Page 404 - Handbooks of Applied Linguistics Communication Competence Language and Communication Problems Practical Solutions

382 Martin Reisigl

are employed in order to justify unequal treatment and the violation of basic
democratic principles and human rights.
Among these fallacies are the argumentum ad baculum (a verbal threat or in-
timidation instead of using plausible and relevant arguments), the argumentum
ad hominem (a verbal attack on the opponent’s personality and character instead
of trying to refute the opponent’s arguments), the argumentum ad populum (an
appeal to “masses” of people, often aiming to justify prejudiced emotions and
opinions of a social group, instead of relevant arguments), the argumentum ad
verecundiam (the misplaced appeal to deep respect and reverence for – alleg-
edly – competent, superior, sacrosanct or unimpeachable authorities, instead of
relevant arguments), the argumentum ad nominem (a fallacious argumentation
scheme based on the conclusion rule that the literal meaning of a person’s name,
a thing’s name or an action’s name applies to the person, thing or action them-
selves, just in the sense of “nomen est omen”), the post hoc, ergo propter hoc
(this fallacy consists in mixing up a temporally chronological relationship with
a causally consequential one, in the sense of “A before B, therefore B because of
A”), the argumentum ad consequentiam (a fallacious causal argumentation
scheme that stresses the consequences of a (non-)decision or (non-)action, with-
out these consequences being plausibly derivable from the (non)-decision or
(non)-action), the hasty generalization (an argumentation scheme based on an
empirically, statistically unconfirmed over-generalization; in fact, many racist,
ethnicist, nationalist and sexist prejudices rely on this fallacy, which takes a part
for the whole), etc. (for more details and examples of these fallacies, see Reisigl
and Wodak 2001: 71–74).
In discourses related to problems of social discrimination it is sometimes
difficult to distinguish between fallacious and more or less plausible argumen-
tation schemes, which, in argumentation theory, are designated as “topoi”.
“Topoi” are those obligatory parts of argumentation which serve as “conclusion
rules”. They link up the argument or arguments with the concluding claim (see
Kienpointner 1992: 194). A typical topos in the discourse about migrants and
migration is the topos of danger or topos of threat. It means that if a political ac-
tion or decision bears dangerous, threatening consequences, one should not per-
form or do it, or if there is a specific danger and threat, one should do something
against it. This topos is often fallaciously realized, if immigrants are “xeno-
phobically” depicted as a threat to national identity and culture against which
the government should proceed. This and other content-related topoi and the re-
spective content-related fallacies to be found in the discourses about migrants
and asylum seekers (e.g. the discourse about migration and the discourse about
asylum) are, among others, analysed in Kienpointner and Kindt (1997), Wen-
geler (1997), Reeves (1983) and Reisigl and Wodak (2001: 75–80).