Content uploaded by Thorn-R. Kray
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Thorn-R. Kray on Aug 28, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
1 23
Argumentation
An International Journal on Reasoning
ISSN 0920-427X
Argumentation
DOI 10.1007/s10503-015-9362-6
On Name-Dropping: The Mechanisms
Behind a Notorious Practice in Social
Science and the Humanities
Thorn-R.Kray
1 23
Your article is protected by copyright and all
rights are held exclusively by Springer Science
+Business Media Dordrecht. This e-offprint
is for personal use only and shall not be self-
archived in electronic repositories. If you wish
to self-archive your article, please use the
accepted manuscript version for posting on
your own website. You may further deposit
the accepted manuscript version in any
repository, provided it is only made publicly
available 12 months after official publication
or later and provided acknowledgement is
given to the original source of publication
and a link is inserted to the published article
on Springer's website. The link must be
accompanied by the following text: "The final
publication is available at link.springer.com”.
On Name-Dropping: The Mechanisms Behind
a Notorious Practice in Social Science
and the Humanities
Thorn-R. Kray
1
Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015
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 dis-
course. First, I discuss name-dropping in terms of informal logic as an ad vere-
cundiam-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 legit-
imation of but also orientation in discourse. Consequently, two tipping points—
detour and disorientation—are proposed as benchmarks for it to become problem-
atic. The conclusion re-widens the argument’s scope by suggesting questions for
future inquiries.
Keywords Name-dropping Argument from authority Rhetoric Sociology of
science Legitimation Orientation
Charlatans, priests and shamans have for millennia used magic formulae,
unknown languages and cabalistic incantations to intimidate their audiences
and conceal the irrationality of their discourses. Might similar phenomena take
place in contemporary academia? And how can one know?
Alan Sokal & Jean Bricmont,
The Uses of Obscurity
&Thorn-R. Kray
thorn.kray@gmx.de; thorn-rennig.kray@uni-konstanz.de
1
Department of Sociology, Graduate Center for the Study of Culture,
Justus-Liebig-University of Giessen, Giessen, Germany
123
Argumentation
DOI 10.1007/s10503-015-9362-6
Author's personal copy
1 How We Should (not) Talk About what We Study
One of the most beautiful metaphors for the practice of scientific discourse comes
from Kenneth Burke. In The Philosophy of Literary Form he invites us to envision
the following scenario:
Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have
long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion
too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the
discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one
present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You
listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the
argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him;
another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either
the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the
quality of your ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The
hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still
vigorously in progress. (Burke 1941, 110f.)
In this ‘‘unending conversation,’’ as Burke called it, the discussion has a past, a
historical depth that none of the participants might measure. Still, the newcomer can
catch the tune and contribute. As dues are paid to the contributor’s precursors, other
participants notice and, since the whole discussion is ‘heated,’ competitive if not
(verbally) combative from the very start, they will attack or defend either you or
your adversary’s standpoint. Most of us know from experience what Lakoff and
Johnson (1980) mean when they point to the ‘‘argumentation is war’’-metaphor
[even if this model might be an exaggeration (Cohen 2004, 35ff.)].
This essay is concerned with one of the premier rhetoric means which we, as
scholars engaged in the scientific discourse of the social sciences and the humanities
on a daily basis, use to fight this intellectual battle with, against, and for each other.
The means I will try to describe involves the discourse’s past. Its intellectual history
is composed of dead people, towering figures and (thus) authorities. Taken together,
they are the constituency of a canon each discipline holds dear and venerates with
the label of (their respective) classics (Gadamer 1986). In some cases, like that of
theology, philosophy or poetry the canonical tradition leads back over more than
some thousand years. This durability in our collective memory has bestowed on
them a certain ‘‘sanctity.’’ Therefore, it is not easy to question them in the face of
sometimes hundreds of thousands of pages of commentary—at least without
referring to another authority having questioned them before. It is one way how the
‘unending conversation’ grows and intensifies, as figures of the past are played out
against each other. When it comes to an actual situation of contestation, to call on
big celebrated names—like Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Galileo, Leibnitz, Niet-
zsche, Freud, Wittgenstein, Foucault, Derrida, Max Weber or Stanley Cavell—
serves to impress one’s audience, to display erudition, assert competence, to instill
trust or fend off criticism. Their reputation supposedly adds to the speaker’s
credibility.
T.-R. Kray
123
Author's personal copy
But these names can also be misused in case they are over-used. The excessive
use of authoritative names mostly happens in spoken discourse and is commonly
referred to as name-dropping.
1
To take a common source, Webster’s (2002, 956)
defines name-dropping as ‘‘the studied but seemingly casual mention of prominent
persons as associates done to impress others.’’ Self-evidently, these prominent
names, for the humanities and social science discourse, are the mentioned canonized
authors, who strongly influenced—if not founded—a particular discipline or at least
staked out a now well-measured terrain within it. Precisely this accomplishment
gives them a distinguished kind of authority. It is neither a legal nor an ‘‘epistemic’’
(understood in the sense of Donald Davidson’s ‘‘first person authority’’ (2001
[1984]), but what we might call ‘‘disciplinary’’ authority.
2
In any case, for the following discussion I will cling to the intuition that almost
any scholar, who has been trained over several years and now professionally
practices in his or her field, will have either engaged in name-dropping him-/herself
or (and of that I am almost certain) witnessed others do it.
3
We all are each other’s
audience after all.
At least in the second case of witnessing, I’d like to assume further—but with
more caution—that one was or at some point got annoyed with the name-dropper. If
a particular argument, talk, presentation and its claims could be supported by the
names brought into play, the tipping point eventually came. Shortly after having
mentioning the eighth or ninth authoritative name in the first one and a half minutes,
he or she has breached some kind of norm. As a result, the audience will eventually
start to feel annoyed or, what’s worse, embarrassed.
But if the majority in that same annoyed audience—well trained, experienced,
hopefully patient and benevolent people—occasionally engage in the practice
themselves, are they not guilty of the very same sin? Why can’t we agree to either
give name-dropping a final pass (without implicitly or explicitly criticizing it)? Or,
if not give it that pass, why can’t we just stop doing (committing) something that
enervates all of us so astonishingly easily?
