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Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Subsidize a writer, tell me what to read!

My book list for my MA degree came in today, and guess what: three books on the list contain the word 'dialectical'. Wake up and smell the reductionist garlic.

Upon further examination, it turned out to be slightly less bad than I had feared, as all books deal with a form of argumentation theory, invented by Frans van Eemeren, called the 'pragma-dialectical approach'.

Because I want to keep my reputation as a genuine smartass, I'd like to read some counterpoints as well. I've already bothered one rather unsuspecting philosophy professor tonight, but I figured: why stop there when I can bother about 2,000 people more.

(Especially since one of the first pdf thingies that came up when I googled 'pragma-dialectical approach' was an article by a British Ph.D. student who used Van Eemeren's theories to point out that everyone who doesn't agree with his view that Western society consists of imperialist maniacs is a racist using foul rhetorical tricks to disguise hate speech; said Ph. D student of course being completely free of any rhetorical missteps himself.)

I'm sure there are a few smart people out there reading this, so do your worst and provide me with a book list from hell.

(To offer some further encouragement: we'll get to critique Michael Moore this semester...)

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