The Role of Connectives for Straw Man Fallacies
摘要
This chapter discusses the role of causal connectives from a more detailed perspective. In this chapter, four experiments targeting different causal connectives and their influence on the acceptability of the straw man fallacy are presented. The results show that connectives are not interchangeable within the same language and that they each have specific functions. These functions translate to their role in the straw man fallacy. We will see that puisque (closest to English since) has a strong role as a forewarner, alerting the participants of attributed content. Comme (closest to English as) is on the other end of the spectrum, having no effect on the acceptability of the straw man. Étant donné que (closest to given that) and vu que (closest to seeing that) have more nuanced effects on the acceptability of the straw man, with vu que having a stronger connotation as forewarner and leading to lower acceptability when used to introduce a straw man compared to étant donné que.