The present essay will answer these questions in the following way: first, I will
ask if we can classify name-dropping as a logical fallacy: an argumentum ad
verecundiam or, less technically, an argument from authority. But this perspective
will prove to be insufficient because it is too formal to grasp the phenomenon. To
see its peculiarity, we have to conceptualize it as a social practice; thus, my essay
will use Erwin Goffman’s ideas on self-presentation. Under this lens we can see
name-dropping as a social tactic employed to enhance an actor’s self-image. For the
1
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.
2
I’d like to thank an anonymous reviewer for emphasizing the importance of this qualification/
distinction.
3
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.
On Name-Dropping: The Mechanisms Behind a Notorious Practice…
123
Author's personal copy
next step, we must look at this tactic in the scientific context. Here, Michael
Overington and Martin Jay are going to help see name-dropping as a rhetorical
means of discursive legitimation. But both their accounts, as important they may be,
overlook a crucial mechanism. This mechanism, I will argue, cannot be avoided and
is vital to our ‘unending conversation’ in the academy. Names not only provide
legitimation of but also orientation in scientific discourse. Discerning and describing
the orientation-mechanism as a second function of name-dropping will also help
expose two tipping-points. These two, which I call detour and disorientation, shall
provide a yardstick that distinguishes the legitimate mentioning of names from
illegitimate forms of name-dropping. My concluding remarks summarize the
distinctions I have made, re-widen the essay’s overall scope, and critique the
illegitimate over-use of authoritative names as self-defeating.
2 Ad Verecundiam: Name-Dropping as a Logical Fallacy
Besides all the other features, we might feel, on an intuitive level, that the unease
with name-dropping stems from its adjacency to an appeal to or argument from
authority.
The general trouble with this kind of ‘‘error in reasoning’’ is that such fallacies
mostly happen in ‘‘arguments which, although incorrect, are psychologically
persuasive’’ (Copi and Cohen 1990, 92). Should name-dropping turn out to be a
downright argumentative fallacy, we’d immediately have an explanation for the
uncomfortability with it. Moreover, there would be ample reason to fully disqualify
it as an illegitimate means in discourse, and thus close the file for good. That is
because, strictly speaking, any ‘‘appeal to authority, having intrinsically inexact and
subjective elements about it, [must] be ruled out of the domain of science entirely’’
(Woods and Walton 1974, 136). So, on this rather (in)formal account, what are the
precise circumstances under which such a faulty argument is dismissible? Irving
Copi and Carl Cohen, the two logicians already consulted, gave the following
textbook answer:
The fallacy ‘ad verecundiam’ arises when the appeal is made to parties having
no legitimate claim to authority in the matter at hand. Thus, in an argument
about morality, an appeal to the opinions of Darwin, a towering authority in
biology, would be fallacious, as would be the appeal to the opinions of a great
artist, like Picasso, to settle an economic dispute. (Copi and Cohen 1990,95;
Italics in orig.)
Name-dropping, according to this expert opinion, only occurs when the wrong
expert is consulted to underscore one’s argument. But if that authority is an expert in
the field in question, an appeal to authority can be perfectly sound: ‘‘there is nothing
wrong, in principle, with backing up your argument with an expert opinion’’
(Walton 1997, 209; cf. Ciurria and Altamimi 2014; Goodwin 1998; Hansen 2006;
Wagemans 2005; Walton 2008; Woods and Walton 1974). In other words, superior
knowledge of and intimate familiarity with a subject matter constitute expertise.
Together, they form the basis of a legitimate speaker position and may put someone
T.-R. Kray
123
Author's personal copy
in the role of an expert. As Copi and Cohen noted, this legitimacy (knowl-
edge ?role) is the criterion for whether or not the fallacy is committed.
4
But there is a problem. When it comes to pressurized situations calling for
pragmatic decisions and convincing justifications, we might be satisfied with an
established expert’s role instead of thoroughly evaluating what he or she has to offer
as ‘superior knowledge.’ Such an evaluation would take time, resources and
perhaps—another expert. This is the reason why, as Jean Goodwin has argued, ‘‘the
system of social roles serves as a stand-in for our own testing of each claimant’s
capacity’’ (Goodwin 1998, 270). Hierarchy and knowledge are intertwined.
5
If we
rely on an expert as an expert, this fact almost immediately translates into the
assumption that his or her knowledge is superior to ours. This, however, is not
necessarily a bad thing; it can be reasonable—and even imperative—to do so. If the
hospital’s most recommended cardiologist treats your complicated heart-defect, it
could be both reasonable and imperative to follow his advice—supposing you want
to stay alive. Put more abstractly, should we consider the pragmatic context of
decision-making, it becomes much harder to figure out if name-dropping does or
does not constitute an ad verecundiam-type fallacy.
Indeed, where far reaching decisions must be made quickly, expert and expertise
are harder to distinguish. But in ‘slow contexts,’ where, for example, knowledge itself
is at stake, the conditions may very well be different. Arguing not about direct
decisions in some time-sensitive matter but for some purely (or merely) intellectual
point, can be said to rely less on a fixed set of roles; even less so since these roles are
not connected to a highly technical set of skills (like surgically fixing a heart defect).
And even better, in a circle of philosophy professors where each argues either for or
against some reading of William James’ account of religion, all are experts in one way
or another. Here, to excessively call on a whole number of experts—(other) big names
from the history of philosophy for instance—could still just be a matter of vanity,
6
especially given ‘‘how dramatically experts’ conclusions can conflict’’ (on whether or
not some cases of name-dropping may qualify as a fallacy committed amongst them)
(Walton 2008, 237). Under these different conditions (‘slow contexts’, e.g. a circle of
qualified experts), isn’t it much easier to rule out name-dropping as a logical fallacy
and immediately dismiss all arguments which blunder into it?
And yet again, there is a problem. Even if the stakes are lower, the skill set less
technical, and the experts amongst themselves, we must be cautious to speak of
dropping names as an annoying logical fallacy. He or she could simply be eager to
pay due respect to important forbearers whose ideas, concepts, styles or
4
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.
5
It almost seems inevitable here to think of Foucault’s insistence on the power/knowledge nexus in every
discourse (Foucault 2001, 111ff.).
6
‘‘One should never underestimate the power of snobbery in the academic world’’ (Billig 2013, 22; cf.
Hansen 2006).
