Dialogue and Rhetoric
Dialogue Studies (DS) Dialogue Studies takes the notion of dialogicity as central; it encompasses every type of language use, workaday, institutional and literary. By covering the whole range of language use, the growing field of dialogue studies comes close to pragmatics and studies in discourse or conversation. The concept of dialogicity, however, provides a clear methodological profile. The series aims to cross disciplinary boundaries and considers a genuinely inter-disciplinary approach necessary for addressing the complex phenomenon of dialogic language use. This peer reviewed series will include monographs, thematic collections of articles, and textbooks in the relevant areas.
Editor Edda Weigand
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Editorial Advisory Board Adelino Cattani
Marion Grein
Kenneth N. Cissna
Fritjof Haft
Světla Čmejrková
John E. Joseph
François Cooren
Werner Kallmeyer
Robert T. Craig
Catherine KerbratOrecchioni
Università di Padova University of South Florida Czech Language Institute Université de Montréal University of Colorado at Boulder
Marcelo Dascal
Tel Aviv University
Valeri Demiankov
Russian Academy of Sciences
Volume 2 Dialogue and Rhetoric Edited by Edda Weigand
University of Mainz University of Tübingen University of Edinburgh University of Mannheim
Université Lyon 2
Geoffrey Sampson University of Sussex
Masayoshi Shibatani Rice University
Anne-Marie Söderberg Copenhagen Business School
Talbot J. Taylor
College of William and Mary
Wolfgang Teubert
University of Birmingham
Linda R. Waugh
University of Arizona
Elda Weizman
Bar Ilan University
Yorick Wilks
University of Sheffield
Dialogue and Rhetoric Edited by
Edda Weigand University of Münster
John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam / Philadelphia
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TM
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dialogue and rhetoric / edited by Edda Weigand. p. cm. (Dialogue Studies, issn 1875-1792 ; v. 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Dialogue anallysis. 2. Rhetoric. I. Weigand, Edda. P95.455.D533
2008
808'.926--dc22
2008035989
isbn 978 90 272 1019 7 (Hb; alk. paper) © 2008 – John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of Contents Introduction Rhetoric or how to integrate the different voices Edda Weigand
IX
PART I Rhetorical Paradigms Rhetoric in the Mixed Game Edda Weigand
3
The Selection of Agency as a Rhetorical Device Opening up the scene of dialogue through ventriloquism François Cooren
23
Dialogic Rhetoric, Coauthorship, and Moments of Meeting Kenneth N. Cissna & Rob Anderson
39
The Rhetoric of ‘Dialogue’ in Metadiscourse Possibility/Impossibility arguments and critical events Robert T. Craig
55
Rhetoric and Ethic of Dialog Can conditions of performance serve as excluding criteria? Alain Létourneau
69
Common Ground and (Re)Defanging the Antagonistic A paradigm for argumentation as shared inquiry and responsibility Barbara A. Emmel
83
What is the Role of Arguments? Fundamental human rights in the age of spin Wolfgang Teubert
95
VI Table of Contents
Logical and Rhetorical Rules of Debate Adelino Cattani
119
Rhetoric in a Dialectical Framework Fallacies as derailments of strategic manoeuvring Frans H. van Eemeren & Peter Houtlosser
133
PART II Rhetoric in the Mixed Game Communicative means, cultural values, and institutional games Strategic Use of Korean Honorifics Functions of ‘partner-deference sangdae-nopim’ Yongkil Cho
155
Irony as a Rhetorical Device in Dialogic Interaction Sebastian Feller
171
Political Rhetoric in Visual Images Georges Roque
185
Sociological Concepts and their Impact on Rhetoric Japanese language concepts Marion Grein
195
The Rhetorical Component of Dialogic Communication in Banks’ Annual Reports Marta Mignini
209
Attention-influencing as a Rhetorical Strategy in German and Turkish Parliamentary Debates Didem Ozan
221
Diatexts of Media Dilemmas The rhetorical construction of euthanasia Giuseppe Mininni, Amelia Manuti & Rossella Rubino
235
Recontextualization of Concepts in European Legal Discourse Anne Lise Kjær
251
Table of Contents VII
A Court Judgment as Dialogue Le Cheng & King Kui Sin
267
PART III Round Table Discussion Concepts of Rhetoric, Dialogue and Argumentation Round Table Discussion
285
General Index
309
List of Contributors
315
Introduction Rhetoric or how to integrate the different voices
In recent years rhetoric has become a focus of research in various disciplines, among them linguistics, philosophy, communication sciences, psychology, and communication training. It was also the focus of the 11th IADA conference on “Dialogue Analysis and Rhetoric” held at the University of Münster in March, 2007. About one hundred papers were given at this interdisciplinary conference by scholars who came from all parts of the world, ranging from China to Canada, and from Korea to Florida. The volume contains a small selection of papers which are oriented towards two issues: on the one hand, they show that the actual state of the art cannot be defined with reference to a unified position but can only be expressed by different voices, in different models. Part I of the volume therefore assembles a variety of different “rhetorical paradigms”. On the other hand, a certain trend can be identified: the majority of scholars are no longer worried about combining different voices and different aspects which would have been considered heterogeneous components according to the tenets of a scientific approach which required the separation of competence and performance. On the contrary, they try to demonstrate how these ‘voices’ interact as components in the actual dialogic game. That is the view which, as I see it, finds its theoretical basis in what I called the “mixed game”. Part II of the volume on “rhetoric in the mixed game” contains a selection of papers which illustrate the interaction of various components in dialogic interaction. Finally, the Round Table discussion in Part III brings proponents of different paradigms face to face with each other and tries to elaborate how they justify their own positions and present arguments against rival paradigms. Among the controversial points are the issue of whether dialogue analysis, rhetoric, and argumentation theory represent separate research fields and the issue of how to deal with emotion and culture. The state of the art which is characterized here as the co-presence of or competition between different rhetorical paradigms certainly contains more ‘voices’ than those included in Part I. We should not be surprised by the wide range of positions, even controversial ones. The plurality of different models is not only a specific feature of the field of rhetoric but is characteristic of linguistics in general in an era which focuses on pragmatics. The Pragmatic Turn has brought about a fundamental change in linguistics as a clear-cut science of definitions and rules. The object-of-study is no longer an artificial system called la langue or language as a sign system which is constituted by rules and definitions but
X Edda Weigand
language-in-use which goes beyond putting the sign system to use. Addressing language-in-use or language performance requires a quite different methodology from that of simply adding together competence models and features of performance. Language use means language action in performance, which is action by individual speakers. Science can no longer rely on general definitions but becomes an argumentative endeavour. That is, in the end, the reason why we are confronted with so many individual views in pragmatics, so many different paradigms and concepts of rhetoric and dialogue. Unfortunately, only very few scholars feel obliged to really argue for and against different positions. I take this as a sign that the search for a bridge between models of competence and performance seems to be petering out. Competence and performance are two different worlds; there is no bridge between them as they are defined in linguistic tradition, no bridge between universal, defined systems and ever-changing performance. Searching for a bridge necessitates changing the starting point. The starting point cannot be models or methodological exigencies which are incompatible. The starting point has to be the speakers or human beings who are capable of coming to grips with the complexity of dialogic interaction. It is human beings’ minds where the bridge is to be found. Human beings are able to orient themselves in ever-changing performance according to principles of probability. Performance does not have to be restricted to empirical features. Performance means performance by human beings who use their abilities – of speaking, thinking, perceiving – in integration. The authentic text is not an autonomous object. It is the extraordinary human ability of being competent-in-performance that constitutes the bridge in the human mind. While trying to find some way of sequencing the different paradigms in the first part of the volume, I was surprised to see that there was only one paper that can be clearly assigned to the methodology of communicative competence, that of van Eemeren and Houtlosser, but van Eemeren and Houtlosser have also made the first step towards ‘real-life’ performance by combining dialectics with rhetoric in what they call “rhetorical manoeuvring”. There is no paper that strictly separates dialogue from rhetoric as demanded by Franz Hundsnurscher in the Round Table discussion. Even if this situation could be expected, as seems to be presupposed by the topic of the conference, it reflects the present state of the art: the unavoidable challenge of addressing performance. The overview of different paradigms in Part I demonstrates that the shackles of competence models have been removed, performance and its various aspects and techniques now inevitably have to be tackled. The different approaches can more or less be described as pointing to the mixed game of performance we are always engaged in and we are capable of managing every day. Part I therefore starts with the Paradigm of the Mixed Game or the Mixed Game Model by Edda Weigand, which offers a theoretical foundation for combining rules, the subject matter of competence, with individuality, the subject matter of performance. The paper contains a short overview of the state of the art
Introduction XI
from the viewpoint of competence-in-performance and enables us to locate, to a certain extent, the positions of the various paradigms. The Mixed Game Model is based on principles of probability as techniques by which human beings cope with the uncertainty of life. Language is not separated from emotion nor from culture, speaking is not separated from thinking and perceiving. What is already obvious to common sense, has fortunately been proved by neurological experiments. On the common ground of the mixed game, François Cooren proposes the Paradigm of Agency, which is a paradigm that opens up the view of dialogue as dialogic action by also showing that “many different things do things with words”, among them collectives, policies and ideologies which can be rhetorically mobilized. Kenneth N. Cissna and Rob Anderson introduce the philosophical Paradigm of Dialogue as Meeting based on Buber’s philosophy of religion, which was a topic of discussion in Europe decades ago. Cissna and Anderson distinguish between three conceptual types of dialogue: the general view of language use as inherently dialogic, their own view of dialogue as meeting, and dialogue as dialogic interaction. The concept of dialogue as meeting is considered more as an ideal to be desired than as a prescriptive concept. It is oriented towards values of humanity and includes what they call a “dialogic rhetoric”. Robert T. Craig proposes a normative concept of dialogue ranging between Cissna and Anderson’s concept of dialogue as meeting and the concept of dialogue as something that people do. This normative concept is applied to practical arguments about the possibility or impossibility of dialogue made in a corpus of discourse samples drawn from the Internet. In what might be called the Paradigm of Metadiscourse, Craig describes the rhetoric of these arguments as they occur in the different normative domains of dialogue, political, social, and personal, with respect to objective conditions or morally accountable attitudes or critical events. Rhetoric in dialogue presupposes some sort of evaluation which ranges from values of humanity, the balance of reason and persuasion to oppressive power. Alain Létourneau discusses conditions of an ethic of rhetoric. Barbara Emmel also pleads for a Paradigm of Rhetorical Ethic and draws our attention to a reworking of the “combative model of rhetoric” by focusing on difference and active listening. On the basis of a Paradigm of Discourse, i.e. starting from the verbal text and interpreting it with respect to previous and subsequent texts from a hermeneutic perspective, Wolfgang Teubert problematizes the role of arguments in our society. Analysing a parliamentary debate in the House of Commons on the Lisbon Treaty’s Charter of Fundamental Rights he draws the conclusion that the role of argumentation is not about changing social conditions but about constructing ideological identity.
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Adelino Cattani introduces a Paradigm of Practice based on a broad view of rhetoric as the theory and practice of argumentation. His question is how to combine logic and rhetoric, conviction and persuasion. Finally, we arrive at the normative Paradigm of Pragma-Dialectics presented by van Eemeren and Houtlosser. It is a paradigm of reasonableness and is restricted to argumentation which “proceeds in an adequate fashion. This requires a regulation of the interaction through rules for critical discussion.” Their attempt to apply the model to real-life examples can be considered a first step in approaching performance. The analysis however remains within the limits of a competence model based on rules of reconstructing norms. It is not surprising that no paradigm of conversational analysis or spoken language was offered. In order to deal with rhetoric or effective language use, we have to go beyond the empirical level in a double sense: first, rhetoric in any case has to do with meaning and the purpose of use, and second, rhetorical means are not only empirical means but include cognitive means and strategies. Rhetoric thus turns out to be a real obstacle to a strictly formal approach. Part II contains papers which demonstrate how human beings are competent to tackle performance effectively in ever-changing surroundings. The topics dealt with are specific communicative means involving rhetoric, cultural values that make a difference, and rhetoric in institutional games. Specific communicative means of rhetoric are the topic of the papers by Yongkil Cho, Sebastian Feller and Georges Roque. Yongkil Cho analyses the use of honorifics as rhetorical means in the Korean language. His approach is based on the Mixed Game Model which allows him to demonstrate that the category of honorifics is not by any means restricted to showing respect as is assumed in traditional approaches. It is more and more strategically used in a balance of respect and self-interest. Sebastian Feller deals with irony as a rhetorical device and demonstrates that it is not only used to bypass direct criticism but also to motivate the interlocutor to act for the good of him- or herself. In contrast to other monological approaches to irony which focus on speaker activity, Feller uses as a theoretical basis Weigand’s model of the dialogic action game based on a concept of language as dialogue and this allows him to elaborate the motivational role of irony. Georges Roque focuses on another interesting rhetorical means. In his analysis of anti-war posters he demonstrates that they are used as communicativedialogic means. Their rhetorical power derives from the interaction of visual images and verbal means. That is precisely what is assumed in the Mixed Game Model: speaking, perceiving and thinking as communicative means cannot be separated. Cultural values that make a difference are dealt with by Marion Grein. She demonstrates that it is of great importance to know the specific socio-cultural concepts and their impact on the rhetoric of dialogue. Her emphasis is on the
Introduction XIII
socio-cultural concepts of harmony, visceral communication and social distance in the Japanese language. Finally, the rhetoric of institutional games is analysed in games of business, politics, the media, and the law. Annual reports of banks are the object-of-study in Marta Mignini’s paper. She demonstrates how logic and rhetoric interact in this type of communication used in circulars and provides examples of various rhetorical devices to be found in them. Didem Ozan deals with the institutional game of parliamentary debates in a comparative study of German and Turkish debates on the accession of Turkey to the European Union. Her focus is to show how influencing attention is used as a rhetorical strategy in the interests of the speaker. Giuseppe Mininni, Amelia Manuti and Rossella Rubino concentrate on the role of the media in the ‘dialogue about euthanasia’ which took place in the Italian media. They discuss the results of a qualitative study on pro and contra positions and highlight how the issue of euthanasia is rhetorically constructed and made more complex by media interaction. Finally, two papers deal with legal action games. Anne Lise Kjær addresses the issue of whether it is possible to develop a common legal language in the European Union, given the cultural and linguistic plurality of Europe. She proposes the recontextualization of concepts as a necessary rhetorical device for arriving at a common understanding of European legal discourse. Le Cheng and King Kui San describe court judgments as dialogic problem solving. A court judgment is taken as a dialogue between judges as well as between courts and the legislature. On the basis of some judgments in Hong Kong, they identify rhetorical strategies and preferences and unravel the underlying pragmatic rationale. The last part of the volume, Part III, contains a transcription of the Round Table discussion held at the end of the conference. Wolfgang Teubert chaired this discussion on the various concepts of rhetoric, dialogue, and argumentation proposed during the conference. He invited the different voices to interact and argue pro and contra with each other. Among the issues discussed are the internal relationships between dialogue and rhetoric as well as between dialogue and emotion. It could not be expected that the debate would end up by yielding a unified position in every respect. We hope that the arguments, more or less controversial, shed some light on what is going on in the field of rhetoric and dialogue. Finally, I would like to thank the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for financial support and the University of Münster for providing some additional financial resources and the facilities needed for the smooth running of the conference. A cordial thank you is also due to all those who helped organize the conference: the conference assistants Sebastian Feller, Oliver Richter and Bérénice Walther, my students Katharina Schneider and Lisa Weber, as well as Jana Köchling and
XIV Edda Weigand
Miriam Reiling. I am also grateful to Marion Grein for offering help whenever needed. The formatting of the papers was carried out by Oliver Richter, the index was compiled by Sebastian Feller and Oliver Richter. Special thanks are due to Anke de Looper and Isja Conen from Benjamins Publishing House for constantly accompanying the publication process with helpful advice.
Münster, July 2008
Edda Weigand
PART I Rhetorical Paradigms
Rhetoric in the Mixed Game Edda Weigand University of Münster
The paper starts from the assumption that rhetoric is inherent to dialogue. Such a view is based on the Theory of Dialogic Action Games or the Mixed Game Model, which is a theory about human beings’ complex ability to come to terms with dialogic issues in ever-changing surroundings. Human beings are not lost in the chaos of ever-varying empirical data but are competent-to-perform in their own interests, i.e. competent to effecttively achieve their purposes in dialogic action games. Models of dialogue usually proceed either by abstraction to rule-governed patterns of competence or by reducing the object-of-study to empirical elements. In contrast to such reductionist models of the simple, the theory of the dialogic action game represents an adventure in the complex of the mixed game of human action. Basic premises and methodological principles of the theory will be briefly introduced. A sample analysis of a political Round Table discussion demonstrates how the model works.
1. Dialogue and rhetoric: some introductory reflections The issue we are dealing with can be included in the question which underlies Ken Cissna’s contribution to this volume: “What kind of rhetoric is dialogue?” since it is based on a presupposition which is crucial for my view: dialogue is in any case some kind of rhetoric, or rhetoric is inherent to dialogue. Texts are not just rhetorical texts if they contain rhetorical figures, they are always produced by human beings who are attempting to achieve more or less effectively certain purposes in dialogic interaction. In language use, rhetoric and grammar are not separate, meaning is in principle persuasion (Burke 1950). I thus consider rhetoric to be rooted in human beings’ interests and needs. It is in the end the need to maintain one’s position in the community which is part of human beings’ nature and which can be justified by evolutionary criteria (Weigand 2006). Human beings are both individuals and social beings. Their double nature determines their actions and induces them to use communicative means and strategies which seem appropriate to their interests. Rhetoric is thus an integral feature of an extraordinary human ability which I called competence-in-performance (e.g., Weigand 2003) and which can be paraphrased in Sampson’s words (2005:193) as “being capable of coming to terms with whatever life throws at us”.
4 Edda Weigand
2. The simple and the complex The question is how to deal with competence-in-performance in theory? Can we address it by starting from the simple, i.e. in a reductionist model which reduces its object either to rule-governed competence or to empirical performance? Reductionist models are not only those models which search for rules via abstracttion at an underlying level of competence; reductionist models are also those models which start from performance but reduce the object-of-study, dialogic interaction, by methodological exigencies to empirically registrable elements. Competence-in-performance however is neither restricted to rules and conventions nor is it lost in unlimited variability of performance. In Daneš’ words (1995): “Language is neither all chaos nor all order.” Competence-in-performance means starting from the complex and trying to structure it by focusing attention and adapting to ever-changing conditions in the continuous attempt to negotiate meaning and understanding. A theory of competence-in-performance thus has to face the challenge of a holistic model. Very early on, Simon (1962) made interesting remarks in this respect on how to proceed. In his article on “The architecture of complexity”, he emphasises the crucial feature of interaction among complex subsystems. The complex whole is more than the sum of these interactions. Consequently, it cannot be structured by division into parts but requires differentiation or specialization into complex subsystems. From the very outset, we have to decide which road to take, the road which involves reducing our natural object by starting from the simple, or the road which involves starting from the natural complex whole of human beings’ competence-in-performance. Both roads are not equivalent, not really alternative ways of achieving the same goal. The road of the simple, starting from methodology, will inevitably damage the natural object. It is a road of no return insofar as what has been lost by abstraction or reduction can never be regained. The complex is an integrated whole which cannot be rebuilt by addition. Starting from the complex will be the road which makes us grasp in theory what human beings do in practice by going beyond the limits of rules and beyond empirically registrable elements. At this point we are thrown back to the basic and ever mysterious question of what language is. Fortunately, the answer which already becomes evident as soon as we start observing human interaction impartially has eventually been experimentally proven by neurology: there is no separate object ‘language’, there is only the human ability to speak which interacts with other human abilities. In principle, no bridge can be established between competence and performance as these terms are defined in linguistics. The bridge is created by changing the object-of-study from a methodologically constructed one to the natural ability of competence-inperformance with language as an intrinsic part. Before addressing the big issue of how to develop a model of the complex, let us have a brief glance at the state of the art in the area of ‘models of the simple’,
Rhetoric in the Mixed Game 5
i.e. of models which start from methodological exigencies. We can distinguish here between competence models based on abstraction and performance models based on certain empiricist postulates. I will first concentrate on models of abstraction where two different guidelines can be observed: the normative and the descriptive one. The normative approach, mostly chosen by philosophers and rhetoricians, describes communication or argumentation ‘as it should be’. The norms that tell us how we should act are mostly norms set up by rationality and reason. The concept of pure rationality has been abandoned in favour of a ‘balance of reason’ (Dascal 1996) or ‘practical’ reason as Toulmin (2001) calls it or ‘reasonableness in critical discussion’ as it is called in Pragma-Dialectics (e.g., van Eemeren et al. 1993). The problem is how to ‘reconcile’ norms with the concept of intention which is crucial for dialogic interaction. Pragma-Dialectics takes the road of “reconstruction” and presupposes that in performance we orient ourselves by reconstructing norms of reasonableness. The question is: does performance go together with norms? We are certainly aware of norms, rational, ethical and conventional ones, we are perhaps even of the opinion that we should meet them, for instance, norms of civilised behaviour in public debates. To this extent, including norms is part of a descriptive model. But do we act and behave by reconstructing norms at a meta-level? We refer to norms when we evaluate the behaviour of our fellow beings. In our own actions in performance, however, we are in the end free to neglect norms and to go beyond conventions. Intentions and deliberate strategies that shape performance are not answerable to norms but are mainly influenced by personal and institutional interests. Norms represent a benchmark that allows us to evaluate actions from outside the game, for instance, the benchmark of reasonableness or of what is collectively accepted as standard behaviour. Normative approaches therefore set up benchmarks and presuppose performance in obedience to them. Setting up benchmarks needs to be justified. Whether a norm of reasonableness or morality can be justified by considering it as innate or something like Kant’s categorical imperative is open to doubt. Another attempt at ‘reconciling’ competence with performance was made by Grice (1975). With his Cooperative Principle he starts from an idealized concept of normative maxims. If the conditions of idealized behaviour seem to be flouted, individual inferences come in. It is thus not reconstruction but contradiction to an ideal system that triggers off inferences which are thought to lead to performance. We have to ask ourselves: do we in fact start acting as ideal beings and then change to real human beings? In contrast to normative approaches of communicative competence, the descriptive type constructs a rule-governed pattern of moves at an underlying level and excludes any move that goes beyond the pattern, for instance, individual intentions and interests. This is the road mainly taken by Dialogue Grammar (cf. Hundsnurscher 1980) and the School of Geneva (cf. Moeschler 1985). Conse-
6 Edda Weigand
quently, the object-of-study is dialogues that obey certain patterns, so-called ‘well-formed’ dialogues. The question of how to arrive at performance is addressed but remains without a satisfying answer. Even if Moeschler envisages an integrated concept, “[une] conception intégrée des points de vue argumentatifs et conversationnels” (p. 186f.), his concept of integration remains a programmatic feature of methodology and does not really catch up with the natural complex whole. A similar approach was proposed by Dascal (1994) who started from the rule-governed pattern of orthodox speech act theory and connected it with the Gricean model of conversational inferences. In contrast to the road of abstraction, there is the empirical road of performance or the “hyper-empiricist” approach to spoken language, as Moeschler (1985:78) called it. Whereas proponents of the road of abstraction search for hidden rules at the level of communicative competence, empiricists start from what they call ‘reality’ and require that any empirical detail – whether relevant or not – is transcribed in the so-called authentic text. They again search for hidden rules, this time, however, strangely by starting from an object which permits any rule to be broken. To my mind, we need methodological blinders that prevent us from recognizing that ‘real’ performance cannot be addressed by the exclusion of any reflection that goes beyond physically registrable elements. The road of communicative competence as well as the empiricist road are based on methodological exigencies which contradict each other. There is, in principle, no consistent methodological technique which might bridge the gap. The bridge between generalized rules and individual inferences is created in the mind of human beings by their competence-in-performance, i.e. their ability to come to grips with the complexity of life. The Model of Dialogic Action Games or the Mixed Game Model (MGM) as a holistic model takes the road of an adventure in the complex and tries to redesign the essential variables and moves which determine how human beings proceed, consciously or unconsciously. In contrast to reductionist models, it makes the theoretical claim to bring together the various complex subsystems as they interact in the mixed game. Such a claim is also made, for instance, by Enfield and Levinson (2006:12) who assume a “form of web of interconnected properties that together constitute human sociality”. Disappointingly, however, they seem to ignore the state of the art achieved in action theory since they only take as their starting point simple adjacency pairs and turn taking regularities. 3. The Mixed Game Model The basic question for a holistic model is how to structure the complex. Many models claim to be holistic models but, to my mind, do not really give us access to the complex. A genuinely holistic model has to start from the complex object and to derive its methodology from it, not vice versa. The first question therefore is to circumscribe the whole and the next to find a key to opening it up. This
Rhetoric in the Mixed Game 7
procedure, which I developed step by step in recent years, dovetails in principle with Simon’s general view of the ‘architecture of complexity’ (1962). I cannot go into details here (see, e.g., Weigand 2000, 2002a, 2002b, 2006, 2008). Instead I will focus on some essential points of the Mixed Game Model which, in particular, relate to the issue of rhetoric. 3.1 Premises about the object Trying to circumscribe the complex whole means searching for the minimal unit in which the object, i.e. competence-in-performance, works. The central reference point will be human beings and their purposes, interests and abilities. The working unit we are looking for has to comprise all the parameters that influence human beings’ actions, variables of their individual story as well as of institutional and cultural conventions. We thus arrive at what I called the cultural unit of the action game. It is an ever-changing, non-equilibrial unit where the world is not separated as such but perceived through the eye of the interacting people. The world as such is beyond our grasp. Everything we can perceive and think depends on our abilities. Assumptions about the way we use our abilities in the action game, in the end, therefore, have to comply with evolutionary criteria. Referring to human nature and to evolutionary criteria helps us to find the key to opening up the complex unit of the action game. What happens in the game is not completely arbitrary, not fully dependent on chance nor completely rulegoverned or rational but, in the end, guided by human beings’ abilities and intentions. From here we have to start if we search for a key concept that changes the puzzle to a mosaic. I consider this key concept to be purposes and needs which emerge from human beings’ double nature as individuals and at the same time social beings. They always have to regulate their self-interest with social concerns. It is, in the end, the interests of social individuals that give us the key to opening up the complex. These interests, from the very outset, include the rhetorical component of maintaining one’s position in the community more or less effectively. This view concurs, to some extent, with Bourdieu’s ‘theory of practice’ (1991) which is also based on a fundamental link between actions and interests. There is however a difference insofar as he considers interests to start from a set of socially determined ‘dispositions’ acquired by training and learning, whereas I consider the driving force of human needs and interests to be, in the end, inherent in human nature. To sum up: − The complex whole we are starting from or the ‘unit of description’ is the cultural unit of the action game with human beings acting and reacting in ever-changing, non-equilibrial surroundings. − The key to opening up the complex mix of order and disorder of the action game, is, in the end, human beings’ needs and abilities.
8 Edda Weigand
3.2 Deriving methodological principles The second step of expounding a theory of the complex consists in deriving the methodology from the natural object. I again have to be very brief. The methodology cannot simply be set up but has to be justified by the natural object. Action in ever-changing surroundings basically means adaptive action. Meaning and understanding are not presupposed by a fixed code but negotiated in conditions of uncertainty with a certain probability. We start structuring the complex by referring to rules and conventions. Where regularities come to an end, we try to establish coherence by individual inferences and particular knowledge of the background. General rules as well as individual inferences are techniques used by human beings. It is human beings who decide to apply them or not. In the end, therefore, it is not eternal rules and absolute truths but Principles of Probability that guide our competence-in-performance. The MGM distinguishes between three types of principles: constitutive, regulative and executive ones. Constitutive Principles focus on the fundamentals which constitute dialogic interaction. They include the Action Principle as a principle that considers action as correlation of purposes and means, the Dialogic Principle proper that characterizes every single action as dialogically oriented and the Coherence Principle that takes account of the fact that communicative means result from the interaction of various human abilities, not only the ability of speaking but of thinking and perceiving as well. Regulative Principles are those that regulate the interaction among subsystems such as emotion and reason or self-interest and respect for the other human being. Emotional and Politeness Principles thus belong to this regulative type. As they tell us how to deal with emotions and respect in certain cultures, they belong to Rhetorical Principles in a broad sense. Rhetorical Principles, in general, have to take account of the balance between the individual’s interests and the interests of the community. They not only refer to how we express our interests but also to what arguments we use to support our position. The MGM is a descriptive model and does not impose any rational or ethical conditions on how this balance is to be interpreted. Executive Principles guide the sequencing of actions. Mostly they are not directly expressed but determine the decision about the road to be taken as underlying cognitive strategies. These strategies, for instance, the strategy of avoiding a definite answer or of concealing the real purpose, are rhetorical strategies which depend on the basic interests and ideological viewpoints of the interacting partners. Let us now see how these principles operate in the mixed game by analysing an authentic example.
Rhetoric in the Mixed Game 9
4. A sample analysis The German elections in 2005 ended with an unexpected result: fewer votes than predicted for the CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union) and Angela Merkel, more votes than predicted for the SPD (Social Democratic Party) and Gerhard Schröder. In this situation immediately after the first exit poll, the so-called “elephants’ discussion” took place, a Round Table discussion on television with the top journalists Brender and von der Tann interviewing the chief representatives of the political parties. This Round Table discussion caused a lot of irritation among the general public and is a highly interesting and sophisticated mixed game that is worth analysing. I will focus on a few outstanding features and am aware of the fact that, as observers of the game, we can only draw hypothetical inferences about what is going on in the minds of the participants. The situation is formally clear according to the numbers: the CDU/CSU gained more votes than the SPD and will therefore take a few more seats in parliament, or in other words: the CDU/CSU and Angela Merkel have beaten the SPD and Gerhard Schröder, who was then still chancellor. Evaluations however differ depending on the point of view. This contradiction between formal and claimed arguments makes the “elephants’ discussion” a game where logic meets rhetoric. Two rounds with different results can be distinguished. Let us consider the first round (transl. from German, for the original see the appendix): 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Brender: Schröder: Brender: Schröder: Brender:
Chancellor ... It’s nice of you to address me this way already. I think that’s nice. Have you resigned already or what? No, no, not at all Mr Brender, not at all Mr Brender. Oh, I see, well, I thought, that would be ... Because you, because it surprised you. Schröder: Yes yes, I was only asking. Brender: Well, I’ll say it again: Chancellor, which you still are until the election of a new one ... Schröder: And I’ll stay Chancellor, too. Even if you’re doing your best to get me out. Brender: (hesitating) Are we doing our best to get you out? You’ve spoken about the power of the media and a media campaign ... Schröder: Correctly in my opinion, correctly in my opinion. Brender: I’d like to point out that the ARD and ZDF can’t be accused of that. Schröder: (nodding his head from side to side as if weighing up the remark) Brender: Not everything that suits you ... Schröder: Some people see it one way, others see it the other, Mr Brender. Brender: Not everything that doesn’t suit you is a media campaign. v. d. Tann: (wakes up, joins in the interview) Well, that’s a serious accusation. Brender: My question was: you wanted to be the strongest party, you didn’t...
10 Edda Weigand
18 19
Schröder: Brender:
20
Schröder:
21 22 23 24
Brender: Schröder: Brender: Schröder:
25
Brender:
26
Schröder:
27 28 29 30 31
v. d. Tann: Schröder: v. d. Tann: Schröder: v. d. Tann:
32
Schröder:
33 34 35 36
v. d. Tann: Schröder: v. d. Tann: Schröder:
37 38 39
Brender: Schröder: Brender:
40 41 42 43
Schröder: Brender: Schröder: Brender:
44
Schröder:
It was a very close call, probably not. You didn’t achieve that. You gained the third worst result for the Social Democratic Party in this republic. (grins arrogantly) This is, this is ... This is precisely what you’re always doing. Isn’t it allowed to ask you whether you’ve lost either? Of course it’s allowed. Well, there you are. Compared with the result of the last election we’ve lost, no doubt about it. But compared with what was written and broadcast in this country there’s a clear loser and that is quite obviously Mrs Merkel. And you too should take that on board (to Brender). That’s a fact. And that’s why I say ... Mr Schröder, perhaps you weren’t listening. My colleague has just pointed out to Mrs Merkel that she lost. May I speak or are you going to keep interrupting me? We lost, no doubt about it. And that hurts me. But compared with where we came from, Mr Brender, er, from 24 per cent, compared with what we had to go through in the last few weeks and months I’m really proud of my party, of the people who supported me, of those who voted for us and who gave us a result that is clear. In any case clear that no one apart from myself is in a position to form a stable government. Chancellor. No one apart from myself! Your starting point was 38.5% in 2002. Yes. Yes, that’s right. So you’ve lost a substantial amount of ground. You haven’t gained as much as you’ve now been saying. But look: in your programmes it was said that Mrs Merkel had 49, 45, 43. Now she has just 35 or a bit more. And at the time the figures were always correct. Yes, but ... I don’t know if they were correct, but... Chancellor. But I think somehow ... that you just have to understand what I’m getting at. In our programmes it was made clear ... Was it? ... what had been described in the public opinion surveys of all the polling institutes. This was not only broadcast in our programmes but written in all the newspapers. But excuse me. I don’t know which newspapers you read but at least ... All of them ... all of them. ... we can’t be accused of anything. But I’d like to ask you another question. Go ahead.
Rhetoric in the Mixed Game 11
45 46
47 48 49 50
51 52 53 54
Brender:
Thank you. If we ... if we have another look at the justification you gave in the Bundestag for dissolving it and having elections ... Schröder: Do we want to continue the election campaign, or what is it you’ve asked me now? (Stoiber giggles irritatedly) Brender: I’m asking you now − looking at the result today. Schröder: Yes. Brender: Has this justification been vindicated, that is to provide the basis for a stable government? Schröder: I think so. I think that my decision ... very ... complex ... I think courageous too, to say I would like to get legitimation again by the people for policies that have been discussed in election campaigns [...] And look, what I’m particularly pleased about − if I can just say this − is that the German people have made use of their right to decide as they wish and not as the public opinion pollsters want them to. (Everybody speaks at once) Brender: But you have only 34.2 per cent and so you at least can’t be the strong leader of a new government. Schröder: (defiantly) I’m sorry, of course I can. Brender: Oh, I see. v. d. Tann: (resignedly) Good. (turns to Westerwelle) [...]
This first round of the exchange between Brender and Schröder starts as an interview. The journalist however does not succeed in posing his question because Schröder immediately interrupts him and takes the initiative by evaluating the form of address as Chancellor in a way that opens up the road of insinuations and irony: 02
I think that’s nice.
Schröder thus, from the very beginning, takes the rhetorical road of attacking the media by insinuating bias on Brender’s part in the sense of ‘I didn’t expect this form of address on your part’. His comment baffles Brender because “Chancellor” is the formally correct term of address: 03
Have you resigned already or what?
Nevertheless the journalist tries to continue with a rational line of questioning. When confronted with explicit criticism 08
… you’re doing your best to get me out.
he “hesitates” and rejects this serious accusation (16)
12 Edda Weigand
11
I’d like to point out that the ARD [First TV Channel] and ZDF [Second TV Channel] can’t be accused of that.
This exchange, which results in the dialogic confrontation of an aggressive insinuation (8) and its formal rejection (11), ↔
accusation you’re doing your best to get me out
rejection the ARD and ZDF can’t be accused of that
Figure 1: Starting the attack
demonstrates that Schröder succeeded in changing the roles of an interview to those of an argumentative game by taking the initiative. He keeps to his rhetorical line of attacking the media by making claims without any rational argument and even ends up by appearing to behave arrogantly: 20
(grins arrogantly) This is, this is … This is precisely what you’re always doing.
Brender, on the other hand, makes every effort to keep to the formal line of the interview and eventually succeeds in posing his question: 21
Isn’t it allowed to ask you whether you’ve lost either?
Schröder has to admit that the SPD has lost: 24
… we’ve lost, no doubt about it.
Nevertheless he immediately brings in another reference point that is used as an argument for his claim: 24
… compared with what was written and broadcast … there is a clear loser and that is quite obviously Mrs Merkel. … That’s a fact.
From this alleged fact he derives his claim: 26
… that no one apart from myself is in a position to form a stable government.
and even rhetorically insists: 28
No one apart from myself!
Rhetoric in the Mixed Game 13
He continues the road of insinuations against the media by calling into doubt von der Tann’s justification: 31
v. d. Tann:
33 34
v. d. Tann: Schröder:
So you’ve lost a substantial amount of ground. You haven’t gained as much as you’ve now been saying. And at the time the figures were always correct. Yes, but … I don’t know if they were correct, but …
The journalists feel still obliged to keep to the formal line of quoting percentages though with growing indignation: 51
But you have only 34.2 per cent and so you at least can’t be the strong leader of a new government.
Again, Schröder simply insists on his claim by compensating for the lack of argument by emotion: 52
(defiantly) I’m sorry, of course I can.
Brender takes it with perfect external composure: 53
Oh, I see.
Only the interjection oh expresses his sense of being baffled again. At this point the journalists give up “resignedly”. The course of this first round between Brender and Schröder between logic and rhetoric, reason and emotion can therefore be put as follows: [interview] QUESTIONBrender
(21)
↔
… ask you whether you’ve lost
→
REPLYSchröder (24)
we’ve lost, no doubt about it
[change to argumentation] THESISSchröder
(26)
no one apart from myself is in a position to form a stable government
↔
ANTI-THESISvon der Tann
(31)
you’ve lost a substantial amount of ground
14 Edda Weigand →
[change to interview] QUESTIONBrender
↔
(49)
has this justification been vindicated, that is to provide the basis for a stable government? (expecting negative reply)
→
REPLYSchröder (50)
I think so.
[change to rising conflict] (everybody speaks at once) CONTRADICTIONBrender
(51)
only 34,2% and so you at least can’t be the strong leader
↔
REJECTIONSchröder (52)
(defiantly) I’m sorry, of course I can.
Figure 2: The course of the first round
Whereas in this first round of ‘logic versus rhetoric’ an open conflict is avoided because the other journalist von der Tann saves the situation by taking his turn and addressing Westerwelle from the FDP (Free Democratic Party), the second round ends quite differently. Schröder carries on his aggressive line of insinuations against the media, “laughing” at the end “mockingly” at von der Tann. That’s the point where Brender interrupts “at the end of his tether”: 89 90 91 92 93 94
95 96
v. d. Tann: (to Schröder) After this period of courageous reforms you moved to the left in the election campaign. You ... Schröder: (laughs at von der Tann) I’ll leave your prejudices intact, but I think ... (laughs mockingly) v. d. Tann: It’s a prejudice I share with a lot of other people and it’d be nice if you let me keep it. Brender: (finally at the end of his tether) Mr Schröder, I’ll call you Mr Schröder now because I think this ... Schröder: You can call me what you like. Brender: form of insinuation is not the done thing in a public television broadcast. To express myself quite clearly it is not up to you to insinuate anything and not up to us either. v. d. Tann: That was the Berlin Round Table discussion (Berliner Runde) on the ARD and ZDF ... Brender: That was the election night debate between the party leaders (“Elefantenrunde”). Most of them will escape and retreat to the undergrowth, (turning to Schröder) one or the other will roll around on the ground a bit and tomorrow things will carry on as usual.
The game thus changes to an open conflict. Brender hits back by calling the Chancellor Mr. Schröder:
Rhetoric in the Mixed Game 15
92
Brender:
94
Brender:
(finally at the end of his tether) Mr Schröder, I’ll call you Mr Schröder now because I think this ... form of insinuation is not the done thing in a public television broadcast. To express myself quite clearly it is not up to you to insinuate anything and not up to us either.
An open conflict or a quarrel begins where both interlocutors attack each other and no longer care about obeying the rules of civilised behaviour required in an institutional game. This point has been reached when Schröder derogatorily comments: 93
You can call me what you like.
Both thus discard the conventions of civilised behaviour. Conflicts and quarrels are accompanied by rising emotions and often lead to the game being abandoned. [open conflict] ↔
REBUKE
COUNTER-ATTACK
Brender (92/94):
Schröder (93):
I’ll call you Mr Schröder …
You can call me what you like.
Figure 3: Ending up in an open conflict
Brender’s turn (94) is very interesting with respect to the issue of how we deal with norms in performance. He evaluates Schröder’s behaviour as not the done thing in a public television broadcast and thus refers to what can be expected as conventions or norms of reasonable behaviour in the given institutional setting. The lexical German expression geziemen “not to be the done thing” has a moral reading which might have been brought in casually or maybe deliberately. I would however not say that Brender “reconstructs” a norm. We simply see that norms play a role in dialogic interaction which should be taken account of in a descriptive approach. They contain an evaluative feature and make the claim to be obeyed. However, whether they are really obeyed by the interlocutor depends on his/her decision. Schröder is not in the least worried about norms. A descriptive approach includes describing the use of norms without setting up norms (Weigand 2006). Both rounds demonstrate that we are observing a game where the parties follow quite different Executive Principles, the strategies of logic and conventions of civilised behaviour versus the strategy of rhetoric over and above logic and rationality. However, the interlocutors do not proceed single-mindedly but are players in a mixed game. Brender starts the interview with the multilayered utterance:
16 Edda Weigand
21
Isn’t it allowed to ask you whether you’ve lost either?
How are we to understand this utterance? According to the numbers of the exit poll Schröder has lost. As Brender takes the position of logic and numbers, his question is a rhetorical one. Neither can Schröder single-mindedly take the rhetorical road and completely deny numbers: 24
It is true to some extent we have lost.
Nevertheless by changing the perspective of evaluation he may declare: there’s a clear loser and that is quite obviously Mrs Merkel. Though every player of the game is prepared to adapt his/her strategy to the course of interaction, the game as a whole is played at the extremes, where logic is confronted with pure rhetoric. What happens when this occurs? The text demonstrates two possibilities. In the first round, rhetoric uncompromisingly maintains its position, defiantly, against any logical argument (52), logic is irritated and gives up (51, 54). At the end of the second round, logic loses composure: Brender is finally at the end of his tether (94) and hits back. The confrontation between the logical and the rhetorical position thus ends up in an argument, in a quarrel whose flames Schröder has permanently fanned. The argument erupts when Brender is no longer able to control his emotions by reason. Let me briefly refer to how the mixed game can be described more precisely by the methodology of principles of interaction which is constitutive for the MGM. The text is clearly structured as a sequence of dialogically oriented speech acts demonstrating the constitutive Action Principle and Dialogic Principle proper. A few of these sequences of interrelated actions are highlighted in the figures (1-3). The speech act types, for instance, accusation and rejection (figure 1), are defined in a dialogic speech act taxonomy with respect to their purpose and mutual interdependence (Weigand 2003). Moreover the text is a good example of the third constitutive principle, the Coherence Principle. In order to understand what is going on in the action game, i.e. in order to establish coherence, we need to integrate perceptual and cognitive means as they are, in part, indicated in the transcript, for instance, by “nodding his head from side to side” in (12) or “defiantly” (52), and in part included in our political background knowledge. Cognitive means also operate as Regulative Principles, for instance, of emotion and reason and as Executive Principles, for instance, Schröder’s strategy of taking the initiative. The Round Table discussion is conceived of as an institutional game consisting of a multiperson interview in the media. As can be seen in figure (2), it proceeds as a permanent change between the explorative game of an interview, an argumentative game and finally an argument. These changes are mainly a result of Schröder’s strategy of crossing the lines of the interview and of attacking the media. Schröder plays his own game, a game of persuasion that is dominated by the strategy of power. He simply declares I’ll stay Chancellor without any argu-
Rhetoric in the Mixed Game 17
ment. What seems to be a representative speech act is, in fact, a sort of declarative act backed by the rhetorical strategy of simulating power. It is very instructive to have a look at how this game of power continues. As time goes by, even Schröder has gradually to take account of the fact that he has lost power, not only he himself as a person but also his party, the SPD, which did not succeed in finding coalition partners. Very interestingly, at this point, the normative view as an evaluative view from outside of the game can elucidate what happened. Though we are free to ignore conventions in performance, we are aware of them and we use them even as norms in evaluating action and behaviour. This is what people did with Schröder, who heavily lost popularity after this Round Table discussion. There is yet another interesting detail to be included in our analysis. At the moment when power was lost personally and politically, what remained to be relied on was the power of logic. And Schröder and the SPD succeeded in constructing a logical argument that fitted their interests. They divided the parliamentary party CDU/CSU into two separate factions and stated that the SPD got more votes than the CDU. That is the point where discussions began about whether such a separation of the parliamentary party was legitimate and about who could nominate the chancellor. Regarding the first question, in elections the CDU and the CSU always behaved as ‘one political force’ even if they sometimes tried to gain advantages by emphasising that they are two parties. Moreover there is a point that clearly vindicates the view that they must not be considered separately. If the CDU exists as a political party in a Land, then the CSU cannot be set up there and vice versa. Regarding the second question it is not clearly determined by the standing orders of the German Bundestag who nominates the chancellor. As there is no law, what counts is tradition. Traditionally the strongest faction nominates the chancellor. In the end Schröder’s claim to the chancellorship thus depended on parliamentary approval of this tradition. His strategy of power therefore did indeed have some chance of turning the tide of events. To sum up: The game demonstrates how human beings deal with the complex they are confronted with in dialogic interaction. They have purposes and interests, the purpose of an interview versus the interest in staying chancellor, and they choose communicative means and strategies in order to effectively achieve their respective goals. Strategies of rationality are confronted with strategies of pure rhetoric in the same game. The interacting human beings have to adapt to everchanging and sometimes confusing surroundings where meaning and understanding are not defined but have to be negotiated. Verbal means interact with perceptual and cognitive means. Emotions play a major role and can ultimately decide how the game ends. What becomes evident is the fact that human beings only in part interact rationally and reasonably; occasionally they are massively influenced by the tur-
18 Edda Weigand
moil of emotions that can even gain the upper hand. The main driving force is their self-interest, which is sometimes highly egocentric and dominated by a striving for power. These controversial forces and impulses operate in one and the same game and simultaneously characterize the game as a mixed game. 5. The balance of reason I started by saying: rhetoric is inherent in dialogue because it is rooted in human beings’ nature. We are able to pursue our interests and needs effectively by the use of different rhetorical means. As it is indeed essential to reflect on the kind of rhetoric to be applied, I would like to emphasise Cissna’s question again: What kind of rhetoric is dialogue? As human nature is full of risks, and evil and violence might even have some fascination for a few of us, we should not lose sight of what humanity means. Humanity is not the same as human nature, not a feature of a descriptive theory but the object of an ethical normative theory that attempts to make the case for the balance of reason in a humanised world. References Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Malden, MA: Polity Press. Burke, Kenneth. 1950. A Rhetoric of Motives. New York: Prentice Hall. Daneš, František. 1995. “Language is neither all chaos nor all order”. Proceedings of LP’94 ed. by Bohumil Palek, 1-9. Prague: Charles University Press. Dascal, Marcelo. 1994. “Speech Act Theory and Gricean Pragmatics: Some differences of detail that make a difference”. Foundations of Speech Act Theory. Philosophical and linguistic perspectives ed. by Savas L. Tsohatzidis, 323-334. London & New York: Routledge. Dascal, Marcelo. 1996. “The Balance of Reason”. La racionalidad. Su poder y sus limites ed. by Oscar Nudler, 363-381. Buenos Aires & Barcelona, Mexico: Paidos. Eemeren, Frans H. van, Rob Grootendorst, Sally Jackson & Scott Jacobs. 1993. Reconstructing Argumentative Discourse. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press. Enfield, N.J. & Stephen C. Levinson. “Introduction: Human sociality as a new interdisciplinary field”. Roots of Human Sociality. Culture, cognition and interaction ed. by N.J. Enfield and Stephen C. Levinson, 1-35. Oxford & New York: Berg. Grice, H. P. 1975. “Logic and Conversation”. Syntax and Semantics. Vol. 3. Speech Acts ed. by Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan, 41-58. New York: Academic Press. Hundsnurscher, Frans. 1980. “Konversationsanalyse versus Dialoggrammatik”. Akten des VI. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses, Basel 1980. Vol. 2 ed by Heinz Rupp and HansGert Roloff, 89-95. Frankfurt/Main: Lang. Moeschler, Jacques. 1985. Argumentation et conversation. Éléments pour une analyse pragmatique du discours. Paris: Hatier. Sampson, Geoffrey. 2005. “The ‘Language Instinct’ Debate”. Rev. ed. London & New York: Continuum. Simon, Herbert A. 1962. “The Architecture of Complexity”. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 106. 467-482. Toulmin, Stephen. 2001. Return to Reason. Cambridge/Mass. & London: Harvard University Press.
Rhetoric in the Mixed Game 19
Weigand, Edda. 2000. “The Dialogic Action Game”. Dialogue Analysis VII. Working with dialogue ed. by Malcolm Coulthard, Janet Cotterill & Frances Rock, 1-18. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Weigand, Edda. 2002a. “The Language Myth and Linguistics Humanised”. The Language Myth in Western Culture ed. by Roy Harris, 55-83. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. Weigand, Edda. 2002b. “Constitutive Features of Human Dialogic Interaction: Mirror neurons and what they tell us about human abilites”. Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language ed. by Maxim I. Stamenov and Vittorio Gallese, 229-248. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. Weigand, Edda. 2003. Sprache als Dialog. Sprechakttaxonomie und kommunikative Grammatik. 2nd rev. ed. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Weigand, Edda. 2004. “Empirical Data and Theoretical Models. Review article on ‘Language and Interaction. Discussions with John J. Gumperz’ ed. by Susan L. Eerdmans, Carlo L. Prevignano & Paul J. Thibault”. Pragmatics & Cognition 12:2. 375-388. Weigand, Edda. 2006. “Argumentation: The mixed game”. Argumentation 20:1.59-81. Weigand, Edda. 2008. “The Sociobiology of Language”. Dialogue and Culture ed. by Marion Grein and Edda Weigand, 27-50. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins.
Appendix The German original text of the “elephants’ discussion” (www.visdp.de/special/extrablatt_visdp.pdf) 01 02 03 04 05
Brender Schröder Brender Schröder Brender
06 Schröder 07 Brender 08 Schröder 09 Brender 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
Schröder: Brender Schröder Brender Schröder Brender von d. Tann Brender:
18 Schröder 19 Brender 20 21 22 23
Schröder Brender Schröder Brender
Herr Bundeskanzler… Is ja schön, dass Sie mich jetzt schon ansprechen. Find ich nett. Sind Sie jetzt schon zurückgetreten oder was? Nein nein, überhaupt nicht Herr Brender, überhaupt nicht Herr Brender. Ach so, na ja ich meine nur, das wäre ja…Weil Sie ja, weil Sie das verwundert. Ja ja, ich frage ja nur. Also ich sage noch mal: Herr Bundeskanzler, das sind Sie ja noch, bis zur Neuwahl eines Neuen… Das bleibe ich auch. Auch wenn Sie dagegen arbeiten. (stockt) Ob wir dagegen arbeiten? Sie haben von Medienmacht und Medienkampagne geredet... Zu Recht wie ich finde, zu Recht wie ich finde. Ich weise darauf hin, dass ARD und ZDF das nicht vorzuwerfen ist. (wiegt den Kopf abschätzend hin und her). Nicht alles was Ihnen passt… Der eine sieht es so und der andere sieht es so, Herr Brender. Nicht alles was Ihnen nicht passt ist Medienkampagne. (wacht auf, schaltet sich ein) Also das ist schon eine starke Beschuldigung. Meine Frage war: Sie wollten stärkste Partei werden, das haben Sie… Sehr knapp, wahrscheinlich nicht. Sie haben das nicht erreicht, Sie haben das drittschlechteste Ergebnis der sozialdemokratischen Partei dieser Republik erreicht. (grinst überheblich) Das ist, das ist…Das ist doch das, was Sie fortsetzen. Ist es nicht erlaubt, Sie zu fragen, ob Sie auch verloren haben. Natürlich ist das erlaubt. Ja also. Bitte.
20 Edda Weigand
24 Schröder
25 Brender 26 Schröder
27 28 29 30 31
von d. Tann Schröder von d. Tann Schröder von d. Tann
32 Schröder: 33 34 35 36 37 38 39
von d. Tann Schröder von d. Tann Schröder Brender Schröder Brender
40 41 42 43
Schröder Brender Schröder Brender
44 Schröder 45 Brender 46 Schröder 47 Brender 48 Schröder 49 Brender 50 Schröder
Verglichen mit dem letzten Wahlergebnis haben wir verloren, ist doch gar keine Frage. Aber verglichen mit dem, was in dieser Republik geschrieben und gesendet worden ist, gibt es einen eindeutigen Verlierer und das ist nun wirklich Frau Merkel. Und das sollten auch Sie mal zur Kenntnis nehmen (zu Brender). Das ist ja doch so. Und deswegen sage ich… Herr Schröder, vielleicht haben Sie nicht zugehört. Der Kollege hat Frau Merkel gerade darauf hingewiesen, dass sie verloren hat. Darf ich auch mal reden oder wollen Sie mich ständig unterbrechen? Wir haben verloren, ist doch gar keine Frage. Und das schmerzt mich. Aber verglichen mit dem, von wo wir kamen, Herr Brender, ähm, von 24 Prozent nämlich, verglichen mit dem was wir erleben mussten in den letzten Wochen und Monaten, bin ich wirklich stolz auf meine Partei, auf die Menschen, die mich unterstützt haben, die uns gewählt haben und die uns ein Ergebnis beschert haben, das eindeutig ist. Jedenfalls eindeutig, dass niemand außer mir in der Lage ist eine stabile Regierung zu stellen. Herr Bundeskanzler. Niemand außer mir! Sie kamen von 38,5 % im Jahre 2002. Ja. Ja, ist ja richtig. Also haben Sie reichlich verloren. Sie haben nicht so viel gewonnen, wie Sie jetzt darstellen. Aber schauen Sie mal: In Ihren Sendungen ist gesagt worden, Frau Merkel ist bei 49, bei 45, bei 43. Jetzt ist sie bei knapp 35, oder etwas mehr. Und die Messungen waren zur Zeit immer korrekt. Ja aber… Ich weiß nicht ob Sie korrekt waren, nur… Herr Bundeskanzler. Ich finde nur irgendwie…dass Sie einfach mal einsehen müssen. In unseren Sendungen ist das nachvollzogen worden… Ja? … was in den Meinungsumfragen aller Institute beschrieben worden ist. Das ist nicht nur in unseren Sendungen gesendet worden, sondern in allen Zeitungen geschrieben. Aber, entschuldigen Sie mal. Ich weiß ja nicht welche Zeitung Sie lesen, aber zumindest … Alle… alle. …wir müssen uns da nichts vorwerfen lassen. Ich würde Ihnen aber bitte noch eine Frage stellen. Bitte. Bitte, wenn wir…wenn wir noch einmal die Begründung im Bundestag, die Sie zur Auflösung zu Neuwahlen gegeben haben… Wollen wir den Wahlkampf fortsetzen, oder was haben Sie mich jetzt gefragt. (Stoiber kichert irritiert) Ich frage Sie jetzt – und das Ergebnis heute sehen. Ja. Ist diese Begründung eingeholt worden, nämlich die Grundlage für eine stabile Regierung zu legen. Ich finde schon. Ich finde schon, dass meine Entscheidung… sehr… kompliziert… wie ich fand auch mutig, zu sagen, ich möchte für eine Politik, die in Wahlkämpfen diskutiert worden ist, in den Ländern eine neue Legitimation durch das Volk. [...] Und wissen Sie, was mich besonders freut – wenn ich das noch sagen darf – das sich die Menschen in Deutschland ihr Recht herausgenommen haben so zu entscheiden, wie sie wollen und nicht so zu entscheiden, wie die Meinungsmacher das wollen.
Rhetoric in the Mixed Game 21
51 Brender 52 Schröder 53 Brender 54 von d. Tann
(Alle sprechen durcheinander.) Aber Sie haben nur 34,2 Prozent und damit kann man zumindest nicht der starke Führer einer neuen Regierung sein. (trotzig) Aber entschuldigen Sie, natürlich kann ich das. Ach so. (resigniert) Gut. (wendet sich zu Westerwelle) […..]
89 von d. Tann 90 Schröder 91 von d. Tann 92 Brender 93 Schröder 94 Brender
95 von d. Tann 96 Brender
(zu Schröder) Sie haben sich nach dieser Zeit der mutigen Reformen im Wahlkampf nach links bewegt. Sie haben … (lacht von der Tann aus) Ich will Ihnen Ihre Vorurteile ja lassen, aber ich meine… (lacht spöttisch) Es ist ein Vorurteil, das ich mit vielen teile und es wär nett, wenn Sie es mir ließen. (am Ende entnervt) Herr Schröder, ich sage jetzt Herr Schröder, weil ich finde diese… Sie können sagen was Sie wollen. …Form der Unterstellungen geziemen sich nicht in einer öffentlichen Fernsehsendung. Um das ganz klar zu sagen. Sie haben uns nichts zu unterstellen, wie wir Ihnen nichts unterstellen. Das war die Berliner Runde in ARD und ZDF… Es war die Elefantenrunde. Die meisten ziehen sich jetzt in Ihr rettendes Gebüsch zurück, (an Schröder gewandt) der eine wälzt sich noch ein bisschen und morgen geht es dann weiter.
The Selection of Agency as a Rhetorical Device Opening up the scene of dialogue through ventriloquism François Cooren University of Montréal
I propose to open up the dialogic scene by showing that a dialogue is never just about discourse and language. It is also about facts, principles, passions, values, ideologies, collectives, worldviews, etc. that can (or cannot) make a difference, i.e., do something, in a given interaction. According to this approach, dialogue is one of the most important phonation devices through which a plethora of ‘things’ – which I call actants – can come to act from a distance. Showing that these actants can be rhetorically mobilized in a given interaction allows me to account for phenomena of ‘ventriloquism,’ that is, the various ways by which human interactants make certain entities (collectives, procedures, policies, ideologies, etc.) speak in their name and vice versa. We will see that this way of dislocating the dialogic scene allows us to address thoroughly the question of power and authority, a question that tends to be relatively downplayed by dialogue analysts.
1. Introduction In this chapter, I propose to reconceptualize the traditional speaker/listener schema by arguing and showing that many different types of actants populate the dialogic scene. What we learned from conversation analysis and pragmatics is that the definition of what is performed in interaction is something that is always negotiable between interactants – in action and reaction, as Weigand (2006) noted insightfully. But I would like to claim that we could even go further in this reflection by showing that the question of who or even what is acting is debatable, for many different types of actants (such as utterances, emotions, collectives, principles, or rules) can be identified as doing something in a given discussion. Opening up the scene of dialogue in this way thus allows us to free it, so to speak, by showing that many different things do things with words. Interestingly, this way of dislocating the dialogic scene also enables us to address more thoroughly the question of power and authority, a question that tends to be relatively downplayed by conversation and dialogue analysts (but see Weigand 2001). Showing that several types of actants can be actively and rhetorically mobilized in a given interaction allows us to account for phenomena of ‘ventriloquism’. That is, the mobilization of particular actants allows human interactants to make certain
24 François Cooren
entities (collectives, procedures, policies, ideologies, etc.) speak in their name and vice versa. To illustrate my argument, I use an excerpt from fieldwork completed in the Democratic Republic of Congo with Médecins sans frontières (“Doctors without Borders”), the famous Nobel Prize winning humanitarian organization. During this interaction, two representatives of MSF are talking to the director of a local hospital that MSF has recently decided to support, a situation that creates some tension between the representatives of the humanitarian organization and this director. Although we can say that this meeting is locally achieved in the office of the hospital director, we will see how dislocation constantly operates through the various events that are reported and the absent people and entities that are discursively mobilized. As shown in this analysis, it is through these activities of ‘translation’ or ‘re-presentation’ that the questions of power and authority are implicitly or explicitly problematized by the participants. This approach has a rhetorical import in that it puts the definition of the dialogic situation in a new light, one that allows us to see how a plurality of actants accomplish a social scene through interaction. To be sure, a lot has already been done to populate the scene of dialogue. For instance, if we dwell on speech act theory alone, we can track an important evolution from Austin (1975) and Searle (1969, 1979) to Sbisà (1984, 1987, 1992, 2002), Weigand (2000, 2006) and others (Cooren 2005, Geis 1995, van Rees 1992). Indeed, let us look at what Searle (1992:7) has said about traditional speech act theory: Traditionally speech act theory has a very restricted subject matter. The speech act scenario is enacted by its two great heroes, ‘S’ and ‘H’; and it works as follows: S goes up to H and cuts loose with an acoustic blast; if all goes well, if all the appropriate conditions are satisfied, if S’s noise is infused with intentionality, and if all kinds of rules come into play, then the speech act is successful and nondefective. After that, there is silence; nothing else happens. The speech act is concluded and S and H go their separate ways. Traditional speech act theory is thus largely confined to single speech acts.
