RELEVANCE, RHETORIC, AND ARGUMENTATION - DRUM

673 Pages·2009·5.18 MB·English

ABSTRACT

Title of Document: RELEVANCE, RHETORIC, AND
ARGUMENTATION:
A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY INQUIRY INTO
PATTERNS OF THINKING AND
INFORMATION STRUCTURING

Xiaoli Huang, PhD, 2009

Directed By: Professor Dagobert Soergel,
College of Information Studies

This dissertation research is a multidisciplinary inquiry into topicality, involving an
in-depth examination of literatures and empirical data and an inductive development
of a faceted typology (containing 227 fine-grained topical relevance relationships and
33 types of presentation relationship). This inquiry investigates a large variety of
topical connections beyond topic matching, renders a closer look into the structure of
a topic, achieves an enriched understanding of topicality and relevance, and induces a
cohesive topic-oriented information architecture that is meaningful across topics and
domains. The findings from the analysis contribute to the foundation work of
information organization, intellectual access / information retrieval, and knowledge
discovery.
Using qualitative content analysis, the inquiry focuses on meaning and deep
structure:
 Phase 1: develop a unified theory-grounded typology of topical relevance
relationships through close reading of literature and synthesis of thinking from
communication, rhetoric, cognitive psychology, education, information science,
argumentation, logic, law, medicine, and art history;
 Phase 2: in-depth qualitative analysis of empirical relevance datasets in oral
history, clinical question answering, and art image tagging, to examine
manifestations of the theory-grounded typology in various contexts and to further
refine the typology; the three relevance datasets were used for analysis to achieve
variation in form, domain, and context.
The typology of topical relevance relationships is structured with three major facets:
 Functional role of a piece of information plays in the overall structure of a topic
or an argument;
 Mode of reasoning: How information contributes to the user’s reasoning about a
topic;
 Semantic relationship: How information connects to a topic semantically.
This inquiry demonstrated that topical relevance with its close linkage to thinking and
reasoning is central to many disciplines. The multidisciplinary approach allows
synthesis and examination from new angles, leading to an integrated scheme of
relevance relationships or a system of thinking that informs each individual
discipline. The scheme resolving from the synthesis can be used to improve text and
image understanding, knowledge organization and retrieval, reasoning,
argumentation, and thinking in general, by people and machines.
RELEVNCE, RHETORIC, AND ARGUMENTATION:
A CROSS-DISCIPLINARY INQUIRY INTO
PATTERNS OF THINKING AND INFORMATION STRUCTURING

By

Xiaoli Huang

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
2009

Advisory Committee:
Professor Dagobert Soergel, Chair
Professor Marilyn D. White
Professor Kenneth R. Fleischmann
Professor Yan Qu
Professor Linda K. Coleman
© Copyright by
Xiaoli Huang
2009
Dedication

To my parents.
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Acknowledgements
This work would not have been possible without the constant mentoring
efforts by my dedicated advisor, Dr. Dagobert Soergel, and the unconditional love
and support of my parents, Zhongnan and Yumei. Through the ups and downs on my
Ph.D. journey, I always gained courage and strength from their unfailing faith,
encouragement, help, and caring. Thank-you will be too light a word to express how
much I am indebted to the three of you.
It has been a privilege to have the benefits of working closely with my advisor
Dr. Dagobert Soergel on so many projects, papers, and courses. He has never ceased
to amaze me with his capability to capture the essential of problems, his devotion to
students, and his uncompromising passion to make a real difference in the world. I
enjoyed and benefited immensely from our numerous discussions and conversations.
He has taught me to think deeper and independently; to grasp the true meaning of
education and mentorship; and to never give up on achieving excellence and
perfection no matter how small each step is.
I am very grateful to members of my committee for providing me with
important guidance in developing and refining this dissertation. Their wide spectrum
of knowledge has broadened my perspective and led to many improvements of the
work. My special thanks to Dr. Marilyn White, my advisor for the first two years and
my de facto co-advisor for the rest of my studies. I thank her for introducing me to the
world of information studies and directing me to many important opportunities on the
Ph.D. journey. I very much appreciate her insights, critical advice, and enduring
support.
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I am equally indebted to Dr. Doug Oard, Dr. Judith Klavans, and Dr. Jimmy
Lin who have given me the wonderful opportunity to work on three significant
research projects respectively: the Multilingual Access to Large Spoken Archives
(MALACH) project funded by NSF IIS Award 0122466, the Computational
Linguistics for Metadata Building (CLiMB) project funded by the Mellon
Foundation, and a project on Evaluation of the PICO Structure
as a Knowledge Representation for Clinical Questions. Direct participations in these
three intriguing projects helped greatly in shaping the initial ideas of this work and
enriching it with essential data.
I thank the Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship committee for
recognizing the value of my work and honoring me with this prestigious fellowship
for the year 2008. Additional funding support for this work includes graduate
fellowships and assistantships at the University of Maryland.
I am grateful to all the faculty members and administrative staffs at the College
of Information Studies for supporting and helping me move through this process.
To all my friends and fellow students in the program, I thank you for your
friendship, inspirations, peer support, and genuine interest in my work. We have
walked, struggled, and cheered together on the memorable Ph.D. journey. You are
the witness and integral part of my intellectual growth. Thank you all!