On Name-Dropping: The Mechanisms Behind a Notorious Practice…
123
Author's personal copy
perspectives she builds upon to make her point (an issue that will be addressed in
Sect. 4). What can also keep us from subsuming name-dropping under the category
in question is the matter of consequential criticism. If the audience does not follow
the speaker’s plea to believe, again, in William James’ account of religion—what
difference does it make, what consequence does it have for the speaker? ‘‘What
criticism does one face if one failed to follow? If none, then following would not
seem forced, and perhaps the case is not one of authority’’ (Goodwin 1998, 274).
These two reasons, I think, are important objections against disqualifying name-
dropping as a logical fallacy. But if they are convincing all the way through, why
isn’t name-dropping an even more accepted and important part of the way we
conduct our intellectual business? Here are two counter-objections: To pay due
respects (to forbearers) can be one reason to name drop without committing the
fallacy. But ‘‘there can be legitimate appeals to a third-party authoritative source
when two people [or more] reason together in a critical discussion, [and still]
fallacies can occur when one party presses too hard in deploying authority to try to
suppress the critical questioning of the other party’’ (Walton 2008, 210). In the
original version from John Locke (1975, Book IV, Ch. XX), the ad verecundiam
argument helps the speaker to ‘‘silence his opposition.’’ To pay due respects to
forbearers can thus in itself be a way to silence one’s opposition. Anyway, this first
counter-objection is not discriminatory enough to satisfy our analytic needs. Hence,
I would like to postpone the discussion of this point, and come back to it later (in
Sect. 4) so that it can prove to be more fruitful.
The second objection, which pertains to consequential criticism, is much more
straightforward than the first one. If the audience gets annoyed that is at least some
sort of criticism.
7
Obviously a particular norm of the code of conduct has been
7
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
T.-R. Kray
123
Author's personal copy
violated. In case we accept that there often is an implicit breach from which quite
subtle consequences do follow, name-dropping could indeed count as the fallacy in
question.
By and large, hard and strictly (in)formal conceptions of the ad verecundiam
fallacy prove to be rather unhelpful when scrutinizing name-dropping. A softer, more
‘interpretative’ notion is required which takes into account the discursive purpose and
psycho-emotional impact of stating authoritative names, i.e. what it means to over-use
them. Especially ‘‘when examples of the ‘ad verecundiam’ argument are presented in
a context […], our basis for evaluating the argument may be quite different from
simply looking at its logical form’’ (Walton 1997, 133; my Italics).
8
The following sections will take this remark seriously by making, at least for
argumentation theorists, a rather surprising turn away from philosophical accounts
and into the realm of social theory. This perspective will help to, first, describe the
more general social context of name-dropping in its relation to an actor’s self-
presentation. Since the focus of this essay is a very particular rhetorical means in
scientific debate, the second step will rigorously narrow down the focus to this
context. Herein, two issues will guide my discussion. One pertains to what Goodwin
(1998, 267) has called the ‘‘tension between authority’s suspiciousness and its
inevitability.’’ There has to be something else to the mentioning of authoritative
names besides legitimation. And second, if stating authoritative names is legit, when
does it start to become illegitimate?
3 Name-Dropping as a General Social Practice
Before we burden ourselves with academic introspection, it seems inevitable—if
you think of Webster’s Dictionary again—to understand name-dropping’s purpose
and function outside the highly specialized field of intellectual thought. The turn to
social theory, as I propose it, has a variety of advantages. First, name-dropping is
part of argumentative discourses that, even argumentation theorists admit, must be
‘‘conceived as basically social activities’’ (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004,
55). Thus, social theory can be expected to help in identifying the mechanisms
which govern it. Additionally, the only empirical studies (to my knowledge) that
deal with the phenomenon in question come from sociology—a fact that attests
further to the discipline’s competence in the matter. On a more general note, I think,
we must first understand how name-dropping works in a broader social level to, in a
second step, see how it does in the academy. After all, every scientific endeavor is
grounded in the life-world one way or the other (e.g. Husserl 1976).
Footnote 7 continued
practices, and thus try to unveil the emotional thrust of, and cultural norms in, professionalized audiences
as they establish and acknowledge truth claims interactively.
8
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.
On Name-Dropping: The Mechanisms Behind a Notorious Practice…
123
Author's personal copy
What end name-dropping serves on a broader social level becomes apparent if we
remember the first sentences from Goffman’s classical study The Presentation of
Self in Everyday Life:
When an individual enters the presence of others, they commonly seek to
acquire information about him or to bring into play information about him
already possessed. […] Information about the individual helps to define the
situation, enabling others to know in advance what he will expect of them and
what they may expect of him. (Goffman 1956,1)
According to this perspective, name-dropping is a way to give others information
about oneself. Who does one know and in what relation does the speaker stand
toward them? And, based upon the answer to this question, how does one assess the
person proving the answer? Does he or she deserve praise or vilification? For
instance, if I learn that my conversation partner is acquainted with an adversary of
mine, I will evaluate the speaker’s status and position toward me very differently
compared to someone else’s, who is chums with, say, a benefactor of mine. To drop
names can be a social strategy to give or get information of or about me. And much
depends on the impressions thus produced and managed, namely, the situation’s
framing as a whole, i.e. its definition.
What is just as important to note: Any social assessment of this sort can fail or be
incorrect. One can get embarrassed. One can always be deceived. ‘‘Life may not be
gamble, but interaction is’’ (Goffman 1956, 156). Sometimes we want and need to
make a knowledgeable, competent impression; but if there are insecurities about
whether or not we can meet the exceptions thus evoked, we might use the fact that
no one knows all the cards everyone is holding in their hands—and ‘‘gamble.’’
Unfortunately, and ‘‘paradoxically, the more the individual is concerned with the
reality that is not available to perception, the more must he concentrate his attention
on appearances.’’ (161) Under the cold lens of such a social theory, names can
become (mere) appearances. Ritually uttered as ‘‘gestures addressed to the
audience’’ (162) for maintaining the performer’s image and signal his commitment,
names get increasingly dissociated from their owners—may they be people or ideas.
If excessive over-use makes weighty names become empty tokens—‘gestures’—
there is a very concrete danger. Namely, to lose touch with both: the content one
tries to convey and, because of overly concern with its delivery, the audience
judging the validity of that content too. Any politician, journalist, salesman, priest
or art critic might find him- or herself in a situation where mere gestures (must)
replace the deeds for which they stand. Pressurized environments, where these
exchanges occur and where the conveyed impression grows more important than the
feeling/morality/knowledge behind it, are something familiar to probably all
professionals.