It is precisely against such a perspective that scholars have since insisted on the dialogic nature of speech acts. This reflection did not start recently, though. Back in 1980, Sbisà and Fabbri already criticized what they called the ‘one-place model’ of speech acts, which they associated with Searle’s (1969, 1979) theory, and his intentionalist/monological perspective. To this model, they opposed what they called a ‘two-place model’, which insisted on the active role of the interlocutor in the definition of what is performed in interaction. It is because any speech act has a conventional dimension that interlocutors can agree or disagree on what is actually achieved by the participants and what they say or write (Sbisà 1984). In other words, speech acts should never be reduced to what the speakers/writers intend to say in interaction (although this
The Selection of Agency as a Rhetorical Device 25
dimension, of course, plays a role), but need to be understood as the result of implicit or explicit negotiation over what these speech acts are all about. 2. Populating the interactional scene But I would contend that we could even go further in this reflection by showing that it is precisely this conventional dimension of speech acts that singularizes the actional dimension of any utterance produced in an interactive or monologic format. In other words, whenever one says or writes something, one is actually producing an utterance, a text, that will come to act on our behalf, in our name, in our stead, as our proxy, as our surrogate, that is, for us. As Derrida (1988) noted in his reflection on speech act theory, communicating always consists of producing texts that function like machines, that is, that always operate without being totally controlled by their producers (Cooren 2000). As he insightfully observes in Signature, Event, Context, any communication is a form of telecommunication. This reflection on textual agency thus leads us to open up the traditional scene of dialogue. Instead of having two or more people interacting with each other, we now have new actants 1 introduced on the stage, i.e., what people say or write in interaction. These utterances produced by human interactants in the scene of dialogue can indeed make them say things that they did not necessarily intend. This phenomenon is actually quite commonly acknowledged by conversation analysts, even if they would, I think, completely resist this type of explanation. For instance, let us look at the following interaction: (1) A B A B
We really don’t know how to solve this problem! Let me see what we can do. Oh no, thanks. I did not mean for you to intervene. I am just frustrated. Okay, no problem. I won’t.
T1 T2 T3 T4
As we see here, while A apparently meant T1 as a simple complaint probably made out of frustration (this is what she says at T3), B understands T1 as an indirect request for help, which leads A to initiate a repair sequence at T3, a repair that is finally acknowledged by B at T4. We could, of course, dwell on the inferential mechanisms that might explain this misunderstanding. For instance, we could note that by complaining about a 1
By ‘actants’, I mean anything who or anyone that can be considered to be doing something in specific circumstances. This allows me not to use the term ‘actor’, given that many people tend to use this notion only to refer to human actors. I am aware that Greimas (1987) also uses the term ‘actant’ and that he identifies six different types of ‘actantial roles’ (sender, receiver, subject, object, helper, opponent) that can be singularized, according to him, in any narratives. His usage should not be confused with mine. Note that sometimes I also use the term ‘agent’ instead of ‘actant’ but for the purpose of this chapter they can be considered synonymous (for more detail, see Cooren, Taylor & van Every 2006, as well as Taylor & van Every 2000).
26 François Cooren
problematic situation (the fact that she and others she is speaking on behalf of do not know how to resolve a given conflict), A potentially initiates, whether she wants it or not, the possibility of a program of action that might contribute to the resolution of the stated problem. In other words, whenever someone appears to complain about a given situation, this complaint almost irremediably creates a tension oriented toward its possible resolution (Cooren & Sanders 2002). The fact that B understands T1 as a request for help therefore is conventionally associated with the fact that the existence of a problem has been deplored. While A might have just meant T1 as a complaint, everything that follows happens as though, in B’s ears, her complaint made her say that she was expecting him to intervene. In other words, we see the phenomenon that Derrida (1988) pointed out, namely, that once produced, texts and utterances function like relatively autonomous machines that can make interlocutors say something they did not really mean. 2 Of course, as we saw, A is able to repair B’s misunderstanding at T3, that is, she is able to tell him what she actually meant at T1 (she was just complaining about something and not indirectly asking B to intervene), which leads B to incarnately or overtly display his understanding at T4 (Okay, no problem. I won’t), but the point made still remains valid. By showing that the turn taking machinery can, in some circumstances, make people say something they apparently did not mean, I do not deny that, for all practical purposes, people, most of the time, tend to understand each other (Garfinkel 1967, 2002, Heritage 1984). Even Derrida (1988) acknowledges this point.3 What I mean is just that the scene of dialogue must take into account these textual agents that interactants constantly produce in conversation. Most of the time, these agents translate more or less faithfully what is meant, but they can, of course, betray the principals they are supposed to represent (traduttore, traditore, as the Italians like to say), which is precisely what leads to repair sequences. But is this enough? Or is the dialogic scene even more populated than we thought? Aren’t there other actants that (or who) can intervene? While we just saw that textual agents can be analytically identified downstream, could we not also identify actants upstream, that is, actants that would be made present, i.e., ‘presentified’ incarnated, translated by the interlocutors’ turns of talk? As we all know, the notion of ventriloquism is not that new in dialogic and literary theory (Aczel 2001, Carroll 1983, Davis 2003, Lodge 1987, Merleau-Ponty 1962,
2
Note that a related vocabulary tends to be used by conversation analysts when they speak about adjacency pairs as the “turn taking machinery”, which is presented as a “fundamental generating feature of conversation” (Schegloff & Sacks 1973:236f.). If adjacency pairs can be compared to some sort of machinery, nothing should prevent us from talking about the constituents of this machinery as being machines themselves. 3 As Derrida (1988:148) notes, meaning is, in many respects, “pragmatically determined”. In other words, Derrida rejects the idea of indeterminacy, but on the contrary insists on the overdetermined character of meaning production. It is such an overdetermination that is illustrated when we see that T1 can be interpreted in at least two ways.
The Selection of Agency as a Rhetorical Device 27
Sprinker 1986), 4 but have we gone far enough in our analyses? If ventriloquism is the process by which one speaker or writer makes somebody or something speak, isn’t it precisely this other aspect of the dialogic scene that contributes to its expanded population? Let us go back to the short example analyzed previously. As we saw, misunderstanding took place because B understood A’s complaint as a request for help, while B (and we) later learn that A apparently did not mean for him to intervene. In other words, we learn that A apparently just meant it as a complaint. So the question might then be: Why did she say that? In other words, what makes T1 relevant? As proposed in our analysis, we said that one possible explanation she provides, the one she actually provided at T3, is that she complained out of frustration. Interestingly, this leads us to look into the black box that conversation, dialogue and interaction analysts usually do not care to investigate, that is, emotions, feelings, passions, which people daily experience, express and display. In other words, this reflection makes us look upstream in the chain of agencies. One way to analyze this event consists indeed of saying that it is her frustration – which, as any feeling, can hardly be controlled – that might have led her to say what she said. According to her explanation, A implicitly positions her frustration as what is at least partly responsible for what she said. A first form of ventriloquism is at stake here to the extent that it is her frustration that is implicitly positioned as expressing itself at T1. Another form of translation can thus be identified here: her frustration translated itself into a complaint on her part. I therefore contend that passions, feelings, emotions should be allowed to enter the dialogic scene as full-fledged contributors. This, in a way, should not be new, given the amount of work that has already been done to investigate the display of emotions in interactional settings (Parrott & Harré 1996, Haviland 1989, Putnam 2007, Sacks 1992, Tracy 2007). But remember that my point consists in taking seriously the idea that many different types of actants, beyond the traditional speaker and hearer, should be considered as populating this scene. Indeed, emotion etymologically comes from the Latin movere, which means ‘to move’. If we therefore acknowledge that people are literally ‘moved’ by feelings, emotions and even passions, nothing should prevent us from identifying them as actants, that is, as at least partly responsible for what is said and done and how something is said or done. Whether they are explicitly oriented to, and identified by, human interactants, or left unattended by the participants, emotions, feelings
4
Other authors have, of course, for a long time insisted on this effect of ventriloquism, but they have mainly reduced their reflections to the phenomenon by which human actors who appear to be absent from a dialogue come to speak through conversation participants. For instance, Cissna and Anderson (2004:203) note that “conversations are texts that resound with voices beyond those of the co-authors”, which leads them to speak of multiples voices. Again, my point is to go one step further and let other kind of actants speak or do things in a dialogic situation.
28 François Cooren
and passions often make themselves present in our interactions. In other words, they constantly invite themselves in our conversations. Of course, feelings, emotions and passions can be strategically invoked, evoked and convoked by an interactant in what s/he is saying or writing (which then raises the question as to whether or not such feeling was actually experienced). Far from invalidating the point I am trying to make, however, it confirms it. Interactants make feelings say things as much as feelings might make interactants say things. And note that we are not just in the world of tropes (metonymy, metaphor, synecdoche) here. As any good lawyer knows, proving that somebody committed a crime out of passion (jealousy, for instance) or out of insanity, is quite consequential, given that it mobilizes in the court scene an important actant that now participates in the definition of the situation. In other words, there is a rhetorical import in mobilizing various actants that can then be identified as the source (or partial source) of what happened or is happening. Jealousy struck again! is not only a metaphoric or metonymic way of speaking, it is also a way of identifying or circumscribing what is (at least partly) responsible for what happened. But is the scene perhaps even more populated? Yes, of course, to the extent that interlocutors can be positioned or position themselves as representing, translating and incarnating many different ‘things’ in a given interaction. As should be clear by now, these three types of action – representation, translation, incarnation – constitute three ways of speaking of the same phenomenon. While representation insists on what or who is made present through a given agent, the idea of translation reminds us that such representation always implies some kind of transformation. In other words, making something or someone present (‘presentifying’ or representing) always implies that what or who is made present has been somehow transformed. For instance, if somebody’s frustration comes to play a role in a given discussion, it is always through specific representatives that act on its behalf in the scene of dialogue: sighs, specific intonations, facial expressions, manners of speaking, etc. This is how frustration (a feeling experienced by an individual) conventionally translates itself in a given interaction. As for incarnation, it insists on the material aspect of such operation of translation/representation. A sigh can come to incarnate or embody frustration to the extent that it is precisely translated through the person’s body or through what she says or the way she says what she says. Presence, materiality and transformation are therefore crucial effects that participate in the reality of the dialogic scene, while opening it up to a plethora of actants that, at first sight, were not considered ‘present‘ (in the temporal and spatial sense of the term). Another way to put it is to speak of it in terms of mise en scène (“staging”), that is, how interlocutors come, quite literally, to put specific actants into the scene, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly.
The Selection of Agency as a Rhetorical Device 29
But beyond the ‘presentification’ of emotions and feelings, other actants can, of course, be made present. As an illustration, let us look one last time at the initial example. As we saw, at T1, A says, We really don’t know how to solve this problem! which positions her as speaking on behalf, in the name of a group of people she identifies as we (and note that B does the same thing at T2). To the extent that by saying we, she is representing a group of people in which she counts herself, she can be said to be making them present in the discussion. It is not only A who is speaking to B, it is also, through her, through a form of ventriloquism, that all the people she embodies and translates through this specific turn of talk, speak. Are these people present physically? Not necessarily (though they could be surrounding A as she is speaking to B, which would normally qualify them as ‘being there’), but presence always is an effect, from the physical presence of the body to its delegation through a letter, a clue, a spokesperson, a representative. As we all know, the mere physical presence of some body never assures the feeling of presence: I can be in presence of a person suffering from Alzheimer disease and not experiencing her presence, because something – essential for me – has been taken away by the disease: her mind, her personality, her spirit. Presence is never completely given. It is a hybrid phenomenon. In my own mise en scène of dialogue, a multitude of beings are constantly convoked and invoked, which result in its dis-location. Our interactions and dialogues are never purely local, whatever this would mean. They are dis-local (Cooren et al. 2005, Cooren & Fairhurst forthc.), that is, they are constantly mobilizing beings that knowingly or unknowingly participate in the de-finition of what is happening. For instance, Callon (1986) and Latour (2004, 2005) have convincingly shown us that if ‘facts speak for themselves’, it is indeed because scientists are usually very good at making them speak through various phonation devices like transducers, sensors, sounds, and several other kinds of machinery (see also Cooren et al. 2006). I would contend that the same thing applies to the dialogic machinery, that is, that several beings (facts, feelings, collectives, texts, etc.) can be presented as ‘speaking for themselves’ through interlocutors who make them speak or do things. According to this approach, principles, reasons, collectives, situations, etc. might be invoked or convoked by interactants to justify their respective positions, promote an agenda or attack another person. I would therefore argue that one way to dislocate the dialogic scene consists of mobilizing various beings on behalf of whom or which interactants happen to speak. According to this approach, rhetoric could be understood as a specific way by which ventriloquism is performed to define a situation and promote or justify specific interests.
30 François Cooren
3. The selection of agency as a rhetorical device As we saw, a dialogic situation is not only about two or more people speaking to each other. It is also about different types of ‘things’ that are mobilized in the discussion and that come to make a difference in what is happening. Metaphorically speaking, a dialogue could thus be conceived as being made up of various channels through which different entities or situations get introduced in the discussion by the phenomenon of ventriloquism. As mentioned before, this multi-agency view of dialogue has a rhetorical import in that it contributes to the definition of the dialogic situation, but also to the definition of the different situations to which the participants are oriented. A good illustration of this kind of ventriloquism can be found in the following excerpt also taken from fieldwork completed in the Democratic Republic of Congo with Médecins sans frontières (“Doctors without Borders”). Marius is a local coordinator who is in charge of an MSF mission located in a town of North Kivu, a devastated region in the North Eastern part of this country. With his immediate superior, Robert, he is talking to the director of a local hospital that MSF has recently decided to support, a situation that is not without the potential for creating some tensions between the representatives of the humanitarian organization and this director. Providing support to this local hospital indeed means that MSF not only brings a lot of equipments that are woefully missing on the premises, but also starts to assume responsibilities for the hospital staff salaries, as well as implement its own medical protocols. Although this is officially called ‘support’ by the two parties (MSF and the hospital), the difference in terms of technological and financial means is such that the situation could easily be interpreted as MSF taking over the hospital, a development that is, naturally, resisted by the director of the hospital, who, we can speculate, feels that his authority is threatened. Throughout my observations of the interactions that took place between the MSF representatives and this director, I could feel a constant tension between the two parties. The excerpt I am going to analyze now is, I think, indicative of what was at stake: (2) 720 Marius 721 722 723 724 725 726 727 728 729 Marius
Also at the same time uh we are going to certainly take again two more hygienists (.) for the block (0.5) to work on sterilization (.) and on::: hygiene in fact becau::se (0.5) the two persons there are (0.5) they won’t be able to cope anymore. (1.0) ((Marius turns his head toward Robert)) hhh
The Selection of Agency as a Rhetorical Device 31
730 731 (0.3) 732 733 Robert Overwhelmed? 734 735 Marius Yeah overwhelmed (.) there are many many- well, there are more 736 operations so more sterilization to do (1.0) So we we have- we already 737 have identified two- two persons (1.0). 738 739 Director hmhm= 740 741 Marius =to work with us already on the hospital to clean up who are people that742 743 (1.5) 744 745 Director But we need to be able to see them (.) according to (.) the spirit of the 746 protocol↑= 747 748 Marius =>Of course ah but that’s why we we identified them now we are going to 749 propose to you↑< 750 751 Director hmhm= 752 753 Marius =>between those persons↑< 754 755 Director hmhm 756 757 Marius Besides those two, they are- they are the two persons who were among the 758 three who cleaned up the surgical service last time. 759 760 Director hmhm 761 762 Marius Yes these are two persons who were uh ((nodding)) who did a good work. 763 764 Director hmhm 765 766 (.) 767 768 Marius who are uh (.) who have a level- who seem to understand well what we ask them 769 770 771 Director hmhm 772 773 Marius Nathalie was rather happy there, besides uh well that’s it↑ this is774 775 (0.5) 776 777 Director Ok well we are going to see them we are going to::=
32 François Cooren
778 779 Marius =hmhm= 780 781 Director =discuss with them (.) and if uh we are also convinced (.) well (.) by 782 mutual agreement ((noise)) like we did last time we- (.) we :: hire them=
This excerpt is interesting for several reasons. First, we see on lines 745-746 how the director of the hospital is quick to mobilize the protocol that was signed between the two organizations a few months earlier when he learns from Marius that MSF wants to hire two more hygienists. From lines 720-741, we indeed see that Marius tends to present this hiring as almost a fait accompli. As he says, we are going to certainly take again two more hygienists (.) for the block (0.5) to work on sterilization (720-721), an information that is then followed by an argument justifying the hiring: becau::se (0.5) the two persons there are (0.5) they won’t be able to cope anymore (lines 722-723). As confirmed by the brief exchange that then follows between Robert and him (lines 733-735), Marius thus invokes the fact that employees are feeling overwhelmed to justify the hiring, a situation that is implicitly explained by the increasing number of operations and sterilizations: Yeah overwhelmed (.) there are many many- well, there are more operations so more sterilization to do (line 735-736). Ceteris paribus, it is noteworthy that Marius implicitly presents the fact that employees are overwhelmed and the growing number of operations as what makes him (or MSF) say that two additional hygienists are needed. In other words, it is implicitly in the name of the employees’ welfare and in the name of a certain effectiveness of the hospital operations that Marius puts forward this hiring. In terms of agency, Marius thus presents the situation in such a way that he is not positioned as the real initiator of the request: it is these two imperatives that for him justify or support the hiring. This puts an interesting light on the rhetorical/argumentative dimension of this interaction to the extent that we see that arguing consists of implicitly or explicitly making principles speak through the phenomenon of ventriloquism. Furthermore, we see how the reasonable character of Marius’s (and MSF’s) project rhetorically comes from his capacity to position himself as implicitly moved by principles that constrain him to present such a project. Incidentally, this analysis allows us to reaffirm the link between reason and passion so often identified by rhetoricians. Providing reasons for something consists, by definition, of positioning oneself as moved by these reasons. Passion becomes more prevalent when somebody does not seem moved by several reasons that are articulated with each other (ratio literally means, as we know, calculation), but by one and only one reason that seems to suppress any other one. For instance, we can say that Othello is moved by passion to the extent that his morbid jealousy drives him to kill Desdemona. Passion indeed appears irrational to the extent that it eliminates any other reasons that might come to interfere with its ‘logic’. But passion is already present in reason to the extent that it is out of a
The Selection of Agency as a Rhetorical Device 33
certain degree of passion for specific reasons that people end up advocating certain positions. Arguing for a given position, according to the plurified or multi-agency view of dialogism I propose, thus mainly consists of mobilizing specific types of actants (principles, facts, values, rules, etc.) that are presented as literally supporting what is put forward by a given rhetor. In other words, rhetoric consists of showing that the rhetor is not the only actant who supports a given position: By becoming the spokesperson for these other actants that s/he mobilizes, s/he therefore becomes more persuasive (and powerful and authoritative). This is what the director appears to do when he invokes the protocol that MSF and the hospital signed a few months earlier: But we need to be able to see them (.) according to (.) the spirit of the protocol (745-746). While Marius implicitly positions himself as moved by humanist and operational principles, the director positions himself as moved by this protocol’s requirements. If the hospital indeed has to see them, it is not because they want to see them, but because the protocol’s spirit constrains them to do so. Ventriloquism thus takes place as soon as the question of constraint, necessity or duty is rhetorically invoked. To the extent that somebody positions himself as having to do something, it means that, rhetorically speaking, his or her agency is made absent or inoperative in a given situation. For instance, we all know that the Bush administration strategy regarding the ‘preemptive war against Iraq’ precisely consisted in denying that it was the administration’s will to invade Iraq, but that they had, so to speak, no choice: it was Saddam Hussein’s non-cooperation or even the self-defense principle that were presented as forcing them to intervene. In the case of the hospital director, we also see this phenomenon of ventriloquism to the extent that his agency is implicitly denied in his intervention: it is the protocol that forces them (the hospital) to see the hygienists. As we also see in this short excerpt, a certain form of resistance is displayed by the director. As previously highlighted, Marius seems to present the hiring as a fait accompli by implicitly positioning the director as having to acknowledge or rubberstamp a decision that is already made. How could someone be against such a project, given the situation presented and the principles implicitly invoked? But we see how the director precisely resists this subjection by invoking the protocol, which, as he implicitly contends, forces him to see the candidates, whether he wants it or not. Mobilizing this document thus allows him to resist his subjection or submission to MSF’s course of action without appearing to have initiated it. In other words, such a resistance is possible precisely because it is not him alone who resists, but a hybrid actant composed of him and the protocol he manages to speak on behalf at that moment. The resistance appears reasonable because it does not come arbitrarily from him, but from the protocol that requires that certain courses of action be respected. We then see how Marius is very quick to reinterpret the situation: Of course ah but that’s why we we identified them now we are going to propose to you (lines
34 François Cooren
748-749). While the sequence he initiated seemed to position the director as facing a fait accompli (whether he meant it that way, that’s how the director seems to have interpreted what he said), he now reframes the whole situation as being MSF making a proposition to the director, a proposition that this latter person is ‘free’ to accept or refuse. What appeared to be information to be acknowledged now becomes a proposition to be accepted. The hospital’s agency is therefore much more acknowledged in this turn, which is another way to recognize a different logic of intervention than the one initially presented by MSF. Resistance must become alignment, which seems to prompt Marius to reaffirm a form of agency that his previous turns had implicitly downplayed or even silenced. It is interesting that Marius then decides to insist on the great value of the two persons that MSF identified for this job (lines 757-773). Since the hospital director now is positioned as having some form of power (he is implicitly acknowledged as the one who can positively or negatively sanction the individuals MSF proposes), Marius now positions himself as pleading for their candidates, which implicitly confirms the director’s new position of authority. It is then easy for the director to reaffirm his agency and power as can be seen in lines 777 to 782 Ok well we are going to see them we are going to:: discuss with them (.) and if uh we are also convinced (.) well (.) by mutual agreement ((noise)) like we did last time we- (.) we :: hire them).
The hybrid actant that he and the hospital constitutes is an obligatory passage point, a key actant that MSF cannot shortcut and that is what he is implicitly reaffirming at this moment. 4. Conclusion Where did this analysis lead us? What is the payoff of this analytical gesture that consists of highlighting the various actants that, for me, populate the dialogic scene? One of the first consequences is that it allows us to acknowledge that a dialogue is never just about discourse and language. It is also about facts, principles, passions, values, ideologies, worldviews, etc., i.e. actants that can (or cannot) make a difference, i.e. do something in a given dialogic scene. Taking language and discourse seriously precisely consists of recognizing that they are some of the most important phonation devices through which a plethora of actants can come to act from a distance in a dialogic situation. Furthermore, this approach allows us to free any interactional sequence from its micro straightjacket, i.e., to dislocate it. In one word, it is an interesting way to reconcile Foucault (1977) and Sacks (1992), that is, to show that people are indeed spoken as much as they speak. It may seem almost impossible to reconcile
The Selection of Agency as a Rhetorical Device 35
these two perspectives because they tend to use two very different vocabularies. Critical scholars speak of discursive formations and ideologies without taking seriously the idea that ideologies, worldviews, principles, etc. are actants that happen to speak through various phonation devices (humans, texts, machines, etc.). They reproduce the (in)famous ‘structure vs. action dichotomy’ without realizing that ‘structures’ do act, but always through specific actants whose contribution need to be acknowledged. We never leave the realm of action and interaction. What we need to do, however, is reconceptualize what we mean by action and interaction, that is, we need to show that many different ‘things’ are interacting and acting when two or more people are talking to each other, a gesture that conversation analysts do not seem ready to make. As long as we do not open up the dialogic scene, Foucauldians will not be able to analyze conversations and conversation analysts will not be able to talk about ideologies. I would contend that the dislocation of the dialogic scene illustrates what Chang (1996) calls the ‘(im)possibility of communication’ or what McPhail (2004) would call the ‘(im)possibility of dialogue’. That is, what makes communication or dialogue possible (their iterable and conventional character) is precisely what makes them, to a certain extent, impossible. As soon as we recognize that many different things can be identified as ‘doing things’ in a given dialogic scene, we are in a good analytical position to show that dialogues and interaction are marked by uncertainty, interruption, failure, alterity, vulnerability, risk, treason, openness, exposure, pollution, contamination (Pinchevski 2005). Did the two MSF representatives and the hospital director understand or comprehend each other during this exchange? As Levinas (1988) points out, comprehending involves the fact of enclosing, of appropriating, while there is always something that remains outside, which is what he precisely calls ‘alterity’ (see also Pinchevski 2005:79). What the previous analysis empirically shows is that there is nothing mysterious or nihilistic in the idea of miscomprehension or miscommunication. The plurified view of agency that I propose shows that interactants are never ‘naked’ individuals, so to speak, but that they only exist in/as a mobilization of actants, whether these actants are principles, values, texts, ideologies, passions, collectives, or even other humans. The impossibility of enclosing this multitude of actants is another way to explain the impossibility of circumscribing meaning. This also means that interactants are the temporal brackets of interdependent streams of action. The way we bracket this stream, in a way, influences the way the stream moves, which is another way to insist on the importance of rhetoric and language. Another thing that this analysis shows is that we derive our power/agency from being able to influence this bracketing, or the cutting of the chain of agencies (or the enlarging). As soon as we open up the dialogic scene to a multitude of actants with variable ontologies, power and authority suddenly seem to lose their mystery. According to this perspective, power and authority are the shortcuts people use to signify the multitude of human and non-human actants
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that they (wrongly or rightly) associate with a given interlocutor. To have power or authority means that we are or appear to be authorized to mobilize and/or speak on behalf of principles, people, collectives, texts, resources, etc. If we can author them, it is because they author us. References Aczel, Richard. 2001. “Understanding as Over-hearing: Towards a dialogics of voice”. New Literary History 32.597-617. Callon, Michel. 1986. “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: The domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay”. Power, Action and Belief ed. by John Law, 196-233. London: Routledge & Kegan. Carroll, David. 1983. “The Alterity of Discourse: Form, history, and the question of the political in M. M. Bakhtin”. Diacritics 13:2.65-83. Chang, Briankle G. 1996. Deconstructing Communication. Representation, subject, and economies of exchange. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Cissna, Kenneth. N. & Rob Anderson. 2004. “Public Dialogue and Intellectual History: Hearing multiple voices”. Dialogue: Theorizing differences in communication studies ed. by Rob Anderson, Leslie A. Baxter & Kenneth N. Cissna, 193-207. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cooren, François. 2000. The Organizing Property of Communication. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Cooren, François. 2005. “The Contribution of Speech Act Theory to the Analysis of Conversation: How pre-sequences work.” Handbook of Language and Social Interaction ed. by Kristine L. Fitch & Robert E. Sanders, 21-40. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Cooren, François & Gail T. Fairhurst (forthc.) “Dislocation and Stabilization: How to scale up from interactions to organization”. The Communicative Constitution of Organization: Centering organizational communication ed. by Linda L. Putnam & Anne Maydan Nicotera. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Cooren, François, Stephanie Fox, Daniel Robichaud & Nayla Talih. 2005. “Arguments for a Plurified View of the Social World: Spacing and timing as hybrid achievements”. Time & Society 14:2/3.263-280. Cooren, François & Robert E. Sanders. 2002. “Implicatures: A schematic approach”. Journal of Pragmatics 34.1045-1067. Cooren, François, James R. Taylor & Elizabeeth J. van Every, eds. 2006. Communication as Organizing: Empirical and theoretical explorations in the dynamic of text and conversation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Cooren, François, Fiona Thompson, Donna Canestraro & Tamás Bodor. 2006. “From Agency to Structure: Analysis of an episode in a facilitation process”. Human Relations 59:4.533-565. Davis, Charles B. 2003. “Distant Ventriloquism: Vocal mimesis, agency and identity in ancient Greek performance”. Theatre Journal 55.45-65. Derrida, Jacques. 1988. Limited Inc. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1977. The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Tavistock. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Garfinkel, Harold. 2002. Ethnomethodology's Program: Working out Durkheim's aphorism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Geis, Michael L. 1995. Speech Acts and Conversational Interaction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Greimas, Algirdas Julien. 1987. On Meaning. Selected writings in semiotic theory (P. J. P. F. H. Collins, Trans.). London: Frances Pinter. Haviland, John B. 1989. “‘Sure, Sure’: Evidence and affect”. Text 9.27–68. Heritage, John. 1984. Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
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Latour, Bruno. 2004. Politics of Nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An introduction to Actor-Network Theory. London: Oxford University Press. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1988. “The Paradox of Morality: An interview with Emmanuel Levinas”. The Provocation of Levinas ed. by Robert Bernasconi & David Woord, 168-180. London: Routledge. Lodge, David. 1987. “After Bakhtin”. The Linguistics of Writing: Arguments between language and literature ed. by Nigel Fabb, Derek Attridge, Alan Durant & Colin MacCabe, 89-102. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. McPhail, Mark Lawrence. 2004. “Race and the (Im)Possibility of Dialogue”. Dialogue: Theorizing differences in communication studies ed. by Rob Anderson, Leslie A. Baxter & Kenneth N. Cissna, 209-224. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 1962. The Phenomenology of Perception. Trans. Colin Smith. New York: Humanities Press. Parrott, W. Gerrod & Rom Harre. 1996. “Overview”. The Emotions: Social, cultural and biological dimensions ed. by Rom Harre & W. Gerrod Parrott, 1–24. London: Sage. Pinchevski, Amit. 2005. By Way of Interruption: Levinas and the ethics of communication. Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press. Putnam, Linda L. 2007. “Contradictions in the Meta-talk about Feelings in ‘After Mr. Sam”’. Interacting and Organizing: Analyses of a management meeting ed. by François Cooren, 95111. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Sacks, Harvey. 1992. Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Blackwell. Sbisà, Marina. 1984. “On Illocutionary Types”. Journal of Pragmatics 8:1.93-112. Sbisà, Marina. 1987. “Speech Acts and Context Change”. Process Linguistics ed. by Thomas T. Ballmer & Wofgang Wildgen, 252-280. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer. Sbisà, Marina. 1992. “Speech Acts, Effects and Responses”. (On) Searle on Conversation ed. by John R. Searle et al., 101-111. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sbisà, Marina. 2002. “Speech Acts in Context”. Language and Communication 22.421-436. Schegloff, Emanuel & Harvey Sacks. 1973. “Opening up Closings”. Semiotica 7.289-327. Searle, John R. 1969. Speech Acts: An essay in the philosophy of language. London: Cambridge University Press. Searle, John R. 1979. Expression and Meaning. Studies in the theory of speech acts. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Sprinker, Michael. 1986. “Boundless Context: Problems in Bakhtin's linguistics”. Poetics Today 7:1.117-128. Taylor, James R. & Elizabeth J. van Every. 2000. The Emergent Organization. Communication as site and surface. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Tracy, Karen. 2007. “Feeling-limned Talk: Conduct ideals in the Steinberg succession meeting.” Interacting and Organizing: Analyses of a management meeting ed. by François Cooren, 7794. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. van Rees, M. Agnes. 1992. “The Adequacy of Speech Act Theory for Explaining Conversational Phenomena: A response to some conversation analytical critics”. Journal of Pragmatics 17.31-47. Weigand, Edda. 2001. “Games of Power”. Negotiation and Power in Dialogic Interaction ed. by Edda Weigand & Marcelo Dascal, 63-76. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Weigand, Edda. 2006. “Argumentation: The mixed game”. Argumentation 20:1.59-87.
Dialogic Rhetoric, Coauthorship, and Moments of Meeting Kenneth N. Cissna & Rob Anderson University of South Florida & Saint Louis University
Distinguishing three concepts of dialogue, we describe a dialogic approach to rhetoric that conceives rhetoric as coexperiential, collaborative, constitutive, open, expansive, and both traditional and radical. Further, we offer an emergent approach to studying dialogic rhetoric that draws on both rhetorical criticism and discourse analysis. We then review briefly four empirical projects in which we have studied conversational dialogue or dialogic rhetoric, including a series of studies of the 1957 dialogue between Martin Buber and Carl Rogers, as well as other conversations involving Gregory Bateson, B. F. Skinner, and Rush Limbaugh. We conclude by identifying the implications of our work to scholarship related to the conversations we have studied, to communication theory and practice, to the facilitation of public dialogue, and to the study of dialogic conversations.
1. Introduction Most rhetorical scholars from Aristotle through the 20th century have understood rhetoric as instrumental, intentional, unidirectional, formulaic, and agonistic. More recently, scholars have recognized the constitutive status of rhetoric. Our work, based significantly on the philosophy of dialogue of Martin Buber and others (including the American psychologist and psychotherapist Carl Rogers), identifies a conversational and dialogic rhetoric that is manifest in what we called “moments of meeting”. 1 Such a dialogic rhetoric is coexperiential, collaborative, open, expansive, and constitutive. This chapter describes this dialogic rhetoric and the research project we have pursued together. For at least two millennia, people have been thinking and writing about human communication. Aristotle, in perhaps the most widely known book ever written about communication, defined rhetoric as “the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion” (I, ch.2:26f.). Aristotle’s conception of communication or rhetoric, and most definitions from his time to the 20th century, emphasized individual skills, linear and one-dimensional control, and the instrumental utility of communication. Such conceptions of communication can be termed monologic, as they position the individual self, the speaker, as the 1
See, especially, the publications by Anderson and Cissna as well as Hammond, Anderson & Cissna (2003) in the references. This chapter borrows in several sections from various of our coauthored works.
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center of the communication process. Communication then moves in one direction, from speaker or message source to the listener or receiver, and the goal of communication is for the speaker to influence the listener. The value of communication is its usefulness in getting others to do or think what one wants. Thus conceived, the most important aspects of communication are the skills and knowledge of the speaker. The past two centuries have seen profound changes in how we conceive of communication. Floyd Matson and Ashley Montagu, in their groundbreaking 1967 book “The Human Dialogue: Perspectives on communication”, described what they called the first and second communication revolutions. The first revolution, of course, was technological and yielded faster and more reliable ways to deliver messages (e.g., the modern printing press, telegraph, radio, and television). The second revolution was more conceptual, involving the ideas of cybernetics and feedback, and allowed more accurate determination of the effects of a message. Each case involved a linear notion of communication and control, a monologue. A third revolution, though, reconceives the communication process as dialogue. In this conception, as we have argued (see Anderson & Cissna 1996, Cissna & Anderson 2002:15ff.), rhetoric need not be limited to instrumental, intentional, unidirectional, formulaic, and agonistic efforts. A dialogic rhetoric is not only possible and would look quite different than the traditional one, but indeed, the 20th century saw the emergence of rhetorical thinking that was more dialogical (e.g., Czubaroff 2000). 2. Conceptions of dialogue We identify three reasonably distinct conceptions of dialogue within a philosophy of communication, each with multiple strains within it. Although we do not have the space to discuss definitions of dialogue in detail, we begin by sketching these uses of the term ‘dialogue’ and showing the distinctions and relationships among them. First, to some, all human language use is inherently dialogic. This position is espoused most famously by the Russian literary and social critic and theorist Mikhail Bakhtin and his contemporary interpreters. Human life, including this chapter and the book of which it is a part, involves a multivocal, unfinalizable chain of alternating utterances, which necessarily involves what Bakhtin called a “dialogic turn” (1986:94). Leslie Baxter (2004) showed that Bakhtin’s concept of dialogue is itself multivocal. John Stewart and his colleagues called this first conception of dialogue descriptive, as it is a “too little noticed and appreciated” yet “pervasive and defining feature of humanity” (Stewart, Zediker & Black 2004:21; also Stewart & Zediker 2000). In addition to Bakhtin, they attributed this descriptive approach to many but not all “social constructionists”. Second, for others, dialogue is also “too little appreciated” and, as a potential, the “defining feature” of our species, but to these thinkers dialogue is not per-
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vasive, not ubiquitous. Rather, it is a possibility for many human encounters but actualized in far fewer. This is the position of Martin Buber and numerous others. In his classic “I and Thou”, he wrote: “I become through my relation to the Thou; as I become I, I say Thou”, and in one of its most oft-quoted passages: “All real living is meeting” (1958:11). Without the dialogic encounter of the I and Thou, which he later called the “interhuman” (1965), we have neither I nor Thou. Our discussion of dialogue as “moments of meeting” (see esp. Cissna & Anderson 1998, 2002) fits in this category, as does Christopher Poulos’s “accidental dialogue” (2008) and Pearce and Pearce’s (2000) “dialogic episodes”. In contrast to the “descriptive” approach to dialogue, Stewart and his colleagues called Buber’s philosophy of dialogue and other similar positions “prescriptive”, an “ideal to be striven toward or a goal to be achieved” (Stewart & Zediker 2000:227). But this label does not tell the whole story. Yes, Buber wished for people to have more dialogic moments in their lives and to appreciate them more, and to that extent, it seems an ideal to be desired, though perhaps not so much a goal to be achieved, but applying the term “prescriptive” to this position can be limiting and confusing for three reasons. First, for Buber, the dialogic, the I-Thou meeting, and the interhuman are ontological categories inherent in our humanity. They happen naturally and even inevitably − indeed, to be a human being is to have been confirmed in dialogue. Thus, dialogue is not necessarily something that has to be “prescribed” like medicine, something we have to be told to do. In this way, dialogue is something like food. We do not eat all the time, and do not need to, but eating regularly (yet not continuously) is essential to being and remaining human. Neither dialogue nor food has to be fancy, but both are present in our lives, whether we attend much to them or not, and we do not have to have either “prescribed” in order to “know” to partake. Second, the characterization of Buber’s dialogue as “prescriptive” can be misunderstood as implying that people should have as much of it as possible. Rather, Buber said that both the I-Thou and the I-It are essential to human life and that if he had lived in a different age, he might have championed the I-It. Just as we cannot and should not eat all the time, we cannot and should not engage in dialogue all the time. Third, Buber’s dialogue is not exactly a “goal” to be achieved, at least not in the sense that someone might plan it as part of his or her day or week: “I need to finish that paper I’ve been working on, get to the grocery store, and be sure to have some dialogue.” Dialogue in Buber’s sense is more a “by-product” – something that happens, more accidentally, while we are doing other things, rather than something we can aim at or plan to achieve. In 1994, we wrote that “dialogue thrives at the margins of human agency − those ill-defined situations in which we imagine we are somewhat in control but in which our plans surprisingly can blend into the unexpected” (Anderson, Cissna & Arnett 1994:xxi). A third conception of dialogue is that it is something people do. In this view, dialogue refers to certain behaviors of speaking and listening that are manifest and enacted (or not) in a group (or dyad), and that can even be taught and
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improved. This position is espoused by David Bohm (1996) and his followers (e.g., Ellinor & Gerard 1998, Isaacs 1999, Senge 1990) as well as most of the many people who, as consultants or activists, seek to promote organizational or public dialogue (for a review of some of the literature on the theory and practice of public dialogue, see Anderson, Cissna & Clune 2003). In this view, dialogue will make us better, but it requires intervention by organizers, facilitators, and others who make it happen. The dialogic practitioner who offers to “do a dialogue” for a group when he comes to town is operating from this approach (Pearce & Pearce 2000:166). Stewart and colleagues included this approach with Buber’s in their “prescriptive” category, but we see an important distinction between this approach and that of Buber and others discussed above. We are comfortable with all of these conceptions of dialogue, and have used − do use − them all. Perhaps they could be referred to as dialogue1 (the pervasive dialogic nature of human social life), dialogue2 (dialogue as a potential for human meetings), and dialogue3 (the facilitated dialogue that can improve organizational, community, social, and public life). 2 They enjoy more than a family resemblance, yet are distinct and distinguishable. Among other differences, they vary in the degree and kind of intention that is involved. Dialogue1 requires no particular intention toward dialogue at all, only the intention to use human language. Dialogue2 requires that and an intention of openness to the other, both in being real about oneself and being receptive to the other. Dialogue3 requires those intentions as well as some knowledge of dialogue and an intention to facilitate or participate in it by engaging in certain behaviors. In a theoretical or philosophical sense, we prefer not to use dialogue to refer to the speech in a theatrical performance or to a literary genre 3 , although obviously it applies to both; nor as a synonym for conversation, preferring ‘conversation’ for this usage; nor to refer to other situations in which participants merely exchange messages back and forth. In earlier work, we identified eight characteristics that we suggested would be recognized by most dialogic theorists and practitioners. Dialogue is characterized by − − − − −
2
an immediacy of presence in which participants are available to one another in the here-and-now a genuineness and authenticity that presumes a thoughtful honesty on the part of all participants a recognition of “strange otherness”, which involves a respect for the other and allows that even familiar others may surprise us a vulnerability that allows all participants to be changed caring about the other and about our relationships that results in a collaborative orientation toward the other
This use of subscripts of dialogue is related to but slightly different than Hyde and Bineham’s (2000) dialogue1 and dialogue2. 3 Nikulin (2006) says that to Bakhtin dialogue is a literary genre.
Dialogic Rhetoric, Coauthorship, and Moments of Meeting 43
− − −
a mutuality in which participants interdepend, each defining and constructing self, other, and their talk simultaneously a temporal flow that presumes historical continuity and immerses participants in a dialogic process an element of surprise or what we called “emergent unanticipated consequences” (Anderson 1994:93f., Cissna & Anderson 1994:13ff.).
One caveat seems critical. Some scholars have portrayed dialogue as an idealistic side-issue in the study of communication. We find it to be far more than that. We have, however, also tried to illuminate potential problems in how the term dialogue is invoked in public communication. Calls for so-called “dialogue” can be employed cynically by the already-powerful in an ideological context. Indeed, in some hegemonic contexts, demanding an ongoing goal of future-oriented dialogue can inhibit the achievement of social justice in the here-and-now (Hammond et al. 2003). 3. Rhetoric and dialogue The theme of this book and the conference from which it evolved assumes that rhetoric and dialogue do or at least can have something to do with each other. We agree. The central premise of our critical and rhetorical approach to studying conversation is, of course, dialogue, and we should expand the implications of this rhetoric-dialogue linkage. To begin, consider Walter Ong’s (1967:300f.) description of dialogue: Dialogue constitutes the basic use of the spoken word, and in its normal stage dialogue is entirely unrehearsed. It moves from determined points of departure toward an undetermined goal, for in dialogue the utterance of each individual is decided not merely by the individual himself but by the preceding remark of the interlocutor to whom his remark is a reply.
Traditional rhetoric privileges persuasion, and thus examines how speakers move from “determined points of departure” toward predetermined goals. A dialogic rhetoric assumes a more open and less controlled communicative arena. In a dialogic rhetoric, individual speakers do not entirely own and cannot entirely control even their own utterances, as conversations are necessarily coauthored. No one can do conversation alone, and in no real conversation is any individual exempt from influence by the other. Thus, in a dialogic rhetoric, the notions of individual control that are so crucial to a more traditional rhetoric are rendered meaningless, as dialogue transcends the control of the individual rhetor. Yet, intention remains. We intend to address the other and be addressed, we intend to have our words understood as words rather than as noise (Ong 1995:22), and, if dialogue is to result, we intend to listen, be open to and respectful of the other, and open to influence by the other. Although one partner cannot assure dialogue’s
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presence, one can assure its absence. The purpose of rhetorical dialogue, then, is not primarily to persuade the other of one’s cause, but to invite further talk, further conversation, indeed, further dialogue. The philosopher Dmitri Nikulin in his new book “On Dialogue” takes a somewhat different position when he asserts that “dialogue is not to be taken as a rhetorical enterprise” (2006:142, emphasis added). He explains this, though by describing rhetoric as attempts “to present a speech in the most attractive form in order that it will be persuasive”. Having assumed, first, a very traditional version of rhetoric as strictly persuasive, and second, that rhetoric has to do merely with the form of a speech, he then contrasts it with dialogue: “Real dialogue quite often appears as a rough, crude, uncultivated, unskilled, simple, and even simplistic oral exchange”. Yes, indeed. And: “Although the agonistic component is an important constituent within dialogue, dialogue’s main interest is not that of winning an argument ... but rather it is to provide the chance for opening up a conversational clearing”. And, yes, again. Our difference from Nikulin in this regard seems to be in our vastly extended sense of what qualifies as rhetoric. Thus, in one of our studies, we describe dialogic rhetoric as “intentional texts coauthored in response to human needs and the symbolic means by which persons address those needs” (Anderson & Cissna 1996:89). Such a rhetoric is coexperiential, collaborative, and constitutive; open and expansive; and paradoxically perhaps, both traditional and radical. It is radical because it requires a profound openness to change; it is traditional because forming and understanding an utterance requires linkage to historical contexts. 4. Studying dialogic rhetoric Just as dialogue2 is somewhat atypical discourse, the study of dialogue2 calls for somewhat unconventional methodological moves. Studies of speeches and various mediated texts are often pursued under the rubric of rhetorical criticism, uncovering the strategies of the author, reactions of the audience, or the significance or the social or political effects of the message, text, or event. Studies of more informal interaction have proceeded as conversation or discourse analysis. Our approach has blended the two: whereas rhetorical or literary criticism typically considers communicative texts in which one person attempts to communicate with many, conversation and discourse analysts more often attend to communicative occasions involving only two (or a small number of) interactants. The best rhetorical criticism allows the method of study to emerge from one’s encounter with the text itself, while conversation and to a lesser extent discourse analysts more often apply a pre-determined approach to their texts. Our project combined these approaches, bringing an emergent dialogic methodology to essentially dyadic, public conversations, along with a commitment to dialogue2 − i.e. to seeing dialogue as a potential in all human encounters. Thus, we approach conversation as a creative rhetorical accomplishment, much as any rhetorical
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critic might confront any other text, yet we were guided as well by the discourse analysts’ commitments to “close looking” at conversations, preparing transcripts carefully, and using excerpts from the transcripts to build arguments about the discourse (Tracy & Mirivel forthc.). Although our approach borrows from both rhetorical criticism and from discourse analysis, our emergent methodology is informed primarily by our interest in dialogue2 and based in the specific and particular projects we have attempted. Indeed, descriptions of our approach − here and elsewhere (e.g., Anderson & Cissna 1996, Cissna & Anderson 2004) − are more emergent descriptions of how we improvised as we proceeded, than a prescribed approach we planned carefully at the outset. The issues that have been salient to us include: First, we allowed our methodological approach to emerge from our encounter with the texts themselves, rather than applying a predetermined methodology. Consider the idea of a template. A template is essentially a pattern − which allows one to create a new work by borrowing, typically, from an external plan. For example, patterns for sewing clothes or making furniture, or cookie molds or screw die casts, are templates − and very useful ones. Their value lies not in producing particularly new or creative works, but in assuring that each new piece is fundamentally very much like the others, though they can be decorated individually. Critical scholarship is, or should be, different, and dialogic scholarship must be. Although some rhetorical or literary critics prefer to follow a plan described by a “master” of that genre, the best critics are not carrying a methodological template around looking for texts to which to apply it. They are not like Abraham Kaplan’s small boy (1964:28) who, once equipped with a hammer, finds that everything he encounters needs pounding. Rather, critics of rhetorical discourse who wish to contribute conceptually discover texts that intrigue or puzzle or in some other way call out for their attention. As we wrote (Anderson & Cissna 1996:91): Critics enter the process as full dialogical partners − ready to be changed and surprised, respectful of the ‘otherness’ of a text, not enrolled in a prescribed critical school, listening to messages for implications not yet disclosed, divulged, or even developed, and ready to weave their tentative meanings also into the emerging public dialogue.
Such an approach is consistent also with social and naturalistic approaches to the study of communication (e.g., Leeds-Hurwitz 1995). One of its proponents, John Lannaman (1992:146) even remarked that such “research requires a dialogic model of understanding”. Thus, texts are not products or objects of study but dialogic invitations with which the critic may interact, and rhetorical critics of conversational dialogue would do well to avoid critical templates. Second, and for similar reasons, we attend to ‘the literature’ without giving it undue attention. The literature of any field is useful and important in many ways, but it should not be regarded as sacred and beyond question. Scholars who are too invested in the shape of the existing literature will be less likely to choose
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unpopular questions or unconventional methods because they are not (yet) represented in the literature, or they may search the literature for the “proper” interpretation of their findings, thereby foregoing the opportunity for a more dialogic encounter with a different voice. Thus, we encourage others to avoid lionizing the literature. Third, we attempt to “live with” the text, enacting a dialogic method and a dialogic relation to the text. Living with the text means encountering it as much and in as many modalities as possible. We obtained audio recordings of all of the conversations we worked with, and we listened to them, repeatedly, alone and with others, and discussed them as much as possible. We made transcripts of them, and read and re-read the transcripts, and read them repeatedly while listening to the tapes, with the best recordings we could find and the best audio equipment we could arrange. Our goal was to produce appropriate and suitable transcripts for each project (and for the Buber-Rogers project, the very best transcript we could). For many reasons, we have learned not to trust others’ transcripts, as how a transcript is done, and why, and by whom, is terribly important. Most publicly accessible transcripts, except those created by trained conversation analysts, are likely to be wrong and in significant ways. Sometimes, we even performed the text aloud, with others. If one is working with a partner, which we strongly recommend, we encourage researchers not only to hear the participants hearing and speaking to one another, but to hear the other dialogically as well. Be willing to engage the other fully − to state one’s own views and to hear the ideas of the other, to be willing to stand one’s ground and to be willing to change. In his dialogue with Rogers, Buber explained that from the time he was a young man he felt an “inclination to meet people, and as far as possible to, just to change if possible something in the other, but also to let me be changed by him .... I felt I have not the right to want to change another if I am not open to be changed by him” (Anderson & Cissna 1997:21). Thus, we suggest critics experience a text in multiple modalities and pursue a dialogic relation to it. Fourth, regularly, we reminded one another that these conversations are coauthored. Of course, all studies of conversation, but especially studies of dialogic conversation and dialogic studies of conversation, must recognize that their texts are coauthored. As coauthored texts, conversations are the products of all involved parties, yet of none of them alone. Although one participant can prevent dialogue from occurring, no one person can ever make dialogue happen. Simultaneously, researchers must recognize that dialogic conversations resound with others’ voices beyond those of the participants. We come with cultures, personal histories, webs of relationships − in short, every person is entwined in myriad conversations, some of which inevitably will find their way into every conversation. Thus, never forget the coauthored and multivocal nature of conversation. Fifth, we have found it useful to pursue as much contextualizing information as we could manage. Whereas conversation analysts usually eschew any infor-
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mation other than the conversation itself, we agree with Bateson that context is critical to meaning. Thus, to understand the meanings that Buber, Rogers, and Bateson brought to their encounters, we engaged in library-based biographical research, archival searches for relevant documents, and interviews with people who might have pertinent personal observations and recollections. Dialogic rhetorical criticism is necessarily an exercise in intellectual history. Thus, we encourage conversational researchers to attend to relevant contextual information. Sixth, we have tried to be modest in describing our findings. Often critics claim to have uncovered the “real” meaning or “best” interpretation of their texts, and virtually always feature what they “know” while omitting what they don’t. In rhetorical studies of conversation, we would do well to recognize that dialogic surprise suggests that new encounters with a text may always produce new insights, and that what we do not know about a conversation may be far greater than what we do. Thus, we suggest that conversation researchers recognize and admit their own humility. Seventh, we found working together as coauthors to be both valuable and enjoyable. Typically, critical scholarship is a solitary activity, and universities often tend to reward solo-authored research more than coauthored scholarship. Assuring that the multiple voices of the dialogue are represented in the work is most easily accomplished when multiple voices are fully present in the authorial mix. Dialogically-oriented research partners will maintain a creative tension. Researchers who insist on their own positions will never complete a project together and likely will destroy their research relationship; researchers too willing to acquiesce are certain to lose good and creative ideas. As Baxter and Montgomery (1998:171) wrote of dialogue and collaboration, “Collaborators do not necessarily have to agree; they do have to forge a relationship to produce something that works”. We have been fortunate, as we have sustained our collaboration for more than 20 years. In all likelihood, neither of us would have done this work alone, and if either of us had done some of it individually, the result would have been far different. Dialogic criticism is, necessarily, metadialogical, and our work is the product, in Buber’s term, of the “between” of our relationship as much as the conversations we have analyzed. Thus, we encourage dialogically-oriented researchers of conversation to pursue coauthored projects. 5. Our studies of dialogue Thus far, we have pursued four projects in which we have studied conversational dialogue or dialogic rhetoric. Our first project involved a series of studies that examined the 1957 dialogue between Martin Buber and Carl Rogers. This conversation is relatively well known, as multiple transcripts of it had been published (for a review, see Anderson & Cissna 1997:1ff.), including at least one in German (“Dialog zwischen Martin Buber und Carl Rogers” 1992; in German, see also Beck 1991, Suter 1986), and various scholars had followed Maurice
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Friedman’s lead in commenting on and interpreting it in print. We presented our first paper on this dialogue at an international, interdisciplinary conference on Martin Buber over 15 years ago, and since then we published three major studies of it in refereed journals (Cissna & Anderson 1994b, 1998, Anderson & Cissna 1996), as well as two books (Anderson & Cissna 1997, Cissna & Anderson 2002) and other articles and chapters about it. Our second conversational rhetoric project examined another historical conversation: a 1975 “Dialogue between Carl Rogers and Gregory Bateson”. This dialogue is not nearly as well known as the Buber-Rogers dialogue, and is not particularly well thought of by those few who do know of it and have written about it. Perhaps the few critics who have commented on it took their cues from the attitudes of Rogers and Bateson, neither of whom were pleased with this event – two weeks later, Bateson called it a “dreadful event”, and Rogers a “fiasco”, adding that he was embarrassed that the dialogue would be available as a cassette for others to listen to (Cissna & Anderson 2005:120). Although disappointing in some respects (as all public dialogues necessarily will be), we found much more ‘dialogue’ in it than others had, and attempted to rehabilitate their conversation. Our study of this instance of dialogic rhetoric was published in a 2005 issue of “Cybernetics and Human Knowing” to celebrate the centennial of Gregory Bateson’s birth. Third, we are currently at work on a piece that is similar to the first two in that it involves Carl Rogers, but this time involves the behaviorist B. F. Skinner. Although they held several very contentious public meetings, we discovered in the Rogers Collection in the Library of Congress a set of private correspondence that reveals a warm and personal friendship that transcended their intellectual differences. This relationship − seemingly unknown by many scholars − inflected their dialogues and debates about what they both thought was a very important public issue related to the nature of freedom and control. We hope to show, in this case, how they used the private relationship to enact the public one. The fourth piece is quite different. In the other projects, we examined cases in which historically famous (and quite dead) intellectuals discussed face-to-face issues that would be significant primarily to other intellectuals before relatively small audiences, and we sought to reveal something about how the dialogue partners accomplished ‘dialogue’. In this newest case, we examined a contemporary, mediated public conversation in which dialogue failed, or more accurately, never really had a chance. Only one of the participants is famous, and not as an intellectual, the other is relatively anonymous, known to the audience only by her first name. Our text is a 22-minute conversation between the most popular U.S. radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh and a 19-year-old caller named Crystal. They are discussing a terribly important public issue, the U.S. war in Iraq, shortly before the war was begun. We discuss how “dismissiveness” as a rhetorical strategy of talking and listening prevented whatever small chance there may have been
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of public dialogue – and how, by extension, dismissiveness characterizes much too much of political discourse in the U.S. today (Anderson & Cissna forthc). 6. Findings and implications from studying dialogic rhetoric Some of the implications of our projects have been very specific to the particular conversations we studied, especially to Buber, Rogers, and the dialogue they shared. First, we hope to have contributed to deepening the communication field’s understanding of and appreciation for Buber and Rogers, as thinkers and as communicators. Twenty years ago, neither was characterized very accurately in the communication literature, at least in the U.S., and we have had a role in changing that for the better. Second, we have enhanced an international and interdisciplinary line of scholarly research into that one revealing event of dialogue. Curiously, in the month or so preceding the conference that gave rise to this book, we received two inquiries regarding events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Buber-Rogers dialogue (April 18, 2007) – one from Great Britain, the other from Austria. Of course, we have no way to know whether our work had any impact on those events being contemplated, but it is nice to think so. In another development, 2007 saw the publication of a Japanese translation of our 1997 transcript of and commentary on the Buber-Rogers dialogue (Anderson & Cissna 1997/2007). In addition, we have identified and discussed various implications of these conversations, again, especially Buber-Rogers dialogue, to communication theory and practice, particularly related to the theory and practice of dialogue. First, theoretically, in one study (Anderson & Cissna 1996), we showed the significance of audience, roles, and interpersonal styles for dialogic conversation. Second, in another study (Cissna & Anderson 1998), we revealed how a coherent “BuberRogers position” emerged in their talk, although most commentators had emphasized their disagreements. We argued, based on their example, that mutuality and by extension dialogue are possible, even under unlikely circumstances, in brief and transitory but vibrant “moments of meeting”. Third, as a counterpoint, perhaps, to the previous point, we have argued that dialogue is, rather than an “ideal possibility seldom realized” − as Laing (1969:98) said of confirmation − a concrete, practical accomplishment in particular and always unique circumstances, and yet, perhaps, also, always and inevitably partial. In a somewhat more practical vein, we attempted to show how dialogue could enhance public discourse through the application of a set of “dialogue-productive” or “facilitating” rhetorics (Cissna & Anderson 2002:250ff.). These rhetorics are patterns of talking and thinking about particular communication challenges that are so closely interrelated that, like a hologram, perhaps all of them are fully contained in each of them. What we called a “commons rhetoric” invokes the notion of the commons as a gathering place that a community shares or has in common, and so a commons rhetoric involves the communicative attempts to
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bring people into dialogic relation, yet reminds us that we cannot assume that merely because we provide a space for people to come together that they will agree, or should. A “mutuality rhetoric” involves helping dialogic participants to imagine the other’s side and to recognize the relational basis of what we do together, and not getting them to act as though they are all equal in influence and power, when likely they are not. A “moments rhetoric” allows participants to appreciate the occasional moments of real meeting and of shared concern, and, without expecting them to persist, recognizes that they can transform relationships. A “vulnerability rhetoric” helps participants turn toward others with openness, and so make themselves vulnerable to the other, and vulnerable to change. “Praxis rhetoric” refers to attempts to get dialogic participants to recognize that their ideas about one another, communication, and relationships are always related to their behaviors toward one another, and to allow all of this to be susceptible to change. Finally, a “recognition rhetoric” recognizes the other’s presence, acknowledges the other’s communication, and endorses the worth of the other as a person, all of which is to say that it confirms (Cissna & Sieburg 1981) others and, however much the parties might disagree, encourages them to confirm one another. Finally, the broadest implications of our project have been two: first, we have demonstrated the usefulness of close rhetorical analysis of significant face-to-face meetings. Scholars have long been interested in analyzing various rhetorical documents using various means of rhetorical analysis. Usually, they have studied speeches, the rhetorical products of social movements, or mediated texts. Rarely have they attempted to engage conversational texts in a critical way, and none have used dialogue as a central construct. We hope to see other studies that bring rhetorical perspectives to particular conversational meetings. Second, we have shown the value of dialogue in a sustained collaborative scholarly project, and not just a single project but a series of projects, indeed a scholarly relationship that has persisted over 20 years. We have produced together a body of work that would in all likelihood not have existed, or would have been very, very different, but for our collaboration. Further, we became friends with one another and one another’s families. Just as we have too few examples of real public dialogues, we have too few instances of long-term scholarly, dialogic collaboration. Of course, we set out initially simply to do one essay together. Then, we agreed to pursue a second, and then another, and then to do book, and another book, and so on, and only now, looking back, is a 20-year collaborating relationship visible. We hope our example might encourage others to work together on that one first project. 7. Conclusion No doubt, the relationship between rhetoric and dialogue can be conceived in multiple ways. We have described briefly a perspective that conceives rhetoric as
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broad enough to include “coauthored” conversational and dialogic texts and have presented an approach to studying such texts that is based in both traditional rhetorical criticism and contemporary discourse analysis. References Anderson, Rob. 1994. “Anonymity, Presence, and the Dialogical Self in a Technological Culture”. The Reach of Dialogue: Confirmation, voice, and community ed. by Rob Anderson, Kenneth N. Cissna & Ronald C. Arnett, 91-110. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Anderson, Rob & Kenneth N. Cissna. 1996. “Criticism and Conversational Texts: Rhetorical bases of role, audience, and style in the Buber-Rogers dialogue”. Human Studies 19.85-118. Anderson, Rob & Kenneth N. Cissna 1997. The Martin Buber – Carl Rogers Dialogue: A new transcript with commentary. Albany: State University of New York Press. Japanese transl. by K. Yamada, N. Imai & S. Nagashima. Tokyo: Shunjusha Publishers, 2007. Anderson, Rob & Kenneth N. Cissna (forthc.) “Dismissiveness and Dialogic Ethics”. Communication Ethics: Cosmopolitanism and provinciality ed. by Ronald C. Arnett & Kathleen Glenister Roberts. New York: Peter Lang. Anderson, Rob, Leslie A. Baxter & Kenneth N. Cissna, eds. 2004a. Dialogue: Theorizing difference in communication studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Anderson, Rob, Leslie A. Baxter & Kenneth N. Cissna. 2004b. “Texts and Contexts of Dialogue”. Dialogue: Theorizing difference in communication studies ed. by Rob Anderson, Leslie A. Baxter & Kenneth N. Cissna, 1-17. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Anderson, Rob, Leslie A. Baxter & Kenneth N. Cissna. 2004c. “Voices, Conversation Fragments, and a Temporary Conclusion”. Dialogue: Theorizing difference in communication studies ed. by Rob Anderson, Leslie A. Baxter & Kenneth N. Cissna, 259-267. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Anderson, Rob, Kenneth N. Cissna & Ronald C. Arnett, eds. 1994. The Reach of Dialogue: Confirmation, voice, and community. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Anderson, Rob, Kenneth N. Cissna & Meghan K. Clune. 2003. “The Rhetoric of Public Dialogue”. Communication Research Trends 22:1.1-37. Aristotle. 1954. The Rhetoric transl. by W. R. Roberts. New York: Random House. Bakhtin, Mikhail M. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays ed. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, transl. by V. W. McGee. Austin: University of Texas Press. Baxter, Leslie. A. 2004. “Dialogues of Relating”. Dialogue: Theorizing difference in communication studies ed. by Rob Anderson, Leslie A. Baxter & Kenneth N. Cissna, 107124. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Baxter, Leslie A. & Barbara M. Montgomery. 1998. “Dialogism and Relational Dialectics”. Dialectical Approaches to Studying Personal Relationships ed. by Barbara M. Montgomery and Leslie A. Baxter, 155-174. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Beck, Harald. 1991. Buber und Rogers: Das Dialogische und das Gespräch. Heidelberg: Roland Asanger. Bohm, David 1996. On Dialogue ed. by Lee Nichol. London: Routledge. Buber, Martin. 1958. I and Thou. Transl. by Ronald Gregor Smith. New York: Scribner. Buber, M. 1965. The Knowledge of Man ed. by Maurice Friedman, transl. by Maurice Friedman and Ronald Gregor Smith. New York: Harper & Row. Cissna, Kenneth N. & Rob Anderson. 1990. “The Contributions of Carl Rogers to a Philosophical Praxis of Dialogue”. Western Journal of Speech Communication 54.125-147. Cissna, Kenneth N. & Rob Anderson. 1994a. “Communication and the Ground of Dialogue”. The Reach of Dialogue: Confirmation, voice, and community ed. by Rob Anderson, Kenneth N. Cissna & Ronald C. Arnett, 9-30. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
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Cissna, Kenneth N. & Rob Anderson. 1994b. “The 1957 Martin Buber – Carl Rogers Dialogue, as Dialogue”. Journal of Humanistic Psychology 34.11-45. Cissna, Kenneth N. & Rob Anderson. 1996. “Dialogue in Public: Looking critically at the Buber – Rogers dialogue”. Martin Buber and the Human Sciences ed. by Maurice Friedman, 191-206. Albany: State University of New York Press. Cissna, Kenneth N. & Rob Anderson. 1998. “Theorizing about Dialogic Moments: The Buber – Rogers position and postmodern themes.” Communication Theory 8.63-104. Cissna, Kenneth N. & Rob Anderson. 2002. Moments of Meeting: Buber, Rogers, and the potential for public dialogue. Albany: State University of New York Press. Cissna, Kenneth N. & Rob Anderson. 2004. “Public Dialogue and Intellectual History: Hearing multiple voices.” Dialogue: Theorizing difference in communication studies ed. by Rob Anderson, Leslie A. Baxter & Kenneth N. Cissna, 193-207. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cissna, Kenneth N. & Rob Anderson. 2005. “A Failed Dialogue? Revisiting the 1975 meeting of Gregory Bateson and Carl Rogers”. Cybernetics and Human Knowing 12.120-136. Cissna, Kenneth N. & Evelyn Sieburg. 1981. “Patterns of Interactional Confirmation and Disconfirmation”. Rigor and Imagination: Essays from the legacy of Gregory Bateson ed. by Carol Wilder-Mott and John H. Weakland, 253-282. New York: Praeger. Czubaroff, Jeanine. 2000. “Dialogical Rhetoric: An application of Martin Buber’s philosophy of dialogue”. Quarterly Journal of Speech 86.168-189. “Dialog zwischen Martin Buber und Carl Rogers”. Integrative Therapie 18.245-260. Ellinor, Linda & Glenna Gerard. 1998. Dialogue: Rediscover the transforming power of conversation. New York: Wiley. Friedman, Maurice. 1994. “Reflections on the Buber-Rogers Dialogue”. Journal of Humanistic Psychology 34.46-65. Grudin, Robert. 1996. On Dialogue: An essay in free thought. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. Hammond, Scott C., Rob Anderson & Kenneth N. Cissna. 2003. “The Problematics of Dialogue and Power”. Communication Yearbook 27.125-157. Hyde, Bruce & Jeffrey Bineham L. 2000. “From Debate to Dialogue: Toward a pedagogy of nonpolarized public discourse”. Southern Communication Journal 65.208-223. Isaacs, William. 1999. Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together: A pioneering approach to communicating in business and life. New York: Doubleday. Kaplan, Abraham. 1964. The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for behavioral science. Scranton, PA: Chandler. Laing, Ronald D. 1969. Self and Others. Baltimore: Penguin. Lannaman, John W. 1992. “Deconstructing the Person and Changing the Subject of Interpersonal Studies”. Communication Theory 2.139-148. Leeds-Hurwitz, Wendy. 1995. Social Approaches to Communication. New York: Guilford. Matson, Floyd & Ashley Montagu. 1967. The Human Dialogue: Perspectives on communication. New York: Free Press. Nikulin, Dmitri. 2006. On Dialogue. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Pearce, Barnett W. & Kimberly Pearce. 2000. “Combining Passions and Abilities: Toward dialogic virtuosity”. Southern Communication Journal 65.161-175. Poulos, Christopher 2008. “Accidental Dialogue: Searching for dialogic moments in everyday life”. Communication Theory 18.117-138. Ong, Walter J. 1967. The Presence of the Word: Some prolegomena for cultural and religious history. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ong, Walter J. 1995. “Hermeneutic Forever: Voice, text, digitization, and the ‘I’”. Oral Tradition 10.3-26. Senge, Peter M. 1990. The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday. Stewart, John & Karen Zediker. 2000. “Dialogue as Tensional, Ethical Practice”. Southern Communication Journal 65.224-242.