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Table of Contents

Dedication .................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................... iv
Table of Contents ....................................................................................................... vi
List of Tables ............................................................................................................. xii
List of Figures ........................................................................................................... xiv
Chapter 1. Introduction and Purpose of the Research ............................................ 3
1.1 Problem Statement .............................................................................................. 4
1.2 Themes and Questions ...................................................................................... 11
Chapter 2. Conceptual Framework and Literature Review ................................. 13
2.1 Overview: Relevance Research in Information Science ................................... 13
2.2 Conceptual Framework of Relevance in Information Science ......................... 15
2.3 Conceptual Definition of Topical Relevance .................................................... 23
2.4 The “System View” vs. the “User View” of Relevance ................................... 27
2.4.1 System View of Relevance ........................................................................ 28
2.4.2 User View of Relevance ............................................................................ 29
2.5 The Entity-based Approach vs. the Relationship-based Approach to
Conceptualizing Relevance ..................................................................................... 36
2.5.1 Entity-based Approach to Conceptualizing Relevance .............................. 37
2.5.1.1 Saracevic (1975): Generic Definition of Relevance ............................... 37
2.5.1.2 Mizzaro (1997): Four-dimensional Relevance Model ............................ 39
2.5.1.3 Saracevic (1996): A Stratified System of Relevances ............................ 41
2.5.2 The Relationship-based Approach of Conceptualizing Relevance ............ 42
2.6 Misunderstandings of Topical Relevance ......................................................... 44
2.6.1 Misunderstanding 1: Topical Relevance Seen as Limited to the System
View of Relevance .............................................................................................. 44
2.6.2 Misunderstanding 2: Topical Relevance Seen as Excluded from User-
defined Relevance ............................................................................................... 46
2.6.3 Misunderstanding 3: Oversimplified Conception of Topical Relevance ... 48
Chapter 3. Methodology ........................................................................................... 69
3.0 Outline of the Research ..................................................................................... 69
3.1 Literature-Based Analysis ................................................................................. 71
3.1.1 Scope of the Literature to Be Analyzed ..................................................... 71
3.1.2 Literature Analysis Method ....................................................................... 74
3.1.2.1 Identification of Topical Relevance Relationships ................................. 75
3.1.2.2 Integration into a Unified Typology ....................................................... 76
3.2 Manifestation Study .......................................................................................... 77
3.2.1 Data: Overview .......................................................................................... 78
3.2.2 Method and Procedure of Analysis ............................................................ 80
3.2.3 Data: Detail ................................................................................................ 84
3.2.3.1 MALACH Topical Relevance Assessment Data .................................... 84
3.2.3.2 Clinical Questions and Answers ............................................................. 88
3.2.3.3 Art Images and Subject Descriptors Describing the Images .................. 89
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Chapter 4. The Perspective of Communication and Rhetoric .............................. 95
4.1 Relevance Theory ............................................................................................. 96
4.1.1 Defining Relevance .................................................................................... 97
4.1.2 An Inferential Perspective of Relevance .................................................... 99
4.1.3 Context as Premises ................................................................................. 101
4.2 Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) ................................................................. 103
4.2.1 Relation Propositions based on Functional Role ..................................... 104
4.2.2 RST Relationships vs. Topical Relevance relationships .......................... 108
4.2.3 Analysis for the Mode of Inference ......................................................... 109
4.2.4 Topical Relevance Relationships Identified from RST ........................... 110
Chapter 5. The Perspective of Argumentation, Reasoning (Inference), and Logic
.................................................................................................................................. 118
5.1 Definitions and Background ........................................................................... 119
5.1.1 Reasoning, Inference, Logic, and Argument ........................................... 119
5.1.2 More on Argument and Argumentation ................................................... 121
5.1.3 The Tension between Classical Logic and Argumentation ..................... 123
5.2 Pluralism Concepts of Topical Relevance in Argumentation ......................... 123
5.2.1 Subject-Matter Overlap as Topical Relevance ........................................ 124
5.2.2 Propositional Relevance........................................................................... 124
5.2.3 Question-Answer Relevance .................................................................... 126
5.2.4 Comparing Types of Topical Relevance in Argumentation .................... 126
5.3 Toulmin’s Argumentation Theory .................................................................. 128
5.3.1 Toulmin’s Model of Argumentation ........................................................ 129
5.3.2 What are warrants, exactly? ..................................................................... 131
5.3.3 Relating to Topical Relevance by Functional Role ................................. 133
5.3.4 Classification of Arguments (Reasoning) ................................................ 134
5.3.4.1 Analyzing the Classification for Topical Relevance ............................ 135
5.3.4.2 Describing the Types of Topical Reasoning ......................................... 137
5.4 Topical Reasoning Identified from Propositional Logic ................................ 148
5.4.1 Propositional Logic .................................................................................. 148
5.4.2 The Hypothetical Syllogism as Topical Reasoning ................................. 150
5.5 A Summary Table of Types of Identified Topical Reasoning ........................ 152
5.6 Analysis of RST Relationships for Modes of Topical Reasoning .................. 156
Chapter 6. The Information Science Perspective ................................................ 158
6.1 Cooper’s Logical Relevance ........................................................................... 160
6.1.1 Definition of Logical Relevance (Cooper, 1971) .................................... 160
6.1.2 Influence of Cooper’s Definition ............................................................. 161
6.1.3 Limitations of Cooper’s Definition .......................................................... 162
6.2 Wilson’s Evidential Relevance and Situational Relevance ............................ 164
6.2.1 Definition of Evidential Relevance (Wilson, 1973) ................................ 164
6.2.2 Definition of Situational Relevance (Wilson, 1973) ................................ 165
6.2.3 Direct vs. Indirect Situational Relevance................................................. 167
6.3 Green & Bean’s Classification of Topical Relevance Relationships .............. 168
6.3.1 Topic Matching Relationships ................................................................. 169
6.3.2 Hierarchical Relationships ....................................................................... 170
6.3.3 Structural (Syntagmatic) Relationships ................................................... 172
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