Even though this dilemma is especially problematic for professionals, it is not
theirs alone. To clarify name-dropping’s position in social life further, and lead over
to the academic context, we should consider its empirical consequences in and for
social interaction more generally. Two studies have tried to measure them. What
they found bears a big importance for the overall argument I want to make in the
following sections.
T.-R. Kray
123
Author's personal copy
The first study found that name-dropping can have very negative consequences
insofar it yields disadvantages for the actor. To name-drop can back-fire and
damage a person’s self-presentation, i.e. have disruptive effects on the evaluation of
others when one uses it clumsily to produce a favorable first impression. Precisely
this happened in a Swiss study from Lebherz et al. (2009). They made a student
introduce himself by mail. In the first version of the message he explicitly referred
to the famous tennis player Roger Federer as a friend of his; in the second version,
he only stated to be a great tennis fan (for Federer). Considered less sympathetic and
showy when alluding to his celebrity-friend, name-dropping, as part of his self-
presentation, proved to be counter-productive because the audience suspected an
attempt of manipulation.
The other study found that name-dropping can also have very positive effects.
Bohra and Pandey (1984, 217) studied techniques of ingratiation, i.e. ‘‘strategic
behaviors illicitly designed to influence other persons to increase the attractiveness
of their personal qualities.’’ A variety of such techniques, ranging from other-
enhancement, opinion conformity, self-depreciation etc. were examined as they
became applied in different types of relations: toward strangers, friends, and bosses.
What Bohra and Pandey found were two things: first, ingratiation techniques are
applied more frequently toward persons with a higher status than the blandisher’s.
And second: even though there was no significant variance between most techniques
being applied to strangers or to friends, name-dropping made the exception. For the
argument, as I whish to make it regarding the social sciences, the following finding
by Bohra and Pandey (1984, 222; my Italics) can hardly be overestimated:
Name-dropping was actually adopted more frequently with the stranger.This
tactic was less effective with an acquaintance. It is assumed that this was the
safest tactic to be used initially because the target person would not know
much about the ingratiator’s social connections. On the other hand, a friend
would know the ingratiator’s social connections.
Name-dropping seems to vanish with a rising degree of familiarity between
actors. At least, it is less prevalent in closer relationships. Social and cultural capital,
to borrow Bourdieu’s (1984) terminology, do not need to be gauged all over again
when two conversation partners already know each other well enough. Markers of
distinction have leveled off.
Even if name-dropping has its pejorative connotation for a good reason, it can
have very beneficial consequences for the relations among actors when its use has
particular boundaries and is calibrated for a particular context. Should a person try
to familiarize herself with a previously unknown audience by alluding to celebrated
names hardly related to a common frame of reference (e.g. a tennis fan club), to
display a superior position/knowledge can be perceived as an attempt to manipulate
and even disparage the audience. On the other hand, should the first purpose be (an
open) ingratiation meant to increase ones familiarity with someone previously
unknown, i.e. turn a stranger into an acquaintance, dropping names can mark ones
relative position and thus—one can speculate—may be received as a sign of
courtesy which, consequently, helps building trust.
On Name-Dropping: The Mechanisms Behind a Notorious Practice…
123
Author's personal copy
The strategic display of what we know, feel, and believe regulates the distance
between actor and audience. As a social practice, name-dropping thus works both
ways: it can endanger the connection between actor and audience and, just as well, it
can establish and foster these same connections.
And yet, although these theoretical arguments and empirical findings help to
place the practice of name-dropping in the wider context of social life, they are
obviously not specific enough to account for what happens in the academic
discourse of the social sciences and humanities. Still, we have found important
clues. One pertains to the different conditions of ingratiation. And the other has to
do with the dilemma that mentioning authoritative names can do both: support and
disrupt actor-audience connections. This last point may become handy to explain
what John Goodwin has called the ‘suspiciousness/inevitability-tension’ in name-
dropping.
What else has yet to be clarified is the tipping-point problem mentioned at the
beginning. Answers have to be provided for the question when exactly the legit
reference to authoritative names (in the academy’s discourse) becomes the annoying
phenomenon of name-dropping. Hence, the following section will build on general
sociological theory of face-to-face interaction to investigate the practice’s role in
our disciplines.
4 Name-Dropping as a Particular Scientific Practice
One crucial difference between various other contexts and that of the social sciences
and humanities consists in the nature and structure of what I will call profession-
alized audiences. These audiences are, in Chaı
¨m Perelman’s and Lucie Olbrechts-
Tyteca’s terms (1969 [1958]), very ‘‘particular’’ in their own way. As a scientific
institution, professionalized audiences have a more distinctive task compared to
such, for instance, found in night-clubs, plenary halls or on the subway.
Professionalized audiences represent a scientific community. They are connected
to an ‘‘invisible college’’ (John Ziman). The speaker, as Burke’s metaphor has
already suggested, faces a ‘‘specially trained audience that is authorized to establish
[her] discourse as knowledge’’ (Overington 1977, 144).
Overington (1977, 144), for this purpose, has formulated a theory aiming at a
‘‘rhetorical analysis and criticism to the process of knowledge production in
science.’’ Using sociology as an example, he has made some important remarks
pertaining to the characteristic conduct of this type of audience. He describes
science as a ‘‘’rhetorical transaction’’’ where ‘‘judgment as to what is admissible as
scientific knowledge depends on networks of responsible and authoritative critics
held together by trust in each other’s judgment’’ (Overington 1977, 146). These
authoritative critics have to be (and want to be—like you, I hope—) persuaded.
Persuasion, in this intent, does not mean manipulation. Rather, it points at a form of
influence especially calibrated to overcome professional skepticism. This skepti-
cism, in turn, serves as a regulative attitude to evaluate the warranted assertability of
a claim made by the speaker. To be sure, all the participants have duly qualified for
being part of such an audience through extensive training where
T.-R. Kray
123
Author's personal copy
individuals learn what is the basis for speaking scientifically. They learn what
kind of experiences are valued by other scientists, and what experiences,
therefore, they should seek out for themselves. […] They learn how to talk
about these experiences in plausible terms and what part of their searches are
to be discussed and what ignored. Finally, they acquire an understanding of
the nature of the audience that will ‘‘enjoy’’ their reports. (Overington 1977,
154f.)
Since (what seems like ‘ever since’
9
) these learning processes happen in relations
of apprenticeship, such dependencies help engender the basic tension between
suspiciousness and inevitability. This tension is essential for understanding why
name-dropping can be so annoying and/or embarrassing.
