Quantification Rhetoric—cancer on Television

This paper is concerned with quantification rhetoric: the manner in which numerical and non-numerical quantity formulations are deployed when proposing and undermining argumentative cases. The analysis is focused on a set of materials derived from the making and response to a current affairs television programme about the (putative) lack of success in charity-supported cancer research in providing effective treatments. The study demonstrates: (a) how a range of calculation, fractionation, aggregation and presentational practices can be selectively drawn on to form the scaffolding of contrasting versions; (b) the systematic translation between numerical (e.g. `1 percent') and non-numerical (e.g. `small') formulations to obtain specific argumentative effects; and (c) the role of basic, but often inexplicit, definitional decisions to both constitute phenomena in a manner that makes them countable, and also to select arenas for the effective advancing of quantification argument. Overall, the study illustrates the efficacy of recent discourse theory and analysis for understanding the rhetorical orientation of quantitative versions of the world.

[1]  Jonathan Potter,et al.  Community leaders: A device for warranting versions of crowd events , 1990 .

[2]  J. Potter.  Testability, Flexibility: Kuhnian Values in Scientists' Discourse Concerning Theory Choice , 1984 .

[3]  D. L. Wieder,et al.  Language and social reality , 1974 .

[4]  J. A. Lee.  Innocent victims and evil-doers , 1984 .

[5]  Derek Edwards,et al.  Discourse: Noun, Verb or Social Practice? , 1990 .

[6]  Margaret Wetherell,et al.  Accomplishing attitudes: Fact and evaluation in racist discourse , 1988 .

[7]  John Heritage,et al.  Generating Applause: A Study of Rhetoric and Response at Party Political Conferences , 1986, American Journal of Sociology.

[8]  R. Watson,et al.  The presentation of 'victim' and 'motive' in discourse: the case of police interrogations and interviews , 1983 .

[9]  D. R. Watson,et al.  Interviews and the interactional construction of accounts of homosexual identity , 1982 .

[10]  D. MacKenzie,et al.  Statistical Theory and Social Interests , 1978, Social studies of science.

[11]  J. Potter,et al.  Social representations in the ordinary explanation of a ‘riot’ , 1985 .

[12]  M. Wowk,et al.  Blame allocation, sex and gender in a murder interrogation , 1984 .

[13]  Anita M. Pomerantz,et al.  Telling My Side: “Limited Access’ as a “Fishing” Device , 1980 .

[14]  Anita M. Pomerantz.  Extreme case formulations: A way of legitimizing claims , 1986, Asking and Telling in Conversation.

[15]  Michael Billig,et al.  Prejudice, categorization and particularization: from a perceptual to a rhetorical approach , 1985 .

[16]  T. Pinch,et al.  The Hard Sell: `Patter Merchanting' and the Strategic (Re)Production and Local Management of Economic Reasoning in the Sales Routines of Markt Pitchers , 1986 .

[17]  M. Billig.  The argumentative nature of holding strong views: a case study , 1989 .

[18]  D. Smith.  `K is Mentally Ill' the Anatomy of a Factual Account , 1978 .

[19]  A.W. McHoul,et al.  Why there are no guarantees for interrogators , 1987 .

[20]  S. Reicher,et al.  Discourses of community and conflict: The organization of social categories in accounts of a ‘riot’ , 1987 .

[21]  Steve Woolgar,et al.  Ontological Gerrymandering: The Anatomy of Social Problems Explanations , 1985 .

[22]  Michael Billig.  Psychology, rhetoric, and cognition , 1989 .

[23]  Derek Edwards,et al.  Nigel Lawson's tent: Discourse analysis, attribution theory and the social psychology of fact , 1990 .

[24]  Steve Woolgar,et al.  Time and documents in researcher interaction: Some ways of making out what is happening in experimental science , 1988 .

[25]  Mary Elizabeth Lynch,et al.  The externalized retina: Selection and mathematization in the visual documentation of objects in the life sciences , 1988 .