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Group emotions: the social and cognitive functions of emotions in argumentation

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Abstract

The learning sciences of today recognize the tri-dimensional nature of learning as involving cognitive, social and emotional phenomena. However, many computer-supported argumentation systems still fail in addressing the socio-emotional aspects of group reasoning, perhaps due to a lack of an integrated theoretical vision of how these three dimensions interrelate to each other. This paper presents a multi-dimensional and multi-level model of the role of emotions in argumentation, inspired from a multidisciplinary literature review and extensive previous empirical work on an international corpus of face-to-face student debates. At the crossroads of argumentation studies and research on collaborative learning, employing a linguistic perspective, we specify the social and cognitive functions of emotions in argumentation. The cognitive function of emotions refers to the cognitive and discursive process of schematization (Grize, 1996, 1997). The social function of emotions refers to recognition-oriented behaviors that correspond to engagement into specific types of group talk (e. g. Mercer in Learning and Instruction 6(4), 359–377, 1996). An in depth presentation of two case studies then enables us to refine the relation between social and cognitive functions of emotions. A first case gives arguments for associating low-intensity emotional framing, on the cognitive side, with cumulative talk, on the social side. A second case shows a correlation between high-intensity emotional framing, and disputational talk. We then propose a hypothetical generalization from these two cases, adding an element to the initial model. In conclusion, we discuss how better understanding the relations between cognition and social and emotional phenomena can inform pedagogical design for CSCL.

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Notes

  1. They were especially trained during 1 day (6 to 8 h) in order to moderate the café.

  2. Caffi and Janney (1994) oppose the two adjectives emotional and emotive to distinguish between what is felt (emotional) and what is discursively expressed (emotive). In practice, the relation between expressed and felt emotions is problematic and can vary depending on the context. In this branch of argumentation studies, researchers usually claim that they focus on the expressed emotions, basing their findings on discursive material, but often there is no evidence that expressed emotions actually differ from felt emotions.

  3. Facework, the activity of seeking to preserve one’s own and others’ face, or positive social value (Goffman 1974; Brown and Levinson 1988), is a structuring element of interactions, which leads the participants to obey a politeness code that constrains the development of the dialogue.

  4. This observation can be nuanced by the concept of ‘argumentative politeness’ that comes from argumentation studies. The specificities of argumentative interaction with respect to the matter of face preservation led to the characterization of a particular argumentative politeness system, which follows different rules than the ordinary system (Plantin in press, p. 368–369). Then, disagreement is usual and is neither polite nor impolite, but rather ‘a-polite’.

  5. The debate in psychology about the direction of causality between emotional symptom and felt emotion is embodied by the classical James/Cannon opposition (Cosnier 1994). A well known psychology experiment illustrates how forcing a smile (e.g. holding a pencil in one’s teeth) can create the same internal physiological phenomena as smiling naturally because of an emotion (Soussignan 2002).

  6. Two other isolated occurrences of third person use present distinctive characteristics. One is Klara’s mention of the role of her parents in changing habits at home. Here we are typically in a “near other” construction. It also constitutes a transfer of responsibility, reminding the group that adults have more potential impact on the problem than the students may have. The other isolated occurrence is also attributed to Klara, during group debate on OQ 3. Her formulation is ambiguous as she talks about the people lacking access to water in these terms: “ils paieraient quoique” (they would pay unless). It tends to present them as responsible for their exclusion to water access due to the fact that they may not pay the corresponding price. The topos of the poor people being responsible for their status is not developed here, but it is a leitmotiv in our data (Polo 2014, 282–298).

  7. Conversational turns are not numbered here because it’s an inventory of discontinuous occurrences. The ‘(…)’ stands for the discontinuity between the reported turns.

  8. This is our own translation from French to English, focusing on the global meaning and level of language rather than trying to literally transpose French expressions.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the Aslan (ANR-10-LABX-0081) of Université de Lyon, for its financial support within the program « Investissements d’Avenir » (ANR-11-IDEX-0007) of the French government operated by the National Research Agency (ANR).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. ICAR Research Laboratory, ICAR Laboratory, ENS, 15, Parvis Descartes, 69007, Lyon, France

    Claire Polo, Kristine Lund, Christian Plantin & Gerald P. Niccolai

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  1. Claire Polo
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  2. Kristine Lund
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  3. Christian Plantin
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  4. Gerald P. Niccolai
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Correspondence to Claire Polo.

Appendices

Appendices

A. Transcripts of two discussion phases at table 2, Kenosha, USA, May 2012

A.1 Kelly, Sabrina, Louise, Pamela’s debate on OQ1:

figure o

A.2 Kelly, Sabrina, Louise, Pamela’s debate on OQ3:

figure p

B. Distance to the issue: key features from Klara, Isabelle, Asa and Samira’s debates on OQ2 and OQ3

In the following tables, we reproduce the parts of the transcript corresponding to the students’ discursive construction of their emotional distance to the issue. Three parameters are studied: the description of people concerned, the identification of people responsible for change, and the spatiotemporal distance to the issue.

During the group discussion about OQ2, no key marker of the spatiotemporal distance to the issue was identified.

Only one utterance described the people concerned:

figure q

On the contrary, the students extensively describe, during the group discussion on OQ2, the people presented as responsible of the evolution of the situation:

figure r

During the class debate that follows the group discussion on OQ2, the students keep talking at their table. Below we reproduce the elements of their speech that contribute to the specification of an emotional distance to the issue:

figure sfigure sfigure s

The class debate about OQ2 is also an opportunity for some of the students in the studied group to make public contributions to the discussion. The parts of their speech that frame their distance to the problem only consider the parameter of the responsible agents for the evolution of the situation. They are reproduced below:

figure t

The discussion of the OQ3 is also an opportunity for the students to elaborate on their emotional distance to the topic. First, they do so during the group debate:

figure u

Klara, Isabelle, Asa and Samira, during the class debate about OQ3, either directly contributing, or making aside commentaries at the group level, keep on framing their distance to the issue:

figure v

C. Transcript conventions

Here are detailes the main transcript conventions used in this article:

figure w

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Polo, C., Lund, K., Plantin, C. et al. Group emotions: the social and cognitive functions of emotions in argumentation. Intern. J. Comput.-Support. Collab. Learn 11, 123–156 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11412-016-9232-8

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