicion acts which are more or less argumentative. Interestingly, anti-money laundering international standards and some national implementations seem to admit suspicions at different argumentative degrees, entailing different levels of critical assessment expected from the financial intermediary. We also identify important implications for bank’s anti-money laundering activities deriving from the different semantic traits emerged in the analysis. We conclude the paper by eliciting from the outcome of the semantic analysis a number of questions that will guide the next steps of an ongoing research project in which Swiss banks’ AML practices are investigated from an argumentative perspective.
In questo contributo intendiamo mettere a fuoco la complessità semantica della nozione di ‘sospet... more In questo contributo intendiamo mettere a fuoco la complessità semantica della nozione di ‘sospetto’, presentando i risultati salienti di un’analisi presentata più nel dettaglio in altra sede (si veda Rigotti e Palmieri, 2014). Tale investigazione non è nata dalla passione erudita – del tutto legittima, peraltro – per l’esplorazione lessicale, ma da una ricerca interdisciplinare, finanziata dal Fondo nazionale svizzero, incentrata sulle argomentazioni con cui gli intermediari finanziari giustificano la segnalazione di attività sospette di riciclaggio o finanziamento del terrorismo. Al fine di contestualizzare l’indagine semantica qui presentata, inizieremo col presentare brevemente la tematica affrontata nel progetto di ricerca. In seguito, verranno esposti e discussi i risultati dell’analisi.
Il presente Working Paper raccoglie i contenuti delle relazioni e delle discussioni che hanno ani... more Il presente Working Paper raccoglie i contenuti delle relazioni e delle discussioni che hanno animato il primo evento pubblico organizzato dal LACoPS il 24 gennaio 2013 nell’Auditorium dell’Università della Svizzera Italiana a Lugano. Tema: “Il sospetto – anticamera della verità o catastrofe della fiducia?”. I relatori – Eddo Rigotti e Rudi Palmieri, Graziano Martignoni, Stiliano Ordolli, François Degeorge e Antonio Perugini – sono intervenuti affrontando alcune domande rilevanti nella sfera pubblica: “Quando si abusa del sospetto?” Come evitare il prevalere di una cultura del sospetto in un’epoca in cui tutti parlano di crisi di fiducia?”
Argumentation intervenes both in the management of the ordinary activities of an organization and... more Argumentation intervenes both in the management of the ordinary activities of an organization and during special circumstances that raise important and critical issues, such as when a crisis creates the exigence of defending the reputation and image of the institution. As a matter of fact, argumentation is at work in the establishment of the institution itself. The creation of an institution entails an argumentative speech act by which the rationale for such an institution is given. Indeed, institutions are not created by chance but in view of a purpose which represents their raison d’être. In this paper, we intend to explore more in depth such a constitutive function of argumentation by examining its role in the discursive acts that human beings perform in order to give birth to an institutional entity. As a case in point, we analyze the Foedus Pactum Helveticum, the 1291 Charter that is at the origin of the Swiss Confederation. We analyze the Foedus Pactum from a semantic-pragmatic point of view, interpreting this document as a complex connection of speech acts, which contribute to fulfill the overarching aim of the document, broadly corresponding to what the writer aims at doing to the reader (Rigotti 1993; Rigotti and Rocci 2001, 2006). From this perspective, we consider in particular the sequences fulfilling an argumentative function.
344 Rudi Palmieri 1. Introduction: Considering argumentation in the financial context It is now w... more 344 Rudi Palmieri 1. Introduction: Considering argumentation in the financial context It is now well-established within argumentation theory that, besides being affected by argumentation, the communication context significantly conditions argumentative discourse, and does it in many different ways and aspects, through all its constitutive dimensions (cf. van Eemeren 2010; Rigotti & Greco Morasso 2009b). This paper investigates how the argumentative situation affects arguers' strategic maneuvering, focusing particularly on the situational characteristics at ...
This volume systematically investigates the role of argumentation in takeover bids. The announcem... more This volume systematically investigates the role of argumentation in takeover bids. The announcement of these financial proposals triggers an argumentative situation, in which both the economic desirability and the social acceptability of the deal become argumentative issues for different classes of stakeholders (shareholders, employees, customers, etc.). The study focuses on the strategic maneuvers that corporate directors deploy in order to persuade their audiences while complying with precise regulatory requirements, designed to allow shareholders to make reasonable decisions. A conceptual reframing of takeovers as an argumentative context brings to light the different argumentative situations of friendly and hostile bids. The argumentative strategies that corporate directors adopt in the two situations are identified and analyzed on the basis of a corpus of takeover documents referring to offers launched in the UK market between 2006 and 2010. The argumentative reconstruction focuses in particular on the inferential configuration of arguments, which is accomplished by means of the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT). This kind of analysis enables capturing the inherently argumentative processes through which information becomes a relevant starting point for investment decisions.
