Forms and Uses of Argument

Preface

This volume is the result of transdisciplinary studies carried out by professors and researchers working at the Department of Education and Human Sciences of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (except for Valentina Bianchi from the University for Foreigners of Siena, and Jennifer Moreno, from the Universitat Jaume I and Visiting Scholar at the Department mentioned above) cross-applying neuro-scientific, aesthetic, linguistic and rhetorical methods to focus on the concept of argumentation, much studied during the twentieth century and then forsaken. Since the common thread that links many interventions is figurative language – particularly metaphor – as an argumentative tool, the general theory is that formal approaches have prevailed in every field of human knowledge to the detriment of the processes that the mind performs to create them. Indeed, formal analyses have generated powerful tools for society to interpret the world – from quantitative analysis to statistical-based predictive models – leading us to believe that form is the purest essence, the “net weight” of things.

In truth, as documented by the contributions in this volume, the complexity of the neuro-cognitive processes based on the concepts of Identity, Integration, and Imagination has cast doubt even on the “primary” concept of identity (A = B), now replaced by conceptual blending – already theorized by that argumentation treatise that was The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities (2002) by Gilles Fauconnier and Marc Turner – and perfectly embodied by metaphor and metonymy. “Conceptual blending” is an argumentative strategy that leads to the co-activation of two mental spaces (input spaces) that project some of their constituent elements to map a third hybrid space (blended space) that selects the most advantageous elements of each, creating – thanks to them – a completely new and emerging structure of meaning, which does not coincide with any of the starting inputs.

This is how conceptual and argumentative models underlining everyday thought and imagination emerge, where – let it be understood – the whole process of blending is non-conscious: a complex and in-depth exploration work is needed to highlight the structure underlying the meanings that arise from the integration process, which holds the formidable power to give us genuine acknowledgments. All this is clear in Stefano Calabrese’s contributions (dedicated to the role of argumentative predictor covered by Pathosformeln and iconemi), Annamaria Contini (dedicated to the theoretical-modeling power of metaphor ←7 | 8→through the contribution of philosophers and scholars of the second half of the twentieth century), Valentina Bianchi, Maria Elena Favilla, Michela Maschietto (dedicated to the argumentative strategies that primary school teachers must face), Valentina Conti (focused on metonymic logic as an explanatory model of infections in the medical area), Alice Giuliani (who worked on the fundamental topic of the twentieth-century theories of metaphor), and finally Jennifer Moreno (who studies the metaphorological differences in the stories told by the sick as an argumentative tool to better deal with suffering).