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Stewart, John, Karen Zediker & Laura Black. 2004. “Relationships among Philosophies of Dialogue”. Dialogue: Theorizing difference in communication studies ed. by Rob Anderson, Leslie A. Baxter & Kenneth N. Cissna, 21-38. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Suter, Alois. 1986. Menschenbild und Erziehung bei M. Buber und C. Rogers. Berne: Paul Haupt. Tracy, Karen & Julien Mirivel (forthc.). “Discourse Analysis: The practice and practical value of taping, transcribing, and analyzing talk”. The Handbook of Applied Communication Research ed. by Lawrence Frey and Kenneth N. Cissna, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
The Rhetoric of ‘Dialogue’ in Metadiscourse Possibility/Impossibility arguments and critical events Robert T. Craig University of Colorado at Boulder
Regarding ‘dialogue’ as a normative rather than a purely descriptive concept, this study describes the rhetoric of practical arguments about the possibility or impossibility of dialogue in a corpus of discourse samples primarily drawn from the Internet. Political, social, and personal domains of dialogue are distinguished and associated respectively with realist, moral, and experiential discourses that intermix in practical argumentation. Arguments for or against the possibility of dialogue may appeal to objective conditions (convergence of interests or beliefs, relatively equal power, a just and supportive sociopolitical order) as well as to morally accountable attitudes and actions (respect, trust, and reaching out versus hatred, dogmatism, dishonesty, and violence). Arguments may also appeal to critical events that interrupt routine patterns of thought and communication and are said to open a potential for dialogue that may or may not be realized in practice. Implications for normative theories of dialogue and rhetoric are considered.
1. Introduction Extending a line of research on arguments about ‘dialogue’ in ordinary metadiscourse (Craig 2007), this chapter describes arguments about the possibility or impossibility of dialogue. The larger purpose of this line research is to engage communication theory with issues in practical metadiscourse, thereby contributing to a body of grounded normative theory for human communication (Craig & Tracy 1995, 2005, Tracy & Craig forthc.). By ‘metadiscourse’ I mean the pragmatic use of language to comment reflexively on a contextual discourse, thereby shaping the meaning and conduct of communication. The present analysis is based on a corpus of discourse samples largely taken from the Internet. Before examining the data and briefly indicating some theoretical implications, I first explain what is meant here by ‘dialogue’ and ‘the rhetoric of dialogue’, and provide further information on the methodology and corpus. 2. Dialogue and rhetoric The present research is concerned with ‘dialogue’ in a range of senses generally running between Cissna and Anderson’s (this volume) concepts of Dialogue 2 and
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Dialogue 3 – that is, between dialogue as a momentarily realized potential for genuine inter-human meeting and dialogue as something that people do, a specific form of human communication – while tending somewhat toward the latter concept. Because our purpose is to explore assumptions about dialogue associated with pragmatic uses of the term in ordinary metadiscourse, it would not be useful to posit a precise theoretical definition at the outset. We are, however, broadly concerned with dialogue as a normative rather than a purely descriptive concept. ‘Dialogue’ in this range of senses is used in practical metadiscourse, and importantly also in academic theory and philosophical discourses, to name and describe forms or qualities of human communication that are normatively preferred in appropriate circumstances. So understood, dialogue is concerned with certain ways in which we should or should not communicate. Drawing from philosophical-theoretical writings, Cissna and Anderson (2002:9ff) listed eight generally accepted normative characteristics of dialogue: immediateness of presence, emergent unanticipated consequences, recognition of strange otherness, collaborative orientation, vulnerability, mutual implication, temporal flow, and genuineness and authenticity. Dialogue thus refers to forms of communication marked by qualities such as authenticity, openness to different views, and engagement in a collaborative process the outcome of which cannot be known in advance. Communication having such characteristics can occur in public as well as intimate situations, although the full realization of dialogue may perhaps be experienced only in brief moments. Wierzbicka’s (2006) corpus-based semantic analysis showed that a common meaning of ‘dialogue’ in international English significantly differs from philosophical-theoretical definitions. In contrast to theoretical writings, the ordinary sense explicated by Wierzbicka (2006:692) refers to “a relatively modest ideal” that “does not imply closeness, intimacy, ‘heart-to-heart communication’, or even complete frankness”. Dialogue in this sense involves trying to understand and to be understood by others with different views, and openness to the possibility of changing one’s own views. However, in further contrast to philosophical notions, dialogue in this sense typically refers to communication between groups or representatives of groups rather than between individuals and to exchanges occurring in multiple episodes over extended periods of time rather than in single episodes, much less in brief experiential moments as envisioned by Cissna and Anderson’s (2002) theoretical interpretation. Wierzbicka argues that philosophical discussions of dialogue have no impact on ordinary meanings. She claims that the specific sense of dialogue she explicates is “a social fact, which cannot be changed at will and which is not a matter of anyone’s opinion” (2006:693). Empirical usage, however, is not always consistent with Wierzbicka’s proposed definition of dialogue (Craig 2007). Moreover, although it may be true that common meanings of a word in natural language cannot be changed by anyone ‘at will’, ideas and opinions about dialogue do differ (and not only among philosophers), as Wierzbicka acknowl-
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edges, and ordinary meanings do change under many influences, sometimes including diffusion from intellectual discourses. Communicative practices of dialogue and of metadiscursive talk about dialogue, like social practices in general, evolve through normative negotiations in everyday life (Rouse 2007). Ordinary metadiscourse expresses speech codes or language ideologies − normative assumptions about language and communication that not only are culturally variable (Carbaugh, Boromisza-Habashi & Ge 2006, Philipsen 1992) but also are inherently contestable and, in fact, contested among ordinary language users (Jaworski, Coupland & Galasinski 2004, Taylor 1997, Verschueren 1999). Academic discourse does not stand entirely apart from these everyday normative negotiations. Arguments embedded in ordinary metadiscourse can be critiqued not only ideologically but also with regard to their possible relevance to intellectual debates on communication theory. In turn, theoretical concepts that are relevant to practical concerns are sometimes taken up and used (and, of course, thereby changed) in practical metadiscourse – a process that ordinary talk about ‘dialogue’ already manifests to some extent (Craig 1999, 2007). Academic research on language and communication can thus participate in a recursive social process in which linguistic and communicative norms are negotiated. To engage properly with dialogue as a normative concept we must, therefore, examine not only the semantics but also the pragmatics and especially the rhetoric of normative arguments about dialogue in practical metadiscourse. Rhetoric and dialogue can be related in various ways. Cissna and Anderson (2002), in their chapter on “A Rhetorical Approach to Dialogue”, articulated methodological principles for dialogic rhetorical analysis, regarding public dialogues as co-authored texts with which rhetorical critics become dialogically engaged. Others have theorized how the practice of rhetoric or argumentation can conform to a normative ideal of genuine dialogue (e.g., Brent 1996, Czubaroff 2000, Foss & Griffin 1995, Myerson 1994). More closely aligned with the present research are critical studies of the rhetoric of dialogue. For example, Tonn (2005) critiqued the increasingly common rhetorical use of ‘conversation’ and ‘dialogue’ as framing devices in episodes of public controversy, arguing that those ways of framing controversy can have normatively problematic consequences, specifically that they may tend to undermine democracy by discouraging public argument and deliberative processes. The present research also aims toward a normative reconstruction of dialogue and related concepts used as metadiscursive framing devices. Rather than move directly to a broad critique, however, we approach the problem initially through an empirical exploration of practical arguments about dialogue. We examine samples of public discourse to identify commonplace premises and reasoning about conditions that make dialogue possible or impossible. The analysis reveals normative assumptions as they function pragmatically in the rhetoric of ordinary metadiscourse about dialogue. Such commonplace assumptions, having been ex-
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plicated through methods of argument and discourse analysis, can be taken up as objects of theoretical reflection. 3. Method and data Data collection for this study has been ongoing within a larger project concerned with ordinary arguments about communication. Approximately 100 English discourse samples pertaining specifically to dialogue have been collected to date (2005-2007). In addition to some found in casual reading, most samples have been obtained by using Internet search engines such as Google and LexisNexis. We have not followed a systematic sampling plan but have experimented with various search strings including ‘dialogue’ (e.g., ‘dialogue is needed’; ‘dialogue only if’; ‘prevents dialogue’) and have browsed the search results for relevant examples (i.e., texts presenting any normative argument about ‘dialogue’ in a relevant sense). Search strings have been designed to ferret out diverse arguments in a broad range of social contexts. Some Google searches have been restricted to blog sites, which tend to present relatively informal, argumentative texts. Cases collected for this study require sufficient context to allow interpretation of the pragmatic situation to which a particular argument has been directed. This breadth of context falls in a middle range between typical linguistic corpus-based studies such as Wierzbicka’s (2006) and extended rhetorical case studies such as Tonn’s (2005). Corpus studies often use keyword-in-context searches that provide a few words on either side of a search term. This provides a large number of cases and sufficient context to distinguish word senses in a semantic analysis but usually insufficient context to draw inferences about the pragmatics of particular situations. On the other hand, extended case studies provide for deep contextual interpretation of pragmatic rhetorical strategies but allow only a small number of cases to be examined at once. The approach used in this study provides enough context for limited rhetorical interpretation of a middling number of cases. It allows for description of diverse lines of argument across a range of pragmatic circumstances. In this study, discourse samples have been examined to identify claims, assumptions, and inferences when arguing that ‘dialogue’ is possible or impossible in some conditions. The results provide an exploratory survey of some arguments about dialogue though not yet a definitive map of the field. 4. Domains of dialogue A previous study distinguished three normative domains of dialogue: political, social, and personal (Craig 2007). Discourse analysis found that arguments for and against seeking dialogue in particular situations differ markedly among the three domains. Arguments about dialogue in the political domain (usually but not always involving international relations in the cases examined) tend to be couched
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in a realist discourse in which reasons typically appeal to calculations of outcomes, interests, and power relations. In these lines of argument, parties should engage in dialogue if and only if it is in their interest to do so. When interests diverge, when the power equation is disadvantageous, when ‘quiet diplomacy’ has failed to produce the required results, then dialogue should be avoided. Arguments about dialogue in the social domain (most often involving tensions among ethnic or religious groups, such as presently occur with immigrant Muslim communities in some Western European societies) tend to be couched in a moral discourse in which reasons typically appeal to principles and obligations of truth, justice, or morality. In these lines of argument, social actors should engage in dialogue out of a sense of rightness or obligation, or perhaps to reciprocate some positive gesture from the other side; but dialogue should be avoided when it would tend to legitimize evil, obfuscate truth, or compromise absolute principles. Least frequent in the discourse samples collected to date, arguments about dialogue in the personal domain (involving, for example, spouses, intimate friends, or professional colleagues) tend to be couched in an experiential discourse in which reasons typically appeal to positive experiences of selfrealization, interpersonal intimacy, or understanding and acceptance of feelings. Craig (2007) reported finding no arguments against personal dialogue and noted as further distinctive features of this domain that it tends to emphasize spiritual and/or therapeutic themes and that dialogue is often assumed to be a structured activity following prescribed steps and rules. Subsequent sampling has found at least one argument against personal dialogue: that a woman’s efforts toward dialogue with her ex-spouse will be abandoned because “it only seems to breed more negativity and doesn’t benefit her [a troubled daughter] in any way” (Internet references 1). In an experiential discourse, attempts at interpersonal dialogue may be opposed because they lead to a bad experience. As this example also illustrates, realist, moral, and experiential discourses intermix. The ex-spouse’s bad behavior (moral discourse) and unwanted outcomes (realist discourse) are reasons for abandoning personal dialogue in this case. In general, realist and even experiential themes do sometimes occur in arguments about dialogue in the social domain, moral arguments occur in the political domain (e.g., in the rhetoric of peace advocates), and common moral themes appear in all domains. Craig (2007) noted two additional observations that are amplified in the present study. First, regarding the common moral themes just mentioned, certain normative requirements for dialogue (such as clear communication, frankness, respect, lack of anger, courage to speak, good faith, openness to other views and change, and commitment to continuing process) are found in all three domains. Second, openings for dialogue in any domain can emerge unexpectedly from critical events that, in themselves, may be either good (e.g., an unexpected
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friendly gesture) or bad (e.g., riots in 2005 that lent urgency to calls for a national ‘dialogue’ in France). 5. Possibility/Impossibility arguments Since dialogue is generally assumed to be a normatively preferred form of communication, signs that dialogue is possible may count as good reasons for seeking dialogue. Arguments against dialogue per se are quite rare, but efforts to engage in dialogue may be opposed on grounds that genuine dialogue is impossible in the particular circumstances. Possibility/impossibility arguments are thus prominent in the rhetoric of dialogue across domains. Such arguments may appeal to objective conditions or to morally accountable attitudes or actions that can render dialogue either possible or impossible. Such arguments may also appeal to critical events that can open new opportunities for dialogue although with some risk of having the opposite effect. 5.1 Objective conditions Political/realist discourses couch arguments about the possibility or impossibility of dialogue in terms of calculations of interest and power. Dialogue is possible in a realist view when interests converge, parties are interdependent, and each side is sufficiently unified that its position can be addressed with confidence. For example, a blogger argued “the US should not reject dialogue with Iran as a matter of principle” because Iran’s “interests would not be served by a failure of US policy in Iraq” (Internet references 2). Here the possibility of dialogue results from a convergence of interests even within a generally antagonistic relationship. When interests diverge, one side may argue that dialogue is possible only if certain conditions are met by the opponent, as when a leftist party leader in West Bengal, India, replied to a chief minister’s offer of talks in a land dispute that “we can have a dialogue only if” specific demands were met first (Internet references 3). Dialogue is only possible in a realist view if each side has a sufficiently unified identity and interests. Even in the business world, where advertisers now want ‘dialogue’ with their customers, it can be argued that this dialogue is only possible if the advertiser carefully maintains a consistent brand image, “a clear, distinct voice … that speaks through all communication, not just spoken but also written; a voice that takes disparate messages many months apart and attributes them to a consistent source” (The Guardian, London, 24 April 2006, p.10, retrieved from www.lexisnexis.com). If one side in a political conflict is internally divided, finding legitimate representatives to engage in dialogue may be impossible. On the other hand, the same situation may offer an opportunity for the other side to open dialogue with less extreme elements, thus driving a wedge through a divided opponent, as when, in 2006, the government of Iraq was reported to have entered dialogue with some insurgent groups, “Lt. Gen. Wafiq al-Samaraei told
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Al-Arabiya television that the dialogue was aimed at driving a wedge between religious zealots and other insurgents” (Robert H. Reid: “Iraqi president says he met with insurgents, believes a deal possible”, Associated Press, 1 May 2006; retrieved from lexisnexis.com). Power relations enter into arguments about the possibility of dialogue in complex ways. A common assumption is that “genuine dialogue is impossible between partners with power disparity” (Internet references 4). A less powerful party may seek dialogue in order to gain access to a forum, which a more powerful party may prefer to deny them (e.g., when Palestinian scholars accepted an invitation from the American Association of University Professors that Israeli scholars rejected, it was argued that this was due to a “power differential” such that Palestinians “do not have the same high level of access to an international forum”; Internet references 5). Or again, a less powerful side that has avoided dialogue from a disadvantaged position may seek dialogue at a moment when the power disparity seems to have decreased, as it was speculated that Iran wanted dialogue with the USA in 2006 “partly because it perceives America’s position in Iraq as weak and its own as strong” (Internet references 6). Facilitation by a powerful third party can make dialogue possible, as India was said to have facilitated dialogue between Maoist rebels and Nepal in 2005 (Internet references 7); while the reluctance of a powerful third party to intervene can be blamed for the absence of dialogue, as when hesitancy by the European Union in 2005 was said to have given Serbian extremists “a green light to reject dialogue” concerning Montenegro (Internet references 8) Although social/moral and personal/experiential discourses do not usually couch arguments about dialogue explicitly in terms of interests and power relations, they do sometimes assert objective conditions for the possibility of dialogue or for a party’s willingness to engage. For example, inter-religious dialogue may be argued impossible in the absence of a “shared logic” (Internet references 9) or “if we don’t think that there is objective truth” (Internet references 10). Interracial dialogue may be argued possible only in a supportive community that provides “a space devoid of violence or retribution – a safe place” (Internet references 11). Other environing conditions that arguably make dialogue impossible include social injustice (“you can’t have dialogue without justice – which is what the Palestinians are crying out for”; Internet references 12) and ‘political correctness’ (“You can’t have dialogue if people are only allowed to speak from a state regulated point of view”; Internet references 13). A party may even condition the possibility of personal dialogue on a ‘realist’ demand for shared interest, such as a filmmaker who is open to dialogue about his work “only if you are actually doing something about your ideas and not merely speculating about doing it” (Internet references 14).
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5.2 Morally accountable attitudes and actions Social/Moral discourses characteristically couch arguments about the possibility or impossibility of dialogue in terms of morally accountable attitudes and actions; however, similar moral requirements are commonly asserted with regard to political and personal dialogue. Dialogue is said in a moral discourse to be possible only when participants display attitudes such as respect, sincerity, integrity, openness, and trust, and when they ‘reach out’ to others, listen, seek understanding, and communicate clearly and frankly. For reasons of space, only a few of these themes can be illustrated here. In explaining how an atheist and a Christian “could create a healthy dialogue about God together”, a pastor claimed: “Listen and respect instead of trying to change everybody’s mind all the time – that’s the big message – listen and respect” (Internet references 15). Trust is often claimed to be necessary (e.g., “‘No trust, no dialogue’. That simple summation says it all”; Internet references 16). Related to trust is the necessity of “reaching out” to others who are different (professional colleagues, in this example), which “will involve getting out of the comfort zone” (Internet references 17). Other arguments emphasize the necessity of self-criticism and acknowledgment of one’s own side’s limitations. As one blogger put it, “dialogue can only take place when we re-cognize and acknowledge the partiality of our perspective” (Internet references 18). Many of these arguments about the positive moral requirements of dialogue occur in pragmatic contexts of advocating, exhorting or instructing on behalf of dialogue in general or in particular social fields. Dialogue is made impossible in a moral view by attitudes such as hatred or dogmatism or by communicative or other actions that are violent, coercive, done in bad faith, or otherwise dishonest or offensive. Arguers across domains often attribute such negative attitudes or actions to others (who may be members of the arguer’s own group) by way of blaming the others for making dialogue impossible. Again, only a few of these themes can be illustrated in the space of this chapter. Bloggers argue that dialogue is impossible with Middle Eastern Muslims because “you can’t have dialogue and jihad” (Internet references 19), or because “there are some people who teach their children to hate … You can’t have dialogue with people like that” (Internet references 20). Nor can you have dialogue, it is frequently argued, with those who are dogmatic, rigid, always ‘right’, or dismissive of other views. Dogmatic beliefs make dialogue impossible according to a blogger who wrote concerning members of Opus Dei (a Catholic group): “You don’t dialogue with these people on these things. They are RIGHT” (Internet references 21); and a feminist blogger concerning a Christian activist group: “You can’t have a dialogue with someone who refuses the (sic) acknowledge the validity of the concept of different viewpoints” (Internet references 22); and a religious critic of atheism: “You can’t have a dialogue with dogmatic atheists. Because they are so sure they know everything, they never listen to intelligent people” (Internet references 23).
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Dialogue is similarly argued to be impossible with radicals, extremists, or fundamentalists. However, opposite claims are sometimes defended. One contrary line of argument is that confidently held, even dogmatic views make dialogue possible rather than impossible. For example, a Catholic blogger defending the Pope against recent criticism by Muslims writes: “… standing firm is the only true basis for dialogue … because this standing firm is itself founded on the belief that faith and reason belong together” (Internet references 24); and a Christian blogger defending “absolute truth claims” writes: “i (sic) strongly argue for dialogue being possible, without having to give up one’s faith … to make dialogue possible, it means first of all that we know where people are, and meet them there” (Internet references 25). Another, rather different line of argument is that dialogue with extremists (the Islamist group al-Qaeda, in this case) is indeed possible if ‘we’ are willing to risk it, for “Those who reject dialogue with this enemy and angrily and in shrilly tones demand more bloodshed in retribution, must remember that they are behaving as extremely and unyielding as they perceive their enemy to be” (Internet references 26). Even the most rigorously realist discourses argue on moral grounds for dialogue’s possibility or impossibility. The many kinds of morally accountable acts that arguably make political dialogue impossible (violence, confrontation, boycott, insult, smear tactics, twisting or misrepresenting truth, etc.) cannot be detailed here. Perhaps the most minimal realist-moral condition for dialogue was asserted by a blogger who argued that dialogue does not mean “to hang around a campfire and sing Kumbaya and hold hands and go to a nice group psychotherapy session together. It just means don’t fucking kill anybody unless you absolutely have to” (Internet references 27). 5.3 Critical events While provocative acts are often blamed for making dialogue impossible, they are sometimes claimed to have an opposite effect, which someone may or may not explicitly intend, of creating conditions in which dialogue suddenly begins or becomes possible. An assumption that seems to underlie many similar arguments is that ingrained attitudes and routines make it difficult if not impossible for dialogue to occur in normal circumstances, but that an unexpected event, either good or bad, that disrupts routine, affords new insight, and demonstrates an urgent need or a potentially rewarding opportunity for dialogue can create a momentary opening in which dialogue can and should (but not necessarily will) occur. Craig (2007) cited, as examples of such arguments, a daughter’s report that a personal disclosure to her mother had opened up a wonderful dialogue between them, a commentator’s argument that race riots in France in 2005 offered the possibility of a deep dialogue on what it means to be French, and a basketball commissioner’s argument that something good could come out of a player misconduct scandal if it allowed a dialogue to begin. The following examples illustrate some additional features of critical events that can make dialogue possible.
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As the just mentioned instance of the daughter’s personal disclosure shows, a critical event that provokes dialogue is not necessarily something bad like a riot or a scandal but can be something as benign as a fresh idea. For example, a newspaper in Omaha, Nebraska (USA) reported, in an article by Cindy Gonzalez under the headline “Schools’ leaders seek dialogue on low-rent housing”, a school official’s remark: “the door to a wider community discussion was opened by stories in “The World-Herald” that explored how changes in housing policies could help” to solve a community problem (“Omaha World-Herald”, 1 March 2006, p.1A, retrieved from LexisNexis.com). A communication event can be organized intentionally to create dialogue, taking advantage of the opportunity afforded by a critical event, as a blogger argued regarding the German Interior Minister’s organization of an Islam Conference in the wake of a controversy over a cancelled opera: “… this conference established a dialogue partner for the first time. You can’t have a dialogue if you don’t have anybody to talk to, and Minister Schäuble has now taken care of that problem [by inviting] every kind of Muslim group” (Internet references 28). Otherwise, a critical event that arguably should stimulate dialogue may fail to do so. A report on the aftermath of a hurricane that devastated the city of New Orleans noted: “Katrina was the cataclysmic event that was supposed to launch a vigorous ‘national dialogue on poverty’. It didn’t happen, many say” and went on to quote an anti-poverty advocate who complained: “We’d love to have a dialogue, but there needs to be someone to have a dialogue with” (“What Became of the Post-Katrina Dialogue on Poverty?” Associated Press, 2 April 2006, retrieved from LexisNexis.com). People commit provocative acts or make controversial statements with the explicit purpose of generating dialogue, as Mario Cuomo, a Catholic governor of New York State who resisted Church demands regarding contraception and abortion policies, did in a famous 1984 speech to a Catholic audience: “I hope that this public attempt to describe the problems as I understand them will give impetus to the dialogue in the Catholic community and beyond, a dialogue which could show me a better wisdom than I’ve been able to find so far” (Internet references 29). Although the claim that one (merely) hopes to provoke dialogue may work pragmatically to mitigate the offensiveness of an act, others may reject the claim on grounds that the act was really (and perhaps intentionally) inappropriate, offensive, or inflammatory. Thus, radio talk show hosts can be said to “go too far to foster dialogue with their listeners” when they “resort to inflammatory remarks and factual misinformation” (Internet references 30); and, although a newspaper publisher claimed that a strongly worded editorial “was meant to ‘initiate some public dialogue’”, a critic remarked: “Some of that dialogue will be about what some consider the editorial’s cheap shots” (Internet references 31). Recognizing this problem, a local theater director expressed a desire to perform thought-provoking plays yet without creating discomfort: “Yes, we’re entertaining [our audience], but we want to be thought provoking. We want a dialogue with the community. Along with creating meaning, our audiences have
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to be comfortable with us, and we can’t have a dialogue with the community if they’re not comfortable” (Internet references 32). 6. Conclusion In summary, we find, across the political, social, and personal domains, that arguments about the possibility or impossibility of dialogue draw from a mixture of realist, moral, and (less frequently) experiential discourses. The possibility or impossibility of dialogue is commonly assumed to depend on objective conditions (convergence of interests or beliefs, relatively equal power, a just and supportive sociopolitical order) as well as on morally accountable attitudes and actions (respect, trust, and reaching out versus hatred, dogmatism, dishonesty, and violence). The realist discourse of political dialogue acknowledges moral considerations no less than the moral discourse of social dialogue acknowledges realist constraints on dialogue’s possibility. Finally, critical events that interrupt routine patterns of thought and communication are said to open a potential for dialogue that may or may not be realized in practice. Events that should provoke dialogue may fail to do so if relevant parties fail to engage, and what are claimed to be conscious efforts to provoke dialogue, when rejected by others as disingenuous or offensive, can be argued instead to render dialogue impossible. Some points on which these observations intersect with dialogue theory will be mentioned briefly in conclusion as topics for further reflection. As was noted previously (Craig 2007), dialogue has been theorized primarily as experience (phenomenology), but dialogue theory needs to give more explicit attention to the realist and moral themes that appear so prominently in practical arguments about dialogue. Two issues suggest the complexity of the problem. First, theorists of dialogue have averred that dialogue requires standing one’s own ground while being profoundly open to others. Practical arguments both illustrate the difficulty of applying this principle in real situations (where, for example, standing one’s ground may readily stir up accusations of dogmatism) and suggest questions about how this principle applies to political and social contexts in which the parties to dialogue are groups rather than individuals and group identity may be constituted by fragile political alliances or public images. Second, theorists of dialogue and rhetoric have noted the potential for strategically disruptive acts to remove blockages that prevent dialogue and critical reflection. For example, Deetz’s (1990) theory of genuine conversation and Farrell’s (1993) theory of rhetoric both make this point in different ways. Practical arguments illustrate this potential for unblocking dialogue in real situations, while also drawing attention to pitfalls and unintended consequences such that strategically disruptive acts may be counterproductive for dialogue. Finally, our analysis suggests that this category of ‘strategically disruptive acts’ may be folded into a broader category of ‘critical events’ (events that disrupt routine discourses, unblocking change) that resonates with themes in postmodern thought but has yet to be theorized.
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References Brent, Douglas. 1996. “Rogerian Rhetoric: Ethical growth through alternative forms of argumentation”. Argument Revisited, Argument Redefined: Negotiating meaning in the composition classroom ed. by Barbara Emmel, Paula Resch & Deborah Tenney, 73-96. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Carbaugh, Donal, David Boromisza-Habashi & Xinmei Ge. 2006. “Dialogue in Cross-cultural Perspective”. Aspects of Intercultural Dialogue ed. by Nancy Aalto & Ewald Reuter, 27-46. Cologne, Germany: SAXA Verlag. Cissna, Kenneth N. & Rob Anderson. 2002. Moments of Meeting: Buber, Rogers, and the potential for public dialogue. Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Craig, Robert T. 1999. “Metadiscourse, Theory, and Practice”. Research on Language and Social Interaction 32.21-29. Craig, Robert T. 2007. “Arguments about ‘Dialogue’ in Practice and Theory”. Proceedings of the Sixth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren, J. Anthony Blair, Charles A. Willard & Bart Garssen, 285-290. Amsterdam: SicSat. Craig, Robert T. & Karen Tracy. 1995. “Grounded Practical Theory: The case of intellectual discussion”. Communication Theory 5.248-272. Craig, Robert T. & Karen Tracy. 2005. “‘The Issue’ in Argumentation Practice and Theory”. The Practice of Argumentation ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser, 11-28. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Czubaroff, Jeanine. 2000. “Dialogical Rhetoric: An application of Buber’s philosophy of dialogue”. Quarterly Journal of Speech 86.168-189. Deetz, Stanley. 1990. “Reclaiming the Subject Matter as a Guide to Mutual Understanding: Effectiveness and ethics in interpersonal interaction”. Communication Quarterly 38.226-243. Farrell, Thomas B. 1993. Norms of Rhetorical Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Foss, Sonja K. & Cindy L. Griffin. 1995. “Beyond Persuasion: A proposal for an invitational rhetoric”. Communication Monographs 62.2-18. Jaworski, Adam, Nikolas Coupland & Dariuz Galasinski. 2004. Metalanguage: Social and ideological perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Myerson, George. 1994. Rhetoric, Reason, and Society: Rationality as dialogue. London: Sage. Rouse, Joseph. 2007. “Social Practices and Normativity”. Philosophy of the Social Sciences 37.1.46-56. Taylor, Talbot J. 1997. Theorizing Language: Analysis, normativity, rhetoric, history. Amsterdam: Pergamon. Tonn, Mari Boor. 2005. “Taking Conversation, Dialogue, and Therapy Public”. Rhetoric & Public Affairs 8.405-430. Tracy, Karen & Robert T. Craig (forthc.) “Studying Interaction in Order to Cultivate Communicative Practices: Action-implicative discourse analysis”. Interaction Analysis and Language ed. by Carlo Prevignano and Paul J. Thibault. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Verschueren, Jef. 1999. Understanding Pragmatics. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2006. “The Concept of ‘Dialogue’ in Cross-linguistic and Cross-cultural Perspective”. Discourse Studies 8.675-703.
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Rhetoric and Ethic of Dialog Can conditions of performance serve as excluding criteria? Alain Létourneau University of Sherbrooke
First, we should recall that a rhetorical dimension is forcibly present in the performance of dialog, if we understand dialog both as an invitation and as a reciprocal openness for a constructive process; it can be demonstrated if we look at some proposals of dialog (Buber 1922, and more recently Isaacs 1999). Usually the refusal to consider that there is a rhetorical aspect aims to keep a specific communication process protected against undue manipulation or abuse; but a false assumption is then made. To guard us against such a slope, many authors have pleaded for a rhetorical ethic or an ethic of the rhetoric (Johannesen 19964). We should discuss whether some distinction should be made between valid and non valid forms of rhetoric, review the conditions of an ethical rhetoric, ask how and if they could be meaningfully used as criteria of exclusion (of the nonrhetorical as non-ethical and vice-versa).
1. Introduction For many researchers and colleagues, to speak of dialog is to speak of interactions, and then the focus will be placed on empirical data of interactions and its analysis. This approach seems to me to be perfectly legitimate. There are probably more than two fields of study of dialog, but another approach, taken broadly, consists in looking at dialog both from a normative and from a practical point of view. This would be my approach: to look at dialog as a kind of qualitative relationship between persons, because we think that some forms of communication might be more fully accomplished than others, dialog being a way to name this qualitative communicational relationship. To say that dialog would be a practice refers to facilitating mediation, or to a way of establishing consensus, even to a practice that facilitates decision making on ethical issues. To say it has a normative content would be to say that it is a kind of value that animates and in part regulates communication, admitting in the same breadth that all human communication does not necessarily qualify as dialog, even if in many cases this is perfectly normal and acceptable, because dialog in that sense is not required all the time.
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2. Philosophical justification We can start by trying to see if a rhetorical dimension is present and involved in the proposition of dialog taken in that practical and normative sense. We certainly then can understand dialog as an invitation and as a reciprocal openness and willingness to enter actively into a communicative and constructive process. With Bakhtin, we might also say that dialog implies factually two logics and an encounter between these (Todorov 1981). But this presupposes in fact that there is a call to the other, a manifestation of openness from one to the other or between participants, in which case we might have more than two logics at hand. This can function and take place on all sides with different degrees of clearness and intensity. To invite a person to join in a dialog can be done implicitly or explicitly, but some speech act produced by participants would have to be understood by the others as present, or at least implied by attitudes and non-verbal cues, inside a global act that would amount to say: I invite you, and reciprocally, the receiver should clearly understand: I feel invited. More than that, an invitation to something like a dialog presupposes that this venture or thing to which we are invited might be of interest to the person or persons invited; but this interest has to be manifested somehow, or at least perceived, probably on the basis both of previous knowledge and on the basis of present cues of many different kinds. Communication of the type ‘invitation to something’ would normally imply some enthusiasm not only in the act of ‘invitation’ itself, but on the other part of the proposal, namely the invitation to something. To invite is forcibly to try, by a series of coordinated acts (among which speech acts, but also invitation carton, gestures, etc.), to appeal to someone and convince this person to participate; it is a thoroughly rhetorical act in that sense. In this context, let us take rhetorical as meaning a rational act that aims at convincing the person of something, in that case it would be: to convince someone to do something, i.e. join in the dialog. The rhetorical aspect seems to be in the invitation as such and in the manifestation by the inviter of the interest that represents the thing to which there is an invitation. And more than that, if we suppose that the dialog has actually begun, some rhetorical acts would have to be performed to maintain interest and participation, even if in a reserved kind of fashion, all through the actual dialog and to prepare its eventual further continuation. 3. The rhetorical dimension of written proposals on dialog This general assertion can be seen and demonstrated more fully if we look at some written proposals of dialog in that practical-normative perspective, more recently in William Isaacs (1999), but I will first say a few words about Martin Buber. As we certainly know, the great religious thinker has been read, with good reasons, as one of the founders of 20th century’s philosophy of dialog in the nor-
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mative sense. An important study could be done that would only focus on all of Buber’s rhetoric, a thing we obviously can not accomplish here in detail. For Buber, to invite to dialog is to invite to enter into the I-Thou relationship, an entrance that is declared to lead to the divine itself. His rhetorical strategy is to contrast this relationship with the I-it relationship, in a typical dialecticaloppositional posture. The opposition that he stresses might not be fully convincing, but there is no doubt that it has a rhetorical function. He has to convince us of the distinction between the two kinds of relationships, of its importance, of what it means to follow the path of the I-Thou relationship, and that is what he is trying to do in a good part of his writing. A simple reading of Buber (1970:53ff.) shows how magisterial and doctrinal he is about his position. He is obviously teaching wisdom to his readers, there is such a pose of grandeur and such a mystical force in his presentation, elements that certainly aim at a rhetorical goal. He begins with assertions that look both mysterious and metaphysical: “The world is twofold …” He poses at some point as the interpreter of public wisdom: “We are told that man experiences his world. What does it mean?” He wishes to integrate the I-It into the I-Thou, as when he says, using a great metaphor here as elsewhere in his writings, that “the It is the chrysalis, the Thou the butterfly”. 1 Elsewhere, he starts a development by defining the position of his opponent. This allows him to give a detailed response to this adversary, manifesting a clear interest in a focussed and specified convincing communication: to situate the audience certainly helps rhetorical speech. 2 From the way he defines the adversary in that particular place, he seems to have dealt with some Marxist discussants. While distinguishing three forms (authentic dialog, technical dialog and monologue) he explicitly includes in the dialogic attitude not only words, but also what the persons have in mind, including their intention to build mutuality: There is genuine dialog – no matter whether spoken or silent – where each of the participants really has in mind the other or others in their present and particular being and turns to them with the intention of establishing a living mutual relation between himself and them. There is technical dialog, which is prompted solely by the need of objective understanding. And there is monologue disguised as dialog, in which two or more men, meeting in space, speak each with himself in strangely tortuous and circuitous ways and yet imagine they have escaped the torment of being thrown back on their own resources.
To have such intentions and thoughts of dialog is for him an essential condition of building mutuality among persons. Buber (1955:20) admits the rhetorical dimension indirectly when he contrasts genuine dialog, including the will to communicate, to learn and influence people, with the unauthentic form: 1
The text has been revised by Buber in 1957; before that the same passage had “eternal chrysalis … eternal butterfly”, as Kaufmann notes. 2 Buber (1955:35): “Before all, dear opponent, if we are to converse with one another and not at and past one another, I beg you to notice that I do not demand.”
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… a conversation characterized by the need neither to communicate something, nor to learn something, nor to influence someone, nor to come into connexion with someone, but solely by the desire to have one’s self-reliance confirmed by marking the impression that is made, or if it has become unsteady to have it strengthened.
It seems then clear that in Buber’s writings, the rhetorical aspect is present both in the invitation to it and in the actual content of the dialog he proposes. William Isaacs (1999), private consultant and lecturer at MIT, is one of the leaders in the new field of dialog approaches and practices. 3 We might say first that his work is directly offered to organizations both private and public to help them overcome specific problems by a systematic recourse to dialog. On their website, he and his colleagues explicitly refer to their expertise in dialog, organizational learning and collective leadership.4 We probably are familiar in part with what he proposes, so I will not enter into a full presentation of his approach. Many books, articles and documents are available. One topic which is well known is his teaching about the fact that we might not fall into “an unwitting ‘argument’ mode in which we stand in the stagnated pond of our own predispositions …” (Isaacs 1999:5). To propose such a contrast between discussion and dialog is precisely an argument made to invite us into dialog as the art of thinking together, which will include, among other elements, the art of suspending. To arrive at the required free flow of meaning, some previous discourse has to be overcome at the entrance level (Bohm 1985) 5 . As with Buber, contrast has an important rhetorical role to play here. Reflective dialog will systematically be opposed to Controlled discussion, and Suspending will be the proposed attitude in contrast with Defending (see the schema in Isaacs 1999:41). He will say that we have to be taught to “let go” of the fixed positions, to simply follow the “flow of conversation”. If Discussion is defined as “making a decision”, and if it seeks “closure and completion”, in contrast Dialog is about exploring “the nature of choice”, “evoking insight”, “reordering our knowledge” (Isaacs 1999:45). Discussion is preordained by shared and unquestioned opinions that have first to be placed in suspension, Husserl would have said to be “bracketed” (Husserl 1931). There is obviously a personal interpretation of phenomenology that plays a part here, but this would require a more thorough analysis of the whole of Isaac’s writings. As was the case with Buber, here opposition is only a phase that leads to integration. We can admit that the overcoming of fixed positions is certainly a good thing, because it helps to see that people sometimes are caught in false dilemmas. But it should not mean that they will not have to enter into discussion along the way and arrive to determine their choice in the end. What Isaacs is 3
See also www.dialogos-inc.com. See www.dialogos-inc.com/index.html. By the way, the website also contains the customary rhetoric of partial availability of documents that we find elsewhere on the www. 5 Quoted by Peter Garrett, a member of Dialogos, on their website: www.dialogos-inc.com/publications/DaTM.html, consulted in March 2007. 4
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doing is to plead and propose ways to emerge, on a collective level, from fixed ideas that lead to dead ends onto open territory, to look for alternatives, to be creative, etc. There is also an obvious rhetorical side of his proposals in terms of bullets reminding us of Power Point presentations, activities to organize with people, processes to implement to conduce in that direction. He does not refrain at all from using recommendations that are formulated as direct maxims of action: “Listen without resistance”, “Stand still”, “Follow the disturbance”, etc. (Isaacs 1999:101,98). We have here the rhetoric of overcoming fixed rhetoric. We must then admit that inside appeals to dialog, a rhetorical dimension is present, as was shown both with Buber’s and Isaac’s proposals. But as we probably know, some people have a problem with rhetoric. 4. Against the identification of the rhetorical with the abusive The refusal to consider that there is a rhetorical aspect inside a dialogic perspective probably aims to keep a specific communication process (planned for as dialogic) protected against undue manipulation or abuse; but a false assumption is then made. As we have seen, a rhetorical dimension is present inside important dialogic perspectives or invitations, and we can surmise that invitations of any kind would have a rhetorical dimension. The false assumption would be to assume that any rhetorical stance is manipulative or abusive, whereas we can suppose that if all communication has a rhetorical side, some of the communication acts can be abusive and manipulative but not all of them. Then the issue is to learn to distinguish wheat from the chaff, le bon grain de l’ivraie as we say in French. What characterises rhetoric as non-abusive? This question also has to do with how and to what conditions communication can be or is ethical. It comes down forcibly to a question of how we define the terms, and how those terms are or are not overlapping and to what degree they can really be distinguished one from the other. We must emphasise the fact that if any object, tool, or linguistic device might be used in a morally questionable way, it does not follow that all objects or devices do. We find here a logical expression: if some Ps (rhetorical acts of communication) are Qs (abusive acts), it is not true that all Ps are Qs. Furthermore, the normal case for a P is not to be a Q, the contrary applies, even though numerous exceptions might obtain in concrete settings. The question then becomes: how to clarify specific situations? And can we identify the wrongdoing and be able to exclude it from the common, social world? To talk of exclusion here does not concern persons but only argumentative forms. This means that an ethic of rhetoric would probably aim at defining the characteristics of all the Ps that are not Qs. This problem of the wrong identification of rhetoric with abuse also has to do with some philosophy traditions. It is clear that if we are to define communicative action as Habermas did, we automatically exclude from communicative action any discourse that would be instrumental to some end, if it is not at the same time
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furthering mutual understanding of the partners, or proceeding without the research of consensus. But that definition is not necessarily valid for communication in general and for any act of communication (Habermas 1981:128). 6 It has been really easy to identify all that is rhetorical with the deceptive, manipulative etc., on the basis of an opposition between the “subjective-relational”, on the one hand, and “subjective-instrumental”, on the other hand, that somehow fuses together the buberian insights with Habermas’ opposition to a strategic-instrumental reason, a concept that comes directly from his discussion with Weber, but that has also to do with the theorizing of the first Frankfurt school (Habermas 1981:489ff). Habermas in particular clearly follows a definitional strategy of argumentation that aims to specify a required type of communication in a consensual context, outside of which it is hard to understand exactly what he is doing. Some authors in the “ethics for rhetoric” tradition have precisely tried to find a third way between the dialogic rhetor and the instrumentalist rhetor: for instance Richard M. Weaver re-reading Plato, and Wayne Brockriede’s rhetorical seducer situated between what he calls the rhetorical lover and the rhetorical rapist (Brockriede 1972:1ff.). In the identification of all rhetoric into manipulation and abuse, what is lost is the value of the rhetorical act itself. Such a move would be catastrophic on the practical level, because if argumentation is excluded, no public debate, and therefore no democratic life would be possible. We would be back to brute force, violence and constraint. The fact that some rhetorical abuse might and does exist can be seen as the main reason for proposing an ethic for argumentation. To guard us against such a condemnable identification of rhetoric with abuse, many authors have pleaded for a rhetorical ethic or an ethic of the rhetoric: we can use Johannesen (19964) as a synthesis of Makay and Brown (1972:27). Obviously, what we would require would be to identify the wrong rhetoric from the good one, a purpose that is also pursued by the quest for fallacies, but I will not discuss that tradition here. If and when this Ethic succeeds in protecting us from rhetorical abuse is far from obvious. 5. The tentative of proceeding by establishing rules If we suppose that an ethic of rhetoric is possible, we would want more than just rules and regulations and adequacy of behavior in accordance with those rules. Such a ‘rules and behaving accordingly’ approach would certainly be insufficient. If an ethic is a way of life that includes the argumentative discussion of norms and morality in action, plus the ability to make choices, we could start by situating the normative elements in the context of a given discourse or in a given social practice, with all the relevant constraints. As grounded in such an ethic, argumentation 6
The partners want to establish an interpersonal relationship, they aim at mutual understanding (Verständigung) to be able to coordinate their action.
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would also need to be morally justified and socially constructive, elements that imply generality statements that might be formulated in terms of rules. It would mean for this specific argumentation that to plead or make the arguments in such and such a way in the given setting or the context concerned is morally justified. Since any behavior is in relationship with a situation, which is understood as being part of a larger but finite whole, called here the context, the elements of which are selected somehow not only by the agent alone but by a number of relevant agents, we cannot proceed as if situations were not important, or surmise that the reference to context suffices (of the kind “it depends of the context”). The justification would be about form as it would have to be, also about content and situation plus probable consequences – an admission of modality that implies uncertainty, an element which is also essential for the Mixed Game Model (Weigand 2006). We can understand argumentation in many different ways, but the possibility of argumentation should be preserved in any case, whether argumentation is seen or not as being done by means of a purely logical structure (as summarized by the following formula: on the basis of arguments A, B, C…Z, we are justified to think P, this being asserted with the required modalities and reservations). In supplement to that logical, toulminian configuration (Toulmin 1958), argumentation can be validly constructed with the means and tools of language and literary communication, the use of metaphors and figures of speech (as in Barthes 1993 7 , Todorov 1981, Reboul 1991, Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1958). We claim that some abusive use of rhetoric is possible and obtains sometimes, whatever the kind of rhetoric used – abuse then has nothing to do with one or the other tradition in argumentation studies. As we can see through the ‘ethics for rhetoric’ tradition, ethical considerations of rhetoric will most of the times put in contrast Dialog and Monologue. This is an avenue of thought that was explored, that sheds some light on issues, but it proves not entirely satisfying. The monologue will in a classical way be typified (Weber 1988, but also Schütz 1967) as the dialog will also be, the one being understood only by sheer contrast with the other; on one side we will have authenticity, openness, inclusiveness of the other, completeness, relevance to the context, respect for the audience; on the other side, we will have manipulation, concealment or systematic deformation, the rhetor or arguer as unattainable, as a kind of mental rapist, struck by partiality, instrumental use of the persons, etc. The persons are reduced to being objects. But in reality, things are much more complicated. This opposition between monologic and dialogic communication does not take into account intermediate situations like what happens in negotiation, working place communication, strategic communication, etc. It certainly does not take into account multiple strategies taking place in complex exchanges between organizational arguers (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004). It also does 7
According to Barthes (1993:529), rhetoric is both a moral, a social practice and a playful practice (ludique).
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not take into account historical and chronological perspectives, strategies for the middle and long term, all things that in practical settings really count. Richard L. Johannesen’s book (19964) on “Ethics in Human Communication” contains lots of elements, a series of teachings on many different questions. It is a kind of compendium that is hard to miss in the fields of ethics of human communication, even though it lacks synthesis. He presents along the way the four elements of Grice’s conservational implicature, in the context of what he calls an “ethic for everyday conversation” (p.160f.). He then quotes some elements that are part of the cooperative principle without mentioning that principle (Arundale 2005:42f.). Basically, what he does is to reformulate Grice in terms of ethics or rules that can be more or less followed, for instance, Quality: do not make contributions that you believe are false or for which you lack evidence. It is the case that Quantity, Quality, Relation and Manner have relevance for conversation in general. Since argumentation is part of conversation, I do not see a reason why Grice’s approach could not be appropriated by an ethic of argumentation. It would probably constitute a firm basis on which to build, if we accept to think that conversation is argumentative and that argumentation is also, even if not all the time, conversational. The question of the specific differences between each field is probably a question of focus. At one point, in the chapter titled “Dialogic perspectives”, Johannesen furnishes a list of elements that we can examine and discuss, that he calls “Toward an ethic for rhetoric”. We want to know if these elements can meaningfully be used as criteria of definition for what is required in terms of argumentation. That having been done, we might be able to decide if on that basis we can proceed to the exclusion of what would then be considered non-rhetorical as non-ethical and vice-versa. Since that exclusion would presuppose some competence, it would be logical to ask first whether the proposal corresponds to some communicative and rhetorical competence on the part of the speaker or rhetor. The following is a long quote (Johannesen 19964:77f.), but it is required to consider the whole of what he proposes. Each element will be discussed afterwards. 1. 2. 3. 4.
5.
Ethical rhetoric serves the ends of self-discovery, social knowledge, or public action more than personal ambition. Ethical rhetoric avoids intolerance and acknowledges audience freedom of choice and freedom of assent. Ethical rhetoric is reflexive in including self-scrutiny of one’s own evidence, reasoning, and motives. Ethical rhetoric is attentive to data through use of accurate, complete, and relevant evidence and reasoning and through use of appropriate field-dependant tests for soundness of evidence and reasoning. Ethical rhetoric is bilateral. Bilaterality includes mutuality of personal and intellectual risk, openness to the possibility of self-change, and openness to scrutiny by others.
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6.
7.
8.
Ethical rhetoric is self-perpetuating. Disagreement on a subject leaves open the possibility of deliberation on other subjects and of later deliberation on the disputed subject. Also, human capacities for persuasion, in ourselves and in others, are nurtured through what Henry W. Johnstone (1981) terms the habits of resoluteness, gentleness, and compassion. Ethical rhetoric embodies an attitude of reasonableness. Reasonableness includes willingness to present reasons in support of our views, tolerance of presentation of reasons by others, respect for the intrinsic worth of the other person as a human, and avoidance of personalizing the controversy. Ethical rhetoric manifests what Walter R. Fisher (1978) terms “the logic of good reasons”. Such a logic of value judgments embodies five key questions. a) What are the implicit and explicit values embedded in a message? b) Are the values appropriate to the nature of the decision that the message bears upon? c) What would be the effects of adhering to the values in regard to one’s concept of oneself, to one’s behavior, to one’s relationship with others and society, and to the process of rhetorical transaction? d) Are the values confirmed or validated in one’s personal experience, in the lives or statements of others whom one admires and respects, and/or in a conception of the best audience that one can conceive? e) Even if an immediate need for belief or action has been demonstrated, would an outside observer/critic assess the values offered or assumed in the message as the ideal basis for human conduct?
About 1: This requirement of an Ethic for Rhetoric supposes that some discourse can actually focus on personal ambition. To avoid it, he proposes to argue in terms of an inclusion of many aspects: the individual’s self-discovery, social knowledge and public action. We must wonder though how such a bad argumentation focused only on the speaker’s ambition could even be received or receivable by anyone: it would look like a joke. It would have to be dissimulated as such. If a discourse were to be transparent in its motivational center being solely personal ambition, it could face exclusion … unless in a specific circle constructed to entertain such ambitious expressions, in which case it would be required and not condemned! The formulation is abstract, and requires a context; we wonder if in any context, the proposition would be workable. On the other hand, it is easy to admit that some good rhetorical act might involve an element of self-discovery only as one element amongst many, in a context where this element might probably not be the more important consideration. Here then some competence is implied by the author, including the self-disclosure part – a selfdisclosure that might include some ambition, too. The ordering present in the formulation does not seem to be mandatory. It designates the competence to take into account many different values in a discourse, self, society and the public action, and only says that to focus only on personal ambition would be wrong – in case some person in normal settings would think otherwise.
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For the second point, about tolerance and freedom: we enter here into a possible substantive content, for instance excluding a discourse proposing hate or segregation, or a discourse to employees that would be degrading and not respectful. Again, unless in a dictatorial context, such an attitude would be automatically rejected by any competent audience – which means communication as a competence or ability is involved, and not only the ethical dimension. At the same time, intolerance and absence of respect for the integrity of the audience is possible, and I would add: it can be avoided. To assume freedom on the part of the audience is to appeal to intelligence and decision, not to the necessity of some absolute truth. Here also, the formulation reflects a complex competence more than it gives us a clear rule. The third point, referring to self-reflection and examination of the value of our own arguments in public, is also not always present, and when present, it does create respect from the audience, if done in adequate place and quantity. But we might go further and suggest that the advocate would also be better off by showing the strengths, and also to manifest where the arguments that he or she puts forward are, from his or her point of view, lacking of strength or showing limits, or on the contrary, to show what is important inside a given argument. The reason for that is that it helps the receivers to actually judge by themselves of the validity of the whole of the argument. Then again, a complex competence is referred to by such an ethical formulation. The fourth point refers to accurate, complete, and relevant evidence and reasoning with the use of appropriate field-dependant tests. We are here in the discussion of the actual content of the communication act. We all know that the contrary of the three first elements mentioned is completely possible and sometimes can actually be deceiving, and that it might be avoided, too. I can remind the participants here of this argumentative strategy far from uncommon these days: to throw to the people you want to ‘convince’ an overwhelming quantity of elements, a bunch of data and information, among which many facts might be true but that are not necessarily relevant to the case at hand. The problem is that some people might appear to receivers or audience members to be showing those qualities referred here without the possibility for the audience to actually verify and test. We can also say that ‘completeness’ is something that varies according to context and circumstances. For the other element, field-dependency of arguments, it has been shown to be required by Toulmin fifty years ago, but again the receiver is not always in a position to verify that. Even then, a great amount of competence is required to meet the criteria offered by the rule. The fifth element expresses the spirit of rhetoric as a heuristic of discovery, an attitude of openness on both sides, a context in which the pleader is also open to discoveries. This seems to correspond to the view that rhetoric has to be more than just a unilateral convincing strategy. Pure bilaterality is often required by the actors, but it would be idealistic to require it in every situation. But even if such symmetry between participants is not always possible, that might not be a prob-
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lem if it has a tendency to occur or happen (Cissna & Anderson 2002). The possibility of it presupposes that the receivers are willing and ready to enter into a discussion with a person that obviously has something definite to say on the issue, and on the other side that a proposer is opened to the suggestions of the persons to which he proposes something. The competence here is quite demanding and goes on every side of the conversation, or must I say: dialog. The sixth element mentioned might at first seem a little idealistic, since any good discussion must come to its conclusion at one point. If the disagreement is profound and intractable, such a reprisal of discussions might be difficult (Lewicki, Gray & Elliott 2002). But the formulation refers to the ability to encounter specific disagreements without jeopardizing any further discussion or argumenttation. Even the worst situations are not a justification to abandon discussion processes. Let’s think for instance of the peace processes in some difficult parts of the planet. Would it be morally justified to abandon even with the amount of difficulty that there is? The elements presented in seventh, reasonableness and tolerance, are not always present, but are required for a good argumentative process. They repeat the tolerance element mentioned before. Tolerance is certainly a good thing, but is it enough? It seems to be barely a minimum. I would like to do more than just tolerate the difference in the other. Finally the elements referred to in the eighth section examine sound value judgments and uses of values in discourse, a point that is oftentimes abused and misused to the point of discrediting any recourse to values in a discussion. Here, of course, a clear theory of values and valuation is absent; it has to be found elsewhere. 8 It is true though that values can be used as pure decoration in a discourse, as justifying apparatuses that might have nothing to do with the situation at hand. Even if Johannesen’s list of elements covers quite a lot of elements, many elements seem to have been forgotten. All Grice’s requirements seem to capture good part of what is actually required. 9 The cooperative principle states that the speaker must give what the situation requires. The maxim of Quantity refers to ‘just enough’ information given. The rhetor or arguer must be clear and understandable in his or her presentation of arguments in favour of the thesis at hand: this goes with Grice’s fourth maxim about Manner (Arundale 2005:43). As for Quality, it goes with the requirement of truthfulness and the refusal of falsehoods or claims that lacks, for the communicator himself, adequate backing. The rhetor must also select what is actually relevant and even essential among a number of arguments in the specific context: this goes with Grice’s relevance principle, called Relation. Adequate quantity of elements in a specific argumentative act and relevancy to the situation at hand might be more emphasised than they are in that “synthesis” of Johannesen, the previously analysed list that looks more like a piling up of references than anything. But even then we would need an image of 8 9
I for myself would propose to look back again at Dewey (1939). H. P. Grice’s articles date from 1975, but have been edited since, especially in Grice (1989).
