Abstract
The present essay discusses a notorious rhetoric means familiar to (probably) all scholars in the social sciences and humanities including philosophy: name-dropping. Defined as the excessive over-use of authoritative names, I argue that it is a pernicious practice leading to collective disorientation in spoken discourse. First, I discuss name-dropping in terms of informal logic as an ad verecundiam-type fallacy. Insofar this perspective proves to lack contextual sensitivity, name-dropping is portrayed in Goffman’s terms as a more general social practice. By narrowing down the focus to social science and the humanities, the essay emphasizes its function of discursive legitimation. This view, I argue, is incomplete because it overlooks the basic mechanism beneath. Names not only provide legitimation of but also orientation in discourse. Consequently, two tipping points—detour and disorientation—are proposed as benchmarks for it to become problematic. The conclusion re-widens the argument’s scope by suggesting questions for future inquiries.
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Notes
From the very start, I’d like to make the reader aware that my argument aims at spoken discourse rather than at written discourse, because, to a large extent, I focus on speaker–audience relations. Under the conditions of strict textuality, the phenomenon in question might behave differently. This stipulation, however, shall express the ambition to grasp the phenomenon more comprehensively in future studies.
I’d like to thank an anonymous reviewer for emphasizing the importance of this qualification/distinction.
It needs to be noted that this and some of the following statements aren’t based on empirical findings—yet. To my knowledge, no studies have been conducted on the issue of name-dropping in the social sciences and humanities up to this point. Thus, I ask the reader to understand my ‘intuitions’ as research hypotheses for a theoretical framework this article will try to outline below.
This, of course, is a stark simplification. Since Copi and Cohen’s seminal account, the debate on fallacies in general and the ad verecundiam in particular has increased a lot [for a recent and influential account see Walton (2008, 209–245)]. The following paragraphs will, of course, not be able to incorporate all the arguments (may it only be for reasons of brevitas). Thus, I will emphasize only those aspects of name-dropping as an informal logical fallacy that are relevant to the rest of my discussion, which will deviate from informal logic and, instead, turn to sociological rhetoric.
It almost seems inevitable here to think of Foucault’s insistence on the power/knowledge nexus in every discourse (Foucault 2001, 111ff.).
This observation of name-dropping often resulting in annoyance and even embarrassment from the side of the audience which I have stated in the beginning of the present essay, has a variety of implications that cannot be discussed here in their entirety. Nonetheless, to give the reader a sense of the scope and wider theoretical framework of this investigation, I might term this special sort of an audience’s disapproval toward a speaker emotional criticism. This term is not fully developed into an analytical tool yet. But it is meant to raise awareness for the more implicit, emotional layer beneath the verbal rhetoric of our academic discourse. Emotional criticism (again, of an audience toward a speaker) wants to capture the “affectual atmosphere” (Anderson 2009; Seyfert 2012) in the location where the academic debate takes place. I think that everyone who has given a talk in a room full of strangers knows how uncomfortable and even hostile this atmosphere can get, and thus recognizes its social efficacy. Analytically grasping it means to find a measure for what Jeffrey Alexander in his cultural pragmatics, which accounts mostly for political speeches, has termed “fusion” between an audience and a speaker (Alexander 2010; Alexander et al. 2006). In the academic world, the mentioned atmosphere regulates the degree of agreeability between audience and speaker, and thus contributes to the process of collectively acknowledging truth claims. Both, the affectual atmosphere and the emotional criticism that occasionally follows from it, are connected to a set of social and academic norms. For instance, should a speaker try to persuade his audience into accepting her particular interpretation of William James’ account of religion by a wordy excursion into the author’s intellectual origins, anecdotes about his academic friends and foes, erudite explanations of James’ impact on later generations of scholars etc., it is easy to get the impression that the speaker is getting “off track” and, in the worst case, not being sincere about both her position and proposition. Since, in academic circles, it is good custom to present one’s (pro)position in no uncertain manner, the speaker’s demeanor breaches the implicit norms of clarity, understandability, and straightforwardness of one’s argumentation. To examine name-dropping in this way can be one (small) part of a broader cultural sociology of emotions in science. This type of sociology would affiliate itself with the rhetoric tradition by describing epistemological concerns in the empiricist language of social practices, and thus try to unveil the emotional thrust of, and cultural norms in, professionalized audiences as they establish and acknowledge truth claims interactively.
Walton (2008, 218ff.), for this purpose, has developed six criteria to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate appeals to authority. I have only mentioned a few, such as expertise, field, and consistency. All others would require actual empirical data—something that has not been acquired yet for the academic realm, at least when it comes to name-dropping as a distinct (sociological) phenomenon.
For such an argument regarding the history of philosophy, see Collins (1998).
“All theory,” Polanyi (1962, 4) writes, “may be regarded as some kind of map”.
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Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Marcel Schwarz, Jürgen Mittelstraß and Bernhard Giesen for their helpful comments and criticisms. The same holds true for the three anonymous reviewers’ time and effort.
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Kray, TR. On Name-Dropping: The Mechanisms Behind a Notorious Practice in Social Science and the Humanities. Argumentation 30, 423–441 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-015-9362-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-015-9362-6