Chapter published in:
Conspiracy Theory Discourses
Edited by Massimiliano Demata, Virginia Zorzi and Angela Zottola
[Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture 98] 2022
► pp. 99–120

Chapter 5
“You want me to be wrong”

Expert ethos, (de-)legitimation, and ethotic straw men as discursive resources for conspiracy theories

| Universities of Lausanne and Neuchâtel
| University of Fribourg

This chapter discusses features of conspiratorial discourse related to the representation of social actors through the lens of rhetorical and argumentative analysis. Specifically, it identifies a previously undocumented variant of the straw man fallacy (a misrepresentation of an opponent’s position meant to refute it more easily), namely the ethotic straw man, which unscrupulous arguers can use to legitimate their own credibility and undermine their opponents’, thereby evading scientific discussion of relevant issues. A TV-interview with French virologist Didier Raoult, who championed hydroxychloroquine-based treatments in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, is taken as a case in point to explain why such quasi-populistic discourse, prominently centred on questions of ethos, fits conspiratorial narratives so well.

Keywords: rhetoric, argumentation, ethos , ethotic straw man, legitimation, de-legitimation, conspiracy, Raoult, expertise
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Conspiracy theories as argumentative objects
  • 3. Ethos : A multi-layered notion
    • 3.1Situational ethos
    • 3.2Communicational ethos
    • 3.3Discursive ethos
  • 4.The straw man fallacy: From propositional to non-propositional misrepresentations
  • 5.Case study
    • 5.1Delegitimating the media by misrepresenting their true nature
    • 5.2Delegitimating the media by misrepresenting their intentions and emotions
    • 5.3Legitimating authority by ridiculing the interviewer
    • 5.4Legitimating an ethos of victim by misrepresenting media intentions
  • 6.Why ethotic straw men are likely to appeal to conspiracy theories
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 01 December 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/dapsac.98.05her
References
Aikin, Scott, and John Casey
2011 “Straw Men, Weak Men, and Hollow Men.” Argumentation 25 (1): 87–105. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016 “Straw Men, Iron Men, and Argumentative Virtue.” Topoi 35: 431–440. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Amossy, Ruth
(ed.) 1999 Images de Soi Dans Le Discours: La Construction de l’ethos. Sciences Des Discours. Lausanne and Paris: Delachaux et Niestlé.Google Scholar
Barnes, Jonathan
2014 Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 1: The Revised Oxford Translation. Vol. 192. Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann
1990 The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Bonnafous, Simone
2002 “La Question de l’ethos et Du Genre En Communication Politique’. In Actes Du Premier Colloque Franco-Mexicain Des Sciences de La Communication, 35–41.Google Scholar
Byford, Jovan
2011 Conspiracy Theories. London: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cattani, Adelino
2020 “Persuading and Convincing.” In OSSA Conference Archive, OSSA 12: Evidence, Persuasion & Diversity. Windsor, ON.Google Scholar
Cornilliat, François, and Richard Lockwood
(eds.) 2000 Ethos et pathos : le statut du sujet rhétorique : actes du Colloque international de Saint-Denis (19–21 juin 1997). Colloques, congrès et conférences sur la Renaissance 21. Paris: Honoré Champion.Google Scholar
Doury, Marianne, and Pierre Lefébure
2006 “« Intérêt Général », « Intérêts Particuliers ». La Construction de l’Ethos dans un Débat public.” Questions de communication, no. 9 (06–30): 47–71. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Duthie, Rory, Katarzyna Budzynska, and Chris Reed
2016 “Mining Ethos in Political Debate’. In Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications. Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Computational Models of Argument (COMMA 2016), ed. by Pietro Baroni, Thomas F. Gordon, Tatjana Scheffler, and Manfred Stede, 299–310. Netherlands: IOS Press.Google Scholar
Eemeren, Frans H. van, and Rob Grootendorst
2004 A Systematic Theory of Argumentation: The Pragma-Dialectical Approach. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Eemeren, Frans H. van, and Robert Grootendorst
1992 Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective. Routledge.Google Scholar
Errecart, Amaia
2019 “De La Sociabilité Associative : Formes et Enjeux de La Construction d’un Ethos Collectif.” Mots, no. 121 (November): 89–105. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Flowerdew, John, and John E. Richardson
(eds.) 2018 The Routledge Handbook of Critical Discourse Studies. First issued in paperback. Routledge Handbooks in Applied Linguistics. London New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.Google Scholar
Fuhrer, Joffrey, and Florian Cova
2020 ‘“Quick and Dirty”: Intuitive Cognitive Style Predicts Trust in Didier Raoult and His Hydroxychloroquine-Based Treatment against COVID-19.” PsyArXiv. https://​osf​.io​/ju62p. DOI logo
Garmendia, Joana
