1. DISCOURSIUM for Cooperative
Examination of Information in the
Context of the Pragmatic Web
Fahri Yetim,
Cologne, Germany
Email: Yetim@acm.org

2. Outline
 Theoretical Background
 Examination Dialogue
 Meta-Communication Concepts for Examining
Information
 From Theory to Practice: Modeling with
Compendium
 From Compendium to DISCOURSIUM
 Critical Examination of Information Objects
 Critical Examination of Arguments (or Maps)
 Conclusions

3. Theoretical Background:
Characteristics of Examination Dialogue
 Dunne et al., 2005:
“In such dialogues one party – the Questioner Q – elicits statements
and opinions from another – the Responder R – with the aim of
discovering R’s position on some topic, either to gain insight into R’s
understanding and knowledge of the topic, or to expose an
inconsistency in R’s position. ” [p. 1560].
 Goals of examination dialogues (Walton, 2006)
 Extraction
 of information
Testing of the reliability of information
 Levels:
 Understanding
 and clarification of the meaning
Critical discussion of the arguments (attributed to the authors)
“It is the joining together of these two levels that represents the
structure of examination and defines it as a type of dialogue” (Walton,
2006, p.775).

4. Architecture of Meta-Communication
Meta-Communication Layer
Discourse Level
Conversation for Clarification level
Communication Action Layer

5. The Meta-Communication Model (Yetim 2006)
Discourse Level
Moral Discourse
Ethical Discourse
Explicative Pragmatic Therapeutic Legal Theoretical Aesthetic
Discourse Discourse Critique Discourse Discourse Critique
Communicative Rationality
Aesthetic Rationality
Strategic Rationality
Instrumental Rationality
Normative Validity
Empirical Validity
Expressive Validity
Relevance
Semantic Clarity
Syntactic Clarity
Conversation for
Physical Clarity
Clarification Level

6. From Theory to Practice:
Modeling with Compendium
 Compendium (Buckingham Shum et al.) facilitates
the capture and structuring of
 Key Issues in Conversations,
 Possible Responses to these Issues, and
 Relevant Arguments
 Used here for modeling the issues and discourses
as templates for examination dialogues

7. Clarification issues and discourses as
independent templates

8. Discourses with integrated clarification
issues
Explicative Discourse

9. Modeling the interconnection of two
levels as a template

10. From Compendium to
DISCOURSIUM
 Design decision
 Only the clarification level is used for both
 examining information objects (texts) and
 examining arguments at the discourse level
 Argument maps are prepared by facilitators

11. 1. Participants examine a text

12. 2. Facilitators construct maps
Rationale
Compendium We need a
multilingual version
support oppose
Current design of Our system should Providing a We should avoid
our system support multilingual doing something
supports a single multilingualism interface will be costly
language costly
supports rebuts
Customers prefer to Unless we will
buy multilingual recoup the costs
products through new sales
supports
A system with
multilingual
features brings new
sales
Araucaria

13. 3. Facilitators submit the maps

14. 4. Participants examine the maps
We need a
multilingual version
support oppose
Current design of Our system should Providing a We should avoid
our system support multilingual doing something
supports a single multilingualism interface will be costly
language costly
supports rebuts
Customers prefer to Unless we will
buy multilingual recoup the costs
products through new sales
supports
A system with
multilingual
features brings new
sales

15. Examining Arguments by Argument
Schemes (Walton, 1996 & 2006)
 Argument schemes represent stereotypical kinds of reasoning
 Examples (Walton 1996):
 argument from expert opinion, argument from example, argument from
analogy, etc.
 Each scheme represents assumptions/premises of an argument and
provides a set of critical questions to evaluate the assumptions.
 Critical questions for “Appeal to Expert Opinion” (Walton, 2006)
 1. Expertise Question: How credible is E as an expert source?
 2. Field Question: Is E an expert in the field that A is in?
 3. Opinion Question: What did E assert that implies A?
 4. Trustworthiness Question: Is E personally reliable as a source?
 5. Consistency Question: Is A consistent with what other experts
assert?
 6. Backup Evidence Question: Is E’s assertion based on evidence?

16. Examining Argument Maps (I)
Categories of Critical
Examples for questioning expert opinions
Issues
Physical Clarity “Is the expression of the expert perceivable/readable by all?”
Syntactic Clarity “Is the expression of the expert syntactically clear?”
Semantic Clarity “Is the meaning of what expert said comprehensible?“
Relevance “Is the assertion of the expert relevant to the domain?“
Expressive Validity “Is the expert known to be trustworthy?“
Empirical Validity “Is expert’s assertion based on evidence?“
Normative Validity “Is the expert really authoritative in the relevant field?“
Instrumental Rationality “Is the expert (known to be) well organized?”
“Is the assertion covertly motivated by expert’s egocentric
Strategic Rationality
calculation of success?“
“Is the expression of the expert emotionally loaded/
Aesthetic Rationality
aesthetically appealing?“

17. Examining Argument Maps (II)
Categories of Critical
Examples for questioning maps
Issues
Physical Clarity “Are texts/nodes/links on the map readable/visible?”
Syntactic Clarity “Are expressions/links on the map syntactically correct?“
Semantic Clarity “Are texts/links on the map comprehensible?”
Relevance “Are all relevant arguments included in the map?”
“Do expressions on the map reflect the sincere intentions of their
Expressive Validity
owners?”
Empirical Validity “Are all claims on the map really asserted?”
“Do representations on the map violate any legal norm or cultural
Normative Validity
value (e.g., ownership, copyrights)?”
Instrumental Rationality “Are boxes/nodes on the map efficiently organized?“
“Are some arguments strategically omitted/ misinterpreted/ wrongly
Strategic Rationality
placed?”
Aesthetic Rationality “Do symbols/colors on the map look beautiful?”

18. Conclusion
 Presented the realization of the meta-
communication architecture in DISCOURSIUM
 making some compromise in design was necessary
 Argued that the set of clarification issues can be
used for both
 examining information objects (e.g., texts) and
 examining arguments
 Future Work