Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


Feigning Objectivity.pdf (661.73 KB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Feigning Objectivity: An Overlooked Conversational Strategy in Everyday Disputes

McFarland, Kathryn
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1426205479

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Philosophy.
In this dissertation, I reconsider core cases of alleged “faultless disagreement,” beginning with disputes about matters of taste. I argue that these cases demand no revisions to traditional truth-conditional semantics and that, instead, their interesting features—those features that theorists have thought to pose difficulties to traditional semantics—are in fact best explained at the level of pragmatics, rhetoric, and sociolinguistics. Specifically, I maintain that such disputes arise in situations in which, given conversational aims, it is rhetorically effective for disputants to feign contradiction—posturing as if their dispute concerned the truth of an “objective” proposition, even if this is not in fact the case. I demonstrate, moreover, than many canonical cases of so-called “merely verbal” disputes share these same interesting features of “faultless” disputes about taste—and that these disputes as well can be explained as rhetorically effective instances of merely “feigned” objectivity. Philosophical discussion of both types of disputes has been hampered by their uncritical assimilation to canonical “faultless” disputes—despite the differences in social role that become evident when the disputes are situated in their context of production—and this has led philosophers too often to neglect other important social and rhetorical reasons for which speakers express disagreement.
William Taschek (Committee Chair)
Richard Samuels (Committee Member)
Stewart Shapiro (Committee Member)
233 p.
Language; Philosophy

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • McFarland, K. (2015). Feigning Objectivity: An Overlooked Conversational Strategy in Everyday Disputes [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1426205479

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • McFarland, Kathryn. Feigning Objectivity: An Overlooked Conversational Strategy in Everyday Disputes. 2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1426205479.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • McFarland, Kathryn. "Feigning Objectivity: An Overlooked Conversational Strategy in Everyday Disputes." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1426205479

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1426205479
1,310
© 2015, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.