In that relationship [of teacher and student] the neophyte learns how to think
with the traditions that the master incarnates and ostentates. However, this
docile acceptance is counterbalanced by the skeptical research attitude
[which the student is required to cultivate in order to be taken seriously by his
or her teachers and peers]. The young scientist must learn both when to accept
the authority of the consensus and when to resist it. (Overington 1977, 147;
my Italics)
A requirement like this is paradoxical in nature. The neophyte must learn to
follow tradition while remaining sufficiently skeptical toward it. Every failure to
meet the expectations connected to it will immediately be noticed. Smirks and
curious smiles invoking a feeling of inadequacy will be the punishment for the
apprentice’s mistakes. Such cruelty, however, almost appears to be a necessary evil.
The demand to ‘think for oneself’ while simultaneously requesting familiarity with
a highly exclusive discourse that is supposed to instruct the student ‘how to think’ is
a devious double bind which seems to be a good explanation for Goodwin’s
observation.
The suspiciousness/inevitability-tension, resulting from the constant stating of
authoritative names, arises out of the structure of academic education itself; more
precisely, the continued simultaneity of trust and skepticism toward the field’s past
and the ceaseless anxiety in learning to deal with it. What Burke elegantly omitted
in his metaphor: The person who enters the parlor is not the peer of those already
present. Internal power structures lie beneath the ‘unending conversation’ to which
the incomer has to adapt. Name-dropping is a display of an already established
familiarity with the canon, i.e. the tradition. But yet again, it seems to belong to the
class of ‘‘’non-technical’ arguments,’’ like ‘‘the prestige of the speaker’s institu-
tional affiliation, the speaker’s reputation, the kind of foundation or granting agency
that funded the research’’ etc. (Overington 1977, 159). Now, with this strong
reminder of the ad verecundiam discussion, we might ask again: If the ‘‘unforced
force of the better argument’’ (Habermas) is supposed to prevail, how can it be legit
to bring to bear such ‘non-technical’ arguments at all? ‘‘How compromised are they
9
For such an argument regarding the history of philosophy, see Collins (1998).
On Name-Dropping: The Mechanisms Behind a Notorious Practice…
123
Author's personal copy
[scholars of the humanities and social sciences] by the persistence of name-dropping
as a mode of legitimation?’’ (Jay 1990, 21).
Jay (1990) has not only posed this crucial question. He has also gave some
illuminating answers to it. As if underscoring the initial intuition about the
annoyance with name-dropping, his observations start provocative: ‘‘Think, for
example, of all the innumerable essays littered with ‘As Benjamin said…’or
‘According to Lacan…’ or ‘In the words of Althusser…’ written by scholars who
would be hard-pressed to provide satisfactory justifications for their authority’s
controversial ideas’’ (Jay 1990, 21). Annoyed or not, Jay acknowledges the reason
why we cannot refrain from the names which we, more than occasionally, drop. It
has to do with the canon composed of ‘‘sacred or pseudosacred texts’’ on which the
humanities all too often focus—a strategy that transfers ‘‘the authority of these texts
to the tradition of commentaries that has accumulated around them’’ (Jay 1990, 22).
Arguments, in this notion, are always intertwined with names; dropping names is a
practice that cannot be avoided precisely because it links us to the intellectual
heritage of our discipline’s history. Transforming thoughts of the past into thoughts
of the present is, like any good ritual, what name-dropping does. Such sneaking
apotheosis, then, does not only affect the young scientist’s education. Apprentice
and teacher alike must depend on the canon’s sacred texts. Only that the latter has
had more time to develop practical coping mechanisms to deal with the trust/
skepticism-tension, for example, by finding a suitable approach, establishing a
firmer measure of what is relevant to him or her, gaining more intimate knowledge
of citation patterns in the disciplinary field, perhaps even inventing a new
methodology, etc.
In any case, the mature researcher (must have) cultivated a more elaborate,
sensible intuition for violations against academia’s ‘culture of critical discourse.’
Without this sensibility for e.g. misleading styles of argumentation, ‘‘the manifest
embarrassment over the dogged persistence of name-dropping as a tacit mode of
legitimation would not be so deeply felt’’ (Jay 1990, 30). To keep the balance
between trust and skepticism for the respective tradition remains a challenge for all
of researchers—no matter if they are junior or senior scholars—since it is
impossible to withdraw from mentioning names of authorities because they help
build the bridge to a collective past thereby maintained. What continuously remains
at stake is nothing less than the ability to judge the validity of these authorities and
stay reflexive when it comes to the rhetorical devices we use to invoke and question
them.
In order to uphold both these qualities, one has to be aware of Overington’s and
Jay’s shared shortcoming: they only told us one side of name-dropping’s story. Its
purpose is not only educational; its goal is not only one of legitimation. Even though
the two authors could explain very well where the tension between suspiciousness
and inevitability comes from, what they were unable to illuminate is when there is
an overuse of such names. This, again, has to do with the halved yardstick which
only allows for legitimation of one’s discourse to be accounted for. But big names
not only provide legitimation of one’s discourse. They also provide for orientation
in it.
T.-R. Kray
123
Author's personal copy
5 The Orientation Mechanism: Names and Maps
At the beginning of this essay, I have stated that the practice of mentioning
celebrated names hints at—and hangs together with—a mechanism unavoidable in
the humanities and social science discourse. Its necessary sustenance enables name-
dropping. Discerning it promises to give non-formal, context-sensitive grounds to
disqualify name-dropping and get a clearer picture why slipping into it seems so
easy. In order to do so, there needs to be a change of perspective. Up to this point,
name-dropping has been discussed as a practice either to enhance one’s self-
presentation or, in a similar vein, to legitimate one’s discourse.
The other mechanism, again, does not primarily concern an individual
legitimation of but a collective orientation in discourse. This claim is at the heart
of my argument. To put it as simply as possible: In social science and the humanities
we bring names into play to get information where the other stands, and to give
information where we stand. What can (in part) be observed on the level of general
social theory, still applies in science: names serve as a sophisticated contrivance to
give directions.
