Research

My current areas of research lie at the interface between (cognitive) pragmatics, linguistics, cognitive psychology, argumentation theory and discourse analysis and are broadly concerned with the relationship between language and cognition. Nowadays, my research mainly covers issues in argumentation theory and pragmatics.

Argumentation theory. After my PhD research, which was devoted to the pragmatics of uncooperative communication, I have taken a strong interest in the study of argumentative practices, which I have approached since from four complementary perspectives:

  1. From a methodological perspective, I am interested in showing how cognitive pragmatics – in particular the framework’s ability to account for the notion of commitment attribution (Morency et al. 2008, Saussure & Oswald 2008, 2009) – can shed light on the reconstruction of material that arguers leave implicit (both premises and standpoints) in their argumentations (see Oswald 2016b). In my bilateral project AMoRe, I am leading the Swiss team in the joint development, with the Polish team of the project, of a methodological protocol to integrate computational and experimental approaches to argumentation.

  2. From a theoretical perspective, I investigate how cognitive pragmatic accounts of information processing are able to shed light on traditional issues in argumentation theory such as argumentative effectiveness. The originality of this research lies both in its linguistic and pragmatic approach to rhetorical effectiveness (Oswald 2016a) and in its attempt to exploit the theoretical convergence between argumentation research and cognitive science (see Oswald & Hart 2013, Oswald & Rihs 2014, Lewiński & Oswald 2013, Oswald & Lewiński 2014). See also my co-edited book with Thierry Herman (2014) and my recent co-edited special issue of the Journal of Argumentation in Context (2020).

  3. From an empirical perspective, I am interested in argumentative features of public discourse and conspiracy theories (CTs) in particular. Drawing on interdisciplinary research on CTs, I try to account for the argumentative patterns they exhibit in order to provide answers to their circulation at the population scale, which amounts, in this work, to assessing the reasons for their persuasiveness (see Oswald 2016b, Oswald & Herman 2016, Oswald & Herman forth.).

  4. From an experimental perspective, I currently lead two research projects. Project IMAFUN (SNF project IZCOZ0_198170) investigates the functions and uses of implicit meaning in argumentation (particularly how rhetorically effective the use of implicit meaning may be in arguments). Project AMoRe (100019E_202273), conducted in collaboration with partners from the Warsaw University of Technology, Poland, studies the rhetorical effectiveness of rephrase strategies in argumentative discourse. I was also involved in two research projects which investigated the cognitive parameters behind the effectiveness of two argumentative fallacies, namely the ad populum fallacy (Ozols et al. 2015) and the straw man fallacy (Schumann et al. 2019, Schumann at al. 2020). The common thread to these experimental designs is to identify the linguistic and pragmatic conditions under which these fallacies are likely not to be noticed as such, which, in turns, would explain their rhetorical appeal.

Pragmatics. I am currently investigating the phenomenon of insinuation, by tackling the quasi-consensual claim that insinuation is not committing by virtue of its plausible deniability (Oswald, forth.), and have always been interested, more generally, by covert speech acts (manipulation, deception, dogwhisles, etc.), which are also part of the phenomena under investigation in project IMAFUN.

Research domains

I conduct research at the interface of the following disciplines:

  • Pragmatics

  • Argumentation theory

  • Cognitive Science

  • Discourse Analysis


These are my main research topics:

  • Cognitive pragmatic aspects of argumentation

  • Deception and uncooperative communication

  • Commitment in linguistics and pragmatics

  • Persuasiveness of conspiracy theories

  • Humour

PhD thesis

Pragmatics of uncooperative and manipulative communication (defended 13 December 2010), under the supervision of prof. Louis de Saussure (University of Neuchâtel). Examined by prof. Didier Maillat (University of Fribourg), prof. Frans van Eemeren (University of Amsterdam), prof. Paul Chilton (University of Lancaster), prof. Fabrice Clément (University of Neuchâtel).

Available here [pdf]

Abstract

This dissertation tackles the issue of uncooperative and manipulative communication from a cognitive pragmatic perspective and develops and documents the fundamental hypothesis that its success depends on whether the manipulator manages to keep the manipulative intention concealed. Specifically, manipulative communication is conceived here as a twofold process meant to i) mislead the addressee into processing limited sets of contextual information and ii) prevent her/him from processing contextual information that would be detrimental to the success of the manipulative attempt.

The dissertation draws on several fields of research in the Humanities and attempts to interface findings from cognitive psychology (mainly research on cognitive biases) and argumentation theory (research on fallacies) into a consistent cognitive pragmatic account of information-processing. To this end, the so-called Contextual Selection Constraint model (CSC) is presented; this model specifies from a theoretical perspective how certain linguistic and argumentative strategies can be used to constrain the comprehension procedure so that targeted assumptions end up partaking in the derivation of meaning and other unwanted assumptions turn out to be disregarded – or unprocessed altogether. These possibilities are conceived as natural potential consequences of our cognitive system’s inherent fallibility.