Persuasion and argumentation in cruise advertising: a case study on cruise catalogues

The second part of my study comes from the argumentation theory which is study argumentation.
What is Argumentation? It is the act or process of forming reasons and of drawing conclusions and applying them to a case in discussion. Mostly, it is defined as a verbal activity that can be performed orally as well as writing. As we can affirm that argumentation is useful during a discussion in order to reach an agreement between the parts interested, I can define it as the activity of defending certain belief standpoints in order to make them acceptable to another part. One of the main characteristics of the argumentation theory is the reasonableness, even if in some cases the argumentation itself lack of reasonableness. When an argumentation is necessary? In most of the cases it is necessary when a different opinion arises, and two or more parts do not agree on the standpoints of the other parts. We have a different opinion when someone put a standpoint and the other has some doubts. When we talk about different opinions between the parts, we can have two different positions. One is related to facts of events, and it usually gives judgments or advice. The other position can be a positive, negative or a neutral one. During a difference of opinion, there is always at least one person who puts forward a positive or negative standpoint, and another part who has doubt or does not commit to any particular standpoint.
People have different opinions on many subjects, for this reason a proposition can be related to a simple matter (or a highly complex matter) or to a scope. Moreover, a proposition can apply to everybody or some selected people, or it can be considered as a way to totally convince someone or just a simple suggestion. When a simple difference of opinion occurs and it puts in doubt the standpoint we talk about an elementary form of differences of opinion. If it involves only one proposition it is called single; if there are more propositions we call it multiple differences of opinion. Both simple and multiple opinions can be mixed and non mixed. So, we can distinguish four types of differences of opinion:
- Single non mixed is when there is just one opinion and only one party that have to defend it.
- Single mixed is like the previous, but there is more than one party that defends a standpoint.
- Multiple non mixed consists in more than one opinion, it usually happens when there are more than one issues discussed at the same time.
- Multiple mixed includes difference of opinion in which the standpoints, which respect the same proposition, are opposite to each other.

The argumentation discussion that I have just described is not always applied in practice. For example, the opening face can be short; or the conclusion of a discussion is more often explicit; in some cases the parties do not use all the four steps. All these examples do not mean that the model is not useful. It allows understanding what in a real-life argumentation discussion goes wrong and permits to identify what elements are missing or inadequately represented.
Van Eemeren (2001) affirms that there are cases in which standpoints are unexpressed because they seem obvious or because they want to cover up some weakness of the argumentation. Even if the standpoint is not expressed, the antagonist can criticize it, so the protagonist has to be aware of the weakness of the unexpressed premise. During an implicit argumentation indirectness is the main tool. How can someone know that something different is meant from what is said? In order to answer to this question, it is important to know and follow the Communication Principles. They try to make their contributions to the communication match the purpose of their communication. [...]