In his take on the sociology of science, Andrew Abbot invites us to imagine two
sociologists as they meet each other for the first time. They come from two very
different branches of sociology, commonly referred to as ‘positivism’ and
‘interpretation.’ In his though experiment, those two, like tribesmen, argue about
the respective relevance and significance of their respective backgrounds—at least
until they have located one another to a degree that will allow them to be mutually
acknowledge where they agree and on what they might disagree (epistemologically,
methodologically, politically, etc.). Unfortunately, the two labels (‘positivism’ and
‘interpretation’) they bring to bear to give each other directions do not carry enough
weight for them to sufficiently locate each another on the disciplinary terrain.
If I tell you I am a positivist, you in fact know only that in my usual domain of
interaction most people I deal with are more interpretative than I. Unless you
can already identify that usual domain of interaction, you don’t really know
anything more than you knew before I spoke. Where people not already know
each other’s positions, therefore, the indexical character of our most important
terms guarantees cacophony. (Abbott 2001, 11; my Italics)
What Abbot overlooks in his informative picture, however, is that to avoid
‘cacaphony’ (i.e. perpetual misunderstandings amongst the disciplines and their
proponents), the mentioned labels need to be accompanied by authoritative names.
They provide the additional information necessary to locate each other properly
because they contain another dimension of ‘indexicality’ for the two sociologists (or
political scientists, literature scholars, philosophers, etc.) to use. Because ‘interpre-
tation’ is itself just a label, an emblem if you like, it tends to homogenize the
tradition it designates and thus omits, or at least doesn’t specify, what kind of
interpretative approach one comes from (Habermas or Culler?) or what branch of
positivism one leans toward (Popper or Carnap?). Combined with the labels of
‘interpretation’ and ‘positivism,’ names help to establish a much more fine-grained
On Name-Dropping: The Mechanisms Behind a Notorious Practice…
123
Author's personal copy
orientation because they reference a particular tradition of hermeneutics, a distinct
type of analytical philosophy, a special sort of science studies. From a bird’s eye
view, they form a dendritic topography of distant and adjacent academic ‘‘tribes and
territories’’ (Becher and Trowler 1989). They stand for schools hostile to or
fraternized with one another, academic circles located at different departments in
different universities, visiting concurrent conferences, publishing in competing
journals, and applying for similar positions.
Any young academic’s training/enculturation involves exploring that topography
and establishing an intimate knowledge of it, i.e. a map.
10
Some regions will be
more and some will be less familiar to him or her; depending on the individual’s
experience, there will be more or less blurry or even dark spots on that map. Every
academic’s training must ensure, by virtue of the disciplinary focus, to help the
individual researcher build and elaborate such a cognitive map. Somebody being a
‘‘towering’’ figure is a metaphor bespeaking this fact.
How much legitimacy—and therefore, leeway—will be granted to a previously
unknown presenter by a particular audience is closely related to their respective
intellectual temperaments, heritages, and traditions. Mutually located on the
cognitive map, the researcher has incorporated ‘the field,’ and is thus able to
navigate in it. To join already existing coalitions and oppositions is not only an
important demonstration of the ability to read/use this cognitive map. Moreover, it
is an important part of every researcher’s identity as an academic: the map shows
who is a potential friend and who is a potential foe; based upon it fights are fought
and compromises achieved.
Let me give a short example from sociology. When, for instance, a statistician
starts to project complicated tables of several regression analyses onto the screen in
a workshop where the audience is affiliated with Frankfurt style Critical Theory,
their repeated mentioning of Adorno and Horkheimer will eventually tell the
statistician how he might (not) expect consensus and acceptance for his findings in
this group. Or, to use the metaphor again, it will help him to get a grasp of the
terrain he just landed in. Even if the statistician is not especially familiar with the
writings of those two authors, at least their canonization in sociology as a discipline
warrants his intuition of how much or, in (t)his case, how little appreciation for his
research-tradition is reasonable to claim. To increase the chances for a fruitful
discussion, he might refer to Pierre Bourdieu and thus signal that statistics can
become a useful tool to make visible structures of domination instead of just
reinforcing them. Mentioning names can also mark, for instance, the willingness to
move to or away from a certain position.
Note how this argument only applies for cases in which the researchers do not
know each other well enough to measure or, at any rate, estimate their relative
distance to one another on the disciplinary terrain. Orientation on the disciplinary
terrain, in other words, presumes a basic initial ignorance of the other’s position like
Abbot has suggested in his scenario.
What further supports this argument of names being dropped for the purpose of
orientation, is the finding of Bohra and Pandey mentioned beforehand. They found
10
‘‘All theory,’’ Polanyi (1962, 4) writes, ‘‘may be regarded as some kind of map’’.
T.-R. Kray
123
Author's personal copy
that dropping names as ingratiation works better with strangers than with friends.
We can infer that the general indexicality (some) names bear even persists outside
the strictly academic discourse. Giving hints at where one stands politically and/or
ideologically, for example, might be a matter of courtesy generating trust and thus
favorability.
Coming back to the ‘statistician-in-a-Critical-Theory-environment’-example, one
might add—as another feature of the orientation-mechanism—that the audience’s
repeated mentioning of a ‘charismatic name’ like Adorno/Horkheimer or Pierre
Bourdieu provides directions also very quickly. Put in a metaphor again, we can
describe it as a sort of shortcut. It is easier, i.e. quicker, to infer someone’s
disciplinary affiliations simply by mentioning a charismatic name than to listen to
an hour of complicated and multi-leveled argumentation (given that one’s
argumentation is not immediately self-evident in this regard). One might think
that the velocity-feature is not too spectacular. Still, in an increasingly globalized
scientific community where subfields of disciplines emerge and expand rapidly,
expeditious overview becomes more difficult by the day. On big international
conferences, for instance, it is both a matter of pragmatic necessity and of mindful
convenience to find one’s tribe quickly and without further ado.
Yet, what remains is the question of how the orientation-mechanism might be
related to the practice of name-dropping as such? Or, more precisely: how can we
separate someone trying to give orientation from someone trying to impress? Are
there tipping points? And if yes, where are they?
6 Two Tipping Points: Detour and Disorientation
We might not find a crystal-clear criterion to distinguish between the legitimation of
and the orientation in discourse. But just because a surgeon does not always have a
sterilized room to operate in, there is no need to perform the procedure out on the
street. Just because orientation involves legitimation and vice versa, we might not
give up in trying to separate them at all.
Two distinctions can help to make a tenable separation. Both have, admittedly a
metaphorical character. We have already encountered the first one. Stating a name
in a scenario where it enables orientation amongst the participants of a
professionalized audience, the name can help quickening a consensus. Similarly,
it can make a dissent more apparent. Either way, stating a name can be a shortcut for
the discussion. Contrary to this fruitful and thus productive function, name-
dropping, as the excessive over-use of charismatic names, makes the conversation
take a detour.