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the rhetor: we propose to consider this person as educator-facilitator-proposerdiscoverer and helper in the process of discovery. When possible, he or she should also take into account what is known and what is not known by his or her audience, an element that bears some ethical value – since it would be unethical to surmise too much or too little knowledge in the part of the audience. This would also be a lack of competence. As part of the communicational act, the audience must be, at least minimally, known if the communication is to occur. In the open context of a discussion, the rhetor might put forward, with all their strength, the arguments that are opposed to his or hers, for the purpose of being able to actually encourage an open and critical discussion. Also, the advocate or rhetor must be willing to confront some accepted notions in the audience, to challenge people towards new ideas, or on the contrary this person must be able to put back in front of the audience old, supposedly outdated ideas that might still be relevant, even if they lack fashionableness. It is also the rhetor’s responsibility to show which ends-in-view are to be considered in a specific discussion or field of reflection, acting as a facilitator of discussion. The pleader must also facilitate discussion by showing the means required to obtain the end, and the values involved in each case, all elements that can be explained further if we look back at John Dewey’s theory of ethics (Dewey 1939). 6. Concluding remarks We mentioned the question as to how to designate such a non-rhetorical attitude. The fact is that, as the saying goes, “Evil has many different faces” or names, and one single word cannot encapsulate correctly the whole of the rhetorical abuse, or lack of mastery – sometimes the bad rhetor might be the first to be abused by his wrong arguments. In some cases we could propose the expression “violent communication” as distinguished from “aggressive” (instead of using “sophistics” while ignoring the sophist’s contributions). In some other cases, “dumb rhetoric” would be a better catchword. In some other cases, that would be “incompetent”. Many other options probably are worth considering. As for answering our starting question: can criteria of competence function as criteria of exclusion, the answer cannot be a clear yes, because many of the attitudes required by an ethical rhetoric can be mimicked. One thing is clear: if a person is incompetent, this person could be excluding his or herself, by the simple act of talking! As elsewhere, to be able to have an ethical reflection on communication, you have to be competent in the practice referred to – the same goes for the ethics of professions. Also, the caricatures that are implied and targeted by Johannesen’s formulations can justify exclusion, probably not of the public discourse because of the freedom of speech, but a critique would also be publicly justified if such a discourse is deemed unacceptable.
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References Arundale, Robert B. 2005. “Pragmatics, Conversational Implicature, and Conversation”. Handbook of Language and Social Interaction ed. by Kristine L. Fitch & Robert E. Sanders, 41-63. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Barthes, Roland. 1993. “L’ancienne rhétorique: aide mémoire”. Œuvres Complètes III ed. by Eric Marty. Paris: Seuil, 527-600 (originally published in Communication 1970). Bohm, David. 1985. Unfolding Meaning. London: Ark. Brockriede, Wayne. 1972. “Arguers as Lovers”. Philosophy and Rhetoric 5.1-11. Buber, Martin. 1922. I and Thou. New transl. and introduction by Walter Kaufmann, 1970. New York: Touchstone. Buber, Martin. 1955. Between Man and Man. Boston: Beacon Press. Cissna, Kenneth N. & Rob Anderson. 2002. Moments of Meeting. Buber, Rogers and the potential for public dialog. Albany: SUNY Press. Dewey, John. 1939. Theory of Valuation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eemeren, Frans van & Rob Grootendorst. 2004. A Systematic Theory of Argumentation. The pragma-dialectic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fisher, Walter R. 1978. “Toward a Logic of Good Reasons”. Quarterly Journal of Speech 64.37684. Grice, Paul. 1989. Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1981. Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns. Vol. I. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Husserl, Jürgen. 1931. Ideas: General Introduction to Phenomenology. London, Allen & Unwin. Isaacs, William. 1999. Dialog and the Art of Thinking Together. New York: Currency. Johannesen, Richard L. 19964. Ethics in Human Communication. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press. Johnstone, Henry W. Jr. 1981. “Towards an Ethics of Rhetoric”. Communication 6:2.305-14. Lewicki, Roy J., Barbara Gray & Michael Elliott, eds. 2002. Making Sense of Intractable Environmental Conflicts. New York: Island Press. Makay, John J. & William R. Brown. 1972. The Rhetorical Dialogue. Dubuque, IA : William C. Brown Co. Perelman, Chaïm & Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. 1958. Traité de l’Argumentation. La nouvelle rhétorique. Bruxelles: Édition de l’Université de Bruxelles. Reboul, Olivier. 1991. Introduction à la rhétorique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Schütz, Alfred. 1967. Phenomenology of the Social World. Evanston, Il.: Northwestern University Press. Todorov, Tzvetan. 1981. Mikhaïl Bakhtine, le principe dialogique. Paris: Seuil; Mikhaïl Bakhtine, the dialogic principle. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1984. Toulmin, Stephen E. 1958. The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber, Max. 19887. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Stuttgart: UTB. Weigand, Edda. 2006. “Argumentation: The mixed game”. Argumentation 20:1.59-87.
Common Ground and (Re)Defanging the Antagonistic A paradigm for argumentation as shared inquiry and responsibility Barbara A. Emmel University of Münster
Any rhetorical exchange can involve a form of ‘identity theft’ if others attempt to wrest authorship from the rhetor. The paradigms of the late 1900s that privileged mutual inquiry into shared knowledge have now evolved into ones that privilege not only the shared, but also difference, debate, even dispute – and the ways in which we might change as a result of a negotiation between what is shared and what is unshared. Such paradigms seek to defang the antagonistic even as they recognize that inquiry into difference is an essential part of rhetorical exchange, as well as increased individual (and social) responsibility for position-taking, i.e. our very identities as social and thinking beings. Whereas ‘common ground’ now represents the acceptance of difference and responsibility as the starting point of any rhetorical exchange, a ‘rhetoric of recognition’ represents an increased awareness of the possibility of change as a result of rhetoric.
1. Rethinking the paradigm: The problem of “identity theft” I have just come from a deeply profound rhetorical experience and thus would like to begin my paper by drawing on some characteristics of that experience. I was invited to join a three-week seminar in writing poetry, from February 19 to March 12 of this year. Eight international poets were selected to work with Master Poet Marie Ponsot, one of America’s “most elegant, intelligent poets” (Jalon 1998:6), and winner of many national and international awards for her writing. 1 Ms. Ponsot organized our daily workshops as follows: we poets each took turns reading a poem aloud. No one had a hard copy; we listened to the poems instead. We each read round, without comment. Then one poet reread his or her poem, as many times as the listeners in the group wanted to hear it. We then responded. However, we did not respond with criticism, nor we were allowed to. We were guided to respond only by reflecting back to the poet what we remembered vividly about the poem just from hearing it: a particular image that might have had strong emotional impact, a set of rhymes, a predominance of high 1
These include, among others: National Book Critics Circle Award; Finalist, 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize; National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Grant; the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize; and the Shaughnessy Medal of the Modern Language Association, as well as the position of Master Poet in many national and international workshops.
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vowels or low vowels, anything that our minds grasped onto and could recall. Observation, but not criticism. By virtue of this approach, the room of the workshop became, for each poet in turn, an extension of the creative space of composing. In hearing his/her poem for the first time in a public space, the poet was able to enter into his/her own poem in a new way. Any changes that might be made to a poem, whether there on the spot or later, would come solely from the author. This was expected, planned; it was in short the whole purpose of the workshop: to allow the poet a number of different spaces – physical, psychological, emotional, linguistic, rhythmic, rhetorical – for trying out his or her voice. In a seminal article titled “Rhetoric and Emotion” regarding poetry, poet and critic Stanley Plumly unequivocably states that “rhetoric ought to be no more or less than the presence of the poet, made manifest, in his poem” (Plumly 1978:21). Because it has been observed that Ms. Ponsot’s “work projects the iridescent insistence of a poet speaking just as she wants to speak” (Jalon 1998:6), she was a good guide in this respect. More importantly, however, by engaging rhetorically this way, we learned to resist any attempts to engage in what rhetorician James Crosswhite has called “identity theft”. To attempt to wrest authorship away from the poet by telling him or her what we thought he or she ought to do with the poem is, according to linguists Ron and Suzanne Scollon (1981:37), to “suggest [a] change in discourse patterns” that is tantamount to “suggesting [a] change in a person’s identity” – a deeply aggressive act. To tell anyone, poet or otherwise, that he or she should delete some or all of what she/he has chosen to say and then substitute what another believes would be a better way of saying it, a better language, is to say that “he [or] she should become a different person ... that he [or she] should change in personal identity and cultural identity” (p.43). These comments were initially made by the Scollons in their study of communication problems between a native Alaskan group, the Athabaskans, and English-speaking residents of Alaska. Yet these principles of authorship and identity could apply to virtually any rhetorical setting, any rhetorical group. 2. Rethinking the paradigm: Privileging the shared, privileging the unshared I have reviewed this workshop experience at some length because I want to use it as a springboard to look at a rhetorical paradigm that is informed by mutual inquiry into that which is not only shared, but also that which privileges difference, debate, even dispute – and the ways in which we might change as a result of a negotiation between what is shared and what is unshared. I do not want to do this in any monologic or monolithic way, however, but rather by looking at a variety of communicative situations and settings – such as the poetry workshop – in which we make conscious choices about how to go about such negotiation.
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To the extent that I mention normative and unconscious choices, this will be peripheral – but not unimportant. The purpose of this approach is to look at how we use language consciously both to affirm our identities and to change them. Or in more rhetorical terms, how acts of communication are able to result in changed and often shared understandings, and the processes by which we make decisions about when and how to change, or even whether to change – whether the setting is that of a poetry workshop, a debate, a political contest, an advertisement, a psychotherapy session, a conversation between a couple, a fight between a parent and a teenager, any myriad of communicative or rhetorical possibilities, etc. Rhetoricians have traditionally been interested in competencies that address and arise from difference, what is not shared at the outset, but a caveat here. Some rhetorical scholars, such as Jeffrey Walker (2003), John Gage (1996), Lawrence Green (1995) and a great many others have devoted considerable time and energy in examining the epistemological, even ontological, necessity of a shared and common ground as a starting point for discussing differences, lest we make no sense whatsoever to each other. I can think of no better starting point for epistemological considerations than William Grimaldi’s Studies in the Philosophy of Aristotle's Rhetoric, published in 1972. My paper today does not seek to diminish these contributions (indeed I myself have spent much time in my research on the importance of the epistemological to shared conclusions) but rather to build on them. We are all familiar with a schematic representation of conflict in discourse, of reasoning and argument, as follows, in which two interlocutors face off against each other with arguments, one eventually being determined – judged – to emerge the victor.
audience as judge
claimant presenting, defending, persuading
respondent counter defending, persuading, claiming
Figure 1: Traditional (mis)representations of rhetorical argument
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The goal in such a traditionally conceived paradigm is not to engage in discourse in any way that might change your very understanding of yourself, your values, or your membership in a group that defines what you believe in and why, but rather simply to defeat the other, to prove the other wrong. Rhetorical scholars such as James Crosswhite and Jeffrey Walker have devoted years of study in examining the origins of this model as it derives from classical sources, not just in order to reveal its deficiencies – of which there are many – but rather to rescue it from the distortions and misrepresentations that have accrued over the centuries and to see how its grounding in difference can lead to the potential for a shared knowledge construction that draws on mutually respectful listening, observing, discussing, reasoning, evaluating, concluding. 3. Reworking the paradigm: Difference, dissent, agreement Developing a more integrated rhetorical model includes building into it an awareness of both shared and unshared as starting points for our epistemological, social and cultural, rhetorical constructions of knowledge, including but not limited to different ethical/emotional backgrounds, different philosophies informing our language use. In his excellent and comprehensive book titled The Rhetoric of Reason, James Crosswhite (1996:41f.) observes that “along with whatever we assert, we both make assumptions and affirm the appropriateness of [those] competences that guide us” and which derive in part from our identities in social groups that “disclose the world and interpret things in a shared way”. Thus we are affirming not only our very identities, but our identities as members of a social group or groups that share a commonality of values, beliefs, assumptions, and truths as they are determined by the group. So far, we might say this does not look so very different from the classical model of opposition above. However, “affirm the appropriateness of those competences that guide us” should – as rhetoricians see it – include competence in recognizing the importance of difference as a starting point, the ways in which difference informs us and the ways in which we ourselves might be informed by difference, as we seek to understand each other and reason our ways to potentially shared conclusions. This is very different from the combative model of rhetoric as “winner take all”, embedded as it is with metaphors of conflict and war: to defeat an opponent, to win your argument, to bring out the big guns in terms of evidence, etc. (for the classical treatment of language as combative, see Lakoff & Johnson 1980). Difference not only informs our notions of competence, but can also be revelatory in terms of our own positions. Because of this, many composition classrooms in America focus on what I might call “a rhetoric of recognition”, or, as Elizabeth McCord puts it, the teaching of “a broad social perspective [that] allow[s] us to understand that each student brings to class a complex set of cultural influences” (McCord 1992:314). The titles of a great many writing text-
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books that are in current use today in America reveal just how essential this part of the paradigm has become to the curriculum in America (for a sample list of these books, see the references). In short, such classrooms represent a recognition of the other and otherness, of difference and learning from difference, and of learning that the right to be listened to carries with it a set of rhetorical responsibilities, including listening to others.
claimant / respondent presenting, listening, responding starting point of difference
Audience / respondents Listening, responding, presenting Starting point of difference
middle ground: potential for understanding changes in insight and perspective, changes in position and conclusions Figure 2: Schematic representation of a newer paradigm of rhetorical argument and exchange
Or, if the above schematic representation is still too oppositional in appearance, even something like the following:
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presenting, listening, responding starting point of difference
listening, responding, presenting starting point of difference
Trying out competences in communication learning from listening, responding, exchange with others Figure 3: A more fluid and interactive schematic representation of the paradigm
What is interesting about such paradigmatic representations as these is that, even when we introduce elements of the overtly conflictual into it, the strongly unshared, it does not look much different according to modern rhetoricians: the paradigm still represents a balance between what is being asked (or claimed) and what is being heard (or received). Neither claimant nor respondent are attempting to shoot down the arguments of the other (another war metaphor), but rather to enter into an understanding of where those arguments come from and what they might be meaningful to each other. In an important article titled “On Rhetorical Traditions: A reply to Jerzy Axer”, Jeffrey Walker – who is one of America’s foremost rhetorical scholars as well as a rhetorician himself – presents compelling evidence that Aristotle’s widely interpreted phrase, from the first line of Chapter 2 of his “Rhetoric”, that “Rhetoric is a faculty of observing the available means of persuasion in any given case”, has been badly misinterpreted over the centuries, and has both defined rhetoric as something that Aristotle never intended and spawned directions that are damaging to individual and civic health, including precisely the paradigm with which I first started: two opponents squaring off, seeking to demolish the other with “the available means of persuasion” and thus emerge victorious. Because rhetorical theory for so many years grounded itself in this sentence as a definitive statement about what argument is and how it works, Walker has taken pains in this article to examine the validity of those translations that seem to define rhetoric, and by extension, argument as “whatever means possible” in order to win. A consummate scholar of Greek, Walker, argues that this sentence
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would be more appropriately translated as “Let’s say that rhetoric is a faculty of observing the available means of persuasion – where will that get us?” Grammatically, that is, Walker (2003:1) sees this sentence starting off the discussion with a stipulative definition, as in a speculative argument or mathematical hypothesis, where one says ‘let the value of X be Y.’ Aristotle, one might say, is stipulating a contentious definition, an opening position, in order to give a particular philosophical account of rhetoric.
Such a rethinking of this sentence would then require the all too readily concluded “available means of persuasion” (ενδεχόμενον πιθανόν) to mean instead “what is admissible, allowable, or acceptable as persuasive”. Walker finishes off this first stage of his argument by asserting that On this reading, Aristotle is stipulatively defining rhetoric not so much as a faculty of invention – of scoping out the available means of persuasion in any given case – but as a faculty of critical judgment – of deciding what should earn one’s assent ...
Walker further points out, in his discussion of the other possible ways of translating the verb theôrêsai, that Aristotle is not examining rhetoric here solely from the perspective of the rhetor, but equally, or perhaps even more so, from the perspective of the audience who as part of the communicative act must choose when to hold or give consent. He then concludes this careful examination of Aristotle’s language by observing that: I now seem to have two rhetorical traditions from just one quote: rhetoric as a faculty of invention (observing the available means of persuasion in order to make arguments), and rhetoric as a faculty of judgment (observing what should be admissible as persuasive in a given discourse) […] And there is a third tradition here: if we read theôrêsai simply as “to theorize”, […] we get rhetoric as a kind of critical theory, a hermeneutic of the rhetorical, an effort to account for what makes the persuasive thing persuasive.
Such a reinterpretation of Aristotle’s words has profound implications for a dissolution of centuries’ worth of how we may have misunderstood and wrongly taught rhetoric; it’s a position Crosswhite starts from as well, the demolition of a rigid, overly antagonistic and ultimately ineffectual paradigm. When the burden is placed on the listener to become a partner in the rhetorical exchange by determining what he or she will give assent to, rhetorical exchange becomes very different indeed. The paradigm becomes much more balanced: it is no longer a matter of individuals’ learning how to wield power and coerce agreement, an aggressive act. It becomes instead virtually a civic matter, for each individual to learn to recognize what might constitute reasonable and just grounds for agreeing with a claimant, and when to decide that agreement is not warranted. It is often said that “anyone can claim anything they want to claim”, especially in this global, internet-embedded age. The challenge is to determine when we are going to give, or withhold, assent from what we hear – and to engage in an exchange that discusses these things openly.
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Rhetoricians are particularly interested in discourse that reflects difference because it is out of difference that new understandings, not just of each other but also of the self, can most fully emerge. Rhetoric is, in its fullest and at its most expressive, an attempt to understand ourselves and why we believe what we believe – and when we might voluntarily change those beliefs as a result of our thoughtful and considered rhetorical exchanges. 4. Reworking the paradigm: Active listening One possibility for defining common ground then is a shift from that which is already shared, to that which is not shared – but which could potentially become shared, or if not shared then at least understood, once we open up the paradigm to include that act of listening to each other as part of the common ground of rhetorical exchange. Before I turn to my conclusion, I’d like to point out some specific rhetorical situations where recognition of difference is practiced as a conscious rhetorical stance, and where developing competencies in listening and understanding can lay the ground for that which eventually will become shared and privileged. In short, that which makes it possible for us to engage in growth. Some of these practices have been so well established for decades now that they too, as normative practices, inform the newer rhetorical paradigm I am talking about here today, and are not just being formed by it. For example, a particular kind of therapy called “active listening”, or “receptive listening” or even at times “reflective listening”, pioneered by Carl Rogers (1942) and intended to teach psychotherapists how to hear what their patients were really saying, or trying to say, has become standard in the field of psychotherapy today. Even more, under the rubric “Rogerian rhetoric”, it has made its way into composition classes in America precisely because its offers a nurturing paradigm for teaching students how to engage in an open and receptive exchange, rather than immediately to jump into combat, debate, defensiveness. A virtual flood of self-help books also draw on similar listening techniques, teaching partners how to achieve better relationships through active listening, parents how to respond to teenagers so that a frank discussion of fears, concerns, problems can take place, teachers how to work with shy children, etc. Rhetorically speaking, Rogers’ goal was to move beyond a prescriptive response to those in need, a telling the other what to do rather than hearing their calls for help. In active listening, the claimant is always privileged, the respondent gives up his or her own goals or needs in order to help the claimant better realize what it is he or she wants to say. What is perhaps most remarkable about this particular way of engaging in any rhetorical situation is the way in which it can also change the respondents’ perspectives as a result. I certainly experienced the revelatory nature of active listening in the poetry workshop I started with above.
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This “active listening” approach has become wildly popular in the last 30 years or so in America, so much so that it is possible to find literally hundreds if not thousands of articles and books devoted to explaining to use this approach in any number of different fields: law, medicine, debate, marriage counseling and psychology, education and teaching, sales, managing alcohol abuse and other forms of abuse, and so on. The list quite literally goes on and on: entering the words active listening on an internet search site and any field will usually turn up hundreds of entries. 5. Conclusion Active listening as a first step towards establishing a common ground of discourse ties into the kinds of responsibilities that Walker is charging us with: when and when not to give our assent. Needless to say, there are a great many more competencies that also attend to the paradigm with which I have been working: learning to listen, learning to assess, learning to ask questions, recognize assumptions, question assumptions, make the leap from evidence towards conclusion. All of these activities represent shared common ground even between those in conflict: the right of the other to ask questions, to receive answers, to make independent judgments, to withhold assent, and not, I might add, to have bombs dropped on them when they do engage in these activities. All of these might constitute what I am calling “common ground”: that is, a shared and common interest in inquiry and the strategies of inquiry, no matter what the starting point of difference. Even in discourse that is more charged and conflictual, recognizing that others have the right to ask questions and to determine whether the grounds for their assent have been met also changes the perspective of the claimant. This new paradigm positions the claimant in a position of responsibility as well: to be willing to explain clearly and fully how he or she came to the conclusions under discussion, so that others can share in those same conclusions if they wish. Thus all participants in a rhetoric of discourse are charged with increased responsibilities, or competencies, towards each other. Rhetoricians would love nothing more than to opt out of what linguist Deborah Tannen (1999) calls “the argument culture”, which rests on the assumption that opposition is the best way to get anything done: The best way to discuss an idea is to set up a debate. The best way to cover news is to find people who express the most extreme views and present them as “both sides”. The best way to begin an essay is to attack someone. The best way to show you're really thoughtful is to criticize. The best way to settle disputes is to litigate them.
Common ground presumes that, no matter what our individual positions, we do share a common interest in both individual and social growth, a willingness to enter into the rhetorical situation with an open mind, to consider, to hear, to ask
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questions, to make contributions. It is out of such commonalities that we forge new competencies, new understandings, new identities, which nonetheless are our all own because, in such a paradigm, we are authors of our own emerging selves, quite possibly on a daily basis. Or, as the poet William Carlos Williams put it: Dissonance (if you are interested) leads to discovery. 2
References Crosswhite, James. 1996. The Rhetoric of Reason: Writing and the attractions of argument. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Gage, John T. 1996. “The Reasoned Thesis: The E-word and argumentative writing as a process of inquiry.” Argument Revisited, Argument Redefined: Negotiating meaning in the composition classroom ed. by Barbara Emmel, Paula Resch & Deborah Tenney, 3-18. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Green, Lawrence. 1995. “Aristotle’s Enthymeme and the Imperfect Syllogism.” Rhetoric and Pedagogy: Its history, philosophy, and practice ed. by Winifred Bryan Horner & Michael Leff, 19-42. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Grimaldi, William M.A. 1972. Studies in the Philosophy of Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag. Jalon, Allan M. 1998. “Ponsot Glides Back Elegantly: Beat poet maintains brilliance”. San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, August 23, RV. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we Live by. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McCord, Elizabeth A. 1992. “New Historicism and Social Rhetoric: From the bard to the boardroom – A cultural exchange”. Constructing Rhetorical Education ed. by Marie Secor and Davida Charney, 300-317. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Plumly, Stanley. January/February 1978. “Chapter and Verse”. The American Poetry Review, 2128. Also reprinted in: Plumly, Stanley. 2003. Argument & Song: Sources and silences in poetry. Other Press LLC. Scollon, Ron & Suzanne B. K. Scollon. 1981. Narrative, Literacy and Face in Interethnic Communication. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation. Rogers, Carl R. 1942. Counselling and Psychotherapy: Newer concepts in practice. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. Tannen, Deborah. 1999. The Argument Culture: Stopping America’s war of words. New York: Ballantine Books. Walker, Jeffrey. 2003. “On Rhetorical Traditions: A reply to Jerzy Axer”. Presented to the Alliance of Rhetoric Societies, plenary session, Northwestern University, September 12, 2003.
(7 November 2007).
2
I thank James Crosswhite for drawing this wonderful poem to my attention, in his book The Rhetoric of Reason.
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A short list of current textbooks that emphasize difference and listening 3 Bowles, Lillian Bridwell. Identity Matters: Rhetorics of difference. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Bass, Randall & Joy Young. Beyond Borders: Cultural readings for contemporary writers. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Holdstein, Deborah. Challenging Perspectives: Reading critically about ethics and values. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Marbeck, Richard. Cities, Cultures, Conversations: Readings for writers. New York: Allyn & Bacon. Bergstrom Costello, Karin. Gendered Voices: Readings from the American experience. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers. McCormick, Kathleen. Reading Our Histories, Understanding Our Cultures. New York: Allyn & Bacon. Petracca, Michael & Madeleine Sorapure. Common Culture. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Bass, Randall. Cultural Readings for Contemporary Writers. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. Wood, Nancy V. Perspectives on Argument. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
3
Dates are not given as virtually all of these books exist in multiple editions. The purpose here is not to recommend any one book over the other, but rather illustrate the current focus in composition in America on sharing, listening, and negotiating different perspectives.
What is the Role of Arguments? Fundamental human rights in the age of spin Wolfgang Teubert University of Birmingham
In our Western democracies, parliamentary debates are seen less as a collaborative effort to achieve a shareable interpretation of an issue than a fight between contestants to be arbitrated by the media as the sole interface between text producers and text consumers. Arguments are no longer designed to convince or persuade. Rather the role of argumentation is twofold. By constant repetition, arguments construct ideological identity. But reformulations, permutations and recombinations of arguments can also give rise to gradual innovation. My illustration is the House of Commons debate of the Lisbon Treaty’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. That the argumentation we find in this debate is full of blatant repetition and void of any new aspects may be caused to some extent by the media industry’s growing grip on text production. Yet it also questions the role assigned to argumentation in our society.
1. Do arguments construct the reality which they interpret? Our trust in the power of argumentation has, to a large extent, its roots in our belief in the power of reason. As Richard Rorty has argued in his “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature” (Rorty 1979), it was René Descartes who persuaded the Western world at the dawn of the enlightenment that god-given human reason in connection with incontrovertible evidence leads ineluctably to truth. We must not trust what we are told; instead we have to ascertain the brute facts constituting the evidence, and once that is done we have to probe each argument proffered whether it stands to reason. Thus it is up to each individual mind whether it accepts the conclusion it is presented with as truth. But not everyone agrees that truth is a strictly personal matter. There is also the role of society, or, to be more precise, of the discourse community in question, to consider. If a line of argumentation has been accepted as true by the large majority of, say, the community of the English people, would it really make sense to disagree? In his essay “On Liberty” (1962:172), John Stuart Mill draws our attention to the importance of dialogue. Truth, at least “in the great practical concerns of life”, is, he insists, normally too complex to be teased out by the monadic individual mind, it needs the exchange of arguments:
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Truth [...] is so much a question of reconciling and combining of opposites that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make an adjustment with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough process of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners.
This is echoed by Charles Sanders Peirce (1958:133), the first of the American pragmatists: “The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed upon by all who investigate is what we mean by truth.” This seems to imply that public knowledge can be called true knowledge once each member of the respective discourse community agrees to have verified such a truth claim by their individual mental act. While traditional epistemologists up to this day uphold the idea of an autonomous mind as the ultimate arbiter of truth, social epistemologists like Helen Longino (2002:12) emphasise the role society plays in determining what is true knowledge: “Critical discursive interactions are social processes of knowledge production.” The situation is far from resolved, as Alvin Goldman’s entry on “social epistemology” in the “Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy” shows (http://plato.stanford. edu/entries/epistemology-social/). He sums up the present situation, as he sees it, in these words: Whereas Descartes thought that truth should be pursued only by the proper conduct of “reason,” specifically, the doxastic agent’s own reason, social epistemology acknowledges what everyone except a radical skeptic will admit, namely, that quests for truth are commonly influenced, for better or for worse, by institutional arrangements that massively affect what doxastic agents hear (or fail to hear) from others.
We may have to reassess the function of arguments if our quest for truth is not borne out by evidence submitted to the scrutiny of the reasoning of one’s own mind but by “institutional arrangements”, the contingent results of collective reasoning. And we may also have to admit that the evidence we are dealing with hardly ever consists of uninterpreted ‘brute facts’ but of symbolic representations, i.e. texts, of what we take to be, with more or less good reason, a discourseexternal reality. Perhaps arguments are less the building blocks of truth than reinforcements of received wisdom, reformulations of what has been said before, i.e. iterations in the Derridean sense (Derrida 1989). Perhaps the glamour of the concept of truth has been misleading us in our enquiry. It might be worth assuming the position of social constructionism, as it has been expounded by Kenneth Gergen (e.g., 1999), in particular, and to understand that whenever we believe ourselves to be dealing with reality, we are not really dealing with the stuff out there, but with the reality that we, the members of a discourse community, have been collectively constructing, and that is, however minutely, altered and amended by each new negotiation in which we engage. It is the reality of the discourse. It is a contingent reality, and it is as plurivocal as the discourse is, containing all the contradictions and disagreements that epistemologists want to resolve. Every new contribution to the discourse has a chance to have an impact on this constructed reality. It will have been successful in changing it if the bit of innovation it has brought in leaves traces in subsequent texts. This means it will have made
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an impact. From such a hermeneutic perspective, what was seen as true knowledge becomes contingent, provisional meaning as it is expressed in all the previous contributions to the discourse. The point of arguing then is to generate continuity, to fuse the past with the presence by interpreting what has been said before. In our discourses we constantly recombine and permute elements we found in previous texts. By varying them in often minute ways, we reformulate the arguments the members of a discourse community are familiar with. The point of any debate is reinterpretation of evidence available only as symbolic representations, that is a new interpretation placed on top of all the previous ones. Each subsequent interpretation may not be a step closer to truth; rather it is the addition of a new layer of meaning to existing layers. What we obtain can be viewed as a fusion of past and present horizons, as Hans-Georg Gadamer (1965:304ff.) formulated the task of hermeneutics. There are, in principle, two ways to look at argumentation in public discourse, depending on whether we take the discourse to be an agon logon, a verbal battle between two or more contestants or two or more competing camps, normally with the public as arbiter on who has won. This is a model we have inherited from Greek antiquity, which has been reinforced by Roman rhetoric, and which has become the almost exclusive perspective to appreciate the exchange of arguments in Western representative democracies. Once victory has been accorded to one camp, all arguments forwarded by the other camps have lost their currency. But we can also look at the discourse as a collaborative act. From such a perspective, each contribution can be viewed as adding something new to our knowledge, as long as it leaves a trace in subsequent texts. This is a perspective suitable for the “organizational worlds” discussed by François Cooren (2006), for instance, boardroom meetings in which the contributions of participants as well as other, previous, texts are collaboratively explored in order to develop jointly plans for action. At the end of such a debate, a synthesis will evolve that goes beyond what any camp has submitted. It is perhaps also a perspective suited to analyse political debate in countries with a one-party system. And it is the perspective on which the Wikipedia undertaking is based. As researchers, we are in principle free to choose whether we investigate a discourse as contest or as collaboration. Yet any discourse will also exhibit the perspective, be it combative or consensual, its participants take. Under normal conditions, a member of parliament in the House of Commons would be viewed as odd if she or he honoured the arguments offered by members from the other parties, unless they happen to be shared. The traditional rationale of parliamentary debates in Western democracies is not consensus but a fight to be refereed. Only if an analysis of the argumentation we encounter takes this aspect on board, it will do justice to such a debate.
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2. Key aspects of the debate over the Charter of Fundamental Rights In this contribution I will discuss the role of arguments, using as my example the debate that took place on the British House of Commons on 5 February 2008 and dealt with the Charter of Fundamental Rights included in the Treaty of Lisbon. When this Treaty was signed on 13 December 2007, the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown was conspicuously absent from the ritual. He arrived a few hours later for his own separate signing ceremony, emphasising in the subsequent press conference the large number of ‘opt-outs’ from the treaty the British delegation has obtained, in form of protocols appended to the treaty. The most striking of these protocols, and the one most often referred to by him and subsequently by government speakers, is the protocol exempting the United Kingdom (together with Poland, which is, however, now reconsidering its position) from Title IV (“Solidarity”), dealing with workers’ rights, of this Charter. The 5 February debate lasted from 15.30 without a break until 22.15, i.e. almost for five hours. In order to appreciate the arguments raised more fully it is necessary to link them to the relevant discourses in British society. These are the thematic discourses on human rights, on Britain’s relationship with Europe, and on the issue of British sovereignty and the role of the parliament. They involve at least four major discourse communities, in particular, the Conservative and the Labour parties, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), and finally the Trade Unions Congress (TUC, the umbrella organisation of the British trade unions). None of these four discourse communities operates in isolation, they all interact with each other. They pursue their goals mainly by producing texts, often interpretations of previous texts which will be, in turn, subsequently re-interpreted by texts of the other discourse communities. Importantly, most of these texts are also designed as input for the news media which passes them on, or rewrites them, or rejects them, in pursuit of their own agenda. It is thus the media industry who are in ultimate control of the reality conveyed to the public at large. One key raison d’être of these organisations is to have an impact on public opinion. For this, they depend on the media. National newspapers, radio and television act in ways similar to supermarket chains such as Sainsbury and Tesco. They are the intermediaries between text producers and text consumers. They are the immediate arbiters who determine winners and losers in the agon logon, the political debate. They decide which texts are put on the shelves for consumption. They employ journalists to repackage texts, adding pleasant or unpleasant odours, trying to ensure that public opinion reflects their umpireship. Text producers and consumers today meet face to face only in rare cases; and hardly a consumer will waste their time by visiting the original texts and their producers on their webpages. This puts an extra onus on text producers. In order to pass through the ear of the media, arguments brought forward in the texts will have to be constructed in such a way that they will not be rejected or utterly distorted by the media in their role as text merchants. For the media themselves are, as we all know, not a
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disinterested party. As the media industry is part of industry in general, their agenda is usually fairly closely tied up with that of the CBI. Text producers who want to see their texts offered to text-consumers are therefore under pressure to negotiate with text merchants, that is with those who are in charge of the media over content. In our Western political systems, the point of arguments in political debate is hardly to persuade or convince those who belong to a different discourse community. Rather, in as much as they are addressed to a general audience, their point is to remind people of what they have heard before and thus to reinforce familiarity with the viewpoint in question. Of course, they are also directed at other text producers in one’s own camp, and thus they have to demonstrate, by repeating the arguments of the party line, that a speaker can be trusted to follow the rules. Repeating verbatim what has been said before, however, is rarely enough. There is always a hierarchy in organisations of text producers, and who wants to move up the ladder must, at the same time, adhere to the key tenets and bring in a bit of acceptable innovation. Thus a successful text producer will have to recombine, permute and reformulate the text material that makes up a discourse community’s agenda. As I have shown in Teubert (2000), a certain amount of variation and even some originality are essential. 3. Two relevant thematic discourses Britons are often staunch advocates of human rights. For them, human rights have more or less directly evolved from the Magna Carta, often perceived as the cradle of British democracy. The Unlock Democracy think-tank describes the line from the Magna Carta of 1215 to the Human Rights Act of 1998 in these words (http://www.unlockdemocracy.org.uk/?tag=magna-carta): In a way, the Human Rights Act brings the development of human rights legislation in Britain full circle. It incorporates the European Convention on Human Rights into domestic law; however, the European Convention on Human Rights is based on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which in turn was inspired by the Magna Carta, among other sources.
The understanding that human rights are essentially a British invention may explain why many Britons assume they need not to be especially defended in their home country, but that other countries may well need Britain’s constant reminder to keep them up. The United Kingdom is a signatory of the Convention on Human Rights, adopted by all member states of the Council of Europe in 1950. The rights given there were incorporated into British law by the Human Rights Act (HRA) in 1998. While citizens now can turn to British courts directly, they previously had to seek redress from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. But the HRA is by no means uncontroversial. David Cameron, the current leader of the Conservative party, “has threatened”, according to the Independent of 13 May 2006, “to
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rewrite or scrap the Human Rights Act if it stands in the way of deporting suspected foreign terrorists”. He is not alone. Google lists about 900 hits for “rip up (the) human rights act”, 3880 for “scrap the human rights act” and 6640 for “repeal the human rights act”. Cameron promises to “replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights that strikes a more sensible balance between fundamental rights and the responsibilities of those claiming them” (www.conservatives.com/tile.do?obj_id=138115&def=news.story.page). Christian Holliday expresses the concerns of many of his fellow members of the Conservative party (voteholliday.com/index_files/views.htm): The next Conservative Government should repeal the Human Rights Act. This dangerous piece of legislation is a threat to the very notion of law and order. It cannot be acceptable that the human rights of criminals, such as hijackers, should be the first priority of the Courts.
Even within the Labour government, responsible for the Human Rights Act, there is a strong opposition. Bruce Anderson, commentator of the Independent newspaper, repeatedly claimed that David Blunkett, then Home Secretary, had said the HRA had been the worst mistake of Labour’s first term (e.g. Independent 26.06.06 and 14.04.08). However, things look quite different if they are about human rights not in Britain but abroad. In a speech given on 25.04.06, the shadow foreign secretary of the Conservatives (www.conservatives.com/tile.do?def=news.story), William Hague, tells us that “human rights abuses in the 21st century cannot be tolerated. [...] Human rights [...] exist to protect people everywhere against political, legal, and social abuses”. Human rights violations are customarily invoked to discredit countries considered unfriendly to the interests of the United Kingdom. Of course, it has been the privilege not just of Britain but of all the countries counting themselves among the ‘civilised world’ to focus on human rights violations almost exclusively in countries less fortunate. Ever since the British establishment feared that the French Revolution would cross the Channel, Britain has never grown tired of distancing itself not just from France but from the Continent. From the beginning, this media exercise was directed more at the masses who had to be protected at any cost from the French disease. For the educated middle classes, and even more for the well-to-do, Europe maintained its charms. As I see it, not many people in Britain would lay claim to a European identity in the sense a Spaniard, a Serb or a Lithuanian would. Most English people are put off by the deep divides in terms of culture, language and institutions. What it means for many people on the Continent to be united by a common history, however hurtful, can perhaps only be compared to the way they feel themselves part of an English-speaking Anglo-Saxon world, a world encompassing at least Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, but also, in a more general sense, the United States.
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Euroscepticism is deeply entrenched in the British public discourse. Language is one reason. The expected subordination of one’s own interests under a common agenda is another. For the duration of the British Empire, it was London who determined the fate of all the provinces under British hegemony. Even today, Britain perceives herself still as a global leader, and all that has changed is that it is now exercising this leadershipjointly with the United States. In the European Union, however, Britain is not accorded a special status; its role is hardly different from that of any other country, and be it as small as Luxembourg. A paper given by Anand Menon, the director of the European Research Institute at the University of Birmingham, on 27 May 2003, bore the telling title “Still leading from the wings? The United Kingdom and the European Union”. It is this fear that the British influence in European affairs is waning that is constantly kindled by the media industry. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is the humiliating fact that Britain entered the Common Market in 1973 only after its membership applications had been rejected twice (in 1963 and 1967, both times on the behalf of Charles de Gaulle). 4. A united front? Of the many discourse communities of text producers that have an impact on discourse consumers in Britain I have mentioned above just four, namely the two main parties, the Conservatives and the Labour party, the Trade Union Congress (TUC), i.e. the association of British trade unions, and finally the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). Of course, only the two parties are represented in the House of Commons debate that will be analysed below. Both parties have links with the TUC, even though Labour is traditionally understood to be the political arm of the British trade union movement. Equally, both parties entertain close ties with the CBI. Again, traditionally the Tories considered themselves to be the political representation of business interests. However, when Old Labour was transformed into New Labour in the middle of the nineties of last century, much effort was put into an improvement of their relations with industry. Indeed, some argue that labour would not have been voted into government if the CBI had not allowed for this outcome to come about. The Conservative party is largely pro-Atlanticist and eurosceptic. While Tony Blair originally embarked on the European project with some enthusiasm, he was held back by large segments of his party who share the anti-European bias of British public opinion or who fear the power of the media. Thus the rejection of the European Constitution by the French and Dutch voters proved a godsend, as a similar result was expected for Britain. Today, the Labour government encourages steps to turn the European Union more into a free trade association and less into an institution with an authority of its own. Thus both main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, take a favourable view of demands and requests from the CBI. As industry all over the world, the CBI is in favour of deregulation, flexibility, con-
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stant increases in productivity at the expense of the workforce, free movement of capital and the reduction of taxes put on profits. It is ambivalent about Europe. To some extent it finds the EU useful for furthering their interests in the Third World. On the other hand, they strongly reject any kind of social agenda. After two hundred years of anti-European propaganda, the British workforce and their trade unions are still very sceptical about almost everything that makes its way from the Continent across the Channel. While they cautiously welcome the Treaty of Lisbon’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, and Title IV with its focus on workers’ rights in particular, they insist, in open opposition to the Labour government, on a referendum on this treaty, even though they must know that the media impact will almost certainly be strong enough that the treaty will be rejected. As we can read in the Daily Telegraph of 10.09.07, the trade unions, having lost over the 1990s one third of their members, are finding out that their role as text producers has become much reduced: “The TUC’s opinion of Private Finance Initiatives is in the same category as its opinion of the identity of Jack the Ripper: potentially interesting, but practically irrelevant.” In the Telegraph’s view, this may well be the reason for the union’s stance on the treaty issue: In their demand for a referendum on the EU constitution [as the Lisbon Treaty is called by the Telegraph], they may have found [a campaign issue]. True, the issue on which they have taken their stance – the non-justiciability of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the United Kingdom – is a rather abstruse one.
An exchange of letters to the editor of the Times, dated 21., 23., and 25.01.08, respectively, demonstrates how open union leaders are to the arguments put forward by die-hard eurosceptics. The first letter, signed by heads of eight antiEuropean institutions (among them “The Freedom Association” and “The Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom”), tells us: The Lisbon Treaty represents a fundamental threat to the livelihoods, businesses and government of the British people [...]. It will reduce the sovereign Parliament to the status of a chatting-shop [...]. With further provisions for the right to strike under the related Charter of Fundamental Rights [...] our nation is in grave danger of becoming absorbed by the European leviathan.
Four (Old) Labour MEPs submitted this report: Bill Cash and others are guilty of a series of distortions and untruths about the Lisbon treaty. First, contrary to their claims, the Charter of Fundamental Rights will not increase (or diminish) the rights of workers to strike – the charter itself states that this is up to national legislation, a point which is reaffirmed by a legally binding protocol stating that the charter does not create any new rights in British law.
Calling the Charter thus irrelevant was perhaps not the smartest response. Why have a charter at all if it does not have any effect?
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Two days later the Times published a letter by the General Secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers: Gary Titley and his fellow MEPs do us a real service by demolishing the myth that the Lisbon treaty provides any form of guarantee of workers’ rights, including the right to strike, for British workers. It does not. […] Under the renamed EU constitution, the ECJ [European Court of Justice] would gain huge powers to impose laws [...] without a mandate to do so. This should convince people to reject the renamed constitution.
The media will give the CBI a platform whenever it makes demands on government policy. Ahead of an intergovernmental meeting in Brussels, we learn that the CBI has, among a handful of other worries, this concern (Independent 01.12.03): It also wants a guarantee that the inclusion within the constitution of the Charter of Fundamental Rights will not give the ECJ [European Court of Justice] the right to interfere with or re-interpret UK employment law.
Newspapers also tell us when representatives of New Labour ingratiate themselves to the CBI. In May 2004, Jack Straw, then still Foreign Secretary, promised at the CBI annual dinner that his government “will insist that [...] the Charter of Fundamental Rights creates no new rights under national law, so as not to upset the balance of Britain’s industrial relations policy”. Having set out the context in which the debate about this Charter in the House of Commons took place on 05.02.08, it is now time to revisit some of the arguments we encountered above. 5. The debate on the Lisbon Treaty’s Charter The reason for me to choose a debate in the House of Commons for my investigation into the role of argumentation is that it is one of its many truly admirable traditions to allow for a real debate. Right in the middle of another member’s speech, a member may stand up to say something appropriate or ask a question, a request that is more often granted than not. The first speaker will have to retort to such an intervention, and at least superficially argue with it. It is this spontaneity that makes commons debates so much livelier than, for instance, a ‘debate’ in the German Bundestag. Parliamentary debates in Western democracies are rarely aimed at reaching an interpretation of matters shared by all present. Speakers do not see them as collaborative endeavours to negotiate existing knowledge with the aim to construct new knowledge. They do not really hope to sway an opponent’s beliefs, quite the opposite. Often they will uphold the party line by repeating, in endless variations, the arguments that define it. It is, however, not so uncommon in the House of Commons, that backbenchers might attack their own frontbenchers, a tradition deplorably absent from many Continental parliaments. More often, though, they see members of the other parties as their opponents, and they will
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make sure that what they say is absolutely incompatible with their opponent’s arguments. There are very few instances in which an opponent’s argument is actually taken apart and rejected, and there are practically no instances where an argument proffered by an opponent is explicitly accepted. Thus it is only on the surface that all contributions seem to be addressed to the opposing camp. The purpose of taking part in a parliamentary debate often is to increase a speaker’s reputation in his own camp. Speakers will normally avoid bringing in new arguments, arguments that do not (yet) reflect the party line. But they will try new variants of existing strands of argumentation. The better they are in doing this, the more likely they will move upwards in party hierarchy. The Commons debate analysed below deals with the Charter of Fundamental Rights. This charter is part of the Treaty of Lisbon, and thus, in principle at least, legally binding for all member states. But the Treaty also contains many provisions that limit the binding force of the charter. This charter is largely a rewording of the European Convention of Human Rights, which, however, falls under the remit of the Council of Europe with its European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. The Council of Europe is a legal entity entirely distinct from the European Union. Title IV of the charter deals predominantly with rights in the interest of workers and their families. It is the successor to the Social Chapter of the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht. Here, the Conservative British government under John Major Labour obtained an opt-out for Britain, which was repealed by Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1997. This is the Social Chapter referred to by David Cameron above. One of the many protocols added to the Lisbon Treaty was the protocol on behalf of the UK government (and of the Polish government who are, at present, in the process of withdrawing from it) concerning the binding force to the charter, and of title IV in particular. The key sentence is (www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page13580.asp): In particular, and for the avoidance of doubt, nothing in Title IV of the Charter creates justiciable rights applicable to Poland or the United Kingdom except in so far as Poland or the United Kingdom has provided for such rights in its national law.
In the debate, we can observe at least these discourse communities (camps) with which the members of parliament participating in this debate affiliate themselves: Labour supporters of the Labour government, a few Labour dissidents (with close ties to the trade unions), Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. These are the main questions concerning the charter that I will discuss in my analysis of the arguments put forward: What is said about − − − −
there members’ attitudes on human rights in general the human rights addressed in title IV of the charter the question whether the charter contains any new rights whether the charter makes sense for Britain or the other EU member states
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− whether the British opt-out is watertight or whether the European Court of Justice can curtail British sovereignty The citations I bring below in my analysis are quoted thus: by column number of the Hansard for 05.02.08 (e.g., “c824”), by name of the contributor (e.g., “J. Straw”), and by the contributor’s party affiliation (C=Conservative, L=Labour, LD=Liberal Democrat). 6. The members’ attitudes on human rights in general The debate is opened by the Minister of Justice, Jack Straw. He argues that human rights are very much a British thing, a concept to be proud of: (c795, J. Straw, L) The United Kingdom has been at the forefront of the development of fundamental human rights, especially since the notion was first articulated by Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt in the Atlantic charter in 1941. Nine years after that charter, British lawyers [...] were instrumental in drafting what became the European convention on human rights. [...] The rights contained within the convention have a long British pedigree, rooted in Magna Carta, the 1689 Bill of Rights and habeas corpus.
For John Redwood, a former minister under Margaret Thatcher, this is exactly the reason why human rights should not be treated as a common European issue; only the British Parliament should be sovereign to interpret them for Britain. Accepting Jack Straw’s evidence, he draws a completely different conclusion: (c796, J. Redwood, C) Does the Secretary of State accept that, over the centuries, it has been this Parliament that has defined, upheld and shaped our human rights, and that it should be this Parliament that does so in future?
Thus the two lines of argumentation are presented. All subsequent speakers provide little more than variations on the two themes. Here is a selection of their contributions: (c795, J. Straw, L) Britain has played a pivotal role in developing that culture of rights and the idea of human rights across Europe. (c823, E. Davey, LD) I believe that this country has a proud record in pushing for human rights, and I believe that the European Union has played a superb role in pushing for them in other countries. (c825, R. Marris, L) The Conservative party, to its credit, has held a fairly consistent position since 1996 or 1997 of not wishing to extend human rights. It is the wrong position but it is consistent. (c830, M. Rifkind, C) This debate is meant to be about human rights, but actually it is not about that, because, despite some of the political arguments that are occasionally used, there is an equal commitment to human rights on both sides of the House, from all Members of Parliament.
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(c834, D. MacShane, L) It is shameful that we are not proud to welcome the charter of fundamental rights into our own legislation, which every other nation in Europe has taken in its stride as the foundation of a civilised society. (c838, P. Lilley, C) All parties and all Members in this House are in favour of basic human rights − what we normally mean by human rights, which do not extend into the sphere of certain economic rights. (c866, B. Prentice, L) I start by asserting our pride in our provisions on human rights and stressing again that the human rights provision contained in the Lisbon treaty, particularly the charter of fundamental rights, will ensure that the European Union is committed to the protection of human rights without infringing on the sovereignty of member states.
As we can see, Robert Marris argues that the Conservatives would fight any extension of human rights, a claim only indirectly rebutted by Malcolm Rifkind, some time later, who insists that all parties are equally committed to the human rights agenda. Also the we in Denis MacShane’s contribution “It is shameful that we are not proud ...” refers to the Tories; however, it is not an argument a Conservative Member has ever made (cf. Malcolm Rifkind: “… there is an equal commitment on both sides if the House …”). 6.1 The fundamental human rights addressed in Title IV of the charter Title IV of the charter deals with the rights of workers and their families. This is the part of the charter about which the protocol states: “Nothing in Title IV creates justifiable rights applicable to Poland or the United Kingdom except in so far as Poland or the United Kingdom has provided for such rights in its national law.” This begs the question why the other titles have not been included, as well, particularly title II which details the rights to conduct a business. It is striking that the debate about Title IV consists, almost exclusively, only of contributions by Labour MPs close to the trade union movement and representative of Old Labour. Jack Straw insists twice on equality for all EU citizens including UK citizens, invokes once more British pride over British workers’ rights, but stresses that for British workers the charter has no impact on their right to strike. Subsequently he wisely shifts his arguments to the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty, for which the Labour government has repealed the earlier optout obtained by the Conservative government, and accuses David Cameron of wanting to repeal this repeal. Nothing more is said by the Labour frontbenchers for the next hours. Neither the Conservatives nor the Liberal Democrats feel tempted to out themselves on this issue. They rather enjoy the attacks on the government by three Labour backbenchers. Only Peter Lilley cannot bite back the disingenuous remark that the Conservatives prefer human rights that can be withdrawn by any parliamentary majority. These are the main arguments brought forward, in a very condensed form:
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(c806, J. Straw, L) Let me clarify the position. UK employees and citizens in general will not have fewer rights because of the protocol. (c808, J. Straw, L) Mr. Cameron has said that he supports flexible working, yet he told his party conference: “I can tell you that we will get out of the European Social Chapter.” [...] Opting out of social chapter rights would simply make it harder for parents to balance work and their caring responsibilities, and could even remove the right to paid holidays. (c834, M. Meacher, L) Although I listened to both Front Bench speeches, I am still very puzzled about why the Government are so adamantly opposed to the application of those rights in this country [...]. A pragmatic answer [...] might be that the charter would ban excessive working hours. The British worker works more hours a week than anyone else in Europe and the CBI would like to keep it that way. It would also permit secondary action in industrial disputes, but at present British workers cannot take such action, although employers can. No doubt the CBI would like to keep it like that as well. (c840, P. Lilley, C) Those hon. Members who have expressed concern about economic rights should know that I would feel far more confident about granting economic rights to workers, say, if I knew that they could be withdrawn if they did not work out to their advantage. (c841, J. Trickett, L) I did some research on the internet earlier today, and found the item that appeared on the BBC site [...] on the Saturday of last June’s Brussels summit. The item states: “Britain’s ‘red lines’ are guarantees that the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which could give workers extra rights to strike, will not apply to the UK.” It was clear that Tony Blair regarded what can only be called an opt-out as a major achievement in the negotiations. In his speech to the CBI to which I referred a few moments ago he said: “We will not allow the Charter of Fundamental Rights to open up interference with Britain’s labour laws and will not agree the new Constitution until we are sure that they are safeguarded.” (c850, J. Cruddas, L) Perhaps the fundamental question is whether it is acceptable, especially for a Labour Government, to put workers’ rights on a different footing from the freedoms of employers, which are contained in title II and are thus not covered by paragraph 2 [of the protocol].
We can assume that the three Labour backbenchers who direct, with their arguments, friendly fire on their own government, would have liked to be found worthy a reply. Early in the debate (c809), Jon Trickett asks Jack Straw directly: I share [Jack Straw’s] pleasure about the directive he mentioned on workers’ rights, but may I draw his attention to title IV of the charter, for which there is the special provision that he has referred to? Will he explain why we have decided that title IV will not create any new justiciable rights that are applicable to the United Kingdom?
The reply he gets is telling: “The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, Bridget Prentice, will be able to go into this matter in more detail when we come to the winding-up speeches.” It goes without saying that she does not address the issue in question. To whom are the questions and insinuations of the Labour rebels addressed? They know that these comments will not appear in the media. They may provoke
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some anger in the higher echelons of the government. I wonder if the trade unions will show their gratitude. 6.2 Does the Charter contain new rights? A surprisingly large part of the debate is devoted to the question whether the charter contains any new human rights, that is rights not yet conferred on EU and/or British citizens in a legally binding form. The argument that no one has to worry because everything contained in the charter has been asserted time and again before is the stance taken by the government. Yet this stance brings the government in an awkward situation. For if the charter contains nothing new, then what is the purpose of the protocol? This is a question I will consider below. The Conservatives, on the other hand, insist, as was to be expected, that the charter indeed opens the door to new rights, rights over which the British parliament has no power of repeal (because they will be brought in by stealth as ECJ rulings, in spite of the protocol). However, it seems to have been rather difficult for them to point out a new right. The one that was mentioned altogether three times was the right to unconstrained scientific research. This was subsequently rejected because it could mean research using animals, a controversial topic in Britain. The ‘no new rights’ argument and its counter-argument can be employed in a rather effortless way, which might explain their popularity. Here are a few citations out of altogether 35 instances, selected to show how they almost immediately acquire the quality of a formulaic expression: (c800, D. Heathcoat-Amory, C) The right hon. Gentleman [...] asserted that there are no new rights in the charter, which was repeated by the Foreign Secretary last October. However, the right in article 13, which states that “scientific research shall be free of constraint”, is a new right. (c801, D. Lidington, C) The right hon. Gentleman has asserted several times that nothing in the charter of fundamental rights creates new rights, and that the rights there already exist. However, in its website commentary on the treaty of Lisbon, the European Commission says that “the Treaty of Lisbon preserves existing rights while introducing new ones”. Is he saying that the Commission is wrong? (c802, J. Straw, L) The text does not establish new rights; that was never the intention. (c806, J. Straw, L) The explanations demonstrate that the charter does not create any new rights, but reaffirms rights that are already recognised. (c822, A. Dismore, L) Several issues arise in relation to the protocol. Nothing in the charter creates new justiciable rights, partly because of subsidiarity and partly because the solidarity heads are not rights as such but are more by way of principles. (c845, D. Heathcoat-Amory, C) On the remarkable story of whether the charter contains new rights, I intervened on the Secretary of State for Justice to point out that the Government’s often repeated claim that there are no new rights is simply and flatly untrue. Just to remind the House, article 13 of the charter says that “scientific research
What is the Role of Arguments? 109
shall be free of constraint.” The explanatory notes confirm that that right is not recorded in any other document to which we are a party. That is a new right. (c867, B. Prentice, L) By setting out the sources of and limits of the provisions in the charter, the explanations show that it does not create any new rights, but simply reaffirms rights that are already recognised in the law of the Union and in member states’ own national laws. (c868, B. Prentice, L) No new rights have been created. [...] It puts beyond doubt the fact that the charter simply cannot extend the powers of the courts to strike down UK laws, and that it does not introduce new justiciable rights. (c885, B. Cash, C) New rights are being created by these provisions, although that is denied by the Government. Every time the European Union accumulates functions, it claims that this does not involve the creation of new rights.
The iterability is striking. No new rights are being created, or established, or there are not new rights, at least not enforceable or justiciable rights. 6.3 Is the Charter good for Britain, or is it good for Europe? The question whether the Charter is good for Britain is at the heart of this debate. But there is little evidence that the two main camps, Labour and the Conservatives, are actually exchanging arguments. Each side sticks to their line, repeating it time after time, with a modicum of variation. In my selection of relevant citations, we find that the Conservatives are more concerned about the powers of the parliament, identified with the House of Commons, which, as they see it, yielded to the European Court of Justice (which will be discussed below), than with the British people themselves. On the other hand, Jack Straw, posing as a progressive against ‘the old home guard’ in their metaphoric wheelchairs, never refers to the powers of the British parliament. Rather, he repeatedly stresses ‘British interests’, the interests of the British people working and living abroad which is indeed the key argument of Labour speakers. This is an argument to which the Conservatives do not respond, for good reason. But there is a sideline. Some of the Old Labour backbenchers cannot keep quiet. Andrew Dismore and Denis MacShane complain almost audibly that UK citizens are excluded from key provisions of the Charter by the British-Polish protocol. It goes without saying that neither New Labour not Conservatives respond to this argument. (c799, J. Straw, L) For the future interests of Britain, and of Europe, it is right that we collectively take further steps to make the promotion of human rights integral to being part of Europe. (c803, J. Straw, L) The old home guard is wheeled out in the name of the defence of British interests. [...] They seem to miss the fact that the British interest of the British people [...] is best served by being in Europe so that we can influence Europe. (c804, R. Marris, L) They do not understand that [...] the rights of UK citizens when in other countries are protected through such provisions.
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(c804, J. Straw, L) Yes, [...] my point to my constituents, which they accept, is that when they go abroad, they want better rights than they would be afforded in many nonEU foreign countries. They [...] want to know that if, for instance, they want to enforce their property rights, they can do so better within the European Union. (c809, J. Straw, L) I fear that those who seek to attack the treaty by attacking its human rights provisions are at risk of doing great harm to the interests of the British people, as well as being injurious to our international reputation. (c853, J Clappison, C) Justice could run very far into matters that we are used to deciding for ourselves in this House. [...] We are abdicating an important part of our historical role as the guardian of the rights of the people of this country. (c857, D. MacShane, L) I want to see an open European market, a socially just market in which British citizens have full rights. (c893, B. Spink, C) The other great movement was to ensure that the powers were in this Chamber and in Parliament as a whole [...]. What the Government are asking us to do tonight is suspend that right. (c895, J. Redwood, C) We believe that those rights are best expressed in British law, in the English language and in a way that is answerable to the British people.
