Empedocles: European Journal for the Philosophy of Communication - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2012

Following a review of a call for a new rhetoric in the 1970s with new conceptualizations of language as symbolic and its occurrence within symbolic forms, this article details the role of ethnography in rhetorical analysis. Through a review of those studies that have examined the indigenous understandings of the choice of when or when not to speak and through what cultural frames, we advance a study of rhetoric within a study of localized cultural discourses. The article concludes by bridging the prevailing understandings of rhetoric within an ethnography of communication suggesting that cultural analysis is not just an optional analytical method for consideration, but a crucial part of future rhetorical analyses.

The amount of social support literature in the field of interpersonal communication has increased steadily. In the last decade, however, no one has pushed for a conclusion as to what kind of phenomenon social support is. This article aims to describe the essence of social support. The essence is what must be present in all the phenomena that claim to be social support. The study uses phenomenological reduction and imag¬inative variation (1) on social support definitions and (2) on the empirical material of support in men’s friendships. The synthesis of the two sets of material deduces the essence of social support both theoretically and empirically. According to the phenomenological reduction the essence of social support is the awareness of a real or potential void in a person’s life experience, and of otherness that intends to alter that experience to achieve wholeness. Supportive communication is the manifestation of the essence of social support in interpersonal relationships.

Privacy concerns have gained relevance as mobile phone use has increased over the years. Since privacy management behaviour is tied to the cultural context, the current study investigates the interrelation of mobile phone use and privacy management in four countries representing different communication cultures. University students (N=1000) from Finland, Germany, Korea and the United States were administered a self-report questionnaire designed to assess characteristics of their mobile phone usage as well as factors associated with listening and privacy management behaviour. Results show both similarities and differences in privacy management behaviour during mobile phone conversations. Privacy management theory is explored as a framework to interpret the relevant patterns of behaviour. Future research utilizing qualitative and other methodologies is needed to extend and expand upon these results.

This study examines topics that participants discuss in the course of mediation sessions in order to understand how these topics indicate whether a mediation session is on-task or off-task. An existing collection of eighteen transcripts from audio recordings of mediation sessions at a mediation centre in the western United States serves as a source of interactional data. On-task topics are those that contribute to the institutional goal of a mediation session. They are centred on the primary reason for attending a mediation session, necessary conditions and ways to resolve the dispute, factors that can hinder this process, a technical side of this process, and information about involved parties that is relevant to the process. Topics that mediators treat as off-task are those that do not contribute to achieving the institutional goal of interaction. They revolve around the parties’ negative behaviour, financial issues, court process, parties’ interests and private matters. Although mediators have a general idea about what is appropriate to discuss in the course of a session, what is on-task or off-task is negotiated and constructed in the situation. The findings enrich our knowledge of institutional talk, argumentation and communication design. First, the analysis of topics shows how mediators and clients enact institutions through their talk, how institutional mediation talk is, and the tension between the interaction order and the institutional order. Second, topics contribute to shaping disagreement space, and mediators control what can become arguable by introducing institutionally appropriate topics and terminating off-task ones. Third, topics serve as interactional material for creating a specific type of interactivity.

This article holds that ability to support one’s opinions with arguments, awareness of the arguments for other opinions, and insight into the superiority of some arguments are basic requirements for rational discourse. Based on a content analysis of Swiss Italian newspaper coverage of a controversy over a smoke-free law introduced and finally implemented in the canton of Ticino in 2007 and on a five-wave panel survey of public opinion on the issue, the article describes elements of the argumentative structure of news coverage of this issue and relates them to rationality requirements. It finds that the newspapers offered a wide variety of arguments to readers (articulation function) when political activity to introduce a ban intensified, and especially when arguments mattered as a referendum approached. Papers displayed a reasonable and differentiated picture of arguments, contributing to a unique pattern of weighting and evaluating them. Neither newspaper coverage nor public opinion showed much sign of change, which speaks against a reaction to superior arguments. Finally, the newspaper bias towards arguments for the ban and their inclination to publish objections to arguments against may have contributed to a widespread lack of awareness of arguments against the ban among people favouring it. Thus, evidence of the rationality of argumentative structures is mixed, and further enquiry into this subject is encouraged.