Zacht Ei

Doorbakken kan altijd nog


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...)

0:51

permalink comment(s) (0) trackback(s) (0)


« 

Katrina links roundup   That's one way of dealing with trolls

 »


Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry


Comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(By submitting comments you agree to have read and accepted the forum rules. If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)



Remember me?