For a second, imagine a parlor much alike that in Burke’s metaphor and a
particular speaker in it. Quotation follows quotation; the speaker’s every assertion is
backed up by a guardian deity and hence curtains her own claims; she continues to
counter critical contestations solely by tracing their points back to some forgotten
French thinker; the speaker uses authoritative names mainly to evade further
questions about her expertise rather than answering to them; the speaker obviously
(out of arrogance or insecurity) tries to ‘‘silence his audience’’ with the names she
On Name-Dropping: The Mechanisms Behind a Notorious Practice…
123
Author's personal copy
mentions—in these cases, names become a costly detour in the conversation instead
of an economic shortcut for it.
The second distinction touches upon what has been central to the whole
discussion so far: the orientation-mechanism as such. In this expression, ‘‘orien-
tation’’ is of course itself metaphorical. It stands for the practice of stating names in
an academic discussion which ‘provide orientation’ for an audience in nothing less
than a longstanding intellectual tradition where authors occupy a certain ‘space.’ It
is enlarged by citation, commentary, and conversation on and about them; it is
diminished by their gradual obsolescence, obscurity, and finally oblivion. That
space has to be navigated. The orientation-mechanism is so important because it
allows us to navigate this—almost infinite—space properly and swiftly.
Name-dropping makes this navigation harder. It spreads disorientation instead of
orientation. To hear someone stating so many names in a conversation that it
becomes not easier but harder to locate her place and position, is to hear someone
obscure both. That is to say, name-dropping betrays the very foundation it is build
on. If being able to navigate the discursive space through the continuous exploring
of, and intimate familiarity with, one’s subject matter, if that is at the heart of one’s
claim for scientific legitimacy, then orientation, as an individual and collective
capacity, is the primary justification of a researcher’s right to take a credible subject
position before a professionalized audience. Name-dropping can be said to
obfuscate and obscure the speakers discourse and become annoying jargon, if it
complicates the process of mutual localization, or even makes it impossible.
With these two metaphorical terms of detour and disorientation, we can now see
the two tipping-points we have been looking for. Yes, they both remain a bit fuzzy
and somewhat contingent upon the composition of a group of academics, the
rigorousness/negligence of a particular institutional framework, and/or the depart-
mental culture in general. Nonetheless, in an assemblage of academics, inasmuch
they are trained and experienced professionals, I think, it will be very noticeable for
the participants when their discussion is stuck, when their parlor is taking detours
instead of running straight, when there is paralysis instead of progress.
If speakers use charismatic names to temporize the overall discussion instead of
forwarding it, then dropping names becomes illegitimate. If they use charismatic
names to disorientate their audience instead of orientating it, then to drop them in
great multitude eventually serves this undermining purpose and, thus, becomes
illegitimate as well. And because disorientation, like in any big city, is something
very unpleasant and potentially threatening, name-dropping is emotional stressful,
i.e. annoying.
7 Conclusion
For the conclusion, I’d like to re-widen the scope of this essay by briefly doing four
things: recount some of the distinctions made so far; revisit the issue of ‘emotional
criticism’ touched upon in footnote four; re-reflect on the difference between written
and spoken discourse; and speculate on the difference between the social sciences/
T.-R. Kray
123
Author's personal copy
humanities and the natural sciences as it has been alluded to by the epigraph from
physicist Alan Sokal.
The two main distinctions which I have introduced here—legitimation of versus
orientation in academic discourse plus detour and disorientation in a scholarly
debate—are both meant as analytical tools to achieve a clearer picture of the
rhetorical practices of our scientific conduct. Nonetheless, they point to different
dimensions of that conduct. The first distinction is descriptive insofar as it aims at
two different mechanism by which speakers display and adjust their relation to a
particular intellectual heritage (in front of a professionalized audience). The second
one has a more normative valence insofar it wants to measure the borderline that
separates the legitimate from the illegitimate, and the orientating from the
disorientating use of authoritative names. Both of these distinctions, although I think
they are quite capable of grasping the phenomenon and our quarrels with it, are
essentially metaphorical. Unlike a clear-cut concept with a formally definable
intension and extension, they operate with a more intuitive mode of understanding.
But since metaphors are akin to models (Black 1966) guiding our thoughts and
actions (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), and informing our scientific terminology on a
deep level (Wahring-Schmidt 1997), I think it is sound to use them here under
philosophical premises and for analytic purposes.
Yet, the intelligibility of the instruments I have proposed—for better or for
worse—remains reliant upon the socialization in a particular peer group’s culture,
their norms, values, idols, and fetishes. Hold in high esteem by its members, the
group’s conventions are neither fully explicit nor completely explicable. To stay in
accordance with these convention-based rules of scientific conduct (and do so in a
rather successful manner) requires a practical and thus implicit knowledge of and
familiarity with them. This, I have argued, becomes most visible in ritualized
performances where a qualified speaker engages in a conversation with a
professionalized audience to establish her truth claims as collectively confirmed
(explicit) knowledge. From rhetoric’s point of view, this process of accreditation not
only involves, but is coextensive with, persuasion. The speculative point I wanted to
make in the outsized footnote above concerned the conditions of failure of that very
process. Because for an understanding why certain knowledge claims fail in their
attempt to become validated, it is important not only to look at the norms and values
guiding the performance/conversation but also to account for their emotional
charge. Name-dropping is a phenomenon which affords us an example of how
scholarly conventions, in case they are noticeably breached in the way I have tried
to describe, can engender a particular emotional response (for name-dropping it has
the shape of annoyance/embarrassment). Of course, until actual ethnographic data
has been gathered, this line of inquiry must remain somewhat speculative; but future
research, if interested in ‘‘empirical rhetoric’’ in its connection to emotion, might
uncover how these affectual responses contribute to the accreditation of truth claims
as knowledge.
Insofar this accreditation happens in and by different media, I’d like to
emphasize, again, that the present argument can only account for spoken discourses.
This limitation, although remedied by the fact that rhetoric indeed has traditionally
been focused on the spoken word, considerably narrows the scope of the present
On Name-Dropping: The Mechanisms Behind a Notorious Practice…
123
Author's personal copy
argument since science is largely a text-based endeavor. Yet, some of the authors I
have referenced above do address name-dropping as a textual practice. Either, they
will turn out to be false friends for the attempt to grasp and explain the phenomenon
at hand or, and I very much hope so, they will prove valuable warrantors to widen
the scope and help account for the different modalities of name-dropping in the
textual dimension.