2018 Irony. Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1959 The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
1982 Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. 1st Pantheon Books ed. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Govier, Trudy
2010 A Practical Study of Argument. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning.Google Scholar
Herman, Thierry
2005 “L’analyse de l’ethos Oratoire’. In Des Discours Aux Textes: Modèles et Analyses, ed. by Philippe Lane, 157–182. Rouen: Publication des Universités de Rouen et du Havre.Google Scholar
2010 “L’irrésistible Rhétorique de La Conspiration: Le Cas de l’imposture de La Lune.” In Les Rhétoriques de La Conspiration, 217–236. Paris: CNRS Editions. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hofstadter, Richard
1964 The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays. 1st edition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jacquin, Jérôme
2018 “Ethos and Inference: Insights from a Multimodal Perspective.” In Argumentation and Inference: Proceedings of the 2nd European Conference on Argumentation, Fribourg 2017, ed. by Steve Oswald and Didier Maillat, 2:413–423. London: College Publications.Google Scholar
Keeley, Brian L.
1999 “Of Conspiracy Theories.” The Journal of Philosophy 96 (3): 109–126. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Krieg-Planque, Alice
2019 “L’ethos de Rupture En Politique: « Un Ouvrier, c’est Là Pour Fermer Sa Gueule ! », Philippe Poutou.” Argumentation et Analyse Du Discours, no. 23 (October). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lehti, Lotta
2013 “Genre et Ethos: Des Voies Discursives de La Construction d’une Image de l’auteur Dans Les Blogs de Politiciens’. PhD Thesis, Finland: University of Turku.
Lewiński, Marcin, and Steve Oswald
2013 “When and How Do We Deal with Straw Men? A Normative and Cognitive Pragmatic Account.” Journal of Pragmatics, Biases and constraints in communication: Argumentation, persuasion and manipulation, 59, Part B: 164–77. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Macagno, Fabrizio, and Douglas Walton
2017 Interpreting Straw Man Argumentation: The Pragmatics of Quotation and Reporting. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mudde, Cas, and Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser
2017 Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Very Short Introductions. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Oswald, Steve
2016 “Conspiracy and Bias: Argumentative Features and Persuasiveness of Conspiracy Theories.” In Argumentation, Objectivity, and Bias: Proceedings of the 11th International Conference of the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation (OSSA), 18–21 May 2016, edited by Pat Bondy and Laura Benacquista, 1–16. Windsor, ON: OSSA. https://​scholar​.uwindsor​.ca​/ossaarchive​/OSSA11​/papersandcommentaries​/168
Oswald, Steve, and Thierry Herman
2016 “Argumentation, Conspiracy and the Moon: A Rhetorical-Pragmatic Analysis.” In Case Studies in Discourse Analysis, edited by Marcel Danesi and Sara Greco, 295–330. Münich: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar
Saussure, Louis de
2018 “The Straw Man Fallacy as a Prestige-Gaining Device.” In Argumentation and Language – Linguistic, Cognitive and Discursive Explorations, edited by Steve Oswald, Jérôme Jacquin, and Thierry Herman, 171–190. Cham: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Schumann, Jennifer, Sandrine Zufferey, and Steve Oswald
2019 “What Makes a Straw Man Acceptable? Three Experiments Assessing Linguistic Factors.” Journal of Pragmatics 141: 1–15. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sunstein, Cass R., and Adrian Vermeule
2009 “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures.” Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (2): 202–227. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Talisse, Robert, and Scott Aikin
2006 “Two Forms of the Straw Man.” Argumentation 20 (3): 345–352. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Theo
1996 “The Representation of Social Actors’. In Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis, ed by Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard, 1:32–70. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
2007 “Legitimation in Discourse and Communication.” Discourse & Communication 1 (1): 91–112. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Walton, Douglas, Christopher Reed, and Fabrizio Macagno
2008 Argumentation Schemes. 1st edition. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre, and Robyn Carston
2019 “Pragmatics and the Challenge of “Non-Propositional” Effects.” Journal of Pragmatics, Quo Vadis, Pragmatics?, 145 (May): 31–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber
2012 “Explaining Irony.” In Meaning and Relevance, edited by Deirdre Wilson and Dan Sperber, 123–145. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wodak, Ruth, and Michael Meyer
2015 Methods of Critical Discourse Studies. Sage.Google Scholar
Zarefsky, David
2014 Rhetorical Perspectives on Argumentation: Selected Essays by David Zarefsky. New York: Springer International Publishing AG. DOI logoGoogle Scholar