The Labour party line is to celebrate the Charter, in spite of all the opt-outs affecting Britain (which are discussed below), as a gift to these countries which had, for such a long time, to miss the rule of law. This is an eulogy in which, of course, the Conservatives are not keen to take part, as much as they otherwise like to denounce human rights violations abroad. Here is a small selection of relevant citations: (c797, J. Straw, L) The key issue was not about bringing the economic performances of the countries joining up to a standard; the key issue for them was to ensure that their human rights provisions were raised to decent standards, in practice as well as theory. (c826, E. Davey, LD) However, there are citizens in some member states and in countries that hope to join for whom such rights are strange and new, and would be welcome. Having a charter that brings those rights together, so that they can be put up in lights to say, “If you join the European Union, these are the sorts of the benefits that you can enjoy”, is a good thing. (c854, D. MacShane, L) Would that much more distinguished forefathers of ours, who sat here, were alive at this hour. I thought that the whole history of the House of Commons was about the extension of rights not only to all citizens of this country, but to people around the world. (c862, M. Connarty, L) The charter will be binding, and I find that attractive for reasons that I will outline. Article 4 of chapter I is entitled, “Prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. Such a prohibition may not exist in some countries that might be considering joining the European Union.
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6.4 Are the British safeguards watertight, or does Britain have to fear the European Court of Justice? I am now coming to the most confusing aspect of this Commons debate. The Labour government seeks to persuade the members of parliament to ratify the Treaty of Lisbon, including the Charter which is a part of it. It is this ratification, by the UK parliament, and by the parliaments of the other member states, that makes the treaty legally binding. As shown above, the Labour government claims that the Charter does not create any new rights, as all the rights mentioned have been introduced in previous legally binding acts. At the same time, however, the government also insists that is has been working very hard to ensure that nothing said in the Charter will affect UK legislation. That it makes little sense to praise a charter as being good for Britain while insisting that it will have no effect whatsoever may seem somewhat inconsistent, but it is, after all, perhaps not so unusual in the way politicians all over the world conduct their business. Again, there is some interference from Old Labour speakers. Jon Trickett rubs salt into the wounds of New Labour by indicating that the safeguards are there not for the interests of the British people but for those of the CBI. No wonder that no one, New Labour or Conservative, is keen to rebut. For those opposed to the Lisbon Treaty, it is obvious that these safeguards will not work. For the Conservatives, there can be no question that all the four safeguards the government claims to have put in place against the provisions of the Charter, the provisions of its Title IV in particular, will, in the end, fail, because the European Court of Justice can interpret these provisions in cases concerning other EU member states, and that such interpretations will then be legally binding also for the United Kingdom. Again it may seem surprising that nowhere in this debate, at least as long as we abstract from the contributions of those close to Old Labour, the content of these provisions as such is addressed. Nobody comes up with an argument why it may be good for the British people that their weekly working hours are not restricted as they are for the citizens of other EU countries. (c805, J. Straw, L) We have also negotiated an extensive package of safeguards. Four measures in particular have been put in place: the new wording of article 6 of the Lisbon treaty; the charter’s horizontal articles, found in articles 51 and 52; the revised official explanations accompanying the charter; and the binding protocol on page 172. (c806, J. Straw, L) It is our view that the protocol − it should be taken together with the other three safeguards, but this applies even to the terms of the protocol itself − contains the safeguards that the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the British Government seek. [...] It is very clear that the safeguards that [...] the courts, domestic or European, are being given no new powers to overrule the will of the House. (c813, D. Lidington, C) The trouble is that when one starts to examine those claims in any detail, one realises that the safeguards appear less than watertight, as the European Scrutiny Committee found in its most recent report.
112 Wolfgang Teubert (c814, D. Lidington, C) If there is not any doubt about that − if the UK’s position is safeguarded − why is paragraph 1.2 needed at all? (c816, J. Redwood, C) The European Court of Justice is a federalist, activist Court, which over time always makes judgments in favour of more European power, so why take the risk? (c826, E. Davey, LD) If one then wants to argue about the impact of the charter [...] or one is concerned about whether there are enough safeguards and protections, one only has to read the text in the surrounding documents. (c840, P Lilley, C) We need to remember that the ECJ will have the last say on what rights are. (c841, J. Trickett, L) It was clear that Tony Blair regarded what can only be called an opt-out as a major achievement in the negotiations. In his speech to the CBI to which I referred a few moments ago he said: “We will not allow the Charter of Fundamental Rights to open up interference with Britain’s labour laws and will not agree the new Constitution until we are sure that they are safeguarded.” (c846, D. Heathcoat-Amory, C) We know that the European Court of Justice is an activist, interventionist court with its own dynamic. (c852, J. Clappison, C) The House must face up to the fact that we are locking ourselves into a situation in which the final decision will be taken by the European Court of Justice. (c868, B. Prentice, L) The combination of those three measures − the wording of article 6, the horizontal articles and the official explanations − makes the charter’s scope and interpretation absolutely clear. However, we listened to concerns expressed about, in particular, the charter’s alleged interference with United Kingdom labour and social laws, and for the avoidance of any doubt we negotiated a fourth safeguard. It consists of a binding protocol […].
6.5 The argumentative role of interventions The British parliament has over centuries developed the culture of a debating club. By standing up, members can indicate that they want to ask the speaker a question, and more often than not the speaker will give way. She or he will then have to retort to the intervention spontaneously. Thus the sessions of the House of Commons create an atmosphere that is much livelier than those in many other parliaments in Europe. The interesting question is, though, whether these interactions aim to form a basis for a possible agreement, or whether they belong to an agon logon with winners and losers. I have selected three examples in the Lisbon Treaty debate in which there was an exchange of arguments. (c801) (D. Lidington, C) The right hon. Gentleman has asserted several times that nothing in the charter of fundamental rights creates new rights, and that the rights there already exist. However, in its website commentary on the treaty of Lisbon, the European
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Commission says that “the Treaty of Lisbon preserves existing rights while introducing new ones.” Is he saying that the Commission is wrong? (J. Straw, L) There is provenance for every one of the rights contained in the charter. [Hon. Members: “Provenance?”] Yes, provenance. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that he objects to a particular right, when he comes to make his speech, let him say in his own way to which of the rights he objects.
David Lidington places Jack Straw in a difficult position by pointing his finger at an obvious contradiction between his statement and that of the European Commission. Indeed, this is what is said about this issue (http://europa.eu/lisbon_treaty/glance/index_en.htm): Citizens’ rights and Charter of Fundamental Rights: the Treaty of Lisbon preserves existing rights while introducing new ones. In particular, it guarantees the freedoms and principles set out in the Charter of Fundamental Rights and gives its provisions a binding legal force. It concerns civil, political, economic and social rights.
Straw, of course, cannot admit such a contradiction. Neither can he disclaim what is written on the webpage, nor can he renege on what he just has said. His escape route is to create a smokescreen by using the word provenance which means, according to the “New Oxford Dictionary of English” (Clarendon 1998) ‘the place of origin or earliest known history of something’. It is not an admission that the issue of new rights can be viewed from different perspectives. (c868) (D. Gauke, C) Perhaps the Minister will answer a question put to the Lord Chancellor that he did not really address. If a country that does not have the benefit of the protocol takes a case to the European Court of Justice, which, on the basis of the charter, makes a decision, why will that decision not become part of EU law, and therefore applicable to the United Kingdom under our general EU treaty obligations? (B. Prentice L) That issue was raised a number of times by Opposition Members, which surprised me, given that the ECJ’s decisions have been binding since 1957 and the original treaty. They will continue to be binding in the same way. (D. Grieve, C) Will the Minister give way? (B. Prentice, L) Very briefly. (D. Grieve, C) If I may say so, the Minister has not answered the question that she has just been asked. It was a very specific question, to which, surely, the only answer can be that in such circumstances the protocol provides no protection whatsoever, because the charter will have been applied in this country through its incorporation in European Union law in a decision concerning another country. (B. Prentice, L) Again, the hon. Gentleman’s premise is false. No new rights have been created. Let me say to him, and also to the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) and the hon. Member for Aylesbury, that the protocol’s meaning and wording are very clear and that it is legally binding. It puts
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beyond doubt the fact that the charter simply cannot extend the powers of the courts to strike down UK laws, and that it does not introduce new justiciable rights.
We have seen above that the government do not like to be clear on the question if the provisions under the Charter’s Title IV can impact British law through the ECJ’s legally binding rulings. Here Bridget Prentice responds to David Gauke’s question with a very general reply that shrouds, in effect, the admission she wants to avoid. So she conceals it in a matter of course statement that on the surface seems to render the intervention as inappropriate. Dominic Grieve does not let her get away with this tactics and insists on an answer. But Prentice evades dealing with the argument by insisting that the Charter does not create new rights, which was not the question. Once more this demonstrates that in these kinds of debates one does not engage with the opponent’s argument but steps over it. (c893) (J. Redwood, C) Since then, this Government have given away massive rights, duties and powers that have nothing to do with the Common Market for which the British people voted. (M. Gapes, L) Surely the right hon. Gentleman cannot believe that the modest changes in this treaty or in the Amsterdam and Nice treaties are comparable with the massive expansion of European competence in Baroness Thatcher’s Single European Act? (M. Redwood, C) I suggest that the hon. Gentleman tries reading the different treaties. The Single European Act was, as its name describes, about market measures to try to promote a common market. I believe that a common market is created by having buyers and sellers and does not need nearly as much law as the European Union subsequently developed.
This example shows that both camps deal with arguments raised by the opposite camp in similar ways. Mike Gapes asks John Redwood whether the Single European Act does not confer more competence on the European institutions than the provisions of the Charter. The treaty is described in volume 9 of “German History in Documents and Images” (http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/Chapter15Doc11Intro.pdf) in these words: Nearly thirty years after the original treaties, the Single European Act proclaimed the completion of the common market within six years. In addition, the authority of the European Community would be expanded, decision-making mechanisms reformed, and goals for economic and currency union set in place.
But in his response, John Redwood reduces its remit to “market measures” and the promotion “of a common market”. In debates between opposite camps each of the two sides present their line of argumentation and tend to stick to it, whatever the other camp may say. One’s own arguments are not adapted to combat the opponents’ arguments. Variation is rather designed to be appreciated by the members of one’s own camp or by on-
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lookers, particularly by the text merchants who would have the final word in what is offered to the text-consuming public. Eurosceptics and those who want to give the United Kingdom a stronger voice in Europe do not talk to each other, at least not in public. They both want to make an impression on public opinion (or the opinions ventilated by the media) by the constant repetition of their respective mantras. The euroscepticism of the Tories is a reflection of the anti-European attitudes of the majority of the British media. However, in their argumentation, they have to align these sentiments with the expectations of those interests whose support they need to come into power, for instance the CBI. This is why they attack European integration not in those areas which the CBI supports, i.e. the free movement of goods, services and capital, but in areas potentially harmful to them, such as workers’ rights. They can rely on the fact that any kind of eurosceptic argumentation will resonate with the deeply entrenched misgivings of large parts of British society over Continental customs, values and ideas. New Labour finds itself between the rock of trade union expectations and the hard place of having to rely on the support of British industry. They are supposed to fight for a deregulated European market (as envisaged by the Treaty of Lisbon), which is what the CBI want, and they know that to reach this goal they have to accept a modicum of fundamental rights, which is what the unions would want, but not the CBI and not the media industry. The result is a debate that seems utterly bizarre. It is a masterpiece in avoiding a discussion of the content of the Charter it claims to deal with. With the exception of the few Labour members close to the trade union movement, whose contributions are carefully quarantined by the other members, nobody loses a word about the human or fundamental rights at stake for the British people. Instead we have a debate that discusses endlessly the illusory sovereignty of Britain and the British parliament. It is a debate not about sharing values but about preserving British opt-outs. The Conservative opposition argues that the Labour government has failed to safeguard Britain from the catastrophic content of the Charter. The Labour majority argues that for Britain the Charter is void and empty. 7. Arguments for fundamental human rights? What I wanted to show is that arguments often do not work the way we think they do or, at least, should do. Most arguments are about texts. We tend to believe that they should persuade or even convince other people of the truth of the matter, or, at least, of the feasibility of a certain interpretation of what has been said. But a parliamentary debate in a multi-party democracy, or at least a system of two parties, does not seek agreement. It is a contest aiming at victory over the other contestants. Victory would invalidate the arguments of the defeated parties. For the political discourse in Western democracies, we should not hope for a collaborative approach in which members of one camp would engage with the arguments
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of the other camp in order to come up with a share interpretation. Such an approach would be the certain end of multi-party democracy as we are used to it. It is, however, an approach much used in more collectively organised communities. We find it, for instance, in boardroom meetings, in congregations of Church hierarchy and in the parliamentary systems of one-party states. But this collaborative approach is destined to fail if it aims at a single truth rather than at the temporary feasibility of a given interpretation. The kommunikative Vernunft (“communicative rationality”) of Jürgen Habermas seems to promise a gradual approximation towards truth. But whoever asserts truth excludes all other voices. Political systems laying claim to truth are bound to fail as they do not allow the amount of variation necessary for adapting to new situations. Arguments do not lead to truth, they give room for innovation, for a new interpretation of the matters on the table. Plurivocality is essential, whether in the agonistic political systems of the West or in the collaborative one-party systems in other parts of the world. As long as Habermas’ universal pragmatics is in search of truth rather than meaning, it is bound to fail. No argumentation, however seriously it is taken, will ever reveal the truth. Thus it is no wonder that Kenneth Gergen, the wise old man of social constructionism, despairs of the role of arguments. In his paper “Construction in Contention” he (2001:420) writes: I believe all arguments are subject to multiple forms of deconstruction. All are semiotically spongy, politically and morally saturated, and born of particular cultures in particular locations of history. [...] There will be no ineluctable conclusions; all will ultimately remain undecidable.
His conclusion (2001:431): In the end I find myself caught up in deliberations about the nature of argumentation itself. [...] I no longer find the tradition of [academic] argumentation a viable one. The grounds are no longer compelling, and the rationale for participation unclear. Yet in order to sustain the dialogue, I find myself nevertheless drawn into the ritual.
To do justice to the role of arguments we have to shed the belief that they help us to find the truth, whether in the Cartesian paradigm or the paradigm of social epistemology. Arguments have their point in the collaborative construction of more or less conflicting realities. A discursively constructed reality is never true; it is an interpretation of the (textualised) content on the table. Some will accept it as the result of a negotiation, others will stick to their own interpretation. Yet in any case today’s interpretations will become part of the content on tomorrow’s table and will be superseded by new interpretations. To permute, reformulate and vary arguments time and again creates the mutations needed for adaptive change. These will be the variants that have an impact on subsequent contributions. As long as the iterability we observe in all argumentation is masked by difference, indeed by Derridean differance, it can result in
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something new. Future debates will tell us which of the mutations will survive and have an impact on future interpretations. Why then does the discussion of fundamental human rights in the Treaty of Lisbon debate seem so void of any noteworthy innovation? Why has there been so little discussion of the content and the rationale of these rights? Why do intelligent members of parliament work so hard to avoid what could have been the core question? One reason might be that the arthritic political systems of the Western world often do not allow for an amount of variation and reformulation that would be sufficient to engender novelty. Perhaps today’s media industry has such a grip on the production of texts in the public sphere that they can suppress the emergence of potentially successful mutations. Could it be that these text merchants encourage the political parties to use their respective sets of arguments? In the end, then, it could be the media industry itself which determines when it is time to assign new arguments to existing groups. A discussion of the value of fundamental human rights for British citizens may not have been deemed feasible. The media industry is not keen to offer consumers what it perhaps sees as a can of worms. In such a scenario, it would be the media industry which exercises ultimate control over arguments. Text producers who want to sell their product will learn quickly what they are supposed to say and what not. Therefore the fundamental human rights, as we find them on the shelves of the text merchants, have to be for all practical purposes vacuous. Their sole raison d’être is the sense of identity they give us. It is us who have them, and it is them, those people outside the ‘civilised world’, who must buy them from us. Whether we look at the reality constructed by Labour or the Conservatives, by the CBI or by the TUC, does not seem matter much. The parliamentary debates in which our politicians are engaged are but exhibition fights. Text producers have morphed into something very similar to Hollywood’s script writers whose task is to make us happy and to turn harmless entertainment into the media industry’s profit. Arguments are reduced to the witty repartees we expect from fast-talking screwball comedies. It should be added as a footnote that this House of Commons debate never made it into any of the national media. As far as I can see it did not leave a single trace in any subsequent text. References Cooren, François. 2006. “The Organizational World as a Plenum of Agencies”. Communication as Organization ed. by François Cooren, James R. Taylor & Elizabeth J. van Every, 81-100. London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Derrida, Jacques. 1989. Limited Inc. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1965. Truth and Method. 2nd ed. London: Continuum. Gergen, Kenneth. 1999. An Invitation to Social Construction. London: Sage. Gergen, Kenneth. 2001. “Construction in Contention. Toward consequential resolutions”. Theory and Psychology 11:3.419-432. Longino, Helen. 2002. The Fate of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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Mill, John Stuart. 1962 [1859]. On Liberty. London: Collins. Peirce, Charles S. 1958. Selected Writings. New York: Dover Publications. Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Teubert, Wolfgang. 2000. “A Province of a Federal Superstate, Ruled by an Unelected Bureaucracy. Keywords of the Euro-sceptic discourse in Britain”. Attitudes Towards Europe ed. by Colin Good, Andreas Musolff, Petra Points & Ruth Wittlinger, 45-88. Abingdon: Ashgate.
Logical and Rhetorical Rules of Debate Adelino Cattani University of Padua
The opposition ‘logic/rhetoric’ represents a fundamental cultural antagonism. Surprising as it may seem, contemporary revival of the art of rhetoric has not been primarily promoted by scholars or professional users of rhetoric but developed itself through alternative, unusual paths, such as those of epistemology, logic and science. This is the case of the theory of knowledge (Polanyi) or of the improvements brought to informal logic by Perelman and Toulmin. As far as our specific interest in rhetoric is concerned, significant contributions to the history of science as well as to the Philosophy of Science have been made (by Thomas Kuhn among many others). At the core we always find the same eternal and unresolved dilemma opposing truth to persuasion, i.e. to be true or to persuade/convince someone to believe that something is true. Persuasion and conviction are intimately connected with debate.
1. The three dimensions of debate In debate we can distinguish at least three different and general dimensions: the logic and epistemic dimension, the rhetorical and dialectical dimension, and the behavioural and moral dimension. –
Logic and epistemic requirements and implications There are two theses and two opponents confronting on a rational investigation. We apply the rules of convincing-demonstrative reasoning. Confrontation occurs at the epistemic level.
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Rhetorical and dialectical requirements and implications There are two parties, both of them employing all their reasoning tools to win the debate. We apply the rules of persuasive reasoning and argumentation. Confrontation occurs at the dialectical level.
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Behavioural and moral requirements and implications Debate takes place in conformity with specific behavioural rules. We apply the code of politeness and the so-called ‘golden rule’ of universal moral vali-
120 Adelino Cattani dity which says: “Treat others as you would like to be treated”. 1 Confrontation occurs at the ethical level. Another way to formulate the initial question could be exemplified as follows, through a disjunctive or coordinating couple, that is ‘logic or rhetoric’, or ‘logic and rhetoric’. Our starting point should be, then, the Aristotelic definition of rhetoric as antístrophos tê dialectikê (Rhetoric I.1354 a), usually translated as “a counterpart to Dialectic”. Otherwise, we could rely on Ralph Johnson’s theory of “manifest rationality”, based on the identity of “to be rational” and “to look rational” (Johnson 2000:164). More simply, I will begin with two ordinary definitions of logic and of rhetoric, keeping in mind that – as John Austin would say – everyday language is not the last but unquestionably the first word. Logic is usually considered to be the science of correct reasoning. Rhetoric is commonly considered as being the art of persuading. On the mere basis of these two definitions, logic and rhetoric appear to be opposite notions and faculties: firstly, because science and art are indeed different practices; and secondly, because the notion of ‘correctness’ highly differs from the notion of ‘persuasion’. Moreover, if we admit that who is expected to be correct can potentially be persuasive, things get more complicated: if duties (i.e. duty to respect logical rules) and rights (i.e. right to use rhetorical moves) are in conflict, what can we do? Here is an example. Family is the theme under discussion: (1) Family must be defended and encouraged. (2) Family must first be encouraged, then defended!
It would be useful to mention that this is not a hypothetical situation but a dialogue exchanged between Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini and the journalist interviewing him on February 18th, 2007. You defend and encourage what you believe in. But encouragement plays a more important role, leaning towards the idea that it is justified or right to do so. And the way to enhance the possibilities of any encouragement to succeed is not only logic and not logic itself, but also rhetoric: in real argumentative situations, in actual debates and public discussions, and even in a lucky case of a perfect dialogue, logic especially works to defend, rhetoric to promote. Logical demonstration and rhetorical argumentation have two features in common: the same (inferential) nature, and the same function (the purpose of 1
This rule has originally been formulated as positive (“Do to others what you would have them do to you” − Matthew 7,12, Luke 6,31) or as negative (“Do not do to others what you wouldn’t the others do to you”).
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proving). But they also bear important differences: they have different subject matters, different addressees, different building principles, different languages, different contexts of use and different evaluation standards. According to these premises, logic and rhetoric can interact with one another on the basis of four different categories: exclusion, complementarity, partial overlap, and inclusion. The first case, that of exclusion, does not allow the use of rhetorical argumentation in logic or in science because it has a negative function. In the second hypothetical situation, that of complementarity, argumentation is possible in logic and science but its function remains marginal and occasional, that is to say not relevant. As for the third case, that of partial overlap, argumentation is useful and relevant, and holds a heuristic function. In the fourth and last case, that of inclusion, argumentation is essential and plays a crucial role. Negative and positive characteristics of the art of rhetoric can be schematically displayed in the tables below: Table 1: Traits of rhetoric RHETORIC
negative traits
positive traits
empty rhetoric, vacuous speech stylistic art elocutio practice of persuasion manipulation, suasion discursive technique natural talent, un-teachable ability
vir bonus dicendi peritus argumentative art elocutio + inventio, dispositio theory of persuasion persuasion by argumentation global strategic behaviour teachable ability
Table 2: Faults and values of rhetoric RHETORIC
fault
value
cognitive
vicious reasoning because groundless or based on arational/irrational elements empty verbalism figures
argumentative schemes heuristically valid and apt to grasp the manifold aspects of reality educational value reasoning
methodological
fallacious method, based on superficial, enthymematic and aphoristic formulations
critical open-mindedness
ethical
Rhetoric is blameworthy for being deceitful and responsible for simulating pseudo-truths.
Rhetoric is associated to prudence, anti-authoritarianism, and challenge.
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Social
Rhetoric is dangerous because of its Rhetoric represents and promotes partiality, demagogy, and seductive broad-mindedness, antitendency. dogmatism, and democracy, tolerance.
IADA, the “International Association for Dialogue Analysis” is an Association devoted to dialogue. Let me just say a word about the necessity of praising dialogue, a practice which has always been praised and highly commended. Clearly, I am not referring to dialogue as occasional talk, nor as theatrical performance, nor even as what we informally call a “conversation between deaf people”, the first case being frivolous, the second artificial, and the third almost too real. By dialogue, we refer to an argumentation-based conversation, the act of conférer, as Michel de Montaigne would say (Montaigne 1588:III, chap.8), that is a debate. Concentrating on this specific meaning, different types of dialogue can be defined according to subject, starting point, purposes, interlocutor’s relationships, levels of knowledge and, most of all, technical tools used: these tools can have logical or rhetorical nature. How does rhetoric work in the dialogic process compared to the way it works in polemic dynamics? And what is the ratio of logic and rhetoric to the above-mentioned types of discursive exchange? From a theoretical point of view, logic appears to be the most powerful component; but from a pragmatic point of view, it is not so, because even logic is not exempt from insidious fallacies. Provisionally and questionably, I would suggest that we should use two categories: to convince and to persuade, to differentiate two different kinds of effectiveness. The persuasion dialogue, that is the ‘dialogue made to persuade’, aims at modifying people’s opinions and behaviours, while the ‘dialogue made to convince’ aims at gaining the intellectual approval of the interlocutor(s). I would not necessarily oppose them, however, confronting their respective rules and moves, logic and rhetoric, the strategies of persuasion and the strategies of conviction. Therefore, the question is about the equilibrium of logic and rhetoric in two different contexts: on the one hand, when I want my interlocutor to be ‘merely’ persuaded, and on the other hand, when I want my interlocutor to be ‘merely’ convinced. In this light, I will have to deal with obvious but problematic theoretical couples which bear philosophical, methodological and disciplinary implications. These couples are: logic and rhetoric, conviction and persuasion, dialogue and polemic. 2. Persuasion and conviction First tendency: to keep distance from rhetoric, especially from rhetorical moves in favour of logical rules. Preferable expressions to be used are ‘rules’ in logical terms, and ‘moves’ in rhetorical terms. Logical rules are clear and universally approved while rhetorical moves are questionable and debatable.
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Second tendency: to keep distance from persuasion in favour of conviction. Conviction and persuasion appear different; Plato, Kant, and Perelman agree on this. Let me quote a passage from Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1966:III.237f.) in which he focuses on this substantial difference: Il est aisé de convaincre un enfant que ce qu’on lui veut enseigner est utile: mais ce n’est rien de le convaincre, si l’on ne sait le persuader. En vain la tranquille raison nous fait approuver ou blâmer; il n’y a que la passion qui nous fasse agir.
Simply considering the two English terms to convince and to persuade, we easily realize they are not synonymous. As a matter of fact, we can say: (3) It is difficult to convince someone that my statement is true.
or (4) It is almost impossible to convince a prejudiced person that her/his opinions do not tally with the facts. (from Browne 1987)
even though there is no linguistic structure of the type *convincing someone to do something. However, it is possible to persuade someone to do something. The verb to convince is only used in the sense of ‘convincing someone of a fact’, or to state ‘that a fact is what it is’. If you aim to induce somebody to do something, you will better use the verb to persuade. The verb to convince seems referring to the realm of thinking, not that of doing; it does not serve to induce somebody to act, but to gain intellectual agreement and assent. In Italian we also find lexical evidence for a difference between the two verbs. For example, the expression logica della persuasione (“logic of persuasion”) is admitted, while the expression retorica della convinzione (“rhetoric of conviction”) is very unconventional. Terms like rational, reasoned, logical are hardly ever associated with persuasion, while terms like emotional, passionate, rhetorical do not fit conviction. Third tendency: to keep distance from polemic in favour of dialogue. In terms of discursive exchange, dialogue and polemic bear some mutual similarities, but from a social and ethical point of view they appear to be exact contraries. Nevertheless, in a dialogic exchange, if the interlocutors are firmly convinced of their own opinions, they easily end up using and are almost forced to use rhetorical, persuasive and polemical tools. This can also happen in those debate situations where there are more answers than input questions, and the answers are relevant and clear, instead of elusive, and are supported by true or at least plausible data; this, of course, happens a fortiori in the usual context in which debate takes place using logically wrong, evasive, irrelevant, and impolite replies. The study and practice of debate – meant primarily as ‘public debate’ – have to deal with some basic and opposite conditions: co-operation and conflict, plain dialogue and crude polemic, friendly conversation and quarrel. Is a good discus-
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sion compatible with polemic, persuasion and rhetoric, or not? In other words: is it compatible with the desire to win, or not? Since ‘good’ means basically ‘honest’ and ‘logic’, we should determine if ethic and logic, on the one hand, and rhetoric, on the other hand, are in conflict, if conviction and persuasion are really such different things, if the apology of dialogue (which seems to get along with logic) and the apology of polemic (which seems to get along with rhetoric) may coexist. 2 I would try to answer these questions starting from another question, concerning persuasion and conviction: why does the term dis-suasion exist while there is no entry for *dis-conviction ? Let us say that rhetoric is the art of persuasion; we could not say that it is the art of conviction. Persuasion and conviction, as already shown, are not interchangeable words/concepts. And the reason why they are not interchangeable can be explained stressing an odd and interesting lexical phenomenon: the antonym of the verb to persuade is to dissuade. So, what is the antonym of to convince, a verb which is often used (properly or improperly), as synonym for to persuade? Leafing through the pages of a synonym and antonym dictionary, one can notice that the antonym of ‘an act aiming to convince or persuade someone’ is a word/verb which bears the idea of ‘diverting’, ‘urging’, ‘exhorting someone against (someone else)’, ‘persuading not to do something’; the antonym of the verb to persuade is the verb to dissuade, while looking for the antonym of to convince a symmetrical correspondence cannot be found. Consequently, admitting the significance of the common language, one ends up wondering why the word dis-suasion exists, whereas there is no entry for *disconviction, that is the equivalent antonym of the semantic family including to convince and conviction . The situation can be represented as follows: – –
to persuade/to dissuade to convince/to *dis-convince
In everyday language, the difference between the two terms appears clear, and – as already explained – it is a distinction developed theoretically by many authors. It can be summarized in this manner: – – –
Persuasion refers primarily to the realm of actions; conviction refers primarily to the realm of thoughts. Persuasion concerns mainly manipulation, it has to do with the idea of ‘mastering’ which seems to be absent in conviction. Persuasion is an act which makes use of emotions, while conviction does not involve any pathos.
2 The simple fact that IADA (International Association for the Dialogue Analysis) and IASC (International Association for the Study of Controversies) exist and co-exist, the first devoted to dialogue, the second to controversy, seems to me a sort of implicit, positive answer to our doubt.
Logical and Rhetorical Rules of Debate 125
– –
– –
Conviction appears to be stronger and more powerful than persuasion. Unlike ‘to persuade’, the verb ‘to convince’ is synonym for ‘to demonstrate’, ‘to prove’, ‘to verify’, ‘to induce someone to do/think something by means of verification’. Unlike conviction, persuasion has a sophistical nature. Persuasion is centred chiefly on the speaker, it enhances one’s will and ability to modify other people’s opinions and behaviour; conviction is chiefly centred on the addressee, focuses on one’s capacity of being convinced and evaluating rationally. The convinced addressee is more active and enterprising than the persuaded addressee, who remains more passive and receptive.
In short: conviction is a more crystalline, more rationally supported and more firmly guaranteed notion. The standard exemplification of the persuasion/conviction dynamics, according to the way they are used in English and Italian 3 , is clarified in the following table: Table 3: Persuasion and conviction
persuasion
conviction
action manipulation pathos, ethos weakness uses any means sophistry more speaker’s action / less addressee’s involvement
thought no manipulation logos strength relies on proof and evidence no sophistry more addressee’s action / less speaker’s involvement
This elementary linguistic test and this rough comparison suggest that the verb to persuade should be basically connected to the idea of a process, while the verb to convince should be basically connected to the idea of a product. A process is adaptable (like any work in progress), while a product is an end result, a halt (like any acquired right, like, for instance, the right to retire). Even democracy falls into the category of the ‘processes’; it is not a ‘static condition’, because it is to be acquired rather than simply transferred or exported. However, this opposition between conviction and persuasion has to be seen as the normal juxtaposition between demonstration and argumentation: we usually employ argumentation, relegating demonstration to very few and specific cases. Consequently, our persuasion can only become conviction within a narrow range 3
The distinction between two kinds of belief is also present in Kant’s vocabulary: Überzeugung (more objective) and Überredung (more subjective). The Italian translation by Giorgio Colli and others corresponds respectively to convinzione and persuasione (see Critica della ragion pura. Milano: Adelphi. 1976:797f.). Cf. Critik der reinen Fernunft. 1787. Part II, ch. II.III. Cf. also Critik der Urteilskraft. 1799. §53, where Überredung is connected with Überlistung.
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of specific situations: for example, if the subject matter or the method are appropriate, if we can apply the principle of non-contradiction. Let us consider the following example: in March 2007, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, a journalist of “La Repubblica”, an Italian newspaper, was finally set free after intense negotiations in exchange for the release of five Taliban prisoners. Under Italian law, once a kidnapping occurs, all personal property and assets are frozen in order to prevent the family of the victim from paying a ransom to the kidnappers. Some parties suggested that this law should be abolished on the basis of the simple consideration that if negotiations are possible on an international scale (as Mastrogiacomo’s case shows), they should be equally possible on the internal scale. According to the reporter, this was not a provocative proposition, but a simple conclusion issuing from the principle of noncontradiction, a conclusion which has both logical and rhetorical power at the same time. It is what we could call an argumented and intermediate conclusion, with no final or universal implications, apt to win provisional agreement between two parties, not necessarily all the parties involved. I would like to consider another example, concerning the Italian mafia: a Sicilian judge said that the mafia is not going to be defeated through the simple appeal to morality; it is mandatory to make people understand that this ‘rebellion’ to the mafia-culture can be useful and profitable, that legality would bring profit, combining logic with interests, rationality with benefits. Blaise Pascal said something similar about the idea of ‘necessity’ to demonstrate, first, that religion is a good thing, and then that religion is true. In a letter to Ferruccio Rossi Landi (January 20th, 1960) Norberto Bobbio writes: “An order is an order even if it is not obeyed; an advise is an advise even if it is not taken; a medical instruction is a medical instruction even if it is not followed” (cf. Quaranta 2005:94f.). A convincing speech is considered so even if the addressee is not convinced. This is why there cannot be, in my opinion, an act called *dis-conviction. We can persuade or convince somebody of something. However, even though we can dis-suade somebody, we cannot *dis-convince him/her. The fact that there is no lexicographic entry indicating the antonym of the act of convincing is an irregularity which tells us a lot; and it is also noteworthy that there does not exist an antonym of the verb to dedicate, which should be hypothetically *to disdedicate. 3. Logic and rhetoric in debate: acceptability and effectiveness of argumentative exchanges There are rules of fair disputations and moves of clever polemists. And there are two different levels of analysis of the debate: the normative level and the descriptive level. The descriptive level offers a realistic representation of a real situation, with all the related rhetorical moves and rights. The prescriptive level provides a code of behaviour to obtain the best or the maximum results from a
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debate, and we set rules and duties. Actually, the most suitable solution should promote the amalgamation of rules and moves, duties and rights, in order to develop a final spectrum of usable, not utopian discipline-tools for debating people. Before getting to the core of the problem, I would like to quote two passages from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day thou canst not then be false to any man. (I.3.78-80) Beware / of entrance to a quarrel, but being in, beart’t that th’opposed may beware of thee. Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice; take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement. (I.3.65-67)
These passages, taken from the advice given by Polonius (in character of both wise Counsellor of State and good father) to his son Laertes on the verge of leaving, are complementary to one another. In this same spirit, I will try to present some customary rules/duties and some objectionable rights/moves of debate. 4. Customary rules and duties of debate –
–
– –
–
– –
We should not think we are infallible, we do not make mistakes, our ideas are untouchable and our arguments indisputable. We should remain open to doubt, be open-minded and willing to recognize the value of our opponent’s arguments. We should look for a common starting point. It is essential to identify some shared premises; we would not be able to measure anything if we use two different rulers. No conclusion is possible if we start debating according to different judgement parameters, especially if we are unaware of this difference. We should conform to what we believe is true. We should not make it seem that our affirmations are true if we know they are false or purely subjective. We should give our counterpart the evidence and proof she/he needs. If our interlocutor asks us to demonstrate our thesis, we must do it, or at least demonstrate that her/his questioning is pointless or absurd. We should not avoid objections nor beat around the bush. The possibility and the promptness to accept and deal with criticism are the so-called raison d’être, the quintessence of debate; refusing this interaction is against the purposes of debate itself. We should not put the burden of proof on the opposite party without justification. We should be relevant: the contrary (irrelevance and impertinence) are one of the main causes of fallacies and failure in discussion.
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– –
– –
We should be clear. Ambiguity is a great resource for comedians, not for the arguer, who is a reasoning subject. We should not distort our opponent’s position. When reporting on the facts and rephrasing other people’s words, we should apply the so-called ‘principle of charity’, that forces – positively – to be understanding, and – negatively – to avoid misrepresentation. We should always try to get the best possible interpretation out of other people’s positions. We should, if an impasse occurs, suspend our judgement, unless this suspension causes greater damage. We should accept to re-open and reconsider the case, in case we receive new information.
Among these rules and duties are Grice’s four cooperation maxims (quantity, quality, relevance, manner) (Grice 1975:41-58), some of the pragma-dialectical principles and precepts for critical discussion introduced by Frans van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst (2004:chap.8), and the so-called ‘principle of charity’. Those who violate these rules also violate the integrity of debate (a minor problem for those who aim at showing off their dexterity in debating) and can be reproached for fallacious behaviours (because we know that fallacies are often behavioural faults rather than logical and cognitive weaknesses). But what happens if the opponent does not respect these duties and precepts? The hypotheses entailed by this answer have not been satisfactorily considered in the educational process yet. Among those who coped and have been coping with this topic, I think of Don Lorenzo Milani and his famous educational manifesto (“pamphlet”) (Scuola di Barbiana 1967): he was firmly convinced that a person who is able to use a large vocabulary and a wide set of discursive techniques could not be easily mastered by her/his interlocutor. We have already stated that we tend to keep our distance from persuasion. Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric is dúnamis perì ékaston toû theorêsai tò endekómenon pithanón, which describes the faculty of discovering any available means of persuasion for/in every situation (Rhetoric 1355 b 25-26). Heinrich Lausberg’s definition of rhetoric is “the system of rules that assures the success of persuasion” (Lausberg 19672:§ 92). Aristotle defines rhetoric as dúnamis, that is a faculty or a ‘theoretical’ activity aiming at digging up all the available means of persuasion: “the task of rhetoric is not to persuade but to identify what is apt to persuade in every field” (Rhetoric 1355 b 11). Lausberg (confirming the ordinary sense of the common idea/concept of rhetoric) includes the idea of success among the goals of the art of rhetoric, in the same way one would include the recovery of a patient among the goals of medical sciences. These two definitions seem similar; in fact, they are extremely different. Aristotle’s definition deals with the concept of ‘value’, while Lausberg’s deals with the concept of ‘danger’ (the dangerous potential of rhetoric). This ‘danger’
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occurs normally when someone is firmly convinced of something and firmly believes in something. Conviction is a primary power. Conviction is a product. The non-irrelevant way to gain conviction (i.e. to get this ‘product’) is a process which involves and combines logical and rhetorical moves. 5. Debatable rights and moves of debate One of our questions was whether a good discussion is compatible with the will to win or not; which brings up another question: whether ethic and logic on the one hand, and rhetoric on the other hand, are necessarily in conflict or not; and this is correlated to the question whether the apology of dialogue (that seems to concern the logical and ethical aspects of debate) and the apology of polemic (that seems to concern the rhetorical aspect of debate) can coexist. A possible answer to this dilemma should take into account – besides logical and rhetorical – behavioural rules of debate, including duties and rights, the quiet power of logic and the passionate power of rhetoric. We often appeal to the ethics of debate and its complex of rules. A suitable and familiar example is the decalogue or “ten commandments” of critical discussion (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2004:chap.8). However, the code tends to remain practically unapplied and theoretically inapplicable, unusable. We would like to try to examine and combine the normative rules of a perfect discussion with the descriptive moves of factual exchanges, keeping in mind Martin Luther King’s statement on civil rights: “What is troubling is not the cry of brutal people, but the silence of the honest people”, a statement which recalls Don Lorenzo Milani’s positions. Consequently, a serious problem in debate is not the infringement of the decalogue but the fact that the participant cannot possibly detect and oppose any logical, rhetorical and behavioural transgressions to the system. Here is a provisional list of rights and moves for debating, whose every single statement, needless to say, is debatable. –
–
–
–
We have the right to cast doubt on everything, because nothing is unquestionable. Right is also a duty and a pleasure, the pleasure to reply just for the sake of replying. We have the right of not telling the whole truth. “I do not tell lies, but I do not tell the entire truth either, nor tell it to anybody”. This does not mean I lie; it means I accept the idea that truth (or the best available option) comes out of a confrontation of two one-sided perspectives openly defended or supported. We have the right to elude our interlocutor’s game plan. We have room for freedom by replying, which allows us to reply in many different ways, going from the perfect and perfectly appropriate answer to the perfectly inappropriate answer. We have the right to defend ourselves and our positions, using passive and/or active tools. The right to defend oneself at trial or in debate is absolute and mandatory.
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– – –
– –
–
We have the right to finish our discourse. It is an elementary right, but not always guaranteed. We have the right to pursue victory, or a successful result. Moreover, as a corollary: we have the right to be co-operatively competitive. We have the right to use our arguments. Since the people involved in debate must be at least two, the counterpart can choose to veto her/his opponent’s unacceptable or precisely debatable moves. We have the right to turn to a third party, an audience or a judge. We have the right to be judged for what we say and think, but not for what we do. It is not fair to solely criticize behaviours, when we are debating ideas and opinions. The judge must condemn the guilty, not the guilt; in logical and argumentative contexts we must attack fallacy, not the fallacious man. We have the right to change rules and rights of debate and we can do that also during debate. People involved in a cooperative debate can reformulate the existing rules, revise debate procedures, define what is allowed and what is not, agree or disagree on the organizational aspects. One of the debate points is how to debate, which does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion, but at least a certain procedural correctness, that is the formal and basic truth condition.
It would be worth clarifying some concepts which belong to the realm of argumentation and which are often considered as almost-synonyms: they are ‘strength’, ‘effectiveness’, and ‘acceptability’. There is a certain confusion of meanings. Are the strength, the effectiveness, the acceptability of an argument descriptive or normative characteristics? In other words, and using John Stuart Mill’s categorization (Mill 1867:24), is the argumentation as strong, as effective and as acceptable as a given object is visible or as a given object is desirable? And visible does mean – descriptively – ‘what can be seen’; desirable does mean – normatively – ‘what is worthy of desire’. Unlike other discriminating criteria of evaluation (such as validity and relevance), the strength, the effectiveness and the acceptability of an argument depend on the simple fact of the argumentation’s succeeding in persuading or convincing the audience/addressee. The effectiveness appears to be a descriptive instead of a normative judgement. Consequently, the study of effectiveness is also connected with psychology, which can explain why one argumentation works better than the other. Marcello Pera, at times when he was working on epistemology, suggested the use of the opposite couple individual vs. community: “The judge of effectiveness is the individual; the judge of strength is the community” (Pera 1991:155). But this distinction makes things worse because the new dissociation arouses further suspicions about argumentation. The process of discussion/debate is one of the most multifaceted human activities. We may even say that any perfect discussion, like any perfect society or perfect language, is not possible, is not necessary, and perhaps not desirable.
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Debate is a third option between monologue and dialogue, between a cruel duel and an indulgent duet: our pinpoint appears to be an honourable and appropriate alternative to me. A good politician neither restricts herself/himself to theory, indicating values, declaring principles and asserting ideals, nor confines herself/himself to pure action, managing reality unaware of principles, values and ideals. Similarly, the good ‘discussant’ uses neither merely logical tools nor merely rhetorical moves. In debate, the problem does not concern the use of rhetorical moves (which seems to be unavoidable), but the fact that people attending the debate can possibly risk not detecting and counterbalancing intentional and/or unintentional fallacies, mistakes and tricks: if, using logical and rhetorical tools, we succeed in counteracting and neutralising them from a purely theoretical point of view (i.e. in terms of purely intellectual categorization of strategies and techniques), we would greatly improve “dialogue analysis and practice” 4 . References Browne, Virginia, ed. 1987. Odd Pairs and False Friends. Bologna: Zanichelli. Cattani. Adelino. 20062. Botta e risposta. L’arte della replica. Bologna: Il Mulino. Spanish transl. 2003. Los usos de la retórica. Madrid: Alianza. Eemeren, Frans H. van & Rob Grootendorst. 2004. A Systematic Theory of Argumentation. The pragma-dialectical approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Finocchiaro, Maurice A. 1980. Galileo and the Art of Reasoning. Dordrecht: Reidel. Grice, Paul H. 1975. “Logic and Conversation”. Syntax and Semantics. Vol.3. Speech Acts ed. by Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan, 41-58. Chicago: Academic Press. Hanson, Norwood R. 1958. Patterns of Discovery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johnson, Ralph H. 2000. Manifest Rationality. London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Kuhn, Thomas. 19702. The Structure of Scientific Revolution. Chicago: The University of Chicago. Lausberg, Heinrich. 19672. Elemente der literarischen Rhetorik. München: Max Hueber. Mill, John-Stuart. 18673. Utilitarianism. London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dryer. Montaigne, Michel de. 15885. “De l’art de conférer”. Essais III. 8. Paris: Abel L’Angelier. Pera, Marcello. 1991. Scienza e retorica. Roma & Bari: Laterza. Perelman, Chaim & Lucy Olbrechts-Tyteca. 1958. Traité de l’argumentation. Paris: PUF. Polanyi, Michael. 1958. Personal Knowledge. Towards a post-critical philosophy. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Quaranta, Mario (ed.). 2005. “Carteggio inedito Norberto Bobbio − Ferruccio Rossi Landi: due filosofi a confronto (parte seconda 1956-1961)”. Foedus 13.65-105. Rossi, Paolo. 1977. Immagini della scienza. Roma: Editori Riuniti. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1966. Emile. Paris: Edition Garnier-Flammarion. Scuola di Barbiana. 1967. Lettera a una professoressa. Firenze: Libreria Editrice Fiorentina. Toulmin, Stephen. 1958. The Uses of Argument. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4
In this view, I would suggest to rename our Association from IADA to IADAP (International Association for Dialogue Analysis and Practice), hoping that in 2008 there will be the opportunity to celebrate, together with logicians and rhetoricians, the 50th anniversary of Hanson’s, Toulmin’s, Perelman’s and M. Polanyi’s main works.
Rhetoric in a Dialectical Framework Fallacies as derailments of strategic manoeuvring Frans H. van Eemeren & Peter Houtlosser University of Amsterdam
The fallacies are one of the most significant research topics in the study of argumentation. After Hamblin (1970) revealed the inadequacy of the dominant Logical Standard Treatment of the fallacies, several kinds of alternative treatments have been developed. The “pragma-dialectical” alternative developed by van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984, 1992, 2004) involves replacing the logical standard definition of fallacies as “arguments that seem valid but are not valid” by a broader communicative definition of fallacies as pragmatic argumentative moves that are “violations of dialectical rules for critical discussion”. To account for the deceptive role the fallacies may have, van Eemeren and Houtlosser (2002) have taken this approach a crucial step further by bringing in the notion of “strategic manoeuvring”: the systematic combination in argumentative discourse of the pursuit of dialectical and rhetorical. Fallacies can be analysed as derailments of legitimate ways of strategic manoeuvring that can only be identified in contextualized argumentative discourse.
1. Introduction The subject we are dealing with in this paper – fallacies in argumentative exchanges – is a crucial topic in the study of argumentation. In our opinion, the way in which the fallacies are treated can even be seen as the ‘acid test’ for any normative theory of argumentation. Let us first turn to some real-life examples of fallacies, so that it becomes clear what the subject of our paper involves. The first example – noticed by Douglas Walton (1995:203f.) – is a paradigm case of the fallacious personal attack known as the argumentum ad hominem, here appearing in its abusive variant. The example is taken from an exchange that took place in the Canadian House of Commons in 1970. Prime Minister Trudeau had been asked to consider using a Jet-star government plane to send an informationgathering team to Biafra and he responded negatively by saying: (1) It would have to refuel in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean . . .
Whereupon the Member of Parliament Mr Hees – known for his drinking habits – retaliated by raising a point of order:
134 Frans H. van Eemeren & Peter Houtlosser
(2) On a point of order, Mr Speaker, I bought the plane for the government and I know it can make the flight with the proper stops on the way . . .
Mr Trudeau then finished this exchange off by making the following remark: (3) I do not think it would have to stop if the hon. Member went along and breathed into the tank.
By insinuating that the honorable Member Mr Hees is habitually drunk, the Prime Minister introduces here a textbook example of a direct personal attack, which was in this case killing. The example nicely illustrates how humor can be brought to bear not only to enliven the discussion and make it more relaxed, but also to get away with fallacies. The next example comes from an interview with the Dutch politician Femke Halsema, who is the leader of the Green Left Party. Like in other European countries, it became an issue in the Netherlands last year whether or not citizens of Turkish descent are prepared to recognize that in Turkey an Armenian genocide took place at the beginning of the 20th century. When asked in a radio interview whether any of the Turkish members of her Green Left Party would have any problems with this recognition, Ms Halsema replied: (4) We don’t have that kind of members because that would be bad for the party, wouldn’t it?
The fallacy in the reasoning here is that Ms Halsema just assumes that something is the case, that is: that her party does not have members who deny the Armenian genocide, because she wants it to be the case – a variant of the fallacy that is called argumentum ad consequentiam. For our last example we turn to the “Nigeria Spam Letters” (analyzed by Manfred Kienpointner 2006). As you will probably know, these Spam Letters were e-mail messages that were sent to a great many people in recent years to ask them for their assistance in transferring enormous amounts of money to the sender. Referring to the number of the section of the Nigerian law that forbids these fraudulent practices, they are now simply called “419 letters”. In one of these 419 letters, a barrister who calls himself Michael Chris presents himself as the legal adviser to an American couple called Mr and Mrs Brown. Mr Chris informs the addressee that the Browns had lived in Nigeria for 30 years before, in 2002, they died in a plane crash – the kind of tragic story that is usually told in 419 letters. The Browns, says Mr Chris, had no children and were good Christians. In his last will, Mr Brown had asked Mr Chris to sell all his property and give it to a ministry for the work of God. Mr Chris confesses that first he had wanted to embezzle the money (13,800.000 USD), but later he had an encounter with Christ, and, as a born again Christian, started to read the Bible. He now
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wants to fulfill Mr Brown’s last will. Looking for a good Christian, Mr Chris took refuge to the Internet and experienced what could be called a miracle: after my fervent prayer over it, […] you were nominated to me through divine revelation from God. Nigeria Spam Letters like this one appeal first of all to greed and have had a considerable impact on people who wanted to have a share in the money and therefore, as requested, sent money of their own to set the African capital free. It will be clear that it is not just an intellectual challenge but also an important social task to unmask the kind of fallacies upon which the success of these letters is based – in this case, for instance, a profane appeal to God that amounts to an abuse of authority known as the argumentum ad verecundiam. Although in Ms Halsema’s and Mr Trudeau’s case it may not be possible to calculate so precisely how many dollars their fallacies cost, viewed in the light of the need for guarding the quality of public discourse and our democratic proceedings, their significance may be even be greater. 2. Hamblin’s revolution in the study of fallacies From Antiquity onwards, the fallacies have been an important object of study. Aristotle examined them extensively, both in his dialectical and in his rhetorical studies. In the Topics, Aristotle’s treatise on dialectic, he placed the fallacies in the context of a debate between the attacker and the defender of a thesis in which the attacker attacks the thesis and the defender defends it. The attacker can win the debate first of all by refuting the defender’s thesis. Aristotle discusses correct moves the attacker can make to refute the defender’s thesis as well as incorrect moves that he considers fallacious. Among the fallacious moves is, for instance, petitio principii – the circular way of reasoning used in ‘begging the question’, and in Aristotle’s analysis a fallacious move because it assumes the truth of the thesis, which is precisely what is the issue of the dispute. In general, in Aristotle’s dialectical perspective, fallacies are false moves employed in the attacker’s efforts to refute the defender’s thesis. In Sophistical Refutations, Aristotle deals with the false ways of refuting a thesis that he ascribed to the popular debate experts known as the Sophists – hence the epithet “sophism”. In his Rhetoric, Aristotle discusses from a rhetorical perspective some fallacious refutations that are only apparent refutations. The fallacies have remained a popular subject of study and in the course of time a number of ‘new’ fallacies were discovered. Although in the nineteenth century the dialectical perspective was, largely due to the huge influence of bishop Whateley, replaced by a much broader logical perspective, the newly discovered fallacies were just added to the Aristotelian list. The Latin names that were given to many of them may suggest that they stem from the classical tradition, but this is not the case. The name argumentum ad hominem, for instance, comes from the 17th century philosopher John Locke.
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In 1970, the Australian philosopher Charles Hamblin caused a revolution in the study of fallacies through the publication of his book Fallacies. After having studied the leading logical textbooks, Hamblin was struck by the similarities between the treatments of the fallacies in the various textbooks. Each of the textbooks presented more or less the same list of fallacies and the fallacies were always explained in more or less the same way. Very often even the same examples were used. Hamblin suspected that the one author was just copying the other, without any further reflection. Hamblin observed that the “Standard Treatment” he had detected in the textbooks started from a Logical Standard Definition in which the fallacies were described as arguments that seem valid but are in fact not valid. Strangely, however, the treatment of the fallacies that was actually given was highly inconsistent with this definition. A great many of the fallacies that were treated in the logical textbooks were in fact no arguments, such as the argumentum ad hominem, or arguments that were certainly not invalid, such as ‘circular reasoning’, and there were also cases in which the fallacy that was described was not productive for an entirely different reason than invalidity, such as the argumentum ad verecundiam. It will be no surprise that these observations caused a lot of turmoil, although open-minded argumentation theorists saw immediately that Hamblin was right. Gradually, they came to share all his objections to the Logical Standard Definition of the fallacies. Nowadays, most argumentation theorists no longer consider ‘logical validity’ the sole criterion for fallaciousness. They also tend to agree that including a word like seems in the definition of fallacies, as happens in the Standard Definition, brings in an undesirable amount of psychologistic subjectivity. A certain argument may seem OK to us, but why would it seem OK to you if you know that it is invalid or otherwise false? In spite of their pertinence, Hamblin’s devastating criticisms were not always effective in practice. Let us first mention two extremely unproductive reactions. First, there were the leading logical textbooks: they were in most cases reprinted without any attempt being made to deal seriously with Hamblin’s objections. Perhaps the authors thought that their textbooks were selling well as it was – and what did their students know about Hamblin? The opposite extreme reaction to Hamblin consists of abandoning the treatment of the fallacies altogether (e.g., Lambert & Ulrich 1980). Besides these two extreme reactions one could have imagined that, as a third option, an easy way-out had been chosen by maintaining the Logical Standard Definition of the fallacies as it is and leaving all fallacies out of one’s treatment that this definition does not cover, such as the argumentum ad hominem. Argumentation theorists, however, do not seem prepared, just for the sake of theoretical purity, to throw the baby out with the bathwater and leave the problems of the fallacies unresolved.