One of these scholars, with very strong opinions pertaining to name-dropping in
the social science and humanities textual discourse, has been quoted in the epigraph.
The reason why I mentioned Alan Sokal, who is knowingly an important instigator
if not the initiator of the so-called ‘‘science wars,’’ (e.g. Parsons 2003) is twofold.
First, I think, with his polemic edge (Sokal and Bricmont 2003; cf. Sokal 2008)he
can help raise awareness for the urgency of the matter. Name-dropping is a topic
that challenges our will to neutrality as it points to ‘ideological’ undercurrents and
power struggles inextricably linked with any form of scientific knowledge. And
second, his particular ‘contribution’—and the string of consequences that followed
from it—allows to ask the further question whether or not name-dropping has a
similar, a completely different or any function at all in the natural sciences.
Unfortunately, I do not feel competent enough (yet) to even attempt to speak on this
subject.
However, the further investigation of name-dropping, as a rhetorical means to
perform the accreditation of truth claims and provide orientation in the vast world of
intellectual thought and scientific theory, might give us the chance to better
understand the disciplinary segmentation and separation of both—the map and the
territory.
Acknowledgments I’d like to thank Marcel Schwarz, Ju
¨rgen Mittelstraß and Bernhard Giesen for their
helpful comments and criticisms. The same holds true for the three anonymous reviewers’ time and effort.
References
Abbott, Andrew Delano. 2001. Chaos of disciplines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Agnes, Michael. 2002. Webster’s new world college dictionary. Cleveland: Wiley.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2010. The performance of politics: Obama’s victory and the democratic struggle
for power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Alexander, Jeffrey C., Bernhard Giesen, and Jason Mast. 2006. Social performance. Symbolic action,
cultural pragmatics and ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Anderson, Ben. 2009. Affective atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society 2: 77–81.
Becher, Tony, and Paul R. Trowler. 1989. Academic tribes and territories: Intellectual enquiry and the
culture of disciplines. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Billig, Michael. 2013. Learn to write badly: How to succeed in the social sciences. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Black, Max. 1966. Models and metaphors studies in language and philosophy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Bohra, Kayyum A., and Janak Pandey. 1984. Ingratiation toward strangers, friends, and bosses. Journal of
Social Psychology 122: 217–222.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Burke, Kenneth. 1941. The philosophy of literary form. Studies in symbolic action. Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press.
T.-R. Kray
123
Author's personal copy
Ciurria, Michelle, and Khameiel Altamimi. 2014. Argumentum ad verecundiam: New gender-based
criteria for appeals to authority. Argumentation 28(4): 437–452.
Cohen, David H. 2004. Arguments and metaphors in philosophy. Dallas: University of America Press.
Collins, Randall. 1998. The sociology of philosophies: A global theory of intellectual change. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Copi, Irving M., and Carl Cohen. 1990. Introduction to logic. New York: Macmillans.
Davidson, Donald. 2001 [1984]. First person authority. In Subjective, intersubjective, objective, ed. ders.,
3–14. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 2001. Power. Essential works of Foucault 1954–1984, vol./Michel Foucault; Vol 3.
Allen Lane: Penguin.
Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1986. Wahrheit und Methode: Grundzu¨ge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik.
Tu
¨bingen: Mohr.
Goffman, Erving. 1956. The presentation of self in everyday life. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh
Press.
Goodwin, Jean. 1998. Forms of authority and the real ad verecundiam. Argumentation 12: 276–280.
Hansen, Hans V. 2006. Whately on arguments involving authority. Informal Logic. Reasoning and
Argumentation in Theory and Practice 26(3): 319–340.
Husserl, Edmund. 1976. Die Krisis der europa¨ischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale
Pha¨nomenologie. Den Haag: Nijhoff.
Jay, Martin. 1990. Name-dropping or dropping names? Modes of legitimation in the humanties. In Theory
between the disciplines. Authority/vision/politics, ed. Martin Kreiswirth, and Mark A. Cheetham,
19–34. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.
Lebherz, Carmen, Klaus Jonas, and Barbara Tomljenovic. 2009. Are we known by the company we keep?
Effects of name-dropping on first impressions. Social Influence 4(1): 62–79.
Locke, John. 1975. An essay concerning human understanding. Oxford: Clarendon.
Overington, Michael A. 1977. The scientific community as audience: Toward a rhetorica analysis of
science. Philosophy & Rhetoric 10(3): 143–164.
Parsons, Keith M. 2003. The science wars: Debating scientific knowledge and technology. Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books.
Perelman, Chaı
¨m, and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. 1969 [1958]. The new rhetoric: A treatise on
argumentation. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
Polanyi, Michael. 1962. Personal knowledge: Towards a post-critical philosophy. Chicago, IL: Chicago
University Press.
Seyfert, Robert. 2012. Beyond personal feelings and collective emotions: Toward a theory of social
affect. Theory, Culture & Society 29(6): 27–46.
Sokal, Alan. 2008. Beyond the hoax: Science, philosophy and culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sokal, Alan D., and Jean Bricmont. 2003. Intellectual impostures: Postmodern philosophers’ abuse of
science. London: Profile.
van Eemeren, Frans H., and Rob Grootendorst. 2004. A systematic theory of argumentation: The pragma-
dialectical approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wagemans, Jean H.M. 2005. The assessment of argumentation from expert opinion. Argumentation 25:
329–339.
Wahring-Schmidt, Bettina. 1997. Metaphern, Metaphern fu
¨r Metaphern und ihr Gebrauch in
wissenschaftstheoretischer Absicht. In Metaphern, Medien, Wissenschaft: Zur Vermittlung der
AIDS-Forschung in Presse und Rundfunk, ed. Bernd Ulrich Biere, 23–48. Opladen: Westdeutscher.
Walton, Douglas N. 1997. Appeal to expert opinion: Arguments from authority. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press.
Walton, Douglas N. 2008. Informal logic: A pragmatic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Woods, John, and Douglas N. Walton. 1974. Argumentum ad verecundiam. Philosophy & Rhetoric 7(3):
135–153.
On Name-Dropping: The Mechanisms Behind a Notorious Practice…
123
Author's personal copy
