An attack in a crisis communication

ONDRÁČEK, Tomáš. An attack in a crisis communication. In Seventh International Conference on Philosophy of Language and Linguistics (PhiLang 2021). 2021.

Basic information

• Original name: An attack in a crisis communication
• Authors: ONDRÁČEK, Tomáš.
• Edition: Seventh International Conference on Philosophy of Language and Linguistics (PhiLang 2021), 2021.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 50204 Business and management
• Country of publisher: Poland
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Organization unit: Faculty of Economics and Administration
• Keywords in English: crisis communication; (persuasive) attack; Toulmin model; katēgoriai; apologiai
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

Many texts in today's discussion on crisis communication are dedicated to problems of apologiai, responses of organizations to an attack, but attacks, katēgoriai, themselves are usually left aside. However, without an attack, there is no need for a response. Thus, these two are intimately connected, and any analyses of organizational response seem to be incomplete and unsatisfying without analyses of the reason for this response, the attack (cf. Ryan, 1982). An attack is usually considered to have two key components (Pomerantz 1978; Benoit and Dorries 1996; Benoit 2015): responsibility and offensiveness. The accused has to be held responsible for an action, and the action itself has to be considered offensive or harmful (cf. Benoit, 1997: 178). These two components have different objects to which they are connected. Although the accuser can use both in one attack, the responsibility is connected to an accused and offensiveness or harmfulness to an action. Furthermore, both key components might vary in their strength in a different way. An accuser might perceive some action as very harmful and yet find the accused bears little responsibility and vice versa. The aim of this paper is twofold: to present a possible way to analyse an attack using the Toulmin model of an argument (Toulmin 2003) and discussed how different strengths of two components might be useful for the determination of a reasonable response.