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3. Woods and Walton’s formal analysis and Walton’s later analysis Fortunately, Hamblin’s book “Fallacies” was also a source of inspiration to those argumentation scholars who wanted to develop a constructive alternative to the way in which the fallacies were approached in the logical Standard Treatment (see Hansen & Pinto 1995). In North America, the most continuous and extensive post-Hamblin contribution to the study of the fallacies was made by the Canadian logicians and fallacy theorists John Woods and Douglas Walton. In a series of coauthored articles and books, they substantiated their remedy for the Standard Treatment by calling on more sophisticated logics (see Woods & Walton 1989). Their first starting point is that fallacies can generally be analyzed with the help of logical systems, so that successful analyses of a great many fallacies will have features that qualify those analyses as formal in the sense that they introduce concepts that are described by employing the technical vocabulary or the formal structures of a system of logic or some other formal theory. This preoccupation with formality is a limitation of the Woods and Walton approach that was not maintained in the studies of the fallacies that were later on independently undertaken by Walton (1987, 1992, 1995, 1998, 1999). A second typical feature of the Woods and Walton approach is that it is pluralistic because in their view each fallacy must be treated in its own way. In our opinion, a major disadvantage of this starting point is that it makes the approach ad hoc. It is ad hoc, because the more or less arbitrary list of fallacies that is handed down by history and recorded in the literature is, without much further ado, taken as the point of departure – a point of departure that Walton has always maintained, in spite of the fact that the list is not systematic, let alone theoretically motivated. Since this approach is combined with giving a different theoretical treatment of each individual fallacy, the Woods and Walton approach is also ad hoc in another sense. If each fallacy gets its own theoretical treatment, each treatment has its own peculiarities and the various treatments of the fallacies can be at variance with each other. In his later studies, Walton (1995, 1998) opts for a more unifying approach to the fallacies. 4. Fallacies as violations of rules for critical discussion In our view, the theorizing about fallacies has to start from a general and coherent perspective on argumentative discourse that provides a common rationale to all studies of the fallacies. Because a theory of errors cannot be constructed independently, a theory of fallacies must be an integral part of a normative theory of argumentation that provides the standards for sound argumentative discourse. The theoretical account of the fallacies should be systematically related to these standards in such a way that it is in all cases clear why the fallacies are fallacious. Following on from Hamblin, in Europe some theories of argumentation were developed in the early 1980s that relate the fallacies systematically to standards
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for sound argumentation. These theories are dialectical theories of argumentation that share a ‘critical rationalist’ perspective on argumentative discourse in which the fallibility of all human thought is the fundamental starting point. First, there was “Formal Dialectics”, developed by Else Barth and Erik Krabbe (1982), and second came the “Pragma-dialectical Theory of Argumentation” developed by Frans van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1984, 1992, 2004) and later extended by Frans van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser (2002, 2003, 2004). Because Barth and Krabbe’s formal dialectics does not deal with the identification of fallacies in ordinary argumentative discourse, we shall concentrate on the Pragma-dialectical Theory. This theory links up with formal dialectics, but it starts from the conviction that the fallacies can only be properly understood if argumentative discourse is also viewed pragmatically from a communicative and interactional perspective. Pragma-dialectics starts from the simplest argumentative situation: a speaker or writer advances a standpoint and acts as ‘protagonist’ of that standpoint, and a listener or reader expresses doubt with regard to the standpoint and acts as ‘antagonist’. In the discussion that develops, the two parties try to find out whether the protagonist’s standpoint can withstand the antagonist’s criticism. After the antagonist has expressed doubt or other kinds of criticism, the protagonist puts forward argumentation in defense of the standpoint. If he judges that there is reason to do so, the antagonist reacts critically to the protagonist’s argumentation. If the protagonist is again confronted with critical reactions on the part of the antagonist, his attempt at legitimizing or refuting the proposition involved in the standpoint may be continued by putting forward more argumentation, to which the antagonist can react, and so on. In this way, there is an interaction between the speech acts performed by the protagonist and the speech acts performed by the antagonist that is typical of what we call a “critical discussion”. This interaction can, of course, only lead to the resolution of the difference of opinion if it proceeds in an adequate fashion. This requires a regulation of the interaction through rules for critical discussion that specify in which cases the performance of certain speech acts contributes to the resolution of the difference. It is, in our view, the task of dialectical argumentation theorists to formulate these rules in such a way that together they constitute a discussion procedure that is problem-valid as well as conventionally valid. The rules of procedure proposed in pragma-dialectics are claimed to be problem-valid standards because each of them contributes in a specific way to solving problems that are inherent in the process of resolving a difference of opinion; the conventional validity of the rules has been confirmed by experimental research regarding their inter-subjective acceptability (van Eemeren, Garssen & Meuffels 2007). (For an overview of the rules for critical discussion, see the Appendix.) A procedure that promotes the resolution of differences of opinion cannot be exclusively confined to the logical relations by which conclusions are inferred from premises. It must, as a matter of course, consist of a system of regulations
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that cover all the speech acts that need to be carried out to resolve a difference of opinion. This means that the procedure should relate to all the stages that are to be distinguished in a critical discussion aimed at resolving a difference of opinion: the ‘confrontation stage’, in which the difference of opinion is developed, the ‘opening stage’, in which the procedural and other starting points are established, the ‘argumentation stage’, in which argumentation is put forward and subjected to critical reaction, and the ‘concluding stage’, in which the outcome of the discussion is determined. The rules for conducting a critical discussion cover the entire argumentative discourse by stating all the norms that are pertinent to resolving a difference of opinion. In all stages of a critical discussion, the protagonist and the antagonist of the standpoint at issue must observe all the rules for the performance of speech acts that are instrumental to resolving the difference. In principle, each of the pragma-dialectical discussion rules constitutes a distinct standard or norm for critical discussion. Any move constituting an infringement of any of the rules, whichever party performs it and at whatever stage in the discussion, is a possible threat to the resolution of a difference of opinion and must therefore (and in this particular sense) be regarded as fallacious. In this way, the use of the term fallacy is systematically connected with the rules for critical discussion. (For some of the fallacies resulting from violating the rules for critical discussion see the Appendix.) Thus, a fallacy is in the pragma-dialectical approach a hindrance or impediment for the resolution of a difference of opinion on the merits, and the specific nature of a particular fallacy depends on the way in which it interferes with the resolution process. Rather than considering the fallacies as belonging to an unstructured list of nominal categories inherited from the past, as in the Standard Treatment, or considering all fallacies to be violations of one and the same validity norm, as in the logic-centered approaches, the pragma-dialectical approach differentiates a functional variety of norms. This approach enables us, for instance, to treat the case of Mr Trudeau’s alluding to the drinking habits of the MP who contradicts him in a more adequate way. It is obvious that the Prime Minister did not allude to these drinking habits in order to show that the conclusion of Mr Hees’s argument does not follow from its premises. Mr Trudeau has expressed a standpoint, and his diversionary allusion to his challenger’s drinking habits enables him to evade defense of that standpoint. Mr Trudeau’s allusion is an argumentum ad hominem that violates the Freedom Rule (Rule 1) by putting Mr Hees in a position that makes it practically impossible for him to maintain his opposition. “If Trudeau had not ridiculed his challenger,” says David Hitchcock, “he would have had to admit that his challenger was correct and that Trudeau was wrong” (2006:114). A comparison shows that fallacies which were traditionally only nominally lumped together are in our approach either shown to have something in common or clearly distinguished, whereas genuinely related fallacies that were separated
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are now brought together. For instance, two variants are now distinguished of the argumentum ad populum, the fallacy of regarding something acceptable because it is considered acceptable by a great many people. The one variant is considered as a violation of the Relevance Rule that a party may defend its standpoint only by advancing argumentation related to that standpoint, the other variant as a violation of the Argument Scheme Rule that a standpoint may not be regarded conclusively defended if the defense does not take place by means of an appropriate argument scheme that is used correctly. This analysis shows that these variants are, in fact, not of the same kind. Among the fallacies that were separated and are brought together in the pragma-dialectical approach are a particular variant of ad verecundiam (using an inappropriate (symptomatic) argument scheme by presenting the standpoint as right because an authority says it is right) and a particular variant of ad populum (using an inappropriate (symptomatic) argument scheme by presenting the standpoint as right because everybody thinks it is right). When they are analyzed as violations of the same Argument Scheme Rule it becomes clear that, seen from the perspective of resolving a difference of opinion, these variants are basically of the same kind. In addition, the pragma-dialectical approach also enables the analysis of thus far unrecognized and unnamed ‘new’ obstacles to resolving a difference of opinion on the merits. Examples are declaring a standpoint sacrosanct, a violation of the Freedom Rule that parties must not prevent each other from putting forward standpoints or casting doubt on standpoints; evading the burden of proof and shifting the burden of proof, both violations of the Burden of Proof Rule that a party who puts forward a standpoint is obliged to defend that standpoint if asked to; denying an unexpressed premise, a violation of the Unexpressed Premise Rule that a party may not falsely present something as a premise that has been left unexpressed or deny a premise that has been left implicit; and making an absolute of the success of the defense, a violation of the Closure Rule that a failed defense must only result in the protagonist retracting the standpoint and a successful defense only in the antagonist retracting his doubt (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 2001). 5. Fallacies as derailments of strategic manoeuvring Although we can safely claim that Hamblin’s criticisms no longer apply to the theory of fallacies we have just sketched, this theory is, in our opinion, still not entirely satisfactory. The reason is that it ignores the intriguing problem of the persuasiveness that fallacies may have, which is actually the main reason why they deserve our attention. Although Daniel O’Keefe’s (2006) “meta-analyses” of experimental persuasion studies seem to suggest that, generally speaking, sound argumentation is more persuasive than fallacious argumentation, Sally Jackson (1995), for one, wants us to pay attention to the persuasiveness of the fallacies. In the Logical Standard Definition of fallacies as “arguments that seem valid but are
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not valid”, the persuasiveness of the fallacies was indicated by the word seem, but since Hamblin (1970:254) issued the verdict that including this qualification brings in an undesirable element of subjectivity, the treacherous character of the fallacies – the Latin word fallax means ‘deceptive’ or ‘deceitful’ – has been ignored and the search for its explanation abandoned. This means that fallacy theorists are no longer concerned with the question of how fallacies ‘work’ and why they so often go unnoticed. We think that the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation can remedy this neglect if it is first enriched by insight from rhetoric. Before turning to the rhetorical extension of the Pragma-dialectical Theory, it is worth emphasizing that combining dialectical and rhetorical insight is not as unproblematic as one might think. Since the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century – starting, in fact, already with Ramus – there has been, in spite of their initial connection in Antiquity, a sharp ideological division between dialectic and rhetoric. This division has resulted in the existence of two separate and mutually isolated paradigms, conforming to different perspectives on argumentation, which are generally considered incompatible. Rhetoric became a field for scholars of communication, language and literature in the humanities and social sciences while dialectic became the province of logic and science – but almost disappeared from sight after the formalization of logic in the late 19th and early 20th century. Although the dialectical approach to argumentation has been taken up again in the second half of the 20th century, there was for a long time – and, to a large extent, there still is – a yawning conceptual and communicative gap between argumentation theorists opting for a dialectical perspective and argumentation theorists with a rhetorical perspective. In the last decade, however, serious efforts have been made to overcome the sharp and infertile division between dialectic and rhetoric (see van Eemeren & Houtlosser 2002). The inclusion of rhetorical insight in the pragma-dialectical theory that we have brought about is one of these efforts to bridge the gap between dialectic and rhetoric (van Eemeren & Houtlosser 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005). We observed that in argumentative discourse, whether it takes place orally or in writing, it is not the arguers’ sole aim to conduct the discussion in a way that is considered reasonable, but also to achieve the outcome that is from their point of view the best result. The arguers’ rhetorical attempts to make things go their way is, as it were, incorporated in their dialectical efforts to resolve the difference of opinion in accordance with proper standards for a critical discussion. This means in practice that at every stage of the resolution process the parties may be presumed to be at the same time out for the optimal rhetorical result at that point in the discussion and to hold to the dialectical objective of the discussion stage concerned. In their efforts to reconcile the simultaneous pursuit of these two aims, which may at times be at odds, the arguers make use of what we have termed “strategic manoeuvring”. This strategic manoeuvring is directed at diminishing
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the potential tension between jointly pursuing a ‘dialectical’ and a ‘rhetorical’ aim. Strategic manoeuvring manifests itself in three aspects of the moves that are made in the argumentative discourse, which can be distinguished only analytically: “topical choice”, “audience adaptation”, and “presentational design”. Topical choice refers to the specific selection that is made in each of the various moves from the topical potential – the set of dialectical options – available at the discussion stage concerned, audience adaptation involves framing one’s moves in a perspective that agrees with the audience, and presentational design concerns the selection that the speaker or writer makes from the existing repertoire of presentational devices. In their strategic manoeuvring aimed at steering the argumentative discourse their way without violating any critical standards in the process, both parties may be considered to be out to make the most convenient topical selection, to appeal in the strongest way to their audience, and to adopt the most effective presentation. A clearer understanding of strategic manoeuvring in argumentative discourse can be gained by examining how the rhetorical opportunities available in a dialectical situation are exploited in argumentative practice. Each of the four stages in the process of resolving a difference of opinion is characterized by having a specific dialectical objective. Because, as a matter of course, the parties want to realize these objectives to the best advantage of the position they have adopted, every dialectical objective has its rhetorical analogue. As a consequence, the specification of the rhetorical aims the participants in the discourse are presumed to have must take place according to dialectical stage. This is the methodological reason why the study of strategic manoeuvring that we propose boils down to a systematic integration of rhetorical insight in a dialectical – in our case, pragma-dialectical – framework of analysis. In each discussion stage, the rhetorical goals of the participants will be dependent on – and therefore run parallel with – their dialectical goals, because in each stage they are out to achieve the dialectical results that serve their rhetorical purposes best. What kind of advantages can be gained by strategic manoeuvring depends on the particular stage one is in. In the confrontation stage, for instance, the dialectical objective is to achieve clarity concerning the issues that are at stake and the positions the parties assume. Each party’s strategic manoeuvring will therefore be aimed at directing the confrontation rhetorically towards a definition of the difference that highlights precisely the issues this party wants to discuss. In the opening stage, the dialectical objective is to establish an unambiguous point of departure consisting of inter-subjectively accepted procedural and material starting points. As a consequence, the strategic manoeuvring by the parties will be aimed at establishing rhetorically procedural starting points that secure an opportune allocation of the burden of proof and combine having desirable discussion rules with having material starting points that involve helpful concessions by the other party. In the argumentation stage, where the standpoints
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at issue are challenged and defended, the dialectical objective is to test, starting from the point of departure established in the opening stage, the tenability of the standpoints that shaped the difference of opinion in the confrontation stage. Depending on the positions they have taken, the parties will manoeuvre strategically to engineer rhetorically the most convincing case – or the most effective attack, as the case may be. In the concluding stage, the dialectical objective of determining if, and in whose favour, the difference of opinion has been resolved leads to strategic manoeuvring aimed at enforcing victory for the sake of the party concerned by effectuating rhetorically either the conclusion that the protagonist may maintain his standpoint in view of the criticisms that were made or that the antagonist may maintain his doubt in view of the argumentation that was advanced. Although, in our view, in strategic manoeuvring the pursuit of dialectical objectives can go well together with the realization of rhetorical aims, this – of course – does not automatically mean that the two objectives will in the end always be in perfect balance. If a party allows its commitment to a critical exchange of argumentative moves to be overruled by the aim of persuading the opponent, we say that the strategic manoeuvring has got “derailed”. Such derailments occur when a rule for critical discussion has been violated. In that case, trying to realize the rhetorical aim has gained the upper hand – at the expense of achieving the dialectical objective. Because derailments of strategic manoeuvring always involve violating a rule for critical discussion, they are on a par with the wrong moves in argumentative discourse designated as fallacies. Viewed from this perspective, fallacies are violations of critical discussion rules that come about as derailments of strategic manoeuvring. The difference between manifestations of strategic manoeuvring that are legitimate and manifestations that are fallacious is that in the latter case certain soundness conditions applying to that way of strategic manoeuvring have not been met. Each way of strategic manoeuvring has as it were its own continuum of sound and fallacious acting and the boundaries between the two are not always crystal clear. More often than not, fallacy judgments are in the end contextual judgments that depend on the specific circumstances of situated argumentative acting. The criteria for determining whether or not a certain norm for critical discussion has been violated may depend on the institutional conventions of the argumentative activity type concerned, i.e., on how argumentative discourse is disciplined – referring to precedent, for instance, may be a perfectly legitimate appeal to authority in a law case but not in a scientific discussion. This does not mean that there are no clear criteria for determining whether the strategic manoeuvring has gone astray, but only that the specific shape these criteria take may vary from the one argumentative activity to the other. This account of the fallacies as derailments of strategic manoeuvring explains why it may, as a matter of course, not be immediately apparent to all concerned that a fallacy has been committed, so that the fallacy may pass unnoticed. In
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principle, each fallacy has its sound counterparts that are manifestations of the same way of strategic manoeuvring. Because, as Sally Jackson (1995) has pointed out, it is an assumption of reasonableness that a party that manoeuvres strategically will normally uphold a commitment to the rules of critical discussion, and a presumption of reasonableness is therefore conferred on every discussion move. This assumption is also operative when a particular way of manoeuvring is fallacious. Deviations from the rules for critical discussion are often hard to detect because none of the parties will be very keen on portraying themselves as being unreasonable. It is therefore to be expected that to realize a purpose that is potentially at odds with the objective of a particular discussion rule, rather than resorting to completely different means, they will stick to the dialectical means for achieving their objective and ‘stretch’ these means in such a way that the other purpose can be realized as well. Echoing the logical Standard Definition of a fallacy, we can then say that although the strategic manoeuvring seems to comply with the critical discussion rules, in fact it does not. Let us now return for a moment to the Nigeria Spam Letters. According to Manfred Kienpointner, at least some of these letters manage to hide their suspicious nature quite effectively. In Kienpointner’s view, a close look at the strategies that are used in these fraudulent letters confirms the pragma-dialectical insight that fallacious arguments are unsound arguments looking like sound arguments. A case in point is the way in which the authority of God is invoked in the letter we quoted from at the beginning of this paper. The suggestion that God ordered the writer to send his message is an argumentum ad verecundiam because God’s authority is for argumentative purposes misused in a way that may escape the reader’s attention in the context of other appeals to religious authority that are not necessarily fallacious. 6. A case in point: Argumentation from authority Now we have characterized the fallacies as violations of rules for critical discussion which manifest themselves in derailments of strategic manoeuvring that may easily escape attention because the derailments can be very similar to sound instances of strategic manoeuvring. To mark the important distinction between non-fallacious and fallacious strategic manoeuvring as clearly as possible, in our terminology we do not use the same labels indiscriminately for the fallacious as well as the non-fallacious moves, as some others do, but reserve the traditional – often Latinized – names of the fallacies, such as argumentum ad hominem, for the incorrect and fallacious cases only. Strategic manoeuvring only derails into fallaciousness if it goes against the norms for having a reasonable exchange embodied in the rules for critical discussion. This means in practice that the argumentative moves that were made are not in agreement with the relevant criteria for complying with a particular norm. As
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we already observed, these criteria vary to some extent according to the argumentative context and, in so far as this is the case, they are determined by the soundness conditions the argumentative moves have to fulfill to remain within the bounds of dialectical reasonableness in the activity type concerned. As a case in point, while avoiding the use of technical language as much as possible, we shall discuss the demarcation of non-fallacious and fallacious moves in a particular way of strategic manoeuvring in the rather open argumentative activity type of an informal conversation. The way of manoeuvring we have chosen is defending a standpoint by advancing an ‘argument from authority’. The argument scheme of an argument from authority is a subtype of the type of argumentation known as ‘symptomatic argumentation’, which is also called ‘sign argumentation’. Argumentation of this type is based on an argument scheme that presents the acceptability of the premise as a sign that the conclusion is acceptable by establishing a relationship of concomitance between a property mentioned in the premise and the property mentioned in the conclusion. Such a fixed symptomatic association is, for instance, suggested in argumentation such as Paul must be a cheese lover, because he is Dutch, where it is stipulated that loving cheese goes together with being Dutch. In the case of an argument from authority, the transition of acceptance is guaranteed by referring in the premise to an external source that has the knowledge or expertise required for drawing the conclusion. This happens, for instance, in The competence for learning a language is innate – Chomsky says so, but also in the Nigeria Spam Letter argument My choosing you for helping me solve this problem is the good choice because God told me to make this choice. Like using other arguments from sign, using arguments from authority is potentially a sound way of strategic manoeuvring. In a great many cases we are fully justified in supporting our claims by referring to an authority that is supposed to know – in argumentative practice this is, in fact, often the only sensible thing we can do. If we have good reasons to think that the source we are referring to is indeed a good source to rely on in the case concerned and had to be taken seriously when the observation referred to was made, an appeal to authority can be unproblematic and may even be conclusive. In argumentative practice, however, strategic manoeuvring by means of arguments from authority can also derail. An appeal to authority may not be justified in a particular case because one of the ‘critical questions’ that need to be asked to check if the criteria for assessing arguments from authority in the activity type concerned have been fulfilled cannot be answered satisfactorily so that the argument violates the Argument Scheme Rule and must be considered an argumentum ad verecundiam. In different activity types different criteria may apply for complying with the soundness norm incorporated in the argument-from-authority variant of the Argument Scheme Rule. In the informal activity type of a conversational exchange it is, in principle, up to the participants to decide what the general conditions are for sound strategic manoeuvring by arguments from authority. For
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the purpose of illustration, we distinguish between three different subtypes of a conversational exchange, each characterized by its own set of preconditions. In the first subtype, (1a) the parties in the discussion have agreed beforehand that an appeal to authority is legitimate, and (1b) the agreement allows an appeal to a specific kind of authority. If the conditions (1a) and (1b) are met in argumentative practice, then no argumentum ad verecundiam has been committed and using the argument from authority may be regarded as sound strategic manoeuvring. In the second subtype, (2a) the parties in the discussion have agreed in the second instance that an appeal to authority is legitimate, and (2b) the agreement specifies to precisely what kind of authority can be appealed. If the conditions (2a) and (2b) are met in argumentative practice, again, no argumentum ad verecundiam has been committed and using the argument from authority may be regarded as sound strategic manoeuvring. In the third subtype, (3) the parties in the discussion have not come to any agreement about the legitimacy of an appeal to authority. If condition (3) is satisfied, no rule for critical discussion has as yet been violated, but the use of the argument from authority may very well introduce a new topic of discussion concerning its legitimacy. It is not hard to imagine other ways of strategic manoeuvring carried out in the same activity type or in other activity types having subtypes that differ in similar ways, so that a similar division of soundness conditions applies. 7. Conclusion By way of conclusion we would like to sum up some of the theoretical points we have tried to make that go against received views. –
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Not everything one does not like or that is generally disapproved of, such as the speculation on greed in the Nigeria Spam Letters, is automatically a fallacy; this is only so if an argumentative move is made that hinders the resolution of a difference and is therefore dysfunctional in a critical discussion. Fallacies are not only committed by an arguer violating the logical validity norm in the argumentation stage of a critical discussion, but can be committed through argumentative moves that violate any of the multi-varied norms that are instrumental in the resolution process by both parties in all stages of a critical discussion. Isolated textbook examples of fallacies are only clear if the argumentative context in which they appear is unequivocal, as may be the case in certain jokes or absurd cartoons, because fallacies can only be identified in the actual context of situated argumentative discourse. The dialectical standards provided by the norms incorporated in the rules for critical discussion are general – and, who knows, even universal – and not limited to any particular activity type, but the criteria for determining whether
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a certain move agrees with these norms may vary depending on the soundness conditions prevailing in the context concerned. Fallacies may in argumentative practice easily go unnoticed, except when they are caricatures, because derailments of strategic manoeuvring are not per se fundamentally different from sound strategic manoeuvring. An important step towards determining the situated conditions that in a particular stage of the discourse must be satisfied to prevent strategic moves from derailing is a clear understanding of the typical design of the way of strategic manoeuvring concerned. In making a fallacious argumentative move an essential boundary is crossed, irrespective of whether this boundary is absolute or gradual, and it is important to mark the fallaciousness by giving the fallacy a name that is different from its sound counterpart. Fallacies can be so witty that we all like them, but because fallacious moves are a distraction from a sound resolution process, in order not to go against the maintenance of reasonableness, we cannot afford to take a lenient attitude towards them. There is no reason, however, to abandon our sense of humor while being critical.
References Aristotle. 1924. Rhetoric. Translation ed. by William D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Aristotle. 1928. Sophistical Refutations. Translation ed. by William D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Aristotle. 1928. Topics. Translation ed. by William D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Barth, Erik M. & Else C.W. Krabbe. 1982. From Axiom to Dialogue: A philosophical study of logics and argumentation. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter. Eemeren, Frans H. van 2001. “Fallacies”. Crucial Concepts in Argumentation Theory ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren, 135-164. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Eemeren, Frans H. van, Bart J. Garssen & Bert Meuffels. 2007. The Intersubjective Validity of the Rules for Critical Discussion. Experimental research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Eemeren, Frans H. van & Rob Grootendorst. 1984. Speech Acts in Argumentative Discussions: A theoretical model for the analysis of discussions directed towards solving conflicts of opinion. Berlin & Dordrecht: de Gruyter & Foris. Eemeren, Frans H. van & Rob Grootendorst. 1992. Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies: A pragma-dialectical perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Eemeren, Frans H. van & Rob Grootendorst. 2004. A Systematic Theory of Argumentation: The pragma-dialectical approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eemeren, Frans H. van & Peter Houtlosser. 1998. “Rhetorical Rationales for Dialectical Moves: Justifying pragma-dialectical reconstructions”. Argument in a Time of Change. Definitions, frameworks, and critiques. Proceedings of the Tenth NCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation ed. by James F. Klump, 51-56. Alta, Utah, August 1997. Annandale, VA: National Communication Association. Eemeren, Frans H. van & Peter Houtlosser. 2001. “Managing Disagreement: Rhetorical analysis within a dialectical framework”. Argumentation and Advocacy 37:3.150-157. Eemeren, Frans H. van & Peter Houtlosser. 2002. “Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Discourse: A delicate balance”. Dialectic and Rhetoric: The warp and woof of argumentation
148 Frans H. van Eemeren & Peter Houtlosser
analysis ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren and Peter Houtlosser, 131-159. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Eemeren, Frans H. van & Peter Houtlosser. 2003. “Fallacies as Derailments of Strategic Maneuvering: The argumentum ad verecundiam, a case in point”. Proceedings of the Fifth Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren, J. Anthony Blair, Charles A. Willard & A. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans, 289-292. Amsterdam: Sic Sat. Eemeren, Frans H. van & Peter Houtlosser. 2004. “More about Fallacies as Derailments of Strategic Maneuvering: The case of tu quoque”. Argumentation and its Applications. Informal Logic @ 25 ed. by Hans V. Hansen, Christopher W. Tindale, J. Anthony Blair, Ralph H. Johnson & Robert C. Pinto. CD ROM ISBN 0-9683461-2-X-3-8. Eemeren, Frans H. van & Peter Houtlosser. 2005. “Theoretical Construction and Argumentative Reality: An analytic model of critical discussion and conventionalised types of argumentative activity”. The Uses of Argument. Proceedings of a Conference at McMaster University, 1821 May 2005 ed. by David Hitchcock and Daniel Farr, 75-84. University Park, PA: Penn State University Press. Hamblin, Charles L. 1970. Fallacies. London: Methuen. Reprinted Newport News, VA: Vale Press. Hansen, Hans V. & Robert C. Pinto. 1995. Fallacies. Classical and contemporary readings. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. Hitchcock, David. 2006. “The Pragma-dialectical Analysis of the ad hominem Fallacy”. Considering Pragma-dialectics. A Festschrift for Frans van Eemeren on the occasion of his 60th birthday ed. by Peter Houtlosser and M. Agnes van Rees, 109-119. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Jackson, Sally. 1995. “Fallacies and Heuristics”. Analysis and Evaluation. Proceedings of the third ISSA conference on argumentation. Vol. II ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren, Rob Grootendorst, J. Anthony Blair & Charles A. Willard, 257-269. Amsterdam: Sic Sat. Kienpointner, Manfred. 2006. “How to Present Fallacious Messages Persuasively: The case of the ‘Nigeria Spam Letters’”. Considering Pragma-dialectics. A Festschrift for Frans van Eemeren on the occasion of his 60th birthday ed. by Peter Houtlosser and M. Agnes van Rees, 161-173. Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Lambert, Karel & William Ulrich. 1980. The Nature of Argument. New York: Macmillan & Collier-Macmillan. O’Keefe, Daniel. 2006. “Pragma-dialectics and Persuasion Effect Research”. Considering Pragma-dialectics. A Festschrift for Frans van Eemeren on the occasion of his 60th birthday ed. by Peter Houtlosser and M. Agnes van Rees, 235-243. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Walton, Douglas N. 1987. “Informal Fallacies. Towards a theory of argument criticisms”. Pragmatics & Beyond Companian Series 4. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Walton, Douglas N. 1992. “Types of Dialogue, Dialectical Shifts and Fallacies”. Argumentation Illuminated ed. by Frans H. van Eemeren, Rob Grootendorst, J. Anthony Blair & Charles A. Willard, 133-147. Amsterdam: Sic Sat. Walton, Douglas N. 1995. A Pragmatic Theory of Fallacy. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. Walton, Douglas N. 1998. The New Dialectic: Conversational contexts of argument. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Walton, Douglas N. 1999. “The Appeal to Ignorance, or argumentum ad ignorantiam”. Argumentation 13.367-377. Woods, John & Douglas N. Walton 1989. Fallacies. Selected Papers 1972-1982. Berlin & Dordrecht: de Gruyter & Foris.
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Appendix Pragma-dialectical rules for critical discussion and fallacies 1. Freedom rule Parties must not prevent each other from putting forward standpoints or casting doubt on standpoints. Violations of rule 1 by the protagonist or the antagonist at the confrontation stage: 1 Placing limits on standpoints or doubts – fallacy of declaring standpoints sacrosanct – fallacy of declaring standpoints taboo 2 Restricting the other party’s freedom of action * putting the other party under pressure – fallacy of the stick (= argumentum ad baculum) – fallacy of appeal to pity (= argumentum ad misericordiam) * attacking the other party’s person (= argumentum ad hominem) – fallacy of depicting the other party as stupid, bad, unreliable, etcetera (= direct personal attack/“abusive” variant) – fallacy of casting suspicion on the other party’s motives (= indirect personal attack/“circumstantial” variant) – fallacy of pointing out a contradiction in the other party’s words or deeds (= “tu quoque” variant) 2. Burden-of-proof rule A party who puts forward a standpoint is obliged to defend it if asked to do so. Violations of rule 2 by the protagonist at the opening stage 1 Charging the burden of proof to the other party * in a non-mixed difference of opinion, instead of defending his or her own standpoint the protagonist forces the antagonist to show that the protagonist’s standpoint is wrong – fallacy of shifting the burden of proof * in a mixed difference of opinion the one party does not attempt to defend his or her standpoint but forces the other party to defend its standpoint – fallacy of shifting the burden of proof 2 Escaping from the burden of proof * presenting the standpoint as self-evident – fallacy of evading the burden of proof * giving a personal guarantee of the rightness of the standpoint – fallacy of evading the burden of proof * immunizing the standpoint against criticism – fallacy of evading the burden of proof 3. Standpoint rule A party’s attack on a standpoint must relate to the standpoint that has indeed been advanced by the other party. Violations of rule 3 by the protagonist or the antagonist at all the discussion stages 1 Attributing a fictitious standpoint to the other party * emphatically putting forward the opposite standpoint – fallacy of the straw man * referring to the views of the group to which the opponent belongs
150 Frans H. van Eemeren & Peter Houtlosser
* 2 * *
– fallacy of the straw man creating a fictitious opponent – fallacy of the straw man Misrepresenting the other party’s standpoint taking utterances out of context – fallacy of the straw man oversimplifying or exaggerating – fallacy of the straw man
4. Relevance rule A party may defend his or her standpoint only by advancing argumentation related to that standpoint. Violations of rule 4 by the protagonist at the argumentation stage 1 The argumentation has no relation to the standpoint under discussion – fallacy of irrelevant argumentation (= ignoratio elenchi) 2 The standpoint is defended by means other than argumentation * non-argumentation – fallacy of playing on the sentiments of the audience (= pathetic fallacy) – fallacy of parading one’s own qualities (= ethical fallacy/abuse of authority) 5. Unexpressed premise rule A party may not falsely present something as a premise that has been left unexpressed by the other party or deny a premise that he or she has left implicit. Violations of rule 5 by the protagonist or the antagonist at the argumentation stage 1 Adding an unexpressed premise that goes beyond what is warranted – fallacy of magnifying an unexpressed premise 2 Refusing to accept commitment to an unexpressed premise implied by one’s defense – fallacy of denying an unexpressed premise 6. Starting point rule No party may falsely present a premise as an accepted starting point, or deny a premise representing an accepted starting point. Violations of rule 6 by the protagonist or the antagonist at the argumentation stage 1 Meddling with the starting points by the protagonist by falsely denying that something is an accepted starting point – fallacy of falsely denying an accepted starting point 2 Meddling with the starting points by the antagonist by falsely presenting something as an accepted starting point – fallacy of making unfair use of presuppositions in making assertions – fallacy of making unfair use of presuppositions in asking questions (= fallacy of many questions) – fallacy of using an argument that amounts to the same thing as the standpoint (= fallacy of circular reasoning/petitio principii/begging the question) 7. Argument scheme rule A standpoint may not be regarded as conclusively defended if the defense does not take place by means of an appropriate argument scheme that is correctly applied.
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Violations of rule 7 by the protagonist at the argumentation stage 1 Using an inappropriate argument scheme – populist fallacy (symptomatic relation) (= argumentum ad populum) – fallacy of confusing facts with value judgments (causal relation) (= argumentum ad consequentiam) 2 Incorrectly applying an argument scheme – fallacy of authority (symptomatic relation) (= argumentum ad verecundiam) – fallacy of hasty generalization (symptomatic relation) (= secundum quid) – fallacy of false analogy (relation of analogy) – fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc (causal relation) – fallacy of the slippery slope (causal relation) 8. Validity rule The reasoning in the argumentation must be logically valid or must be capable of being made valid by making explicit one or more unexpressed premises. Violations of rule 8 by the protagonist at the argumentation stage 1 Reasoning that treats a sufficient condition as a necessary condition – fallacy of denying the antecedent – fallacy of affirming the consequent 2 Reasoning that confuses the properties of parts and wholes – fallacy of division – fallacy of composition 9. Closure rule A failed defense of a standpoint must result in the protagonist retracting the standpoint, and a successful defense of a standpoint must result in the antagonist retracting his or her doubts. Violations of rule 9 by the protagonist or the antagonist at the concluding stage 1 Meddling with the conclusion by the protagonist – fallacy of refusing to retract a standpoint that has not been successfully defended – fallacy of concluding that a standpoint is true because it has been defended successfully 2 Meddling with the conclusion by the antagonist – fallacy of refusing to retract criticism of a standpoint that has been successfully defended – fallacy of concluding that a standpoint is true because the opposite has not been successfully defended (= argumentum ad ignorantiam) 10. Usage rule Parties must not use any formulations that are insufficiently clear or confusingly ambiguous, and they must interpret the formulations of the other party as carefully and accurately as possible. Violations of rule 10 by the protagonist or the antagonist at all the discussion stages 1 Misusing unclearness – fallacy of unclearness (implicitness, indefiniteness, unfamiliarity, vagueness) 2 Misusing ambiguity – fallacy of ambiguity From: Frans H. van Eemeren, Rob Grootendorst & A. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans. 2002. Argumentation. Analysis, evaluation, presentation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
PART II Rhetoric in the Mixed Game Communicative means, cultural values, and institutional games
Strategic Use of Korean Honorifics Functions of ‘partner-deference sangdae-nopim’ Yongkil Cho Hanyang University in Seoul
From the standpoint of Weigand’s concept of ‘competence-in-performance’, I will analyse the communicative function of sangdae-nopim in conversations at Korean workplaces. The aim of this investigation is to show that in the modern Korean society speakers draw on sangdae-nopim in a more and more strategical fashion. Rather than reducing its function to the traditional value of ‘showing respect to one’s dialogue partner’, I will demonstrate how sangdae-nopim is used to mediate between both respect and selfinterest.
1. Introduction I hold it to be common ground that languages mirror the world view of their users. As a consequence, a changing world view naturally brings with it a change in language, i.e. more precisely, a change in forms of expression and linguistic functions. Languages are thus not unalterable; on the contrary, they are constantly affected by the speaker’s point of view. Accordingly, this approach to language has also to be applied to the analysis of today’s use of Korean honorifics. The strong process of individualization now taking place within Korean society runs counter to the traditional feeling of togetherness that used to characterize it. Koreans nowadays tend to define themselves much more in terms of individuals. For this reason, interpersonal relationships are most of the time considered horizontally. As a consequence, this change in Korean society entails a change in the use of Korean honorifics. The traditional value ‘respect for the other’ is losing its traditional significance; instead, the effective pursuit of one’s own goals is now of primary importance. However, most structuralist investigations of honorifics simply ignore this shift of interest and do not integrate this important factor into their analyses. Rather they focus on the normative usage of honorifics which centers on the traditional value ‘respect for the other’. However, an adequate linguistic investigation of honorifics ought not to be narrowed down in such a way; on the contrary, the speaker’s strategic use of honorifics must also be integrated into the analysis in order to obtain adequate research results.
156 Yongkil Cho This article will deal with the strategic use of Korean honorifics. More precisely, I will describe some of the basic functions of the subcategory called “partner-deference sangdae-nopim” from a pragmatic standpoint. First of all, I would like to critically discuss a selection of previous investigations into the matter with a view to gathering some thoughts for my own description. 2. Problems of previous investigations of honorifics Lately, numerous works have been written that deal with the linguistic phenolmenon of honorifics. These works can be categorized under the two major linguistic schools of thought, structuralism and sociolinguistics. Structuralist approaches mostly focus on mood marked at the end of the sentence. There are two models of mood systems in this line dating back to the 1970s. The first model describes a system of six different “speech levels”. Lee and Yim (1983), for example, classify all the moods that can be possibly used at the end of the sentence into the six types called hapsyo, hayyo, hao, hakey, panmal and hayla; Martin (1964) and Lee (1973) develop a similar approach. The crux of this model is that it can only detect slight variations of modal forms on an exclusively formal level. To my mind, this can hardly be considered an adequate systematic classification. The other model understands modal forms at the end of the sentence along the lines of two dimensions and thus categorizes mood according to formal and informal types. Seo (1997), for example, divides the types of modal forms in terms of deference and non-deference respectively. Each category is further subdivided into formal and informal types. Whereas the formal type is realized by the two expressions acwu-nopim and yeysa-nopim, the informal type can be realized by the single expression twulu-nopim only. Each type correlates with specific partner constellations. Hwang (1990) additionally separates the moods according to four “speech levels”, namely “deferential”, “raised but nondeferential”, “moderately lowering” and “lowering”. Although these structuralist approaches provide better insights into the Korean mood system, they do not give an appropriate account of the use of honorifics in language use. It would be more pertinent to analyse honorifics within the framework of language-in-use since they largely depend on social and situational conditions and ought therefore not to be restricted to mere morphosyntactical functions. As the object-of-study is language-in-use, the focus should be on the functions of honorifics in dialogic interaction and not on a single component isolated from the total speech system. Sociolinguistic approaches take a more pragmatic view and try to show how honorifics are put to work in everyday situations. The main focus is on the correlation of particular expressions or patterns and social or situational conditions. Wang (1990) deals with ethnographic investigations of the Korean mood system. He analyses mood forms that are currently used by “Cihwali” villagers
Strategic Use of Korean Honorifics 157
(pseudonym). On the basis of the empirical data, he is able to show that the villagers make use of various mood forms that were neglected in the earlier literature. These forms or variations are somehow connected to the age of the speakers. Lee (1994) examines the use of honorifics in military groups. Previous investigations only point to determinants of honorifics such as age, rank, home country, etc. On the basis of authentic material, Lee (1994) points out that military groups break down into multifarious subgroups in a hierarchical order in which the choice of the particular honorific expressions used is not determined by a variety of factors but, instead, by a single dominant factor only. Kim (1995) primarily deals with the influence that society has on the use of apsonpep as part of the honorific system. apsonpep is a rule which lowers the speaker’s position with respect to a third party referred to in conversation but actually not present. It is implemented with a view to paying respect to this person. Empirical data, however, shows that this rule has lost most of its appeal nowadays, as Korean society switches increasingly from vertical to horizontal social structures. After this brief overview of the sociolinguistic approaches to the matter, we will proceed with a short critical remark: honorifics cannot simply be described on the basis of social norms or patterns. In real life conversations, honorifics are also used strategically, i.e. independent of the particular social relationship of the dialogue partners. The most severe problem consists in reducing the use of honorifics to the function of paying respect. As a consequence, honorifics ought to be described adequately only on the basis of language-in-use, i.e. in dialogic interaction. This approach should account for the complexity of honorifics, since human beings follow largely diverse interests and purposes when applying honorific structures. 3. Honorifics in language use If we now concentrate this investigation on language use, the main question is what kind of functions honorifics have in real-life conversation. In order to arrive at an adequate picture, we also need a suitable methodology. As discussed earlier, human beings do not exclusively act along the lines of rationality or social norms; on the contrary, personal habits, interests, and preferences are also important factors in the realm of human action. In addition, speakers make use of diverse communicative means in language use. Besides verbal expressions, communicative purposes might also be achieved by non-verbal means such as perception and cognition. For these reasons, the investigation of honorifics ought always to take into account the complexity of functions and means. Before we go into detail concerning the functional complexity of honorifics in language use, we will first discuss the relation that holds between honorifics and politeness. In the pertinent literature, politeness is mostly defined in terms of acceptable social conduct. Accordingly, in this context honorifics are exclusively understood as a form of politeness. To my mind, this view is profoundly mistak-
158 Yongkil Cho en. Honorifics ought not to be equated with politeness, but can be merely used as communicative means which seem to express politeness. In other words, politeness is a communicative function that is realized by both verbal and non-verbal means. On the other hand, honorifics can also be understood as mere communicative means which might be used for various functions. In the following, we will have a closer look at this: (1) lee-tayli, ikes dangcang poksa haycwu-eyo. Last name-title, this immediately copy – (Imp.) (Hon.). “Tayli Lee, copy this immediately!” (2) lee-tayli, ikes com poksa haycwukeyss-e? Last name-title, this please copy will – (Int.)? “Tayli Lee, would you copy this, please?” (3) lee-tayli, ikes com poksa hay cwusikeyss-eyo? Last name-title, this please copy will – (Int.) (Hon.)? “Tayli Lee, would you copy this, please?”
The above-mentioned examples depict a petition to a colleague not known to the speaker, which makes the use of honorifics obligatory. In (1), the speaker uses only the modal form of the honorific –eyo. Despite the use of this honorific, the colleague might consider the speaker’s request to be impolite. In (2), on the other hand, the speaker expresses the petition indirectly by the use of an interrogative in combination with the easing particle com (“please”). However, this utterance cannot be considered polite, either, as the speaker completely dispenses the implementation of honorifics. Other than in (1) and (2), in (3) it is not only the honorific –eyo that is put to use by the speaker but, in addition, the modal particle com plus the interrogative. As such (3) alone can be considered a genuinely polite utterance. These examples show that the use of honorifics is a necessary but not sufficient precondition for a speech act to be considered polite (Yongkil Cho 2005:64). As a next step, we have to arrive at a proper definition of politeness. As mentioned above, in the pertinent literature politeness is mostly equated with paying respect. Choon-Hak Cho (1982), for example, defines politeness exclusively in terms of modesty and sees the role of honorifics founded in the realization of this function only. However, it is highly questionable if politeness only serves the purpose of paying respect and if accordingly the functional use of honorifics can be possibly reduced to respect as such. We therefore need to put politeness under close scrutiny with a view to gaining detailed insights into the role it plays in language use. Just as language has developed out of the human need to communicate with each other, politeness is rooted in everyone’s need to live in harmony with their fellow human beings (Yongkil Cho 2005:36). Living in harmony requires that people as both individuals and social beings manage to negotiate their interests with each other. As a result, one’s own freedom ought to end where the
Strategic Use of Korean Honorifics 159
other’s freedom begins. In dialogic interaction the speaker is eager to achieve his/her communicative aims. At the same time, the interlocutor demands respect (cf. Weigand 2006:76). Politeness as part of communicative competence-in-performance helps the speaker to negotiate their personal interests with their respect for the interlocutor. Accordingly, I understand politeness as a communicative strategy to create a positive, i.e. harmonic interpersonal relationship between the dialogue partners. For this reason, politeness ought not solely to be equated with paying respect but also with effectively negotiating respect and self-interest. As a consequence, honorifics are to be seen as communicative means that realize this kind of negotiation (cf. Park 2000:7-26, Lee 2000:69-76). Let us take a look at the following expressions that are used to carry out a petition to a colleague unknown to the speaker: (4) ku sekyu com camsi poye swul su isse-yo. the documents please real quick show can – (Hon.). “Could you show me the documents real quick, please?” (5) Lee kwacangnim! i sekyu com camsi poye cwusil su isse-yo. Lee supervisor (Hon.)! the documents please real quick show can − (Hon.). “Supervisor Lee! Could you show me the documents real quick, please?”
In both (4) and (5), the speaker addresses a colleague unknown to him, making the use of honorifics obligatory. Unlike in (4), in (5) the speaker not only uses the modal form yo but also adds the suffix si and the honorific form of address Lee kwacangnim. In this case the extensive use of honorifics in (5) cannot be explained merely in terms of a heightening of the respect level. By using more honorifics than normally expected, the speaker intends to create a positive image. He/she accentuates their polite skills in order to accomplish their communicative goal. The use of honorifics in (5) thus does not solely serve the realization of respect; it is also used as a communicative means to strengthen the effective pursuit of the speaker’s self-interest. What is in focus, i.e. respect or effectiveness, depends on social, situational as well as personal conditions. There are cases where the main emphasis is on respect. Often the social relationship between the dialogue partners demands deference. There are other cases where honorifics are used when deference is of no importance. Here, honorifics realize formal politeness and indicate the social relationship of the dialogue partners. There are also cases where honorifics are implemented with a view to increasing the speaker’s effectiveness in regard to the pursuit of his/her own communicative goals. The speaker might, for example, increase the level of respect that would normally be expected in a particular social constellation. How this might work in particular has already been exemplified in (4) and (5). Authentic dialogues show that nowadays there is an increased trend to the strategic implementation of honorifics. In the next chapter, we will therefore have a closer look at the particular strategic uses displayed in language use.
160 Yongkil Cho At this point the question arises how it is possible to structure the diverse functions of honorifics that can be found in language-in-use. Starting from dialogic communicative interaction, we first need to clarify what we precisely understand by a dialogic speech act. According to Weigand (2003), dialogic speech acts are either initiative or reactive. The individual speech act can be defined in terms of the correlation of communicative functions and communicative means. The communicative functions provide the starting point for the correlation. This correlation is not fixed; on the contrary, it is based on the speakers’ expectations, i.e. on probability measures. This also holds for the linguistic description of honorifics. Honorifics as part of dialogic speech acts should be described by the correlation of function and form. As discussed earlier, the use of honorifics is connected to a wide variety of possible communicative functions realized in numerous different ways. Accordingly, deference is not only expressed by the implementation of specific verbal expressions but also by facial expressions, gestures and intonation. The function is thus carried out by the integration of diverse communicative means. As the means may constantly vary, we need to draw on the functional aspects with a view to arriving at an adequate linguistic description. Taking this as our starting point, we can then investigate with a certain degree of probability what communicative means speakers use to realize particular functions in specific speech situations. 4. The strategic use of ‘partner-deference sangdae-nopim’ In the following chapter, I will concentrate on the specific honorific category “partner-deference sangdae-nopim” and describe its strategic use at the workplace. 4.1 The category “partner-deference sangdae-nopim” The category “partner-deference sangdae-nopim” is basically grammatical and normally used when addressing socially higher or coequal dialogue partners one is not well acquainted with. There are numerous expressions one needs to know in order to be polite, such as, among others, the modal forms of respect at the end of the sentence, certain forms of address, the personal pronoun ce, lexical alternatives, the suffix si of the verbal phrase and the reply particles yey/ney. In the pertinent literature, all these expressions are usually defined in terms of social norms, i.e., their function is reduced to the indication of the social hierarchy among the dialogue partners. This reduction obscures the numerous functions of sangdae-nopim in authentic speech (cf. Park 2000:7-26). In fact, nowadays speakers tend to use sangdae-nopim strategically, i.e. to achieve their goals more effectively or to improve their relationship with the dialogue partner. In terms of social relations, the speaker can select from various options of sangdae-nopim. Depending on the speaker’s particular interests, the formal modal forms, for example, may be preferred over the informal variants (a detailed discussion of the
Strategic Use of Korean Honorifics 161
modal will follow later on) so that the level of respect is higher than normally expected. The strategic use of sangdae-nopim can thus be found in two distinct cases: first, in those cases where the speaker attempts to achieve his/her own goal under the obligation of the appropriate social norms imposed by social hierarchies and, second, those cases where the speaker does not necessarily need to obey these particular social norms. In both cases, the strategic use of sangdae-nopim covers a wide range of distinct functions. As I have to set limits, I will confine myself to the discussion of some essential functions that are typically found in today’s communication procedures at the workplace. In this context, I will first set about the effective pursuit of the speaker’s personal communicative goal. This function occurs quite often, as, for example, when we direct a ‘big petition’ at our co-worker. Other conceivable strategic functions may evoke a feeling of togetherness as well as maintain a positive personal image. By evoking a feeling of togetherness the speaker usually intends to emphasize social relations with a view to gaining advantages. By maintaining a positive image the speaker aims at presenting him/herself as an educated person. The chart below lists some forms of expression used for sangdae-nopim and correlates them with their specific strategic functions. Table 1: The strategic use of ‘partner-deference sangdae-nopim’
forms of expression
cases
functions
− − − −
− pursuit of one’s own
− effective pursuit of
forms of address lexical alternatives personal pronoun ce suffix si in the verbal phrase − modal forms at the end of the sentence − reply particles yey/ney
communicative goals under hierarchical constraints
− pursuit of one’s own communicative goals without hierarchical constraints
one’s communicative goals − solidarity
− ensuring one’s positive image
4.2 Different forms of expression At the Korean workplace speakers draw on various forms of expression for sangdae-nopim such as, among others, specific forms of address, the personal pronoun ce as well as lexical alternatives. Speakers normally address their colleagues using their title or by using formal forms such as, for example, kimyongssi (“Mr Kimyong”), kim-kwacang (“supervisor Kim”) or lee-kwacangnim (“supervisor Kim, Sir”). The latter form of address is usually used when addressing a person of higher social rank. In contrast, hyeng (“older brother”), enni (“older sister”), senpaey (“Senior”), etc. are used among co-workers who know
162 Yongkil Cho each other well. The personal pronoun ce indicates first person singular and refers to the lower social rank of the speaker. Accordingly, the speaker uses ce to signalize modesty. In addition, there is a wide variety of lexical alternatives for nouns and verbal phrases available that might be used to indicate specific functions of sangdae-nopim. The following two examples (Cho 2005) illustrate this point: (6) ce cikum tangcang hay tulyeya hanayo? I (Hon.) immediately must do (Hon.)? “Do I have to do it right now?” (7) sacang-nim! malssum tulil kkey issnunteyyo. Boss (Hon.)! words (Hon.) must give (Hon.). “Boss! I must say something.”
In (6), the use of ce and the choice of tulyeya over cwueyas indicate the higher social rank of the addressee. In (7), malssum and tulil take on a similar role. Their choice over mal and cwul also indicates the superordinate position of the dialogue partner. In addition, sangdae-nopim can be realized by other forms of expression such as the modal forms at the end of the sentence, the particle –si in the verbal phrase as well as the reply particles yey and ney. As is generally known, the modal forms at the end of the sentence are of paramount importance for polite speech. They can be subdivided into two distinct types, namely the formal type and the informal type. Both formal and informal type comprise four grammatical categories, i.e. indicative, interrogative, imperative and hortative: Table 2: Modal forms at the end of the sentence (cf. Cho 2005:54)
formal type
indicative
interrogative imperative
hortative
formal
-pnita
-pnikka
-sipsio
-sipsita
informal
-yo
-yo
-yo
-yo
The choice of a particular type is entirely at the discretion of the speaker. Nevertheless, speakers nowadays show a tendency to use the informal type for two main reasons: first, the speaker can in doing so decrease the intensity of the particular speech act function (Cho 2005:55): (8) sacangnim, cikumun com konlanha-nteyyo (informal) -pnita (formal) Boss (Hon.), now a little difficult – (Ind.) (Hon.). “Boss, this is a little difficult right now.”
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As against the formal suffix –pnita, the informal –yo, which is often combined with –(u)ntey, mitigates the intensity of the speech act function. –pnita, on the other hand, has the opposite effect, i.e. the amplification of the particular illocution. When using the formal type, (8) might be considered impolite, as the speaker’s intention to refuse is then strongly emphasized. In such a case, the informal type is preferred since it shows reluctance. Second, the informal type helps to engender a feeling of familiarity among the dialogue partners (Cho 2005:55): (9) cikum poksasil kanun kili-seyyo (informal) -pnikka (formal) now copy lab go on the way – (Int.) (Hon.). “Are you on your way to the copy lab, right now?”
The use of the formal –pinta can create distance between the dialogue partners. In contrast, the informal –sey counters this effect and thus creates a more mutual relationship between the interlocutors. Last, we will analyse the particle –si in the verbal phrase as well as the reply particles yey/ney. (10) colleague 1: kimyong-ssi, ikes balo cheliha-sil swu issnunciyo? full name - Mr, this immediately do can (Hon.) (Int.)? “Mr Kimyong, can you do this right now?” colleague 2: yey, mulloniciyo. yes (Hon.) of course (Hon.). “Yes, of course.”
In (10), colleague 1 conveys his petition perfectly respectfully by the use of –si. In his reaction, colleague 2 thus applies the positive reply particle yey. At this point, we should keep in mind that the above-mentioned forms of expression are not equally important and differ with respect to necessity. If the use of sangdae-nopim is obligatory, in other words, if specific social relations are to be indicated, the modal forms at the end of the sentence are of paramount importance. In contrast, the application of other forms is at the speaker’s discretion. (11) onul cemsim hamkkey gal swu iss -eyo? today lunch with me go can – (Int.) (Hon.)? “Can we have lunch together today?” (12) kwacangnim, onul cemsim hamkkey gal swu iss-eyo? supervisor (Hon..) today lunch with me go can – (Int.) (Hon.)? “Supervisor, can we have lunch together today?”
164 Yongkil Cho (13) kwacangnim, onul cemsim hamkkey gasil swu iss-eyo? supervisor (Hon.) today lunch with me go (Hon.) can – (Int.) (Hon.)? “Supervisor, can we have lunch together today?”
In each example, the speaker uses –yo at the end of the sentence, as this is obligatory for polite speech. In contrast, the form of address kwacangnim in (12) and (13) as well as –si in (13) is a matter of the speaker’s own free choice depending on his particular interests. These forms increase the level of respect with a view to improving the effectiveness of the particular petition. In the following, I will thus concentrate on the strategic functions of these kinds of facultative forms of address in dialogic interaction. 4.3 The functions of forms of expression As discussed earlier, sangdae-nopim is often applied strategically at the workplace. Speakers use it with a view to pursue their communicative goals effectively as well as to create a feeling of togetherness or to create and maintain their positive image. In the following chapter, I will focus on the situational contexts of sangdae-nopim. In addition, we will take a look at the particular forms of expression by which it is realized in speech. 4.3.1 Effective pursuit of one’s communicative goal Many co-workers believe that with sangdae-nopim their communicative goals are easier to achieve (cf. Lee 1998). The respect for the other person plays only a minor role here. This is often the case with big petitions as with example (14): (14) colleague 1: lee-sensangnim, ceyka putak hana tulyedo toellkkayo? full name – teacher (Hon.), I (Hon.) request one give (Hon.) can (Hon.) (Int.)? “Teacher Lee, can I ask you a favour?” colleague 2: mulloniciyo, musun illinteyyo? of course (Hon.), what thing is (Hon.) (Int.)? “Of course, what is it?”
In the example above, colleague 1 addresses his co-equal but unknown colleague. In this case, the social norm demands that both speakers apply sangdae-nopim. The particle –yo at the end of the sentence indicates this particular social relation of the dialogue partners. In addition, colleague 1 applies more polite forms than normally expected. He also uses the form of address lee-sensang-nim, the pronoun ceyka and the form tulyedo indicating modesty. In the present case, one would normally address one’s dialogue partner using his name plus the suffix –ssi as in leesangho-ssi. As for the above-mentioned example, lee-sensang-nim is used to indicate the speaker’s high level of respect (cf. Lee 2000:72-74). The extended use of forms indicating modesty shows that the speaker is tending to act strategically. Directing a big petition to one’s coequal but unknown co-worker is no
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easy matter in Korean culture. To compensate for this, the speaker makes extensive use of forms of respect. Let us take a look at another example: (15) colleague 1: kimyong-ssi, ticitalkamera cwumaley camsiman pilley cwul swu isse? full name -Mr, digital camera on the week end shortly lend (Int.)? “Mr Kimyong, can you lend me your digital camera on the weekend for a little time?” colleague 2: ceto sseya toanunteyyo. also I (Hon.) must use (Ind.) (Hon.). “I must use it, too.” colleague 1: kuleci malko hanpen man pwuthak tulilkkeyyo. so do not do only once ask (Hon.). “Please do not reject. I ask you only once.” colleague 2: kollan hantey.... halswu epciyo. pilleye tulilkkeyyo. difficult.... cannot do (Hon.). lend (Hon.). “It is difficult... I can’t say no. I will lend it to you.”
Here, colleague 1 holds a higher position than his dialogue partner. Under normal circumstances, he does not therefore need to use the particle –yo at the end of the sentence. As expected, he does not use any forms of respect in his initiative utterance. However, in his second utterance, he all of a sudden applies several such forms. Accordingly, we find tulilkkey in the verbal phrase indicating modesty as well as the particle –yo at the end of the sentence. The use of this particular modal form in combination with the form of modesty is rather untypical in the given case. Colleague 1 is not restricted by any hierarchical constraints. In contrast, he only makes use of sangdae-nopim after his colleague’s rejection. Accordingly, he uses it strategically as a way of insisting on his initial goal. The effective pursuit of one’s communicative goals plays a major role mostly in connection with big petitions. As we have seen, we can distinguish between those cases where some elements of sangdae-nopim are demanded by the particular social hierarchy and other cases where it is used without any hierarchical restrictions. As the examples above illustrate, the speaker draws in both cases on the extensive use of expressions indicating a high level of respect. 4.3.2 Feeling of solidarity sangdae-nopim is also used to promote a mutual feeling of togetherness. This function is not so much intended to pay respect to the other as to achieve one’s own communicative goals. Let us consider the following example where sangdaenopim is required in order to meet the social norms: (16) colleague 1: senpaey, onul il kkutnako sikan isseyo? kathi siksahaeyo. Senior, tonight have time (Int.) (Hon.)? go eat together (Hort.) (Hon.).
166 Yongkil Cho “Senior, do you have time tonight. Let us go eat together.” colleague 2: alasse. “Okay.”
Colleague 2 holds a higher position in the company than colleague 1. Nevertheless, they are both well acquainted, as they have graduated from the same university. Due to the hierarchical order, colleague 1 applies sangdae-nopim which explains why he uses –yo at the end of each sentence. However, he chooses not to apply any additional forms of sangdae-nopim thus indicating only the minimal level of respect (cf. Park 2000:19-23 and Choi 2004:145-168). To my mind, this communicative behaviour is meant to emphasize the mutual relationship to his colleague. This intention is also conveyed by senpaey (“Senior”), a form of address which is normally used between people of long acquaintance. As against such forms of address that include the person’s title, the form senpaey avoids any feeling of distance between the dialogue partners. Taking this into account, colleague 1 applies these communicative means with a view to accentuate solidarity with his supervisor. By doing this he expects positive effects for himself. The function of solidarity also plays a role in cases where the speaker’s communication is not directly restricted by social norms. Consider the following example: (17) cho-hyeng! hoksi nalang kunmwunalcca com pakkul swu isse? (Cho 2005:260) given name - brother! perhaps with me shift please can change (Int.)? “Brother Cho! Can you perhaps change the shift with me, please?”
The form of address hyeng (“older brother”) is often applied between people of long acquaintance. It also indicates that the dialogue partner holds a higher position than the speaker himself. In (17), on the other hand, it is implemented strategically: as both interlocutors are on a co-equal level with each other, the use of hyeng is not obligatory. The speaker rather intends to demonstrate solidarity in the expectation of positive effects. Both examples have thus illustrated how solidarity is strategically indicated by the speakers. Whenever sangdae-nopim is demanded by the applicable social norms, the speaker indicates solidarity by special forms of address stressing the dialogue partners’ mutuality (e.g., senpay, hyeng, enni). These are then combined with modal forms designating a minimal level of respect. On the other hand, if the particular partner constellation demands sangdae-nopim, the speaker usually draws on forms of address referring to kinship (e.g., enni, hyeng). 4.3.3 Ensuring one’s positive image The speaker normally tries to ensure his/her positive image only if the talk is not restricted by any social norms. This function is often found in conversations among older colleagues.
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(18) colleague 1: pakkwacangnim, X sicangpwunsek pokose onul cwungulo supervisor Park (Hon.), X market analysis report today cakseng hay cwuseyyo. finish (Imp.) (Hon.). “Supervisor Park! Please finish the report on the market analysis today.” colleague 2: yey, alkeyssupnita. yes (Hon.), know can (Hon.). “Yes, okay.”
Colleague 1 holds a higher position than colleague 2. Accordingly, he does not need to apply sangdae-nopim. Nevertheless does he make use of –yo at the end of the sentence as well as the deferent form of address nim. In this particular case, we can reasonably assume that the use of these forms is not based on deference. This would not make sense with regard to the social hierarchy of the dialogue partners. Instead, it is the person’s age that demands the application of sangdaenopim. In the Korean culture, older people or people that are about the speaker’s age are to be addressed with sangdae-nopim, at least with –yo at the end of the sentence. This is rooted in a traditional feeling of respect for older members of the society. In modern times, however, speakers tend to use these forms as a strategic means. It is not respect that is of primary concern but rather the speaker’s personal interests. Accordingly, we can reasonably hold that the use of sangdaenopim in (18) is meant to ensure the speaker’s positive image. The speaker intends to demonstrate his excellent education in order to put himself in a positive light. sangdae-nopim is applied in a similar way with a co-equal senior colleague. (19) kim-kwacang i selyu tasi hanpen kemto hay cwuseyyo. given name - supervisor, these papers again check (Imp.) (Hon.). “Supervisor Kim, please check these papers again.”
The use of –yo is not due to the social hierarchy of the dialogue partners. On the contrary, the speaker uses it to pay respect to the colleague’s age. To sum up, the above mentioned examples show that, with respect to the function of image building, sangdae-nopim is often used when addressing senior colleagues. In such cases, the social hierarchy is of no importance. 4.3.4 Summing up Table 3 compares the various strategic uses of sangdae-nopim. As discussed earlier, the application of sangdae-nopim ought not to be judged against any claims to certainty. On the contrary, its use is based on probability measures.
168 Yongkil Cho Table 3: The strategic use of ‘partner-deference sangdae-nopim’
functions effective pursuit of one’s communicative goals
specific situations constraint by social hierarchy; big petitions independent of social hierarchy; big petitions
polite forms indicating a high level of respect
constraint by social hierarchy; long acquaintance
modal forms indicating a minimal level of respect and forms of address signalling mutuality (e.g., senpaey, senpaynim, hyeng, hyengnim, enni, etc.)
independent of social hierarchy; long acquaintance
forms of address signalling mutuality (e.g., hyeng, hyengnim, enni, etc.)
independent of social hierarchy; with senior colleagues
address by title combined with the suffix –nim and modal forms of respect (e.g., yo at the end of the sentence)
solidarity
ensuring one’s positive image
realizations polite forms indicating a high level of respect, more polite forms than normally expected
5. Conclusion So far, I have described the use of the honorific category sangdae-nopim with special focus on its strategic implementation in discourse. I have looked at some of its essential functions from a pragmatic perspective. It has turned out that sangdae-nopim is not merely used to indicate specific social hierarchies. Its use cannot merely be reduced to the function of paying respect to the other. On the contrary, it needs to be seen within the complex mediation of both respect and self-interest. Taking this view it is evident that in modern Korean society effecttiveness is of increasing importance as illustrated by table 3 above. This is to be explained against the backdrop of the changes taking place within Korean society and the resulting world view. However, I am aware that this study needs to be further refined by detailed empirical research on authentic material. In addition, future research ought to address other strategic functions of honorifics used in conversations at the workplace and in other social spheres. This is indispensable in order to arrive at a detailed description of honorifics in language use. References Cho, Choon-Hak. 1982. A Study of Korean Pragmatics. Deixis and politeness. Seoul: Hanshin. Cho, Yongkil. 2005. Grammatik und Höflichkeit im Sprachvergleich. Direktive Handlungsspiele des Bittens, Aufforderns und Anweisens im Deutschen und im Koreanischen. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
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Choi, Sang-Jin. 2004. “kwuke contae pwohyenu cengdoseong pwunsek” (“An Analysis of the Level of Respect of Korean Honorifics”). hankwuk mwunhwa yenkwu (“A Study of Korean Culture”) 8-12. 145-168. Hwang, Juck-Ryoon. 1990. “‘Deference’ versus ‘Politeness’ in Korean Speech”. International Journal of the Society of Language 82. 41-55. Kim, Haesuk. 1995. “apsonpepey taehan sahoe enehakcek yenkwu” (“A Sociolinguistic Study of apsonpep”). sahoe enehak (“Sociolinguistics”) 3-1.17-34. Martin, Samuel Elmo. 1964. “Speech levels in Japan and Korea”. Language in Culture and Society ed. by Dell H. Hymes, 407-412. New York: Harper & Row. Lee, Iksop & Yim, Hong-Pin. 1983. kwuke mwunpeplon (“A Study of Korean Grammar”). Seoul: Hakyensa. Lee, Jeong-Bok. 1994. “kyeykup ciptan keonge pep sayonge taehan pwunsek” (“An Analysis of the Use of Honorifics in Hierarchically Structured Groups”). sahoe enehak (“Sociolinguistics”) 2.193-241. Lee, Jeong-Bok. 1998. kwuke kyeonge-pep-ui celyak-cek tukseong (“Strategic Aspects of Korean Honorifics”). Dissertation Seoul University. Lee, Ki-Kap. 2000. “hotchinge yenkwu” (“On Terms of Address in Korean”). nonmwuncip (“A collection of learned papers”) 32.69-76. Lee, Maeng-Sung. 1973. “Variations of Speech Levels and Interpersonal Social Relationships in Korean”. Hansan Lee Chong-Soo Paksa Songswu Nonchong (“In Honour of Dr. Chong-Soo Lee on his Sixtieth Birthday”), 109-142. Seoul: Samhwa Chwulphansa. Park, Sek-Jun. 2000. “kwuke contaypepu kemunikaesyen kinung kwa cyenlay” (“Communicative Function and Strategies of Korean Honorifics”). yeonsey emwunhak 32.7-26. Seo, Cheng-Soo. 1997. chondae-pep-ui yeonkwu (“An Investigation of Honorifics”). Seoul: Hanshin. Wang, Hahn-Seok. 1990. “Toward a Description of the Organization of the Korean Speech Levels”. International Journal of the Society of Language 82.25-39. Weigand, Edda. 2003. Sprache als Dialog. Sprechakttaxonomie und kommunikative Grammatik. 2nd rev. ed. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Weigand, Edda. 2006. “Argumentation: The mixed game”. In: Argumentation 20:1.59-87.