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One of the crucial factors making economic-financial predictions worthy of being considered in investment decisions is argumentation, in particular the extent to which the predicted proposition follows from a plausible and acceptable reasoning. Starting from a corpus of 50 articles of the Italian economic-financial press, we consider the inferential dimension of prediction-oriented arguments, focusing on the locus, i.e. the ontological relation on which the connection between the argument(s) and the predictive conclusion rests.
All predictions found in the corpus were manually annotated with the software UAM Corpus Tool. For each of them we identified the source, which could be either the journalist him/herself or a third party, typically financial analysts or corporate actors. We distinguished mere predictive opinions from predictive standpoints, i.e. predictions for which the journalist advances one or more supportive arguments (either confirmatory of refutatory). For the latter category, we identified the locus referring to an adaptation of the taxonomy outlined by Rigotti (2009).
The findings highlight in particular the following three interesting aspects: (1) in predictions, journalists reinforce their stance by plausible justifications, but weaken it at the same time by marking it as uncertain and/or by using reported speech or evidential means to reduce their responsibility for the predictive speech act; (2) the justification of a predictive standpoint, by the journalist or by third parties, is mostly based on loci of causality, in particular on the locus from efficient cause, the locus from final cause and complex forms of causality where the involvement of rational agents is implied but defocused; (3) moreover, journalists refer to the predictive opinions of experts or corporate insiders to activate the locus from authority, either by explicit argumentation or implicitly, by reporting speech from reliable sources.
Our study suggests that the role of predictions in financial news is not so much that of giving any straightforward advice to investors, but rather that of providing chunks of sound argumentative reasoning, including both supportive evidence and rebuttals or refutatory moves, that the investor-reader might apply and combine in the highly uncertain context of financial markets. Overall, our findings shed light on how financial journalists fulfil the function of information intermediaries in finance.
Al fine di contestualizzare l’indagine semantica qui presentata, inizieremo col presentare brevemente la tematica affrontata nel progetto di ricerca. In seguito, verranno esposti e discussi i risultati dell’analisi.
Books
A conceptual reframing of takeovers as an argumentative context brings to light the different argumentative situations of friendly and hostile bids. The argumentative strategies that corporate directors adopt in the two situations are identified and analyzed on the basis of a corpus of takeover documents referring to offers launched in the UK market between 2006 and 2010. The argumentative reconstruction focuses in particular on the inferential configuration of arguments, which is accomplished by means of the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT). This kind of analysis enables capturing the inherently argumentative processes through which information becomes a relevant starting point for investment decisions.
Conference Presentations
One of the crucial factors making economic-financial predictions worthy of being considered in investment decisions is argumentation, in particular the extent to which the predicted proposition follows from a plausible and acceptable reasoning. Starting from a corpus of 50 articles of the Italian economic-financial press, we consider the inferential dimension of prediction-oriented arguments, focusing on the locus, i.e. the ontological relation on which the connection between the argument(s) and the predictive conclusion rests.
All predictions found in the corpus were manually annotated with the software UAM Corpus Tool. For each of them we identified the source, which could be either the journalist him/herself or a third party, typically financial analysts or corporate actors. We distinguished mere predictive opinions from predictive standpoints, i.e. predictions for which the journalist advances one or more supportive arguments (either confirmatory of refutatory). For the latter category, we identified the locus referring to an adaptation of the taxonomy outlined by Rigotti (2009).
The findings highlight in particular the following three interesting aspects: (1) in predictions, journalists reinforce their stance by plausible justifications, but weaken it at the same time by marking it as uncertain and/or by using reported speech or evidential means to reduce their responsibility for the predictive speech act; (2) the justification of a predictive standpoint, by the journalist or by third parties, is mostly based on loci of causality, in particular on the locus from efficient cause, the locus from final cause and complex forms of causality where the involvement of rational agents is implied but defocused; (3) moreover, journalists refer to the predictive opinions of experts or corporate insiders to activate the locus from authority, either by explicit argumentation or implicitly, by reporting speech from reliable sources.
Our study suggests that the role of predictions in financial news is not so much that of giving any straightforward advice to investors, but rather that of providing chunks of sound argumentative reasoning, including both supportive evidence and rebuttals or refutatory moves, that the investor-reader might apply and combine in the highly uncertain context of financial markets. Overall, our findings shed light on how financial journalists fulfil the function of information intermediaries in finance.
Al fine di contestualizzare l’indagine semantica qui presentata, inizieremo col presentare brevemente la tematica affrontata nel progetto di ricerca. In seguito, verranno esposti e discussi i risultati dell’analisi.
A conceptual reframing of takeovers as an argumentative context brings to light the different argumentative situations of friendly and hostile bids. The argumentative strategies that corporate directors adopt in the two situations are identified and analyzed on the basis of a corpus of takeover documents referring to offers launched in the UK market between 2006 and 2010. The argumentative reconstruction focuses in particular on the inferential configuration of arguments, which is accomplished by means of the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT). This kind of analysis enables capturing the inherently argumentative processes through which information becomes a relevant starting point for investment decisions.