Abstract
I distinguish four current strategies for integrating a rhetorical perspective within normative models for argumentation. Then I propose and argue for a fifth one by defending a conception of acts of arguing as having a rhetorical dimension that provides conditions for characterizing good argumentation, understood as argumentation that justifies a target-claim.
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Notes
In this sense, I think that, in criticizing Johnson’s approach, Kock is confusing his own project of developing a normative model for rhetorical argumentation with the characterization of a rhetorical normative model for argumentation, which is what Johnson is talking about.
For example, according to Jacobs’ descriptions, the integration of the logical, the dialectical and the rhetorical normative perspectives might result in something like the following definition of good argumentation: “good argumentation is argumentation that, in being sound, it has been developed in such a way that it sets participants/us in a position to tell that it is, so that, in facing it, people decide there is good reason to be persuaded by it”. Certainly, if the argumentation is not sound, we cannot say that it is good. And if we cannot tell that it is sound, we cannot say that it is good. Finally, if it is sound and we/participants can tell that it is, but it would not persuade any other people, then it is plausible to assume that we should not say that it is good argumentation. (This account of argumentative value has several problems—mostly related to the fact that, in it, the dialectical is not properly differentiated from the rhetorical. However, I think it underlies some current proposals.)
For example, I will talk of the rhetorical value of a piece of argumentation as a measure of its value as a persuasive device. But we can also think of its propagandistic value, its moral value, its historical value, its originality value, its exhortative value, and many more.
The point of whether pragma-dialecticians or Tindale actually endorse a constitutive or an instrumental value monist position is a matter of whether we can understand their definitions of argumentation as functional or not. I think they are not functional. Particularly, Pragma-dialectics is very clear at this point: not every argumentation is a critical discussion, i.e. a process aimed at resolving a conflict of opinion; rather, the critical discussion is an ideal model of argumentation.
This claim does not mean that we cannot compare different proposals on Argumentation Theory as long as they endorse different conceptions of argumentation. Certainly, conceptions cannot be plainly right or wrong. But we can compare them by considering which one is more fruitful, less problematic regarding related concepts and ideas, etc.
A big issue within this account is “who is the subject whose behaviour counts for determining the causal power of a performance, and consequently, its rhetorical properties”. We may either establish a “general subject”, or consider different subjects, depending, for example, on the expected audiences of each performance. We can think of individuals or groups, or we can take a feminist approach and demand gender considerations, etc. Whatever the case, in my view, the only thing we cannot do is to consider a transcendental subject, for such a subject does not exhibit empirical regularities in behaviour.
I cannot deal with this question here, but my suggestion is that the variety of subjects we can consider results in a variety of types of rhetorical properties.
I think this is an important gain. For example, sometimes, the badness of a movie, a play, a painting, etc. appears as a mismatch between the perceived rhetorical intentions of the author and the rhetorical import of his work—whether or not such work is able to achieve, here and there, the desired reaction. Consider, for example, Ed Woods’ intensely scary movies, where such mismatches are so evident that they are able to bring about a sort of “second order” rhetorical import.
In Bermejo-Luque (2009) I further explain the distinction between rhetorical acts and rhetorical effects, and between rhetorical meaning and rhetorical import, etc.
In Bermejo-Luque (forthcoming), I give an account of the rhetorical nature of certain traditional fallacies, as long as they are violations of such rhetorical normative conditions.
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Acknowledgements
The work presented in this paper has been financed by a JAE-doc Research Fellowship of the Spanish National Research Council and by the research project FFI2008-00085 of the Spanish Ministry of Science.
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Bermejo-Luque, L. Intrinsic Versus Instrumental Values of Argumentation: The Rhetorical Dimension of Argumentation. Argumentation 24, 453–474 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-010-9187-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-010-9187-2