Irony as a Rhetorical Device in Dialogic Interaction Sebastian Feller University of Münster
In the present article I will critically discuss various approaches to irony originating from different disciplines. Besides traditional definitions of ironic speech dating back to Roman times as well as present-day linguistic models, I will also deal with irony from a psychological perspective. As this inquiry will show, all the approaches under discussion are exclusively monologic and so do not provide a full account of the communicative functions of ironic expressions in language use. I will therefore suggest a dialogic perspective which highlights the communicative effects of ironic talk neglected by previous models. As a result, I will show that irony need not merely be used by a speaker to bypass direct criticism in order to avoid conflict or to compensate for psychological incongruities but as a skilful rhetorical device to motivate the interlocutor to act for the good of herself or of other people around.
1. The less you say the more you mean Without doubt ironic talk is among those topics in linguistics that highlights some of the central problems in the study of meaning. Obviously, ironic expressions are such that they leave a gap between the literal wording used by the speaker on the one hand and the insinuated sense on the other hand. The discontinuity between literal and intended meaning thus resembles in part contradictory statements such as those evoked by paradoxes. In making use of irony the speaker seems to be making two conflicting statements at the same time. When I say, for instance, Oh, that was really awesome! after having watched my favorite soccer team suffering a disastrous defeat against a third-class team nobody has ever heard of, one does not need to be an expert on theories of meaning in order to grasp the ironic undertone of my expression. At this point the question arises why speakers actually fall back on the use of ironic expressions instead of just saying directly what they mean. As we will see in the following paragraphs, the answers given vary widely. Taking into consideration the particular disciplinary standpoints and their dependent definitions of language, a generally accepted definition of irony does not exist. For this reason, it still remains a highly controversial topic. Ironic expressions accentuate what has been pinpointed by the findings of Gricean analyses (e.g., 1975) at the beginning of the modern study of pragmatics
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under the broader theme that “the less you say the more you mean” (Levinson 1998:546). From a monologic point of view, it is primarily the linguistic mechanisms behind the transformations of ordinary statements into ironic expressions that are at the center of attention. The communicative function of ironic talk is thereby only of secondary concern. In addition, these approaches are of a type that centers exclusively on speaker activity. As a consequence, the interlocutor and her reaction towards the ironic utterance is completely disregarded in the linguistic analysis. As we will see later on, this kind of methodological reductionism necessarily leads to an extremely narrow understanding of ironic speech, excluding important functions that come to the surface only from the standpoint of dialogicity. In the following, I will therefore discuss four different approaches to irony which I hold to be monologic in nature. This critical overview is intended to debunk the main shortcomings of the monologic perspective. Finally, I will introduce a dialogic approach based on Weigand’s conception of ‘Kompetenz-in-derPerformanz’ (“competence-in-performance”) (e.g., Weigand 2003:3). I will demonstrate how it might be used to discover the motivation behind the use of ironic expressions. According to these findings, the speaker might thus motivate the dialogue partner to act for her own good or even a third party who is also somehow involved in her current life situation. Special attention will thereby be paid to the inferential line of reasoning that is triggered in the mind of the interlocutor by the use of irony in the speaker’s initiative speech act. 2. Irony as the speaker’s pun 2.1 Verbal irony Verbal irony was already subject to linguistic investigation during Roman times. The Roman Rhetorician Quintilian set out to study the use of ironic expression and the linguistic mechanisms that lie behind the ironic twist of words. In his “Institutio oratoria”, he states that in irony “contrarium ei quod dicitur intelligendum est” (“we must understand the opposite of what is actually said”) (1921:400f.). In his “De oratore”, Cicero broadens this standpoint insofar as, in his view, the intended meaning does not have to be the complete opposite of what has been said. Accordingly, he also includes slight deviations of words from the original intention of the speaker in his definition of ironic expressions. For centuries to come, this model of irony played a central role in rhetoric and its neighboring disciplines. According to this view, the ironic effect is explained on the basis of a rather simple rhetorical mechanism: the ironist, so to speak, translates her primary statement into an ironic expression through a translational technique by which the original statement is converted into its negative. As a consequence, the derived expression more or less contradicts the originally intended meaning (Stringfellow 1994:3f.). This translational shift is illustrated below (Seto 1997:245):
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emphasis
positive pole
positive side negative side negative pole Figure 1: The translational shift of irony
As figure 1 shows, verbal irony is triggered by an explicit exaggeration of the positive side of an expression, resulting in the semantic reversal into its negative. The exaggeration can, among other things, be caused by simple linguistic techniques such as the use of intensifiers in the form of absolute, real, brilliant, nice and sweet. A similar effect can be achieved with nouns that are noticeably charged with a very high positive meaning such as genius or miracle. In addition, the speaker might use other linguistic devices ranging from syntactic modification, the use of the superlative or exclamation and topicalization to various prosodic markers such as extra stress (cf. Seto 1997:245ff.). However, the question needs to be posed why the speaker actually falls back on the ironic technique. What reasons does she have to translate her original statement into its opposite? Would it not be easier to express directly what she has to say? From the point of view advocated by followers of the verbal approach, the main function of ironic talk consists in the avoidance of difficulties stemming from direct criticism. Especially under political censorship irony is a welcome rhetorical means to express one’s critical thoughts about the authorities without having to fear repression. In his play “Julius Caesar” (1992), Shakespeare gives a perfect example in Mark Antony’s speech in which the orator continuously praises the assassins of Caesar although his real intention is to provoke the crowd against them. In psychoanalysis, Freud has a similar understanding of the ironist’s technique; however, concerning its functional characteristics, he (1974:174) focuses on the effects of psychological compensation for both speaker and interlocutor: It [irony] brings the person who uses it the advantage of enabling him readily to evade the difficulties of direct expression, for instance in invective. It produces comic pleasure in the hearer probably because it stirs him into a contradictory expenditure of energy which is at once recognized as being unnecessary.
In addition, in The Compass of Irony Muecke (1969:233) concludes that the major ironic properties can be assigned to one of the three categories “rhetorical,
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satirical, or heuristic”. As a rhetorical device it is meant to reinforce one’s meaning, as a satirical device to attack a point of view and its heuristics makes the interlocutor see that something is not as complicated as it appears to be at first sight. Schlegel (1968:126), too, attributes a strong heuristic effect to ironic expression. He sees its highest value in its Socratic application to searching for the truth in all branches of philosophy and, consequently, dubs it the “logical beauty” in philosophical discourse. Brooks (1947:191f.) opens up a similar perspective along the lines of the New Criticism. In his view, irony is a technical device with a deeply heuristic leaning in which the recipient is confronted with the incongruities around her. Irony, once again, comes into effect through its negativity of meaning and thereby through its denial of actuality. Another characteristic commonality of all these views consists in the general assumption that the ironic speaker has a unitary intention. As a result, if the ironic utterance is held to imply two different interpretations, i.e. a primary and a complementary meaning, these meanings must then be considered as standing in a successive relationship to one another. Accordingly, we are to suppose that the speaker cannot possibly have in mind two or more contradictory meanings at the same time. Regarding this, Stringfellow (1994:4f.) states: The literal level of the ironic statement must be explained away as a transformation of the original, underlying utterance, so that one of the meanings that actually emerges from the ironic statement must be subsequently denied as constituting an intended meaning of the utterance.
Nevertheless, this assumption remains rather doubtful. Why would the speaker state something that she does not mean at all? If we do not want to grant irony a life of its own, it seems quite awkward to cancel out one of the meanings in ironic talk. 2.2 Echoic irony The echoic version of irony as developed by Sperber & Wilson in their article entitled “Irony and the Use-Mention Distinction” (1991) is, as the title suggests, based on the logical distinction between ‘mention’ and ‘use’. From their point of view, an ironic utterance is not being ‘used’ by a speaker, as when making an assertion or asking a question, but is interpreted as echoing a remark or opinion that was originally uttered by some other source. By mentioning this original statement under specific circumstances, the speaker thus wants to characterize this other opinion as ludicrously inappropriate or irrelevant. Consider, for example, the following situation. You are at a business meeting and just about to leave when you hear one of the attendees say What lovely weather!. As soon as you set off on your walk it starts to pour with rain. Now you repeat the attendee’s previous exclamation What lovely weather!. According to Sperber and Wilson, you did not use this exclamation in the same sense as the
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attendee did before but merely mentioned it (cf. Sperber & Wilson 1991:551). In other words, you cited the original statement with a view to revealing its inappropriateness regarding the current situation. Thus one of the major differences to usual citing is that the above-mentioned character of ironic utterances is not made explicit by the use of quotation marks or ‘he/she said’ tags; on the contrary, the irony is only implicitly conveyed to the interlocutor. Concerning the identification of the quoted sources, the degree of directness might vary so that [s]ome [expressions] are immediate echoes, and others delayed; some have their source in actual utterances, others in thoughts and opinions; some have a real source, others an imagined one; some are traceable back to a particular individual, whereas others have a vaguer origin (Sperber & Wilson 1991:558).
Thus, according to Sperber and Wilson an ironic utterance is no more than an indirect echoic quotation expressing the speaker’s disapproval of the original statement. Regarding this, they argue: In particular, the speaker may echo a remark in such a way as to suggest that he finds it untrue, inappropriate, or irrelevant …. The speaker mentions a proposition in such a way as to make clear that he rejects it as ludicrously false, [i.e., in other words,] inappropriate … (Sperber & Wilson 1991:557).
The authors do not think it necessary for there to be an immediate verbatim resemblance for a statement to be labelled echoic. An echoic utterance may thus only share logical and contextual implications with its original. Considering the example mentioned above, the wording could possibly be changed to Oh, the weather is really beautiful! without contradicting the mention-character of this utterance. The main problem of this approach remains similar to that of the traditional models discussed earlier. Besides the direct-criticism argument, Sperber and Wilson are not able to explain why the speaker would want make use of ironic expressions. In addition, it is not clear at all why someone should not indicate explicitly whether she is simply mentioning an utterance or actually using it. It remains obscure how the interlocutor can possibly detect the citational distance from the original expression when the original source and the citational use are not indicated by the ironic utterance. Besides, echoic irony, too, is reduced to a uni-intentional view of the speaker who, though mentioning the ironic utterance, does not actually mean it. As we have seen earlier, this seems to be a rather problematic implication of ironic talk. It is somewhat implausible to hold that the speaker says something that, at the same time, she does not mean at all. 2.3 Irony as a pragmatic device Under the ‘Pragmatic Turn’, the approach towards ironic utterances has changed immensely. In contrast to the uni-intentional models, for example, in the form of verbal or echoic irony, linguists have come to terms with the idea that a speaker might have two intentions in mind at the same time. As a consequence, one
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should be aware of the two-sidedness of ironic utterances opening up their full communicative capacity. Regarding this, the group µ around Jacques Dubois (1978:427f.) argues: Précisons d’abord que l’encodeur, quand il énonce x, ne renonce pas à nous faire entendre x aussi bien que non-x. Négliger cette intention polysémique, cette volonté d’assumer deux isotopies à la fois, reconduit à confondre rhétorique et simple transcodage […] et à retomber dans l’idée selon laquelle le « sens figuré » n’est qu’une traduction ornementale d’un « sens propre » . “Let us make clear first of all that the encoder, when he states x, does not give up the idea of making us understand x as well as not-x. To neglect this polysemous intention, this wish to assume two isotopies at the same time, would lead us to confuse rhetoric and simple transcoding […] and to fall back into the idea that the ‘figurative sense’ is only an ornamental translation of the ‘proper sense’” (transl. and qtd. in Stringfellow 1994:6f.).
Thus, Dubois does not understand irony as a mere translational device which puts the intended meaning into contradictory words, but rather as a complex whole which consists of both the figurative and the proper sense. Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1978:15) arrives at a similar conclusion. She holds polysemy to be one of the major components of ironic statements. Its effect would simply be undone if the speaker immediately specified the range of what is really meant. What would be the advantage of using irony? It would then certainly be more economical to express directly what one means. In contrast, KerbratOrecchioni holds both meanings, i.e. the literal and the insinuated sense, to be essential components that are both necessary to make irony actually work. From the standpoint of linguistic analysis, she explains the ironic effect on the basis of a shift of the semantic levels being involved (see figure 2). denotative level: ‘The weather is terrible.’ What lovely weather! connotative level: ‘What lovely weather.’ Figure 2: The interpretational shift caused by the use of irony
Accordingly, Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1980:111) notes that irony causes un renversement de la hiérarchie usuelle des niveaux sémantiques: dès lors qu’elle est identifiée, la valeur dérivée se trouve promue au rang de valeur dénotative, cependant que le sens littéral se trouve dégradé sous forme de trace connotée. “a reversal of the usual hierarchy of semantic levels: as soon as it is identified, the derived value finds itself promoted to the rank of denotative value, while the literal sense
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finds itself degraded in the form of a connoted trace” (transl. and qtd. in Stringfellow 1994:10).
The focus on the split intention underlying ironic statements is furthermore supported by psychoanalytical studies. Reik, for example, demonstrated this point by referring to the case history of a psychoanalytic patient suffering from obsesssional thoughts. The patient showed great respect for everything that was connected to nobility and at the same time an extraordinary contempt for servants and this had about it something “obviously exaggerated, forced, and absurd” (Reik 1932:300). He would always refer to waiters or servants as “the devil” and to a serving girl as “the devil’s wife”. These thoughts were quite surprising even to the patient himself who, in other situations, showed that, to him, class differences did not determine human worth at all. To solve the mystery, Reik investigated the young man’s childhood history and discovered an interesting fact: as a child he used to be very attached to the servants that worked in his parents’ house. Since his parents were eager to keep the proper social distance, they had him stay away from the servants. He also had to witness numerous scenes in which he saw the servants he was fond of being mistreated and abused. However, at the same time his parents introduced him to the Bible and he had his first instruction in religion. The young man resolved the incongruities between what he had witnessed before and his parents’ teachings by making use of other parts of the Bible, especially those concerned with Satan. Reik (1932:301f.) concludes: True Christians could act in such a humiliating and brutal manner only toward the devil – so ran the boy’s ironic thought […]. Consciously the obsessive idea has the meaning of being obedient to the parents’ teachings; unconsciously it represents resentful mockery of these authorities.
Bergler (1952:9ff.) draws a similar conclusion. In his view, irony helps to debunk the private images and ideals that have been imprinted on one’s mind by external authorities. The ironic attack attempts to prove that the ideals are flawed and therefore are not as powerful as they seemed to be. This ironic rebellion against external authority is meant to prove that the individual is not passive but rather self-determining and thus free. He emphasizes that when an authoritarian precept is repeated in inappropriate circumstances, it is effectively stated in an ironic mode. Through literal repetition the ironist keeps her hands absolutely clean, a strategy that can often be found at the conscious level as well. It is thus evident and at the same time far from being contradictory that in ironic talk the speaker has multiple intentions and meanings in mind simultaneously. The question is then how the speaker actually positions herself regarding the particular interpretations that are available through the use of ironic expressions. In the following chapter, I will focus on the speaker’s positioning. In addition, I will further try to illuminate the reaction of the interlocutor and describe the effect that irony might cause with respect to the interlocutor’s line of reasoning.
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3. Irony as a rhetorical device In the present chapter, I would like to deal with another aspect of ironic expressions, namely their motivational role in discourse. As we have seen so far, this aspect has simply been neglected by former investigations. One of the reasons for this is certainly that former approaches to irony were generally interested in the investigation of isolated ironic expressions and the linguistic mechanisms underlying the ironic technique. But if we disregard the mere mechanical picture and move on to a more pragmatic, i.e. dialogic understanding of the phenomenon, we will find many more multifarious aspects to irony than one might have thought of initially. In the following I am therefore going to focus on the motivational power of ironic talk in encouraging the interlocutor to do what will affect herself or a third party in a positive way. This positive use of irony can only be revealed against the background of language-in-use. We cannot simply restrict our view to the ironic utterance of the speaker and its underlying mechanisms but need to include the interlocutor and also her actions and reactions. It is only from such a dialogic perspective, for example in the form of Weigand’s “Dialogic Action Game” (e.g., 2000), that it becomes obvious that irony can be used to move a person to act for her own good or the good of others. Figure 3 shows how this might generally work:
speaker
cultural/situational context
standard norm/belief
interlocutor further reasoning
standard norm/belief ironic utterance
absurdity
selfdissociation absurdity
Figure 3: Self-dissociating effect of ironic utterances
As illustrated in figure 3, both speaker and interlocutor are embedded in a culturally and situationally determined context. This context is built on an epistemic foundation of assumptions which are areas of shared knowledge. Within a speech community, speakers can, for example, presuppose a particular value system which includes a set of standard norms and common beliefs.
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If therefore the speaker says something that obviously contradicts a given standard norm that naturally applies in the given speech situation, the interlocutor will most certainly detect the absurdity underlying the speaker’s statement. Given the fact that the interlocutor shares the same cultural and situational context as the speaker, she will find out immediately that the speaker’s utterance cannot be combined in any consistent way with the shared standard norm. Faced with this absurdity, the interlocutor will try to resolve the incongruities created by the speaker by dissociating herself from the speaker’s utterance. Eventually, she will redress the balance by the motivated self-distancing effect and call up the appropriate standard norm which normally applies to the particular situation. In this way, an ironic utterance may be used intentionally by the speaker to trigger the self-dissociation of the interlocutor with a view to make her act in accordance with behavioral strategies meant to benefit herself or a third party. At this point, I would like to reopen the question why somebody would want to speak ironically instead of just referring directly to what she wants to say. If we consider the examples presented below, the key to this problem lies in the indirect motivational effect of the ironic utterance. By indirectly moving the interlocutor to dissociate herself from the speaker’s statement, the speaker is thus not directly determined in her train of thoughts and has the final power of decision. Thus she is not dominated by any external authority but works it out all herself. This obviously has the advantage that the speaker does not take on the position of the superior know-it-all who deters the interlocutor by her finger-wagging attitude; on the contrary, it is left to the interlocutor to detect the incongruities that have been created and to find a way out herself. The speaker can therefore expect the interlocutor to act in a particular way, since the ironic talk takes place on the basis of a shared epistemic foundation of manifested values, beliefs and norms. Consequently, the speaker can predict the interlocutor’s reactions with a greater or lesser degree of probability. To demonstrate how this might work in detail, I will present two conversations from the TV show “House, M.D.”. Although these are fictional conversations, their ‘as if’ character reveals the functional aspects I am looking for. We can reasonably expect that the functional capacity of the examples given is just as likely to be found in real-life communication as well. Consider the first example: House, the head of the Department of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey, is discussing a medical case with his team member Cameron. They are caught up in a case where a woman has come down with symptoms of African sleeping sickness, but it first remains inexplicable how she could have contracted it. House and his aides must ask a few tough questions and make some borderline decisions in order to try to save her life. Cameron is now deeply troubled, for it has turned out during the medical interview that the woman has been cheating on her husband. Having found out about this, the husband mentions to Cameron that a part of him did not want her to recover. Consider the transcribed dialogue from
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the episode “Fidelity” of the TV series “House, M.D.”, which was originally aired on December 28th 2004: (1) House: Uh-oh. What’s going on? Cameron: I’m recalibrating the centrifuge. House: Turn around. [She does, she looks very sad indeed.] It’s a very sad thing, an uncalibrated centrifuge. It makes me cry, too. Cameron: I'm not crying. House: Ok. [long pause] Cameron: I told the husband he was a jerk. House: Why? Cameron: [hesitates] When I was in college, I… I fell in love, and I got married. And… House: At that age the chances of a marriage lasting-Cameron: It lasted six months. Thyroid cancer metastasized to his brain. There was nothing they could do. I was 21, and… I watched my husband die.
It is immediately evident that House’s reaction It’s a very sad thing, an uncalibrated centrifuge. It makes me cry, too. to Cameron’s preceding reply I’m recalibrating the centrifuge. cannot be taken at face value. Under normal circumstances, it goes without saying that a person does not feel inclined to cry just because a centrifuge is not accurately calibrated. Hence, by uttering this statement House purposely contradicts this common belief. He sets up an incongruity between the normal evaluation of the given situation and his pretended belief expressed in his utterance. Cameron immediately recognizes this incongruity as she shares the basic belief that an uncalibrated centrifuge is not a reason to cry in the present situation. She then tries to resolve this inconsistency and dissociates herself from the content of House’s statement. In the present case, the dissociation might thus look as follows: [absurdity]
If a centrifuge is uncalibrated one has reason to cry.
[self-dissociation] [line of reasoning within the interlocutor on the basis of the normal state of affairs]: P1: P2: P3:
If one is crying one normally feels sad for a serious reason [standard belief]. If one feels sad one normally wants to feel better. If one opens up to someone else one might actually feel better.
C:
If one feels sad it may help to open up to someone else. Figure 4: Self-dissociation of the interlocutor being confronted with absurd statement
If we take a closer look at the line of reasoning taking place within the interlocutor, it is obvious that the train of thought does not necessarily end with
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the arrival at the standard belief. On the contrary, after having redressed the balance, the standard belief might function as a starting point for further reflection. In the example discussed above, this becomes evident through P2 and P3 which build on the standard belief P1. With reference to this specific example, this could mean that Cameron is not only pushed to admitting that she is in a state of depression but also to opening up to House in hope of relief. Let us have a short look at a second conversation taken from the same episode. The team around House needs to find out whether or not the wife caught the African sleeping sickness from sexual infidelity. This includes the possibility that the husband might have been infected first. In order to cure the patient, this delicate piece of information is indispensable. (2) Cameron: You want me to ask a man whose wife is about to die if he cheated on her? House: No, I want you to be polite and let her die. [Cameron gives him a look.]
Considering the given situation and the standard beliefs, we can plausibly hold that House is once again making an absurd statement. In doing so, he intentionally violates the belief that a doctor ought to save her patient’s life even if, to do so, she needs to be impolite to the patient’s relative. A doctor ought not to cross ethical boundaries but if it is a matter of life and death being impolite is not really morally reprehensible. Accordingly, this time the line of reasoning within the interlocutor might be as follows: [absurdity]
If one is a doctor and one respects ethics one cannot be impolite to a patient’s relative even if this means that the patient will die.
[implication]
Being impolite to a patient’s relative is unethical/a major breach of ethics.
[self-dissociation] [line of reasoning within the interlocutor on the basis of the normal state of affairs]: P1:
P3:
If one is a doctor one ought to save one’s patient’s life given that the treatment does not result in major breaches of ethics (standard norm/belief). If one is impolite to the husband of this particular patient one can actually save her life. Being impolite to a patient’s relative is not a major violation of ethics.
C:
One ought to be impolite to the husband of this particular patient.
P2:
Figure 5: Self-dissociation of the interlocutor being confronted with absurd statement
With his ironic statement, House brings to the surface the absurdity that is already implied in Cameron’s initial utterance (see [implication]). Despite the fact that
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being impolite to the patient’s husband is the only way to save her life, Cameron still has a problem with asking him about being sexually unfaithful. By dissociating herself from the absurdity which is expressed by House’s irony she convinces herself that she is justified in asking the husband in order to save the patient’s life. 4. Conclusion Both dialogues presented above demonstrate the potential motivational power of some ironic expressions in discourse. As a matter of course, irony in language use is a largely complex linguistic means that is not restricted to the motivational function as described above. On the contrary, speakers may just as well use the ironic technique as purported by traditional approaches. It is without doubt conceivable that the speaker draws on ironic expressions with a view to avoiding direct criticism or ridiculing a statement by a third party. Nevertheless, it has become evident that monologic models are not capable of grasping the full range of communicative functions that are potentially at hand in dialogic interaction. It is thus obvious that these kinds of models are much too restrictive. As Weigand (2003) points out, the analysis of isolated speech acts as such is doomed to fail from the very beginning. We need to begin our investigation by determining our object-of-study. Having overcome the artificiality of structural and generative linguistics, modern linguistic theories should take as their starting point language-in-use. As a consequence, both speaker and interlocutor have to be integrated into the analysis in order to arrive at an adequate understanding of what actually happens in reallife communication. It is the mutual dependence between action and reaction in language use that provides an accurate starting point for further analyses. In addition, we have to be aware that speakers make use of possibly open-ended sets of communicative means (cf. Weigand 2003). With regard to the use of ironic expressions, this means that we ought not to restrict the underlying linguistic technique to a mere verbally realized translational shift which transforms the intended utterance into the negative; on the contrary, we have to be aware from the very beginning that language use is much more multifarious than this. Besides verbal means, speakers might, for instance, use a specially marked tone of voice or particular body language in order to indicate the ironic quality of their expressions. I therefore consider it indispensable to take a dialogic approach in linguistics with a view to coming to a more accurate understanding of our object of study, language-in-use. On this basis, a fruitful perspective to the study of ironic expressions has been opened up that seems worth pursuing in future linguistic research.
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References Bergler, Edmund. 1952. The Superego: Unconscious conscience – the key to the theory and therapy of neurosis. New York: Grune. Brooks, Cleanth. 1947. The Well Wrought Urn. New York: Harcourt. Cicero. 1948. De oratore. Vol. I, transl. by E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library). Freud, Sigmund. 1974. “Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol. 8 ed. by James Strachey. London: Hogarth. Grice, Herbert Paul. 1975. “Logic and Conversation.” Syntax and Semantics. Vol. III ed. by Peter Cole and Jerry Morgan, 41-58. New York: Academic Press. Group µ (Jaques Dubois et al.). 1978. “Ironique et iconique”. Poétique 36.427-442. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. 1978. “Problèmes de l’ironie”. L’ironie. Travaux du Centre de Recherches linguistiques et sémiologiques de Lyon ed. by Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni, 1046. Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. 1980. “L’ironie comme trope”. Poétique 41.108-127. Levinson, Stephen C. 1998. “Minimization and Conversational Inference”. Pragmatics. Vol. IV ed. by Asa Kasher, 545-614. London: Routledge. Muecke, Douglas C. 1969. The Compass of Irony. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Quintilian. 1921. Institutio oratoria. Vol. III transl. by H. E. Butler. Cambridge: Harvard University Press ( Loeb Classical Library). Reik, Theodor. 1932. “Grenzland des Witzes.” Psychoanalytische Bewegung 4.289-322. Schlegel, Friedrich. 1968. “Dialogue on Poetry” and Literary Aphorism, transl. by Ernst Behler and Roman Struck. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Seto, Ken-Ichi. 1997. “On Non-echoic Irony.” Relevance Theory. Applications and implications ed. by Robyn Carston and Seiji Uchida, 239-255. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins. Shakespeare, William. 1992. Julius Caesar. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions. Sperber, Dan & Deidre Wilson. 1991. “Irony and the Use-mention Distinction”. Pragmatics. A reader ed. by Steven Davis, 550-563. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stringfellow, Frank, Jr. 1994. The Meaning of Irony. A psychological investigation. Albany: State University of New York Press. Weigand, Edda. 2000. “The Dialogic Action Game.” Dialogue Analysis VII. Working with dialogue ed. by Malcolm Coulthard, Janet Cotterill & Frances Rock, 1-18. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Weigand, Edda. 2003. Sprache als Dialog. Sprechakttaxonomie und kommunikative Grammatik. 2nd rev. ed. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Political Rhetoric in Visual Images Georges Roque University of Paris, CNRS
Given the nature of fixed visual images, visual rhetoric is usually seen as monologic. However, in some cases, an analysis of images can reveal them to be dialogic in a weak sense. This hypothesis is examined taking as examples political images, mostly posters, protesting against war. One obvious possibility consists in introducing a written dialogue in the poster. More interestingly, in many posters there is a play between text and image: since an image cannot directly negate, it often shows the crude reality of war. In these cases, it is the text that negates what is affirmed by the image. The opposition between images showing the destructiveness of war and texts rejecting war is analysed both rhetorically and in terms of Ducrot’s theory of polyphony. Finally, parodies and pastiches provide good examples of a kind of dialogue between an image and its source.
1. The issue: visual images as dialogue Unlike movies or television programs, fixed visual images do not allow interactive dialogue, i.e. “an exchange of arguments between two speech partners reasoning together in turn-making sequences aimed at a collective goal” (Walton 1998:30). Images are usually considered as persuasive but, again, not in the sense of a persuasion dialogue between proponent and respondent. However, not all kinds of persuasion work through an interactive dialogue. Effective uses of image can be directed at inducing the adherence of the viewer. From this point of view, it is possible to rethink visual rhetoric as being sometimes dialogic and not only monologic, at least when it takes into account the audience and the will to make it adhere to the view expressed by the image, even though we must be aware of the fact that, as Edda Weigand (1999:55) warned, “the aspect of the audience’s adherence is only a very restricted dialogic view”. Given the nature of fixed visual images, visual rhetoric is usually seen as monologic. However, in many cases, images may be analysed from a (weak) dialogic standpoint. This is the issue I would like to raise taking as examples political images, mostly posters, protesting against war. My intuition when I started to write this paper was that, since a protest image is a kind of visual argument against something (in this case against war), it should present a sort of dialogue with the partisans of war in order to make its claim more effective, so that we should be able to find both a representation of what one is fighting against and one’s own opinion in such images.
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2. Visual rhetoric as a rhetoric of pathos and pragmatic argument In fact, things are more complicated. If we look at the famous series of eighteen engravings by Jacques Callot, “Miseries and Disasters of War” (1633), that soon became a reference for the genre, we see in one of these engravings a crude depiction of a sadly common scene of wartime: soldiers pillaging and burning a village (see Clearwater 1992:12ff.). At the bottom of the engraving is a written description of the scene, the last verses explaining that the soldiers are impervious to the suffering of their victims: “neither tears nor screams could move them”. Rhetorically, however, both text and image seek to move the viewer. As far as the image is concerned, it fits the general claim that images mainly activate the pathos pole of argumentation and act above all emotionally (Roque 2004). Even though this is obvious for images on hard topics such as war, I would like to qualify this commonplace according to which visual rhetoric is above all a rhetoric of pathos. I will not discuss here the fact that pathos can sometimes also play an argumentative role (cf. Nettel 1996, see also Walton 1992). The effectiveness of such images owes a lot to pathos, and in particular to some of the ‘passions’ already classified by Aristotle in Book II (1377b ff.) of his Rhetoric (cf. Garver 1994:110ff.). In this case, the passions that visual persuasion tries to stimulate are anger, fear and indignation. However, this reading is not incompatible with an argumentative approach. In another engraving from the series, poor soldiers are shown after the war without any income and obliged to beg in the same villages they have plundered. Here, the passion these images try to trigger may be one of compassion. Another reading is possible, however, if we turn to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s New Rhetoric (1983:358). From this perspective, this image is a ‘pragmatic argument’ which ‘makes it possible to appreciate an act or an event according to its favorable or unfavorable consequences’. Indeed, this engraving shows some of the undesirable consequences of war and therefore aims to dissuade those who entertain a favorable view of war. It should be added that this series was probably not commissioned, for it seems that Callot made the engravings for himself as a way of using his celebrated skill to protest against war. He had a personal reason to make the engravings public: a native of Lorraine, he and his family had suffered considerably during the devastating Thirty Years’ War, with half of the duchy’s population dying during that war. In 1633, the year the large set of engravings was published, the French Army invaded Lorraine. This shows that, at a minimum, visual rhetoric can be simultaneously emotional and rational seeking to persuade the viewer by means both of pathos and of a pragmatic argument. It is worth noting that this peculiar combination of pathos and pragmatic argument is one of the main features of images protesting against war, as can be seen in many examples of this rhetorical strategy: F. Goya’s Las resultas (c. 1815-1820) from the series “The Disasters of War” (Clearwater 1992:25); William Blake’s series “The Consequences of War” (1805); Otto Dix’s
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“Skull” from the series “War” (1924). Yet, can we consider this rhetoric to be dialogic? Yes, but only to a limited degree. 3. Image and text To make images dialogic, another possibility consists in introducing a written dialogue into the image itself, as in a poster asking: Which will win? War [or] Peace. Disarm! (c. 1931, unknown artist, poster for World Peace Posters Inc., Bruckner et al. 1984:84). This dialogue, however, is not complete, as the arguments for and against war are not fully developed in the text. The interesting thing here is the way image and text are intertwined. War and peace are represented visually by means of a synecdoche: peace as a civil plane, war as a military plane. This rhetorical tool is reinforced by the color code: red for war and white for peace. To the question raised by the text, the image provides an answer thanks to the layout. In the typography, war comes before peace and occupies much more space on the left hand side. The same scheme is repeated in the upper part of the image, where the military airplane, flying over the civilian airplane, is also flying faster. In so far as the opposition between war and peace is figured as a race, it is easy to guess the answer to the question posed by the text: war is winning. The conclusion, therefore, is disarm. Note that the word disarm is isolated and highlighted by another color in the background. However, the dialogue is reduced to the opposition between war and peace. Here the image plays an important part, since it conveys the (visual) argument: war is threatening peace. The conclusion: disarm is the conclusion of an enthymeme (Nettel 2005). The whole argumentation, to put it verbally, would be: “Which will win? War or peace? War could win or is winning. If we don’t want it to happen, we must disarm.” Put this way, we understand that the poster is directed to people for whom war is dangerous and must be avoided. Indeed, any argument could be given against war in the context of the nineteen-thirties, i.e. not long after WWI when people knew what war meant and wanted to do their best to prevent a new one from occurring. In this context, many organizations fought to promote disarmament. Another way of introducing a play between text and image is prosopopeia, as in a poster showing a huge explosion killing soldiers, with the inscription: The dead cry HALT! (1936, anonymous, poster for Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Bruckner et al. 1984:70). The use of this classical figure in a modern context is to be understood by its function. If we are to visually argue against war, what can we do? The rhetorical scope of images of war is indeed rather limited: crude images of war can be shown, but the image itself is affirmative, not negative. This is the reason why the pragmatic argument is so useful. For the same reason, showing war scenes is generally an appeal to the emotions, to pathos. A visual image can hardly express more. Indeed, how could an image signify a refusal of war? Since an image cannot directly negate, one of its re-
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sources is metaphor, as in a German poster where a worker is destroying a canon (Heinz H. Halke, Nie wieder Krieg, 1922, Bruckner et al. 1984:71). Another important possibility is given to the designer and used in the poster The dead cry halt, that of dissociating the function of text and image: the image shows war and the text explicitly stresses the refusal of war. In this case, the prosopopeia creates a continuity between the image (showing how terrible the explosion of a bomb killing numerous soldiers is) and the text in which the enunciating force halt is all the more effective in that it is supposedly uttered by the dead soldiers themselves. Another example of how an image can express the rejection of war is a poster of the French Communist Party showing a village burning in the horizon with a huge military cemetery (Rival, 1952, Contre ça … défendons la paix, Buton & Gervereau 1992:85). Here, the designer chooses to explicitly affirm his position through the text: against that. It is indeed a challenge for an image to express the idea of being against, for there is no visual operator to communicate such ideas (except, maybe, for crosses, as in the poster Contra el caciquismo ayudad al gobierno de la República by Espert, 1936, from the Spanish Civil War, where the image of a cacique is crossed out; Colección Fundación Pablo Iglesias 2004:12). For this reason, the idea of being against is often expressed by the text explicitly stating against. 1 As in the poster of the French Communist Party mentioned above, being against is made explicit by the opposition between the image showing the destructiveness of war and the text claiming the rejection of war. Rhetorically, the main device is an antithesis which functions between text and image (Roque 1997:7), i.e. between the image showing the reality of war and the text claiming peace. The rhetorical importance of the antithesis lies in the fact that the contrast established between two ideas enables one to stress the other. Here, the image of war (a village burning) and its consequences (so many dead persons) underscores the conclusion: if we don’t want this to happen, “let’s defend peace” (Défendons la paix). In sum, we are faced with two quite opposed positions: the realistic image of war and the text claiming the need to promote peace. To go further, let us examine another poster, a Polish one, Nie! by T. Trepkowski (1952; Bruckner et al. 1984:98, see fig. 1). The image uses a variety of rhetorical devices. First, war is represented by a synecdoche (a falling bomb). Second, there is a plastic condensation – a surrealistic device – of the silhouette of the bomb and a destroyed building. And third, between the silhouette and the building a metalepsis occurs (cf. Roque 2005), since there is an inversion of time: the falling bomb is the cause and the destroyed building the consequence, so that the plastic condensation anticipates the destruction of a building. Finally, if we look at the opposition between text and image, it should be easy, after my comments on the previous poster, to identify an antithesis in this context, too, since the text strongly negates what is affirmed in the image. The rejection of war is signified here by the interjection never, i.e. by the text only. 1
As in a serigraphy, “Unite against the War”, 1970, Student Workshop Berkeley, Images de la révolte, 1965-1975, p. 110.
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Figure 1: Tadeusz Trepkowski: Nie
4. Multiple voices To better analyse these kinds of images, it might be helpful to make use of the theory of polyphony developed by Oswald Ducrot (1984), for this theory provides a useful tool for showing how different voices can be expressed in a single utterance. This theory, to summarize it roughly, is built up out of a three-fold distinction. First, the speaking subject (sujet parlant) is the physical person producing the utterance (p.189). In the case of this poster, it is the graphic designer who made it, Trepkowski. Second, there is the locutor (locuteur), who is not the author, not a physical person, but the persona “given” within the utterance as the source of the enunciation (Ducrot 1984:193f.; see also Ducrot 1995:604). However, utterances do not always have an explicit locutor, and the same is true in the case of the poster under consideration. A good example of a locutor is given in a famous poster dating from WWI, which I will return to later: I want you, where the locutor is Uncle Sam, identified by the personal pronoun I. 2 Now, as far as the enunciator is concerned, it is a character that presents an attitude or a point of view referred to by a locutor without the locutor being accountable for this attitude or this point of view. The first example given is that of irony. According to this account, irony occurs when a locutor presents an enunciation as the position of an enunciator E, which the locutor is not responsible for or, even more, a position that the locutor considers as absurd (Ducrot 1984:211). The most important idea for our purpose is that an utterance can present different voices or that it can adopt attitudes that the locutor may not share. My 2
In a comparison with narratology, Ducrot (1984:207) draws a parallel between the locutor of an utterance and the narrator of a story.
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point here is that in an image, as well, two different enunciators can express opposed standpoints, one accepted and the other rejected by the locutor, and thus make it possible to understand how a kind of reduced ‘dialogue’ may occur within an image. Returning to the Polish poster, we should now be able to grasp it as expressing two different ‘voices’ or attitudes towards war. The first is visual: it depicts a falling bomb which is about to destroy a building. The second is textual: the cry Nie! written at the bottom of the poster. Now, the two enunciators are not at the same level, for the second serves to reject the first one. How does this work? The image is ‘objective’ in that it shows a bomb falling and anticipates its consequences. The visual rhetoric is persuasive, using (as in so many other cases) the pragmatic argument and at the same time arousing the pathos of the viewer. The text, superimposed on the image, takes the image as its referent: what the image shows is exactly what we do not want to occur. So the first way of understanding how the text serves to negate what the image affirms is the fact that it takes the image as its referent. The second results from the fact that the text is reduced to an interjection. It must be however pointed out that interjections are one of the most important enunciative marks. They serve, as Ducrot (1995:607) explains, “to build an image of the enunciation which seems then to have been ‘grabbed’ from the locutor by the emotions or sensations he feels”. Hence, the feelings elicited by the image are accentuated and drawn to a head: Nie! (“Never!”). So, the narrative sequences leads us from the image and its pathos to the textual consequence of an enthymeme: never. It could be added that besides images, exclamation is also often considered as a figure of rhetoric serving to express directly ‘all passions, all feelings, all wishes of the soul’ (Fontanier 1968:370). No wonder then that Fontanier should enumerate most of the same passions associated with pathos that are mentioned by Aristotle. Furthermore, in so far as the text is an exclamation, clearly indicated by the exclamation mark, it fulfills an important enunciative function; even more, it unequivocally indicates the position assumed by the locutor, since in an interjection the enunciation is emphatically presented as a spontaneous and natural reaction of the locutor. Even though there is no locutor directly present in these images who could assume the utterance as an ‘I’, the interjection serves to evoke the locutor’s attitude. For this reason, in reading the poster, we do not hesitate to interpret the text (rather than the image) as expressing the position the image wants us to adopt. A third comment can be added. Ducrot applied his polyphonic theory to the case of negation, which is, according to him, a prime example of polyphony, since in most negative utterances, the enunciation appears as a confrontation between two antagonistic attitudes: a positive attitude attributed to an enunciator E1 and the refusal of this attitude, attributed to E2, usually adopted by the locutor. The poster “Nie!” fits this scheme perfectly. Most posters adopting a position against war take the form of negative utterances, and to do so they need an enunciator affirming what they negate – a part usually played by the image. Since images do not readily lend themselves to negation, negation in images usually takes on a textual
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form, presented in the poster by another enunciator to express the position, if not directly of the locutor, at least the position the image wants us to adopt. The confrontation between these two attitudes toward war can be considered a form of dialogue. 5. Hypertexts Another approach to dialogue in visual rhetoric is that of a particular kind of intertextuality, hypertexts, defined by Gérard Genette (1982:11,14) as the fact that a text A is derived from another text B by a process of transformation. In so far as a text or, here, an image is the result of the transformation of another, we can consider that transformation as a form of dialogue with the source Genette calls hypotext. Parodies are the main class of hypertexts. As a parody functions better when it takes as its target a well-known image, Larry Dunst took as a hypotext the famous poster of Montgomery Flagg, I want you, a nearly omnipresent image during WWII, for his own work, I want out. 3 The parody here is very effective: the visual dialogue with the famous poster shows the transformation of Uncle Sam, a handsome gentleman – according to Montgomery Flagg he used his own face as a model – who is now a wounded and bandaged veteran. In the context of the Vietnam War, it was an excellent visual trick to ridicule the recruitment campaign that made the original poster so famous, showing the other side of the story, the sad reality of so many wounded soldiers who just wanted to go back home. Through the parodic dialogue between hypotext and hypertext, we become more aware of the distance between patriotic ideology and the suffering this ideology produces. For this reason, a well-known poster such as Montgomery Flagg’s has been an excellent target for many parodic uses. 4 Another interesting case of a poster protesting against the Vietnam War is that of Seymour Chwast’s 1964 War is good Business. Invest your Son (Bruckner et al. 1984:110). This poster is less a parody than a pastiche, since the hypotext is not an image in particular but adopts the style of late nineteenth century ads lampooning patriotic conduct. It raises essential questions, “inviting a comparison between human costs in a war and the profit figures of war industries”.5
3
Steve Horn, photographer, and Larry Dunst, art director, “I want out”, poster for the “Committee to End the Vietnam War” (Bruckner et al. 1984:120). 4 Another example is a poster for the same “Committee to End the Vietnam War”, dated 1971 (Gourévitch 1980:76). 5 As Chwast is one of the authors of the book, I assume that he wrote the quote, taken from the description of his own poster.
192 Georges Roque
6. Conclusion Up to this point, I have commented on images in which the text plays a more or less important part. To conclude, I would now like to quickly examine two purely visual posters. The first is a plastic condensation of the roundness of the earth and the oval shape of a hand grenade, fused into a very effective image: the earth, an image of peace, that may explode with the grenade. 6 The second poster includes a poetic dialogue between war, represented by a chain link fence (synecdoche), and peace, symbolized by a white dove. 7 However, the wire has been cut, and surprisingly the hole in the fence is in the form of a white dove. It is not easy to determine the figure used, although it could be the visual equivalent of syllepsis, if by syllepsis we understand the fact that a graphic element, be it a line or a shape, can be perceived simultaneously as belonging to two different sets (Noguez 1974:119f.). The poetic strength of this purely visual poster is that the severing of the wire – symbolizing the victory of peace over war – takes the shape of the silhouette of the peace symbol. In this case, the ‘dialogue’ between the two elements in conflict is represented poetically within the image itself. I hope, with the analysis of these posters, that I have demonstrated that a form of dialogue is possible in images, even without the written word. Acknowledgment I would like to thank Ana Nettel and Marion Carel whose comments helped me to improve a first version of this paper.
References Ducrot, Oswald. 1984. Le Dire et le dit. Paris: Editions de minuit. Ducrot, Oswald & Jean-Marie Schaeffer eds. 1995. “Enonciation”. Nouveau dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences du langage. Paris: Seuil. Fontanier, Pierre. 1968. Les figures du discourse. Paris: Flammarion. Garver, Eugene. 1994. Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. Genette, Gérard. 1982. Palimpsestes: La littérature au second degree. Paris: Seuil. Nettel, Ana Laura. 1996. “Racionalidad y argumentación en el éthos y el pathos”. Alegatos 33.277-284. Nettel, Ana Laura. 2005. “The Power of Image and the Image of Power: The case of law”. Word & Image 21:2.136-149. Noguez, Dominique. 1974. “Petite rhétorique de poche pour servir à la lecture des dessins dits ‘d’humour’”. Revue d’esthétique 3-4.119f. Special issue L’art de masse n’existe pas (10/18 No 903). Perelman, Chaïm & Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. 1983. Traité de l’argumentation: La nouvelle rhétorique. Brussels: Editions de l’Institut de Sociologie, 4th ed. Roque, Georges. 1997. “La force énonciative. Sur quelques affichettes, vignettes et autocollants mexicains de 1968”. Degrés 91. Enonciations. g 1-18. 6 Jukka Veistola and Peter Lindholm, photographers, serigraphy, 1969 (Images de la révolte 1982:91). 7 U.G. Sato, poster, 1978 (Bruckner et al. 1984:121).
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Roque, Georges. 2004. “Prolégomènes à l’analyse de l’argumentation visuelle”. Direito, Retórica e Teoria da Argumentação ed. by Chaïm Perelman, 95-114. Feira de Santana, Brazil: Universidade Estadual. Roque, Georges. 2005. “Sous le signe de Magritte”. Métalepses. Entorses au pacte de la representation ed. by John Pier and Jean-Marie Schaeffer, 263-276. Paris: Editions de l’Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences sociales. Walton, Douglas. 1992. The Place of Emotion in Argument. University Park, PA.: Penn State Press. Walton, Douglas. 1998. The New Dialectic: Conversational contexts of arguments. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Weigand, Edda. 1999. “Rhetoric and Argumentation in a Dialogic Perspective”. Rhetoric and Argumentation ed. by Eddo Rigotti (in collaboration with Sara Cigada), 53-69. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Collections of visual images Bruckner, D.J.R., Seymour Chwast & Steven Heller, eds. 1984. Art Against War: 400 years of protest in art. New York: Abbeville Press. Carteles de la Guerra, 1936-1939. 2004. Colección Fundación Pablo Iglesias. Exhib. cat., Barcelona & Madrid: Lunwerg Editores. Buton, Philippe & Laurent Gervereau, eds. 1989. Le couteau entre les dents. Paris: Chêne. Carteles de la guerra 1936-1939. 2004. Colección Fundación Pablo Iglesias. Exhib. cat., Barcelona & Madrid: Lunwerg Editores. Clearwater, Bonnie, ed. 1992. “Los desastres de la guerra”. Imágenes de guerra. Exhib. cat., Mexico: Centro cultural arte contemporáneo. Gourévitch, Jean-Paul, ed. 1980. L’Imagerie politique. Paris: Flammarion. Images de la révolte, 1965-1975. 1982. Exhib. cat. Paris: Musée de l’affiche et de la publicité.
Sociological Concepts and their Impact on Rhetoric Japanese language concepts Marion Grein University of Mainz
Communication principles are culturally determined and are, without doubt, omnipresent in every dialogue. In some languages, these culturally determined principles can directly be linked to socio-cultural concepts. These concepts are well-elaborated in Japan. In this article, I shall emphasize three concepts: harmony as the communication ideal, visceral communication and intuitive understanding (concept of haragei and inshin denshin), and the different roles of the individual depending on social distance honne (private, true self) vs. tatemae (official, mask).
1. Introduction The article attempts to provide some culturally determined communication features found in the Japanese language. These features are based on cultural values and concepts such as harmony, discernment and communicative virtues (cf. Grein 2007a). The fundamental category of language usage is the so-called minimal action game (cf. Weigand 2003, Grein 2007a) where active and reactive speech act are joined into a dialogic principle. Integrated into this approach is the cultural imprint of each human being. Perception and cognition are, thus, invariably culturally determined (cf. Grein 2007b). The objective of my presentation is the description of the following minimal action game:
active speech act
reactive speech act
Figure 1: Minimal action game
After the presentation of basic cultural values and concepts, the influence on language is displayed within a few language examples. The article will show that
196 Marion Grein
language and socio-cultural principles or concepts interact. Out of the more or less indefinite choice of utterances, it is the cognition of a human-being that opts for a specific communicative form. The speaker has to perceive the interactive social status within seconds and choose the adequate language level. Thus, language study is bound to take the human and social perspective into account (cf. Grein 2007b). 2. Cultural values and concepts Concerning cultural values and concepts, I will confine myself to the presentation of harmony and the dependence on the interpersonal relations, individualism versus collectivism and the private versus the public dimension. 2.1 Harmony and interpersonal relations The establishment and maintenance of harmony (wa ) is still the utmost interaction-ideal for Japan (cf. Günthner 2000:302 for China). Speakers have to acquire linguistic means and skills to avoid any kind of disharmony. The establishment and maintenance of harmony has a historical tradition in Japan. As early as 607 a.d., the regent and prince Shotoku Taishi ( ) proclaimed harmony as a primary principle of interpersonal contact within the first constitution of Japan (first article within the 17-article constitution). Direct or confrontational conversational style is, thus, interpreted as face-threatening and an indication of bad manners and low-level educational background. Therefore, within the socialisation period, Japanese children are obliged to acquire linguistic techniques and strategies that enable them to keep up with the harmony standards of society (cf. Clancy 1990 for first language acquisition and the acquisition of interpersonal speech levels). The acquired techniques and strategies themselves are dependent on the conversational context, i.e. the interacting participants. Depending on the interpersonal relations among the speakers, the communicative behaviour is determined. Styles or levels of speech, the usage of routines, directness and further politeness strategies vary depending on the relation between the interactants. The classification of interpersonal relations is, thus, far more sophisticated than in Western languages. In a first broad classification interpersonal relations are divided into three levels (cf. Grein 1997:163-171):
Sociological Concepts and their Impact on Rhetoric 197
intimate friends family members close friends friends colleagues acquaintances
amae honne tatemae
strangers
UCHI
SOTO
Figure 2: Interpersonal constellations in Japan
The relation to intimate friends and family members is characterized by directness and the revelation of emotions (honne ). Within this group, everyone needs someone he or she is dependent on (amae − indulgent dependency, cf. Wierzbicka 1997:238-242). Doi (1981:7) asserts: The psychological prototype of ‘amae’ lies in the psychology of the infant in its relationship to its mother; not a newborn infant, but an infant who has already realised that its mother exists independently of itself ... [A]s its mind develops it gradually realises that itself and its mother are independent existences, and comes to feel the mother as something indispensable to itself, it is the craving for close contact thus developed that constitutes, one might say, amae.
In Japan this kind of relationship – based on the mother-infant relationship – provides a model of human relationships in general. Independence and autonomy – basic aims of socialisation in the West – are, thus, less desirable in Japan. Maynard (1993:263) explicates: Among in-group members in Japan, a reciprocal amae relationship allows members to express emotion and feelings directly, even sometimes in a manner considered rude by outsiders. In this warm, all forgiving environment Japanese typically use direct discourse with little awareness of the addressee as the ‘other’opposing one’s self.
Whenever two people have an amae-relationship, a direct demonstration of needs and feelings is required. Repressing ones feelings would be interpreted as a lack of amae and the end of the intimate relationship (cf. Yamada 1997:10). The relation and behaviour towards friends, colleagues and acquaintances is following different rules: Harmony is of primary importance and face-threatening acts have to be avoided. Emotions and needs are hidden (tatemae , literally façade). Tatemae is expected by society and required according to the interpersonal constellations and circumstances. Tatemae, thus, requires the proper communicative behaviour. Rules for proper language usage are released by the Ministry of Education (cf. Coulmas 1992:307f.).
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Especially the hierarchical subordinate interactant has to comply with the regulated speech behaviour (seniority – sempai-kôhai ). Mae (1996: 130) defines: Es gibt ein komplexes System von Regeln für die Beziehungen zwischen Kommunikationssituationen, Teilnehmer/innen und Sprachformen. Damit wird die Sprachverwendung in hohem Maß vorstrukturiert, und von den Kommunikationsteilnehmern/innen wird in ihren Sprechakten weniger eine individuell-schöpferische Ausdrucksfähigkeit, als vielmehr die Beherrschung der situationsspezifisch angemessenen Ausdrucksform erwartet. “There exists a complex system of rules for the relations between communicative circumstances, participants and language styles. Language usage is, thus, exceedingly prestructured. Participants’ language usage is not supposed to show any individual inventive or creative form of expression, but situation-specific appropriate linguistic means.”
2.2 Individualism vs. collectivism Whereas an ‘individual face’is primary in Western countries, Japan adheres to the concept of ‘collective face’. Maynard (1993:16) explicates: In Japan, there is a tradition of defining self on the basis of the human relationship within the society of which the self is a part. This tradition emphasises the social formation of non-autonomous Japanese self.
To have a mind of one’s own is perfectly all right as long as it does not endanger the harmonious rapport. Yet, respect is not gained by independence, but by dependence on other individuals (cf. Doi 1981, Mae 1996:132f., SchründerLenzen 1996:18ff. und Sugimoto 1997). Ting-Toomey (1988:230) resumes the different virtues (cf. Ting-Toomey 1999): Table 1: Japanese virtues
key-construct of face identity
individualistic emphasis on ‘I’-identity
collectivistic emphasis on ‘we’-identity
concern
self-face-concern
other-face-concern
need
autonomy, dissociation, negative-face need
inclusion, association, positive-face need
suprastrategy
self positive-face and self negative face
other positive-face and other negative-face
mode
direct mode
indirect mode
Sociological Concepts and their Impact on Rhetoric 199
style
controlling style or confrontation style, and solution-oriented style
obliging style or avoidance style, and affective-oriented style
strategy
distributive or competitive strategies
integrative or collaborative strategies
speech act
direct speech acts
indirect speech acts
nonverbal act
individualistic nonverbal acts, direct emotional expressions
contextualized (roleoriented) nonverbal acts, indirect emotional expressions
2.3 Private vs. public dimension As shown in chapter 2.1 on “Harmony and interpersonal constellation”, Japanese children have to acquire the appropriate principles of speech behaviour, which depend on the interpersonal constellations between the interactants. Thus, during the socialisation process, children become acquainted with the severely separated areas of honne ( ) and tatemae . These areas are, however, interacting with the locality (private vs. public). In public, more formality (omote – public life of a person) is required, whereas in private situations and locations, informality (ura − private life of a person) is essential. In Japanese being a lococentric language, language is directly linked to interpersonal constellations: towards people in one’s soto (“outside”) and one’s uchi (“inside”, group member) communicative behaviour is completely different. Those differences are to be found in German as well, but much less thoroughgoing. Yet, Beckers (1999:113f.) notes a similar behaviour within German interactions: Germans tend to be impolite or rude when they interact with outgroups like outsiders or strangers. Everyone outside the ingroup is likely to be treated with curiosity or caution or even a bit of suspicion. … The facial expression of German people are usually fixed and rigid when they meet with persons they do not know, but they suddenly melt into soft, warm smiling expressions when they meet their intimate friends. Germans are indeed affectionate and close to the persons they know well, but to the general public they are unexpectedly unfriendly and cold.
From my point of view, the differences are far more distinct within the Japanese society. This point of view is supported by the existence of a more elaborate set of relationship terms. Within the amae-group (no boundaries between ‘I’and ‘you’) for instance, Japanese differentiates between shinyu (“close friends”) and tomodachi (“friends”). Wierzbicka (1997:35) lists the following equivalents for ‘friend’:
200 Marion Grein Table 2: Relationship terms for ‘friend’
shinyu
Close friend, same sex
tomodachi
friend
yujin
friend (more formal)
doryo
friend within the same company on the same hierarchy
nakama
crony, mate à nominakama drinking mate
Schründer-Lenzen (1996:16) operate with the differentiation between German as an egocentric and Japanese as a lococentric language. Lococentric implies that each speech act is dependent on situation, subject and exceptionally on the interpersonal constellation of the interactants. Since haragei and inshin denshin – in an nutshell: ‘silent communication’– is only possible among people within a close relationship, and since the principles of communication rely on the above mentioned concepts of uchi and soto as well as omote and ura, the term lococentric seems appropriate. The lococentric character can be visualized with the help of a continuum with the poles: direct, emotional and indirect, unemotional. shinyu
amae friends direct haragei/honne
tomodachi
kohai
acquaintance
doryo sempai
colleague
respectabilities indirect tatemae
Figure 2: Lococentric continuum
Moosmüller (1997:36) refers to the two poles as “talking with your heart“ and “saving your face“. In my terminology, the concepts are haragei/honne and tatemae. Coulmas (1992:312) posits three parameters for the choice of the adequate level of directness. These are: age, group membership (in-group/uchi vs. out-group/soto) and sex (cf. Wetzel 1985:142ff.). Towards strangers indifference is displayed (cf. for the Chinese culture, Günthner 2000:301, FN 7; cf. also Nakane 1998). The lococentric character is further displayed within the so-called ‘concept of communicative virtues’. Marui (1996:389f.) sets up the concept of the communicative virtues as a concept that is superordinate to the concept of politeness. Dependent on the interpersonal relation, different ‘communicative virtues’are proclaimed. Within their study, they disclose the following interdependencies between interpersonal constellations and communicative virtues. They distinguish between intimate friends, friends and acquaintances, and socially distant persons.
Sociological Concepts and their Impact on Rhetoric 201
Table 3: Communicative virtues and social distance
intimates, in % i.e. partner zakkubaran “frank” teinei “polite” shitashimi “friendly” reigi tadashiku “compliant to rules” kiraku “informal, familiar” wakimae “discernment” kizu tsukenai “face-saving” kyori naku “without distance”
acquaintance, i.e. colleague
more distant acquaintance, i.e. superior
88.4
45.1
3.9
8.4
55.2
97.4
75.0
50.3
22.5
8.4
50.3
99.4
96.1
52.9
13.8
29.2
68.0
96.8
68.4
92.2
80.1
80.6
24.2
5.2
The closer the interpersonal relationship, the more honest, frank and unconstrained the communication becomes. Politeness and compliance to rules is of little importance when talking to intimates. The rules for proper language usage are released by the Ministry of Education (cf. Coulmas 1992:307f.). Particularly important is the concept of wakimae (“discernment”), which might even be equivalent to the concept of ‘lococentric language usage’: In every interaction, all persons involved have to be capable to correctly assess both the situation and the interactants interrelationship. Clyne (1994:15), thus, concludes “language use is predetermined by the person’s place in society”(cf. Matsumoto 1989, Ide 1989, Clyne 1994, Ide/Yoshida 1999:445f., Fukushima 2002:54-59). Fukushima (2002:58) reveals: When people wakimareru their own position or place in society, they consider some elements which are included in a situation, such as, power, distance and imposition. Components of those variables include closeness, authority, status, class, age, sex, role, rights and obligations, etc.
