Abstract
The Talking-Tree or Palaver Tree (Arbre à palabres) is a designated location (originally a large ancestral tree such as the baobab, but it can also be a grave) in many African traditions where the community comes together to discuss, in a peaceful and constructive manner, issues of common interest. It is conceived as an open gathering space of interactive communication led by the stance that finding a compromise or common solution is the best way to consolidate a community. At times, the interchange taking place at a Talking-Tree may also transform into conflict management. Conflict management unfolds into several specific patterns of argumentation including those that aim at deciding if some given accusation is justified or not. The main aim of this chapter is to study, within the Baule tradition of Talking-Tree debates involving accusations of wrongdoing, the meaning explanation underlying proverbs (nyanndra), which constitute the most fundamental elements of these debates. More precisely our study, based on a pragmatic approach to meaning, will focus on the distinction drawn by linguist Kouadio (2012) between ascertainment, (epistemo)logical and moral Baule proverbs by distinguishing their different role in a Talking-Tree debate. One of the main results of our approach is that it makes it patent that drawing a conclusion from a Talking-Tree debate is grounded on contentual functional links, rather than on the analysis of logical constants. This research should set the basis for a larger epistemological research on the structure of argumentation patterns born and developed in Africa, where meaning and knowledge are constituted during dialogical interaction. The dialogical system underlying such form of argumentation, that we call Dialogues of functional reasoning by proverbs, we think provides a general instrument for the study of patterns of argumentation beyond the African tradition.
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Notes
- 1.
The Baule-people inhabit mostly a region of Ivory Coast between the Comoé and Bandama rivers. The Baule are an Akan group, speaking a language of the Kwa branch. Nowadays the Baule people represent around 20% of the population of Ivory Coast. They came mostly from Ghana during the reign of queen Abla Pokou in the XVIIIth Century – see Kouadio (2007, pp. 21–27) and (2012, pp. 21–51).
- 2.
The notion of meaning explanation is the inferential counterpart of truth-functional semantics. The terminology is due to Martin-Löf and has a natural dialogical reading – see Rahman et al. (2018, chapters II and III). Namely, it amounts to setting the meaning of an expression by rules that establish how to challenge and defend it. These rules also indicate how to produce a local reason for a claim and how to analyse a reason.
- 3.
Notice that often the formulation of proverbs does not make explicit the particles “if” and “then” for binding antecedent and consequent of an implication – cf. Carteron (2018, p. 2). The implication is determined by the contentual dependence of the consequent upon the antecedent. Something similar happens with the propositional connectives “and” and “or”.
- 4.
We owe this proverb to Carteron (2018, proverb 173, p. 57)
- 5.
We owe this proverb to Carteron (2018, proverb 315, p. 105).
- 6.
We owe this proverb to Carteron (2018, p. 18), proverb 44.
- 7.
See too Dadié (2003).
- 8.
We borrowed the term open-texture from Bartha (2010, p. 9).
- 9.
As mentioned below this can be linked with Nzokou’s (2016, pp. 336–339) operator “≈”.
- 10.
For the dropping of the exclamation mark here see explanation of this use in the next section.
- 11.
See Ranta (1994, pp. 162–163).
- 12.
See Ranta (1994, pp. 126–137).
- 13.
One important difference to our approach is that Nzokou’s (2013, 2016) analysis is based on the idea that proverbs have the logical form of a universal quantified proposition. Thus, according to Nzokou’s view, sentences and proverbs are related by universal elimination (plus analogy), whereas within the framework of Dialogues of functional reasoning by proverbs , decoding-functions do the job of associating proverbs and sentences – whereby the latter constitute the contents of claims in a debate.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Teresa Lopez-Soto (Seville) the editor of present inspiring volume and to Christian Plantin (Lyon), who suggested many improvements to an earlier version of the paper. We are also very grateful to Jérome Kouadio Yao (Univ. Alassane Ouattara, Bouaké) for his generous support and assistance in linguistic issues related to the subject of our paper. The first author would also like to thank Ayénon Ignace Yapi (Univ. Alassane Ouattara, Bouaké), for his fruitful advices and Kouakou Simplice (Univ. Alassane Ouattara, Bouaké) for his backing to our work. The second author would like to thank the Laboratory STL: UMR-CNRS 8163 and particularly Leone Gazziero (STL), Laurent Cesalli (Genève), and Tony Street (Cambridge) leaders of the ERC-Generator project “Logic in Reverse. Fallacies in the Latin and the Islamic traditions” and Claudio Majolino (STL), associated researcher to that project, for fostering the research leading to the present study and Gildas Nzokou (Libreville), who made S. Rahman aware of the exciting world of African Argumentation . Let us point out that the reflections on which this paper is based evolved under the influence of the responses of many audiences. We are profoundly grateful to all of them, particularly so to Yaovi Akakpo (Université de Lomé), Mouhamadou el Hady Ba (Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar), Mawusse Kpakpo Akue Adotevi (Université de Lomé), Zacharie Bowao (Univ. Marien Ngouabi de Brazzaville, Congo), Christian Berner (Paris Nanterre), Michel Crubellier (Lille), Oumar Dia (Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar), Souleymane Bachir Diagne (Columbia University), M. Iqbal (Université Lille, STL/Antassari I. State Univ, Banjarmassin), A. Klev (Academy of Sciences, Prague), Marcel Nguimbi (Univ. Marien Ngouabi de Brazzaville, Congo), to Auguste Nsonsissa (Univ. Marien Ngouabi de Brazzaville, Congo).
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Dango, A.B., Rahman, S. (2021). Under the Talking-Tree: Proverbs as Reasons. The Dialogical Articulaton of Proverbs Within the Baule Tradition. In: Lopez-Soto, T. (eds) Dialog Systems. Logic, Argumentation & Reasoning, vol 22. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61438-6_5
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