Whenever a Japanese person meets a potential communication partner, he/she has to examine his/her status narrowly. He/she has to consider the following factors: − age (senior/same age/junior) − power (superior/equal/minor, i.e. in a company) − social distance (i.e. social class, education)
202 Marion Grein − affiliation (i.e. partner, family member, intimate, friend, relative, friend, acquaintance, stranger) − sex − intra-group member (i.e. the same tennis club) − institutional in-group member (i.e. during an international soccer game) − sharing a common interest (i.e. both collecting manga) − the interactant’s mental status (i.e. empathy required, omoiyari) The communicative means, then, depend on the speaker’s perception of the overall situation and his or her cognitive rating of the interpersonal constellation. The closer the interpersonal constellation is, i.e. same age, equal power, same sex, intra-group member, having a common interest, the more directness, the more disclosure of emotions, the less politeness strategies and so forth are applied. The more distant the relationship is, the more indirectness, the more submission to moral obligation (tatemae), the more employment of linguistic politeness (keigo) and the more use of laughter is applied. 3. Communicative strategies In Barnlund’s (1975:57f.) study Japanese students were asked to formulate ten statements that best described their personal modes of interacting with others. They commented along the following lines: “I try to behave according to my role and circumstance”, “I try to be as polite as possible”, “I pretend to be calm and cool, even when I am not”, “I rarely show my true self”, “I don’t say all of what I think”, and so forth. This is certainly true for communications with socially more distant interactants, yet as pointed out in the previous section, other strategies are employed when talking to intimates. We shall take a short look at the following concepts: visceral communication (ishin-denshin and haragei ), backchanneling (aizuchi ), laughter, hiding emotions (enryo ) and politeness encoding (keigo ). 3.1 Visceral communication: inshin-denshin and haragei Information that can be grasped by the context does not need to be verbalized with close interactants. In essence, ishin-denshin implies that, as far as possible, communication should be conveyed without using many words because both parties know each other so very well that they are capable of understanding each other wordlessly. Ishin-denshin is closely related to the concept of haragei, literally meaning ‘belly language’. Hara is “a concept [that] involves connotetions connected in the West with heart, mind, soul, intuition and feeling”(Matsumoto 1988:17). The unverbalised utterance (ishin-denshin) is understood by the listener’s capability of haragei, understanding by means of empathy. Verbalising would be a face-threatening act: the communication partner would deduce that the
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relationship is less close than expected. Among couples verbalised communication, i.e. giving information that could be grasped by context, could be interpreted as a loss of closeness. It goes without saying, that intimates surely do talk with each other. Yet, as we will see in chapter 3.5, a different level of politeness, encoded in the lexicon and morphology, is used. 3.2 Back-channel signals: aizuchi and sync talk The closer two interactants, especially female interactants, are, the more backchanneling (aizuchi) is required. Wierzbicka (2003:81) argues that “in Japanese conversation utterances are expected to be, to a large extent, a collective work of the speaker and the addressee, or, more generally, of different speakers”. Backchanneling, thus, does not signal a request for a turn, but is a common means of cooperative talking among close friends (cf. Maynard 1986, Yamada 1997:95ff.). The less distant the (female) speakers are, the more backchanneling is employed. Hayashi (1988:281) refers to this type of communication among close female friends as ‘sync talk’and argues that “sync talk creates ensemble and comfortable moments”. Mizutani/Mizutani (1987:27) exemplify: „[L]eaving a part of the sentence unsaid so that the listener can supplement it is often more considerate and polite than just going ahead and completing one’s own sentence”(Mizutani/ Mizutani 1987:27). Yamada (1997:40) outlines the result of an American-Japanese conversation, in which the Japanese female speaker is keen to do her part of sync-talk: As usual, Chie was verbalizing her sasshi (guesswork) in English, and completing Fioana’s sentences. Fioana caught on to this after a while, and began speaking faster so she could finish her sentences on her own. But the faster she spoke, the more Chie tried to show her empathy, supplying sentence-endings with unmatched speed.
3.3 Laughter As we will see within chapter 3.4, showing emotions is limited to intimates and close friends. Yet, laughter (and smiling) is to be observed frequently in Japan. Again, the functions of laughter are dependent on interpersonal constellations. Among intimates and friends, laughter is an expression of positive emotions. With more distant acquaintances and respectabilities, however, laughter is most often found prior to stating an idea. It is used as a device for weakening one’s statement or as a sort of defence mechanism. Nakai (2002:11) assumes that “laughter is [… ] used to express the speaker’s fear of feeling awkward or nervous while expressing himself or herself”. So, while laughing is a demonstration of enjoyment with close friends, it is a sort of hedge and mitigation with more distant communication partners. According to Nakai (2002:11) “this type of laughter [M.G. mitigationlaughter] usually occurs when the listener is superior to the speaker and when the speaker and the listener are not very familiar with each other”.
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3.4 Hiding emotions (enryo) Following up the last chapter, we are aware that showing emotions is limited to intimates and close friends. Yet, hiding emotions is only a minor part integrated into the complex concept of enryo (“thoughtful consideration”, “diffidence”). The kanji en: “distant” and ryo: “consideration” suggest a translation like “distant consideration”. It incorporates concepts like reserve, modesty, self-restraint, holding back. According to Kubo (2006:140) enryo “literally means ‘consideration of the distance’and is used to mean non-literally ‘consideration of the social distance between interlocutors’”. The more substantial the social distance is, the more an adherence to society’s principle is obligatory. With superiors and socially distant interlocutors, one restraints one’s own sentiments and tries to disclose the interactants desires. The disclosure of the interlocutor’s sentiments, however, is confined to nonverbal empathy skills and intuition. Empathy- and enryo-teaching and training begins at the age of two years. Children have to acquire that disclosure of sentiments is perfectly adequate with family members, but impossible with more distant interactants. Doi (1981:38) states: “With other relationships outside this parent-child relationship, enryo decreases proportionately with intimacy and increases with distance.” 3.5 Politeness encoding As we have seen so far, the relationship to intimate friends and family members is characterized by directness, the revelation of emotions, frankness, informality, the use of visceral communication, communication as a collective work of the interactants and laughter as a sign of joy. The relationship to socially more distant interactants, however, was labelled as indirect, unemotional, formal, constantly self-assessing one’s social rank, applying verbal routines, using laughter as a device for weakening one’s statement and intuition-controlled. The existing speech levels in Japanese, now, may be used to emphasize either social intimacy and similarity in rank or social distance and disparity in rank. There are three levels of politeness in Japanese: the plain level ( tai) which is used among intimates, friends and people of similar rank, the distal level ( keitai or teinei) for socially distant interlocutors and the formal level which corresponds to the distal level but is used in formal, public situations. The distal level, and thus the formal level as well, can further be subdivided into three categories of honorific language keigo ( ) (cf. Fritzsche 1998:185): − respectful language: sonkeigo ( − humble language: kenj go ( − humble language II: teineigo (
) (positive face of the listener) ) (positive face of the speaker) ) (negative face of listener)
The former two are referent honorifics, the last one an addressee honorific. Differences are displayed by lexical distinctions and verb morphology. This
Sociological Concepts and their Impact on Rhetoric 205
article will not go into any further details, but confines to giving an example. If the speaker refers to himself and talks, e.g., to his wife, he would just utter: (1)
Suwaru. sit:plain “I sit.”
If he asks his wife to sit down, he would say: (2)
Suwatte. sit:IMP “Sit!”
If he would talk to an acquaintance, he would state: (3)
Dôzo suwatte kudasai. Please sit:IMP please “Please sit down!”
If he would talk to a more distant acquaintance, he would formulate a question: (4)
O-suwarimasen ka. HON-sit:formal QU “Won’t you sit down?”
And finally, if he would ask a customer to take a seat, he would choose: (5)
O-kake ni natte HON-sit DAT become “Would you please take a seat.”
kudasai. please
4. Concluding remarks We have seen that language and socio-cultural concepts interact powerfully. Out of the more or less indefinite choice of utterances, it is the cognition of the speaker that opts for the specific communicative form. He or she perceives the interactive social status within seconds and chooses the adequate language level. Even within languages that are less lococentric than the Japanese, language study is bound to take the human and social perspective into account. References Barnlund, Dean C. 1975. “Communicative Styles in Two Cultures: Japan and the United States”. Organization of Behavior in Face-to-Face Interaction ed. by Adam Kendon, Richard M. Harris & Mary Richie Key, 427-456. Den Haag/Paris: Mouton de Gruyter.
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Beckers, Astrid Maria. 1999. How to Say “No” without Saying “No” – A study of the refusal strategies of Americans and Germans. PhD diss. University of Mississippi. Clancy, Patricia. 1990. “Acquiring Communicative Style in Japanese”. Developing Communicative Competence in a Second Language ed. by Robin C. Scarcella, Elaine S. Andersen & Stephen D. Krashen, 27-34. Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers. Clyne, Michael. 1994. Intercultural Communication at Work. Cultural values in discourse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coulmas, Florian. 1992. “Linguistic Etiquette in Japanese Society”. Politeness in Language. Studies in its history, theory and practice ed. by Richard Watts, Sachiko Ide & Konrad Ehlich, 299-323. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Doi, Takeo. 1981. The Anatomy of Dependence: The key analysis of Japanese behavior, English trans. by John Bester, 2nd edition. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Fritzsche, Yvonne. 1998. Wie höflich sind Japaner wirklich? Höflichkeitserwartungen in der japanischen Alltagskommunikation. München: Iudicium. Fukushima, Saeko. 2002. Requests and Culture. Politeness in British English and Japanese. Bern: Peter Lang. Grein, Marion. 1997. Japan –heute und gestern. Mainz: Liber. Grein, Marion. 2007a. Kommunikative Grammatik im Sprachvergleich. Die Sprechaktsequenz Direktiv und Ablehnung im Deutschen und Japanischen. Tübingen. Niemeyer. Grein, Marion. 2007b. “The Speech Act of Refusal within the Minimal Action Game – A comparative study of German and Japanese”. Dialogue and Culture ed. by Marion Grein and Edda Weigand, 95-114. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Günthner, Susanne. 2000. “Höflichkeitspraktiken in der interkulturellen Kommunikation – am Beispiel chinesisch-deutscher Interaktionen“. Höflichkeitsstile ed by Heinz-Helmut Lüger, 295-314. Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang. Hayashi, Reiko. 1988. “Simultaneous Talk from the Perspective of Floor Management of English and Japanese Speakers”. World Englishes 7:3.269-288. Ide, Sachiko. 1989. “Formal Forms and Discernment: Two neglected aspects of universals of linguistic politeness”. Multilingua 8: 2/3.223-248. Ide, Sachiko & Megumi Yoshida. 1999. “Sociolinguistics: Honorifics and gender differences”. The Handbook of Japanese Linguistics ed. by Natsuko Tsujimura, 444-480. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kubo, Susumu. 2006. “On a Japanese speech act enryo: An analysis of an X-sociative and Xregulative speech act”. PAAL Japan 139-150. Mae, Sachiko. 1996. “Das Japanische als ‘Sprache der Harmonie’oder die Formalisierung der Differenzen”. Harmonie und Konformität ed. by Agi Schründer-Lenzen, 130-150. München: iudicium. Marui, Ichiro. 1996. “Concepts of Communicative Virtues (CCV) in Japanese and German”. Contrastive Sociolinguistics ed. by Marlis Hellinger and Ulrich Ammon, 385-409. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Matsumoto, Michihiro. 1988. The Unspoken Way. HARAGEI: Silence in Japanese business and society. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Matsumoto, Yoshiko. 1989. “Politeness and Conversational Universals – Observations from Japanese”. Multilingua 8:2/3.207-221. Maynard, Senko K. 1986. “On Backchannel Behavior in Japanese and English Casual Conversations”. Linguistics 24.1079-1108. Maynard, Senko K. 1993. Discourse Modality. Subjectivity, emotion and voice in the Japanese language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins. Mizutani, Osamu & Nobuko Mizutani. 1987. How to be Polite in Japanese. Tokyo: Japan Times. Moosmüller, Alois. 1997. Kulturen in Interaktion. Deutsche und US-amerikanische Firmenentsandte in Japan. Münster: Waxmann. Nakai, Fuki. 2002. “The Role of Cultural Influences in Japanese Communication: A literature review on social and situational factors and Japanese indirectness”.
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14 (2002 ) (Ibunka communication kenyuu – Research of different cultures communication) 99-122 Schründer-Lenzen, Agi. 1996. “Sozialisation im ‘Reich der Zeichen’”. Harmonie und Konformität ed. by Agi Schründer-Lenzen, 6-29. München: iudicium. Sugimoto, Yoshio. 1997. An Introduction to Japanese Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ting-Toomey, Stella. 1988. “Intercultural Conflict Styles: A face-negotiation-theory”. Theories in Intercultural Communication ed by Young Yun Kim & William Gudykunst, 213-235. Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Ting-Toomey, Stella. 1999. Communicating Across Cultures. New York: The Guilford Press. Weigand, Edda. 2003. Sprache als Dialog. Sprechakttaxonomie und kommunikative Grammatik. 2nd rev. edition. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Wetzel, J. Patricia. 1985. “In-Group/Out-Group Deixis: Situational variation in the verbs of giving and receiving in Japanese”. Language and Social Situation ed. by Joseph F. Forgas, 141-157. New York: Springer. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1997. Understanding Cultures Through Their Key Words. English, Russian, Polish, German, and Japanese. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wierzbicka, Anna. 2003. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. The semantics of human interaction. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Yamada, Haru. 1997. Different Games, Different Rules. Why Americans and Japanese misunderstand each other. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
The Rhetorical Component of Dialogic Communication in Banks’ Annual Reports Marta Mignini Catholic University of Milan
In this paper the concepts of dialogic interaction, of circular communication and the role of logic and emotions will receive special attention. In the first part of my manuscript I will show that banks’ annual reports are a two-way communication where two heterogeneous subjects exchange information, and feed-back from them is crucial for a success. In the second part I will focus on the coexistence of logic and rhetoric in annual reports, which have often been considered linguistically distant from everyday interaction. To do this, I will provide examples of devices like the order of elements conveying positive or negative ideas, rhetorical questions, repetitions, metaphors and appeals directed at stakeholders. The third and last part of my paper will stress the importance of emotional linguistic tools with particular reference to the concepts of “central” and “peripheral” routes to persuasion (Petty et al. 1994).
1. Introduction Banks’ annual reports are extremely important means of communication between banks and (potential) stakeholders: as a matter of fact, through them banks convincingly and persuasively provide the information required by their counterpart. This paper, divided into three main parts, aims at showing that even if annual reports are written texts, they serve as a dialogic interaction between two macroparts, i.e. banks and (potential) stakeholders, that is not only informative but also argumentative. Moreover, the paper wants to stress that the emotional component of communication is fundamental to make decisions, because it influences the addressees’ perception. In the first part, it will be stressed that annual reports set up a communication activity that is both addressed to another party and has a circular form: this means that (potential) stakeholders have specific requests that banks try to satisfy by supplying the right information to make decisions. The interactive process, though, does not stop here: once obtaining new information, the banks’ counterpart finds itself in a different situation, it has different needs and desires that banks try to satisfy by providing further data and information. The second part will be focused on the role of logic and emotions in the communication process going on in annual reports: this section will show that
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rhetoric plays a strategic role in persuading the public to trust banks, and it will analyse the way how linguistic strategies like the order of positive and negative elements, the use of positive adjectives and adverbs, rhetorical questions, repetitions, metaphors and the appeals directed at stakeholders. The third and last part will deal with the relationship between emotional linguistic devices on one side and what Petty et al. (1994:116ff.) call the “central” and the “peripheral route to persuasion”. This research is based on annual reports drawn up by some of the main European and American banks in the last few years (2000-2006). The examples quoted are extracted from the English version of the reports, and their most significant parts will be highlighted in bold. 2. The actors of the dialogic interaction in annual reports and the shape of communication In this section, the presence of two main parties will be pointed out, and it will be stressed that communication has a circular form. 2.1 The dialogic interaction in written texts First of all, it must be stated that even if annual reports are written texts, they are dialogical in nature: as a matter of fact, they are drawn up by a subject, i.e. banks, which wants to communicate something to another subject, i.e. (potential) stakeholders, which is a very heterogeneous group consisting of shareholders, savers, employees, financial analysts, other banks, the public administrators, mass media, legislators, etc. Even if at first sight it is difficult to associate written texts with a dialogic form of communication, it must be said that dialogism is a peculiar feature of communication in general. When a subject says or writes something, this happens because it wants to get in touch with someone else, it wants communication to reach another party that must be informed or convinced about something. Rigotti (2005) and van Eemeren et al. (2002) point out that in the communicative and in the argumentative process the dialogic form is always present even if, according to the School of Amsterdam, people rarely realize that a two-way interaction is what characterizes written and apparently monological texts. 1 1
Rigotti (2005:93) states: “The text – for instance a personal letter or an e-mail – can function internally as a monologue (no immediate feed-back is expected for the single speech acts) and be considered, in its entirety as a move in a broader dialogue. Monological text and dialogue are not mutually exclusive categories: dialogues are made of texts – turns in spoken conversation, e-mail messages, letters, etc. – and texts can be part of a dialogue.” While dealing with argumentative communication, the School of Amsterdam (van Eemeren et al. 2002:29) states: “Even so, a monologue defending a standpoint should be viewed as a one-way dialogue. Such monologues are so common that people don’t even realize that argumentative discourse always presumes a discussion or dialogue situation, even though it may be implicit.
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As regards banks’ annual reports, these are a very powerful means of contact between banks and their (potential) stakeholders; they are drawn up yearly to deliver information in a convincing and persuasive way: through them banks try to strengthen some believes in their clientele as well as to increase the number and to the improve quality of their clients. Even if in written texts “no immediate feed-back is expected for the single speech acts” (Rigotti 2005:93), it can be stated that annual reports represent the banks’ reply (feed-back) to their stakeholders’ thoughts, knowledge and behaviour, which, in their turn, represent a reaction (feed-back) to information previously supplied by banks. In annual reports, two parties are thus involved, and a constant interaction takes place, which gives birth to new texts, new information, different opinions and behaviours. In the next paragraph, the attention will be focused on the shape of the interaction. 2.2 The shape of communication: why is it circular? It has been previously stated that annual reports represent a two-way communication. Banks are both compelled by national and international principles and they need to supply people with information about the different aspects of their life: their story, the latest results, the main past events, their future perspectives, their social activities, etc. The addressees get new information, they are consequently mentally enriched by new knowledge so that they are able to make decisions accordingly: as a matter of fact, they can decide to trust a bank instead of another, to become shareholders of a certain institution, to invest a huger or a smaller amount of money there, etc. Mental change is usually followed by a behavioural change, and this happens on both sides. According to the clientele’s response to what has been communicated, banks can modify their points of view, they can opt for some steps in a specific direction, they can obtain better or worse results. In the end, banks will tell their addressees about the changes and their consequences, and this will lead to new information, a change in the readers’ opinions and behaviour, etc. It can be stated that both parties are constantly enriched by mutual knowledge, which is essential for them to adapt to new situations. Messages are sent by one party (output), they reach the addressee (input) and go back to the first party. What goes back, though, is not the same as what had been sent first, but it can be modified according to the receiver’s reaction. In this sense, a constant feed-back takes place in written texts, which can be considered as powerful and effective as oral communication. The interaction between banks and stakeholders can be illustrated as follows: Argumentation always has the aim of convincing potential critics, whether or not they are actually present.”
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Figure 1: Interaction between banks and stakeholders
It is possible to affirm that the communicative process is similar to the production cycle: as a matter of fact, as regards communication we have an input of messages produced both by banks and stakeholders, and an output of messages, i.e. the communication of further information and of opinions modified on the basis of the input. As a result, feed-back is constantly created, even if in written communication this is not as immediately perceived as in oral interaction. In the next part of this paper the role of rhetoric in banks’ annual reports will be highlighted, and the most frequently exploited emotional linguistic devices will be treated. 3. Rhetoric in dialogic business interaction Generally speaking, banks draw up annual reports because they want to provoke a change of behaviour in their addressees: it should be pointed out that this change is usually preceded by a change of mind which, in its turn, is preceded by the exchange of convincing and persuasive messages. The process can be schematized as follows: exchange of convincing and persuasive information
Æ
change of mind
Æ
change of behaviour
Figure 2: From rhetoric to change of behaviour
As it is possible to understand from the schema above, the first step towards the final change is the exchange of messages that are convincing and persuasive. Even though conviction and persuasion are often used interchangeably, it is necessary to specify that conviction has been traditionally associated with dialectic, rationality, logic, while persuasion has been associated with rhetoric and the exploitation of emotions (Stati 2002).
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Both logic and emotions are involved in the production and exchange of information in the business field: thanks to logic, addressees store information thus increasing their awareness, while emotions keep the addressees’ attention alive and move their feelings. Therefore, business interaction can be characterized as a ‘mixed game’ (Weigand 2006). In banks’ annual reports logic plays an extremely important role because it gives sense to the text and it arranges information so that it can: – – – –
be true, be clear, start from valid premises and reach valid conclusions, be relevant to the addressees’ requests and to the context.
The exploitation of rhetorical strategies is equally important, and it can be stated that emotions serve as a bridge connecting logical information to the readers’ mental and behavioural change. Rhetoric often provides what is missing in logic to create the ‘communion’ (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1966) necessary to lead to a change in the addressees. The role of rhetoric can be illustrated as follows:
logic
rhetoric
readers’ change
Figure 3: The ‘communion’ of logic and rhetoric
Language is a powerful means that stimulates the readers’ feelings. In banks’ annual reports specific devices are exploited so that (potential) stakeholders can more easily get closer to the banks’ points of view. In the next paragraph, these devices and their functions will be summarized, and examples from banks’ annual reports will be provided. 4. Emotional linguistic devices in banks’ annual reports Some of the most recurring linguistic means that are part of the rhetorical strategy are: – – – – –
the order of positive and negative elements in sentences and the position of adjectives and adverbs conveying positive ideas rhetorical questions repetitions metaphors appeals directed at stakeholders
The order of positive and negative elements in sentences is very important because it is usually the last element that remains more easily impressed in the
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readers’ mind. Cialdini (1989) and Lo Cascio (1991) stress that the order of presentation, i.e. the sequence of the arguments, influences the readers in a certain way, and it is therefore advisable to pay attention to it. Placing a positive element after a negative one surprises readers because it reverses his expectations in a positive way. Moreover, the presence of positive adjectives and adverbs fosters optimism and helps addressees to build a good image of the banks. An example of strategic arrangement of positive and negative elements in sentences is the following: (1) Ladies and Gentlemen, 2004 was a year of relative stability for the global economy. Despite continued strength in the price of oil and other key commodities, economic growth was about 5%. (Deutsche Bank 2004:3)
An example of the exploitation of positive adjectives and adverbs is: (2) We are optimistic about the outlook for UBS – for 2006 and beyond. We are also extremely proud of recently being named overall winner and financial industry leader in the Financial Times “Best of European Business” awards. (UBS 2005:3)
Rhetorical questions are a device that helps readers to focus their attention on certain topics instead of on others, and they are used by the addressers to guide the counterpart’s mind towards a specific conclusion that is included in the rhetorical question. As stated by Anscombre and Ducrot (1983), rhetorical questions represent a particular use of questioning, and they are useful to remind addressees of answers that do not add new information, but strengthen an idea that is already accepted, but not always recognizable at once. 2 Some examples are: (3) At Group level, we serve just over 6.8 million customers. Too small? Our business volume stands at about €380bn. Too little? Germany’s exports and imports added up to almost €1,200bn in 2003; roughly 16% of this total passed through the books of Commerzbank. Too small? (Commerzbank 2003, Letter to shareholders) (4) What would be the big successes without the little victories? (Bank Austria Creditanstalt 2002:19)
Rhetorical questions are useful to let readers feel involved in the communicative process; furthermore, they help the readers’ attention to be kept alive and they help to break the monotony of the text, which often has long sections providing information that are sometimes difficult to understand. 2
Anscombre and Ducrot (1983:128) give a particular meaning to rhetorical questions: “On entend par là, rappelons-le un emploi particulier de l’interrogation.” They stress that “le locuteur de l’énoncé interrogatif fait comme si la réponse à la question allait de soi, aussi bien pour lui que pour l’allocutaire. La question n’est là que pour rappeler cette réponse. Elle joue alors à peu près le rôle de l’assertion de cette dernière, présentée comme une vérité admise.”
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Repetitions are of help when banks need to engrave a concept on the readers’ mind: in annual reports words like clients, grow(th), improve(ment), build, new, strength(en) are very often repeated because they represent what is valuable for banks. The concepts expressed by these words are part of the institutional culture, and banks want their (potential) stakeholders to focus their attention on the same elements, so that they can better understand the institutional culture. The following quotations provide some examples of repetitions: (5) We continually invest to improve our offerings and enhance areas where we’re underrepresented relative to the opportunity. In the process, we create new products, new alliances and new sources of revenue. We’re growing and will continue to grow with discipline and strategic focus. (Merrill Lynch 2003:8) (6) We strengthened our Transaction Banking platform with the acquisition of the custody business of Dresdner Bank. Private Wealth Management strengthened its market position by acquiring the Munich-based Investment Management Wilhelm von Finck & Co. […] PBC will focus this year on strengthening its consumer finance business and will invest in a new client loyalty program. (Deutsche Bank 2004:4)
Metaphors are powerful linguistic means that render the text lively in the readers’ imagination. The general role of metaphors has been stressed by Aristotle’s Rhetoric, according to which metaphors generate action. As regards the role of metaphors in economic texts, Jäkel (1994) and Bamford (1997) point out that there exist different kinds of metaphors which render abstract meanings real and make the comprehension process easier. Moreover, according to the authors, metaphors help readers to find texts more attractive and not static but dynamic. 3 Examples of metaphors quoted in annual reports are the following: 3
Olaf Jäkel (1994) distinguishes three main kinds of metaphor in economics: the structural metaphors, which are imported from scientific fields which are different from economics; ontological metaphors, that are used to make abstract concept real; quantitative metaphors, with reference to those metaphors that express movement in different directions (especially horizontal and vertical movements). Julia Bamford (1997:127ff.) distinguishes four different metaphorical functions: the “catachretic/ theory building function”, the “adherence to discourse community conventions function”, the conventional “metaphors we live by function” and the “communicative function”. In the first case, a metaphor “serves the function of labelling new concepts in terms of already known objects or processes. […] In other words a metaphor affects the way we think not only about the principal and subsidiary subjects, but also about the world beyond the concepts”; in the second case, the “use of metaphor is also largely determined by the conventions of the discourse community. Certain metaphors have become part of the standard discourse of economics and this constrains the rhetoric of economists to a large extent.” As regards the third function, the author refers to the fact that “economists use conventional metaphor of the type Lakoff and Johnson describe as ‘metaphors we live by’”, while as for the fourth and last metaphorical function Bamford states that “economists like most other writers also use metaphor to embellish their prose and thus to persuade their readers of their arguments but also to communicate effectively with them”.
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(7) HBOS accepts without question that to grow our relationships with customers, we have to deliver value, absolute transparency and quality service. (HBOS plc 2001:6) (8) Our people: the key to long-term growth. (Deutsche Bank 2005:43)
The last linguistic device that will be considered in this paper is the appeal directed at stakeholders. In banks’ annual reports it is possible to find this stratagem, through which banks refer directly to their stakeholders in order to let them feel involved in the communication process. It is as if banks wanted to remind readers that written texts can be similar to oral interaction, where a party can call the counterpart by name, and where the counterpart’s attention must be steadily focused on the discourse so as to be able to reply or to express one’s opinion. The appeals directed at stakeholders strengthen the feeling that the written interaction taking place in annual reports is a two-way process involving both banks and stakeholders, who are supposed to take part in the communicative process on equal level. Two examples of direct appeals are: (9) At the same time, The Group intends to exploit all growth opportunities that may arise in new markets and new business, continuing to create development options for the future. Shareholders, The coming year will be rich in challenges, both in terms of rising competition in the marketplace, and in terms of implementing as soon as possible the integration process under way and the new business projects. (SanpaoloImi 2001:11) (10) In the name of the entire Board of Managing Directors, I would like to sincerely thank our employees, but a special thanks in particular to you, dear shareholders and business partners, for your support and continued commitment throughout a challenging and turbulent year 2000. (Dresdner Bank 2000:9)
After dealing with some of the most important emotional linguistic devices exploited in the interaction taking place in banks’ annual reports, the attention will be focused on the relationship between rhetorical devices and the two routes to persuasion identified by Petty et al. (1999), i.e. the central and the peripheral route. This relationship will be the main topic of the last section of this paper. 5. The relationship between rhetorical linguistic devices and the two routes to persuasion Petty et al. (1994) distinguished two routes to persuasion: – –
the central route and the peripheral route
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According to the authors (Petty et al. 1994:114f.), who refer to the theory called “Elaboration Likelihood Model” (ELM) 4 , the two routes represent two “rather different ways by which a person might come to hold a reasonable attitude (i.e. one that seems right to the person)”. The difference between them is stressed by Petty et al. in this way: One procedure, referred to as following the central route to persuasion, involves carefully thinking about and examining information pertinent (or central) to the merits of a topic. The second strategy, called the peripheral route to persuasion, involves less cognitive effort and occurs when a person relies on a relatively simple cue in the situation, such as whether the source appears to be an expert or whether a product comes in an attractive package (i.e., relying on information that permits a reasonable decision without requiring the person to undertake a careful and effortful analysis of the true merits of the issue or product).
In the case of annual reports, textual addressees can adopt the two routes, depending on their attitudes and interests. If they adopt the central route to persuasion they pay attention to what is written in annual reports, try to memorize the information supplied and to establish a relationship between it and what is already known, between what is written and the already existing opinions and adopted behaviour. 5 As regards the peripheral route to persuasion, readers focus their attention only on some textual sections that are considered of interest or attractive. 6 How can emotional linguistic stratagems affect the addressees’ behaviour if they choose the central route to persuasion? And how if readers choose the peripheral route? In the first case, linguistic devices strike the readers’ mind, and lead addressees to concentrate on the concepts that the sender wants to highlight: readers are led to think thoroughly about the new information they get and to put it into relationship with their actual opinions and behaviour, i.e. with the 4
Petty et al. (1994:114) highlight that the ELM “says that the amount and nature of the thinking that a person does about a persuasive message (such as an advertisement) has an important influence on the kind of persuasion that occurs. […] In order to understand the ELM, it is first important to understand an assumption that the ELM makes about the nature of humans in general. That assumption is that people have neither the ability nor the motivation to evaluate everything carefully.” 5 According to Petty et al. (1994:116), the “effortful elaboration that is necessary to take the central route involves paying careful attention to the relevant information in the message and relating that information to previous knowledge stored in memory (e.g., Is the message consistent or inconsistent with other facts that I know?) and generating new implications of the information (e.g., What does this mean for my life?). The ultimate goal of this effort is to determine if the position taken by the source has any merit.” 6 As regards the peripheral route, Petty et al. (1994:118) state that the "peripheral route to persuasion recognizes that it is neither adaptive nor possible for people to exert considerable mental effort in thinking about all of the persuasive communications to which they are exposed. […] That is, their opinions are the result of their use of simple cues rather than thinking about the substantive arguments presented.”
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environment they live in. In this case, it can be stated that emotional linguistic devices are highly logic because “sometimes attitudes are formed or changed by a rather thoughtful process in which people carefully attend to the arguments presented, examine them in the light of their relevant experiences and knowledge, and evaluate them along the dimensions they perceive to be central to the merits of the objects” (Petty et al. 1994:117). Rhetoric is of help in relating new information with old news, and it can push for the final adoption of a rational behaviour. In the second case which, according to Petty et al., occurs very frequently because people do not usually have time to examine every single word, rhetoric draws the addressees’ attention to some concepts that banks are willing to highlight, because they are able to persuade readers in a more effective way than other concepts. For instance, by exploiting repetitions in a textual section banks try to impress some concepts in the readers’ mind: the importance of repetitions is due to the fact that addressees can sense the role of the word repeated while reading a short paragraph where the repetition is present instead of the whole text. A metaphor, just to give another example, can surprise readers and lead them to focus their attention on a concept that is important throughout the text, but whose importance cannot be perceived if addressees do not read the text from the beginning to the end. 6. Conclusions In this paper three main points have been highlighted: First of all, in banks’ annual reports the flow of information is circular in shape and gives birth to a two-way interaction between banks and (potential) stakeholders. This kind of communication implies the production of an input of messages that are exchanged by the parties and of an output of messages and behaviours that are the result of the interaction between the information received and the surrounding environment. Secondly, both logic and emotions are important to lead addressees to a mental and a behavioural change. Logic is determinant for information to be true, clear, to start from valid premises and reach valid conclusions, to answer exactly the addressees’ questions, and to be adapted to the context. On their part, emotions add a quid to logic, i.e. an element that stimulates final decisions, for which they serve as a bridge. As regards rhetoric in the interaction taking place in banks’ annual reports, some emotional linguistic devices are particularly exploited: the order of positive and negative elements in sentences and the use of adjectives and adverbs conveying positive ideas, rhetorical questions, repetitions, metaphors and appeals directed at stakeholders. These stratagems have different roles: they foster the readers’ involvement (e.g., rhetorical questions and direct appeals), they make the reading process more pleasant and easier (e.g., metaphors), they impress concepts in the readers’ mind (e.g., repetitions), they
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convey positive ideas (e.g., arrangement of positive and negative elements in sentences and the exploitation of positive adjectives and adverbs). Thirdly, rhetorical linguistic strategies have a relationship with two routes to persuasion identified by Petty et al. (1994), i.e. the central and the peripheral route. As regards the central route, it is possible to state that emotional devices are useful if readers want to go through the text carefully and to relate information to their past and present experiences. In fact, rhetoric highlights certain concepts thus making addressees mentally connect these concepts with the environment. As for the peripheral route, rhetoric helps readers concentrate only on the textual parts that are crucial for banks and that, consequently, banks try to engrave on their (potential) stakeholders’ mind. References Anscombre, Jean-Claude & Oswald Ducrot. 1983. L’Argumentation dans la langue. Liège: Mardaga. Aristoteles. 1996. Rhetorica. Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore. Bamford, Julia. 1997. “The Role of Metaphor in Argumentation in Economics Texts: The case of the research article on stock markets”. Understanding Argument: La logica informale del discorso ed. by Elisa Bussi, Marina Bondi & Francesca Gatta. Bologna: Clueb. Cialdini, Robert B. 1989. Le armi della persuasione: Come e perché si finisce col dire di sì. Firenze: Giunti. Eemeren, Frans H. van, Rob Grootendorst & Francisca Snoeck Henkemans. 2002. Argumentation: Analysis, evaluation, presentation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Jäkel, Olaf. 1994. “Wirtschaftswachstum oder Wir steigern das Bruttosozialprodukt: Quantitätsmetaphern aus der Ökonomie-Domäne“. Unternehmenskommunikation: Linguistische Analyse und Beschreibungen ed. by Theo Bungarten. Tostedt: Attikon Verlag. Lo Cascio, Vincenzo. 1991. Grammatica dell’argomentare: strategie e strutture. Firenze: La Nuova Italia Editrice. Perelman, Chaїm & Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. 1966. Trattato dell’argomentazione: La nuova retorica. Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore. Petty, Richard E., John T. Cacioppo, Alan J. Strahtman & Joseph R. Priest. 1994. “To Think or not to Think: Exploring two routes to persuasion”. Persuasion: Psychological insights and perspectives ed. by Sharon Shavitt and Timothy C. Brock. Needham Heights, Mass.: Allyn & Bacon. Rigotti, Eddo. 2005. “Congruity Theory and Argumentation”. Studies in Communication Sciences. Special Issue, 75-96. Stati, Sorin. 2002. Principi di analisi argomentativa: Retorica, logica, linguistica. Bologna: Pàtron Editore. Weigand, Edda. 2006. “Principles of Dialogue. With a special focus on business dialogues”. Cooperation and Conflict in Ingroup and Intergroup Communication. Selected papers from the Xth biennial congress of the IADA, Bucharest 2005 ed. by Liliana Ionescu-Ruxăndoiu in collaboration with Liliana Hoinărescu, 35-51. Bucharest: University of Bucharest. Annual Reports Bank Austria Creditanstalt 2002, Commerzbank 2003, Deutsche Bank 2004, 2005, Dresdner Bank 2000, HBOS plc. 2001, Merrill Lynch 2003, SanpaoloImi 2001, UBS 2005
Attention-influencing as a Rhetorical Strategy in German and Turkish Parliamentary Debates Didem Ozan University of Münster
Rhetoric as the art of using human communicative abilities effectively in order to promote individual or collective interests is a permanent and inherent feature of dialogue as a mixed game. In parliamentary debates, influencing attention is used as a rhetorical strategy. Speakers anticipate their audience’s as well as the public’s perception. They target and influence the direction and intensity of attention in various political domains. Politicians have to mediate between institutional functions and roles and their electorate’s expectations. If they do this, they can easily get into conflicts of interest. In October 2004, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan and the then German Foreign Minister Joseph Fischer declared their positions regarding the scheduled accession of Turkey to the European Union. Two sample analyses are taken from their speeches given during two national parliamentary debates. Rhetorical strategies dependent on different cultural conditions were used by these political leaders to shift attention from internal conflicts which could weaken their position.
1. Introduction In the present paper, I would like to compare different strategies for influencing public perception in parliamentary debates. The comparison is based neither on single linguistic forms nor functions nor communicative purposes of single speech acts. Sözer-Huber & Huber (1995:376) claim with regard to approaches towards linguistic comparison: “Das Tertium comparationis ist in der Denkausstattung, in den Ausdrucksbedürfnissen des Menschen zu suchen.” (“The tertium comparationis must be sought in the mental equipment and the needs of expression of the individual.”) Thus, language comparison takes universal principles of human interaction into account - principles that take different shapes in different cultural surroundings - and approaches them from a higher functional level. My approach is based on Edda Weigand’s Theory of Dialogic Action Games, a model which analyses the use of language in relation to individuals and their purposes (cf. Weigand 2000), and in which language, perception, and cognition have been integrated into dialogic interaction. It has been extended to the ‘Mixed Game Model’ where rhetoric as the art of using human communicative abilities effecttively in order to promote individual or collective interests is a permanent and inherent feature of dialogue (cf. Weigand 2006:75). This means with regard to
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parliamentary rhetoric that the basis of a politician’s argumentation is the intention to promote the interests of a party in conflict situations with the help of skilfully rhetorically embedded arguments. The authentic examples in the analytical part have been taken from two parliamentary debates about the scheduled Turkish accession to the European Union, both of which took place in October 2004; the transcriptions can be found in the appendix. Both politicians, the Turkish Prime Minister, Tayyip Erdoğan, and the then German Foreign Minister, Joseph Fischer, held the same core position: Turkey should join the European Union. Their appearance in parliament, shortly after the European Commission had published the positive progress report, was a unique chance for both politicians, which offered them one last opportunity to lend support to their own pro-European and pro-Turkish positions just before the European Council’s decision in December 2004. 2. Attention as a perception ability Perception plays an important role in dialogues. In cognitive psychology, it is understood to be an integrative component of cognition (cf. Anderson 2001). Attention intensifies perception, which is itself limited and accessible to control. A main cognitive strategy with which individuals grasp complex environments is the so-called “attention focusing”, defined as “that part of the cognitive structure which forms an activation maximum” (Engelkamp & Zimmer 1983:29). In general, cognitive activation means directing one’s attention to domains of the self and the environment. In parliament, speakers anticipate their audience’s as well as the public’s perception. They target and influence the direction and intensity of attention to various political domains. Influencing attention can be used as a rhetorical strategy in parliamentary debates. 3. The speaker’s orientation space The German Bundestag (“German Parliament”) and the Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi (“Turkish Grand National Assembly”) are the parliamentary centres of the German and Turkish representative democracies. Searle describes institutional reality in a functional way, above all with reference to the features “collective intentionality” and “attribution of function” (cf. 2001:149). In accordance with this, in parliament, internal attributions of function are made and purpose-oriented structures are shaped, based on a functional orientation and legal foundations such as constitutions or treaties. As functionaries, individuals play different roles, according to their institutional status. Every Member of Parliament learns which communicative actions – for example, those performed during a speech – are obligatory and which are optional. Not only does this restrict actions through norms and expectations, it also creates elbow room allowing a politician to act strate-
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gically. The skill with which this room is used depends on interests, resources, practical necessities, and creative ability. When political leaders give a speech in parliament, they are institutional functionaries as well as party representatives – both roles which are integrated into state and society and which assume a communicative mediation function in the forming of the political will. They represent societal claims to truth and volition, allowing these to be functionalized and regulated for governmental action. As an ‘advocate’, a politician has to concern him- or herself with party preservation by addressing in a cooperative way latent and manifest interests within societal reality and by framing these within the worldview represented by the party. Choice and weighting of the arguments employed is therefore connected to ideologies and the traditions and values derived from them (for example, ‘freedom’, ‘security’, or ‘family’). Since parties as well as their representatives compete, they are forced to defend their positions in the face of collective or individual antagonists and to acquire political power. Thus, parties and their representatives are guided by two types of specific interests: self assertion party claims to truth and volition
orientation towards society society’s claims to truth and volition
Figure 1: Party interests
The electorate perceives contradictions between political ‘speaking’ and ‘acting’ as symptoms of arbitrary power maximizing. Political rhetoric covering a preceding complex of relationships and decisions ‘behind the scenes’ is latently suspected of deceiving people about immoral conduct and hidden interests. The political ideal that politicians’ motives should be sincere and be guided by the common weal is repeatedly disregarded in the public’s opinion. The perception of ‘political reality’ by the electorate suffers from strong negative bias regarding current political morality, bias fed by − among other things − corruption scandals. In Germany, terms like Legitimitätskrise (“crisis of legitimacy”) or Politikverdrossenheit (“political weariness”) reflect an enormous loss of confidence and reputation (cf. Huth 2004:325), a loss that can be seen in the withdrawal of political support. In Turkey, suspicions regarding politicians’ alleged ‘clandestine motives’ go hand in hand with a low voter acceptance of the well-established political parties. The Turkish public views the shaping of the political will as a client-driven political process (cf. Kramer 2002:19). The demonstrative toppling of three administrations by the military and the practice of prohibiting parties holding oppositional ideologies have led to a loss of confidence (cf. Seufert 2002:6). In this context, the fact that the Islamic AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, “Party for Justice and Development”) was voted into parliament in 2002
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has been explained as a protest reaction against the leading Turkish popular parties. 4. Conflicting interests in the debate as a mixed game The decisive aspect of rhetorical strategies in parliamentary debates as complex units of political culture is thus the politicians’ need to win over a critical public to their positions as well as to themselves. Some universal functions of parliamentary debates by which they are necessarily guided will be described below. In plenum, formally defined oral contributions are made within the frame of a cooperative and critical exchange of opinions, representing the shaping of a social consensus in a democracy in an institutionalized form. From the party’s perspective, the contributions first of all have the purpose of convincing others of a certain position the party considers the most reasonable solution. Positions held by the party are announced and justified with arguments, opponents’ positions and arguments critically scrutinized for errors. Beneath this surface, the main task is not the development of opinions. The positions have already been developed and fixed by the party. In core, announcements serve as persuasive statements of already well-established positions made for the internal audience and potential voters. Their purpose is to gain or keep political power. Therefore the debate sets a constitutive frame for the regulative struggle between the parties for the electorate’s support. PARTY INTERESTS [CONVINCE / PERSUADE (proposition)]
Arguments + rhetorical techniques
Figure 2: Communicative action in debates
The parliamentary debate as an argumentative action game is regulated by a conflict of interests regarding political power. Gains in power made by one faction (‘ego’) widen their options and reduce the influence held by another faction (‘alter ego’): faction 1 (‘ego’) > power gain < faction 2 (‘alter ego’) Figure 3: Conflict of interests
Strategies employed during oral contributions still follow rational argumentative structures. However, they are not aimed primarily at communication but at the effective promotion of party interests. In this specific mixed game, persuasion as a universal communicative attempt to promote interests most effectively can be described as ‘striving to gain power by garnering support for a worldview’. In this, perceiving the ego of a party and its personages as an integral identity is important. Internal conflicts, whether caused by disagreements within the party or by
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the assigning of the various political roles, are pushed out of the spotlight. During the oral performance, the politician instrumentalizes language use, perception, and cognition as human abilities to prevail in the conflict of interests. The adaptation to different cultural surroundings will be compared in a contrastive sample analysis of parliamentary oral contributions made by the Turkish Prime Minister and the former German Foreign Minister. 5. Sample analysis 1: Erdoğan’s strategy of attention-influencing As chairman of the AKP, the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan pursues the main goal of his Islamic-Conservative party, namely to strengthen the position of religion in the Turkish state. His institutional position provides him with the power needed to promote the religious interests of his voters; however, his elbow room is greatly limited by the laicist Turkish constitution (cf. Agai 2004). Erdoğan is under constant scrutiny by republican observers regarding the respect he pays to the laicist state ideology. To ensure his self-preservation, the AKP politician pursues a complex goal reflected in his rhetoric: He focuses on the traditionally religious tendencies of his voters, but at the same time his argumentation supports the laicist state principles. These communicative demands are in conflict. In order to camouflage religious and traditional interests that might be disapproved of by the state, Erdoğan moulds the public’s perception through positive argumentation, euphemization, and vagueness. 5.1 Positive argumentation The basis of Erdoğan’s rhetoric is the dialogic purpose of winning the audience’s support for the underlying two claims: − The EU intends to start accession negotiations. − This is advantageous for Turkey. Regarding the argumentative structure, is must be said that the AKP politician does nothing other than deliver the arguments made by his own side (positive argumentative structure). During his speech, Erdoğan pushes the opposing side’s position away from the focus of attention by alluding to and depreciating it: (1) 001 002 003
… Tabiî, zamanla ilgili olarak çok değişik ifadeler kullanılıyor; efendim, askıya alınmak; efendim, işte, tarih verilmedi, şudur budur gibi. Bence bunlara pek iltifat etmenin anlamı yok. …
“Of course, different statements have been made regarding the accession period, ‘Sir/Ma’am, put on hold, Sir/Ma’am, well, no date has been given’, or something to that effect. My opinion is that it is pointless to pay any special attention to this.”
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5.2 Euphemizing delicate matters Erdoğan sidesteps a relevant and complex matter by amplifying marginally important propositional aspects while at the same time ignoring a central one: he tells the audience about his tour of Europe in 2004 and describes his meetings with European representatives with whom he talked about the Turkish situation, his happiness about the cooperative atmosphere he experienced: (2) 004 005 006 007
… Muhataplarımız, Avrupa Konseyinin etkin bir üyesi olan ülkemiz ile Avrupa Konseyi arasındaki işbirliğinden ve Hükümetimiz döneminde insan hakları, demokratikleşme konusunda atılan adımlardan duydukları memnuniyetleri ifade ettiler ve bundan, tabiî ki, bizler de memnun olduk. …
“Our interlocutors have shown their contentment with the cooperation between the Council of Europe and our country as an active member as well as with the progress made in human rights and democratization during the period of our government and this has, of course, made us content, too.”
Erdoğan repeatedly notes the satisfaction of the Council of Europe (004). This is not an institution of the European Union and does not have any influence on Turkey’s accession process. His circumlocution euphemizes the main goals of the journey. Erdoğan does not mention that he negotiated with the then European Union enlargement commissioner Günter Verheugen about one point that could have jeopardized a positive evaluation in the EU progress report. The reform of Turkish Criminal Law made in 2004 was to include a paragraph making adultery a crime, in accordance with Islamic Law. This so-called Zina paragraph (“fornication” in Islam) almost caused a crisis between the radical and the moderate wings of the AKP and was criticized by the EU as signifying a lack of accession maturity (cf. Luchs 2004). This adultery paragraph was controversially discussed in the Turkish media, but the Prime Minister does not even mention it. 5.3 Self-authorizing by means of lexical selection Several times, Erdoğan praises parliament, for example like this: (3) 008
... yine bunları da süratle yerine getirmeye muktedir bir Parlamentomuz var
“... in order to fulfill these demands speedily, too, we have a capable parliament”
This utterance is very vague. The praising and thus empowering ‘agens’ is the inclusive we, which can mean one’s own faction, parliament itself, or the whole public. Using the representative action function PRAISE, the speaker acknowledges an achievement with the authority of the praiser, thereby directing the attention of the praised ‘patiens’ to himself. The identity of the praising ‘agens’ emerges after a closer lexical analysis. The praise contains an Arabic loan-word: the adjective muktedir (“capable”, line
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008). Erdoğan uses muktedir and not the more widespread Turkish synonym yetenekli. The people empower parliament by attributing a characteristic: muktedir is rather high register language, evoking the Ottoman-Oriental tradition of Turkey. High register Arabic vocabulary is used by the Islamic-Conservative middle class; colloquially used Arabic loan-words are more likely to be found among the poorer rural population. This choice of words connects on a lexical level the subject ‘parliament’, a laicist institution, with an attribution defined as oriental. Erdoğan’s precise selection is made possible by the existence of a large reservoir of Arabic lexemes which are at his disposition, in addition to their Turkish synonyms. Approximately half of all Turkish loan-words are of Arabic origin and were incorporated into the vocabulary during the age of the Ottoman Empire. Since Kemal Atatürk’s language reform of 1923 – in whose wake, among other things, the Arabic script was replaced by Latin letters – Turkish synonyms meant to replace loan-words have constantly been (re-)constructed (cf. Steuerwald 1963). The fact that they continue to be used by traditionally-minded groups is above all responsible for the survival of the Arabic lexemes in spite of the existence of Turkish synonyms with the same cognitive functions. 1 In doing this, the Prime Minister is opposing Turkish language policy, though appealing to Kemal’s principle of halkçılık (“populism”), which within Turkish state ideology means closeness to the people. Erdoğan’s lexical selection serves to direct the public’s focus of attention to itself. The AKP politician attributes the active part in the further accession process to the Turkish people. 6. Sample analysis 2: Fischer’s strategy of attention-influencing Tayyip Erdoğan is not the only politician for whom the question of the Turkish EU accession is burdened with an internal conflict of interests; the same applies to Joseph Fischer, at that time German Foreign Minister, regarding the human rights situation in Turkey. Fischer’s party, Bündnis 90/Grüne (“Alliance 90/Greens”), stressed in a position paper the necessity of improving the human rights situation in Turkey before negotiations could be commenced (cf. Bundestagsfraktion Bündnis 90/Die Grünen 2003:1). The protection of human rights is also part of the socalled Copenhagen EU accession criteria (cf. Europäischer Rat 1993:13). Human rights organizations such as Amnesty International still classify the Turkish situation as problematical (cf. Amnesty International 2004). In a representative German survey by the Centre for Turkish Studies, the negative argument that Turkey does not respect human rights, it is not a democracy obtained the highest approval (66.1 %) among those questioned (cf. Zentrum für Türkeistudien 2003:25). 1
Stamenov describes a similar lexical phenomenon in the Bulgarian language. Many Turkish loan-words have a negative or ambiguous additional meaning and continue to be used even though Bulgarian synonyms exist (cf. Stamenov 2004:193).
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As Foreign Minister and member of the red-green coalition (1998−2005), Fischer agreed to the Federal Chancellor’s pro-Turkish stance: closer cooperation with Turkey is strategically advantageous and more easily achieved if the country’s efforts to join the EU are rewarded with acceptance. Fischer avoids discussing this strategic calculation and directs attention to the opposition’s conduct instead. 6.1 Negative argumentation From the perspective of the German government, Fischer wishes to push forward the underlying claim to truth: − Beginning accession negotiations is advantageous for the EU. In order to lend support to the government’s position, Fischer rejects the position held by the opposition: − Beginning accession negotiations is disadvantageous for the EU. The argumentative structure of his speech is characterized by negatives (cf. Bollow 2007:72) and directs attention to his opponents. To support his argumenttation, Fischer discovers his own position in quotations made by leading opponents such as Michael Glos (cf. chapter 6.3). 6.2 Interpreting the position shift as a breach of cooperation With their so-called “privileged partnership model”, the opposing CDU/CSU faction maintains a position which offers – as an alternative to full membership – deeper cooperation with Turkey in various fields. The Foreign Minister, however, presents his opponents’ current position in such a way that it implies a complete rejection of Turkey. This would mean a contradiction to a position held for 40 years: (4) 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009
… Ich war auch der Meinung, dass wir unbeschadet der Entscheidung über die Vollmitgliedschaft hinsichtlich der Bedeutung der zukünftigen Entwicklung der Türkei eine gemeinsame strategische Position vertreten haben. Wenn dies aber der Fall ist, dann müssen Sie sich fragen lassen, meine Damen und Herren von der Union und Frau Vorsitzende Merkel, warum Sie jetzt, nach 40 Jahren, in dem Wissen um die Konsequenzen eines Nein – ungeachtet dessen, wie Sie dieses Nein verpacken werden; ob als privilegierte Partnerschaft oder wie auch immer – diese Wende vornehmen, nachdem Ihre Partei vier Jahrzehnte lang eine ganz andere Politik verfolgt hat. …
“… It was also my opinion that – irrespective of any decision about full membership status - we held a common strategic position regarding the future development of Turkey. If this is true, ladies and gentlemen of the Union and Ms Chairperson Merkel, you have to accept the question why you – after 40 years and being fully aware of the consequences a ‘no’ would have, no matter how you will disguise this
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‘no’, call it privileged partnership or something else – perform this turnabout after your party has upheld a completely different policy for four decades. …”
In Example 4, both the personal pronoun wir (“we”) (001) and the nominal phrase eine gemeinsame strategische Position (“a common strategic position”) (003), referring to Turkey’s importance for strategic defense policy, hint at a cooperative agreement between government and opposition. For camouflage and to avoid laying himself open to attack, Fischer does not go into details. He marks this ‘common ground’ with the past tense and contrasts it with the opposition’s current solo stance, which he interprets as a change in direction, using the word Wende (“turnabout”). Here, Fischer alludes to the positive meaning of the word during the chancellorship of Helmut Kohl (1982 – 1998), who announced a geistigmoralische Wende (“mental and moral turnabout”) after thirteen years of SPD/ FDP government. Fischer uses this lexeme ironically in order to present the opposition as lacking in moral integrity. 6.3 Irritating the opponent Fischer skillfully uses a quotation from the past to show up the opposition. In order to understand this, it is important to know that the arguments presented here by CSU leader Michael Glos – ‘European security’, ‘partnership’, and ‘equal treatment of Turkey’ (see below) – have been accepted by the opposition. However, these arguments support a pro-Turkish position which at present is not accepted any more: (5) 009 010 011 012 013 014 015 016 017 018 019 020 021 022 023 024
Wortwörtlich heißt es in der Presseerklärung von Michael Glos: Es ist nicht nur im deutschen, sondern im europäischen Interesse, die Türkei an Europa zu binden. An der Schwelle Europas, im Schnittpunkt der Krisenregionen des Nahen und Mittleren Ostens, war die Türkei über Jahrzehnte ein verlässlicher Partner und Freund der Deutschen. (Beifall bei Abgeordneten der CDU/CSU) Klatschen Sie weiter! Sehr gut! Weiter heißt es: Die Bedeutung der Türkei für die Sicherheit Europas besteht über das Ende des Ost-West-Konflikts hinaus. Es dient nicht europäischen Interessen, wenn die Türkei auf ihrem Weg nach Europa durch Obertaktieren vor den Kopf gestoßen wird. (Beifall bei Abgeordneten des BÜNDNISSES 90/DIE GRÜNEN und der SPD) So, und jetzt klatschen Sie gleich: Für Europa und die Türkei muss klar sein, dass ein türkischer Beitrittsantrag grundsätzlich an den gleichen Kriterien gemessen wird wie der jedes anderen europäischen Staates.
“I am quoting verbally from a press release by Michael Glos: It is not only in the German but in the European interest to link Turkey more closely to Europe. On the threshold to Europe, at the intersection of the volatile regions of the Near and Middle East, Turkey has been a reliable partner and friend of Germany for decades.
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(CDU/CSU Bundestag members applaud) Keep applauding! Very good! I will continue: Turkey’s importance for European security does not end with the Cold War. It is not in the European interest to insult Turkey on her way to Europe by excessive tactical maneuvering. (BÜNDNIS 90/GRÜNE and SPD Bundestag members applaud) Well, now you are sure to applaud: It has to be clear to Europe and Turkey that a Turkish application for membership as a matter of principle must be judged by the same criteria as that of any other state in Europe.”
Fischer’s conclusion “[…] dass ein türkischer Beitrittsantrag grundsätzlich an den gleichen Kriterien gemessen wird wie der jedes anderen europäischen Staates” (“[…] that a Turkish application for membership as a matter of principle must be judged by the same criteria as that of any other state in Europe”) (022024) is based on the principle of equality (cf. Kolmer & Rob-Santer 2002:191). In his press release, Glos used this principle for his pro-Turkish position. Fischer explicitly states how he perceives the non-verbal reaction of the conservative faction and thereby directs the public attention to a small detail. Without any verbal comment, he demonstrates that for the conservative CDU/CSU the political norm of party solidarity obviously has priority over the principle of equal treatment. The Foreign Minister interacts with the opposition in order to expose it. He praises the applause as nonverbal support for Glos’ arguments and comments ironically on the nonexistent support for the conclusion So, und jetzt klatschen Sie gleich (“Well, now you are sure to applaud”) (022) – a support that would have been reasonable but at the present time is at odds with party solidarity. 7. Conclusions The strategies presented in this analysis, used by Fischer and Erdoğan to influence attention, are integral parts of the public mixed game ‘parliamentary debate’ and determine the way arguments are presented. Perceptive strategies play a role for the rhetorical effectiveness of argumentation in parliamentary debates, a role not to be underestimated. Attention is skillfully influenced in order to deal with internal conflicts of interest. By doing this, political leaders realize party interests within tight institutional frameworks and deftly deal with conflicts that result from the personal union of party interests and institutional functions. Even the choice of arguments is influenced beforehand by perception-oriented criteria closely connected with institutional interests. A task for further analysis would be to find out how far the Turkish Prime Minister’s deflecting and self-referring strategy is meant as a defense against negative public attitudes. It is part of Turkish government culture to treat parliament generally in a very positive and respectful manner. In Fischer’s speech, however, conscious focusing on the opposition with the aim of irritating is equivalent to an obvious attitude of attacking.
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References Agai, Bekim. 2004. “Islam und Kemalismus in der Türkei”. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 33/34.18-24. Anderson, John R. 20013. Kognitive Psychologie. Heidelberg: Spektrum. Amnesty International. 2004. “Annual Report Turkey 2004”. http://www2.amnesty.de (1. April 2007). Bollow, Jörn. 2007. Hinterfragt. Das politische Fernsehinterview als dialogisches Handlungsspiel. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Bundestagsfraktion Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen. 2003. “Die Erweiterung der EU”. http://www. gruene-fraktion.de (3. January 2004). Engelkamp, Johannes & Zimmer, Hubert D. 1983. Dynamic Aspects of Language Processing. Focus and Presupposition. Berlin: Springer. Europäischer Rat. 1993. “Europäischer Rat. Schlussfolgerungen des Vorsitzes, 21.-22. Juni 1993”. http://ue.eu.int/pressData/de/ec/72924.pdf (14. July 2003). Huth, Iris A. 2004. Politische Verdrossenheit. Erscheinungsformen und Ursachen als Herausforderungen für das politische System und die politische Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland im 21. Jahrhundert. Münster: LIT. Kolmer, Lothar & Rob-Santer, Carmen. 2002. Studienbuch Rhetorik. Paderborn: Schöningh. Kramer, Heinz. 2002. “Die Türkei und die Kopenhagener Kriterien”. November 2002, http://www.swp-berlin.org/de/common/get_document.php?asset_id=759 (1. February 2007). Luchs, Robert. 2004. “Die diffuse Angst vor einem neuen Jahr 1683”. Das Parlament 41/42, http://www.bundestag.de/dasparlament/2004/41-42/Ausland/002.html (4. October 2004). Searle, John R. 2001. Geist, Sprache und Gesellschaft. Philosophie in der wirklichen Welt. Transl. by Harvey P. Gavagai. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Seufert, Günter. 2002. “Neue pro-islamische Parteien in der Türkei”. March 2002, http://www.swp-berlin.org/de/common/get_document.php?asset_id=324 (2 February 2007). Sözer-Huber, Emel & Huber, Wolfgang. 1995. “Prinzipien des Sprachvergleichs Deutsch – Türkisch”. Germanistentreffen Bundesrepublik Deutschland–Türkei, 25.9.-29.9.1994. Dokumentation der Tagungsbeiträge ed. by Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, 369-389. Bonn. Stamenov, Maxim I. 2004. “Ambivalence as a Dialogic Frame of Emotions in Conflict”. Emotion in Dialogic Interaction. Advances in the complex ed by Edda Weigand, 179-204. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Steuerwald, Karl. 1963. Die türkische Sprachpolitik seit 1928. Berlin: Langenscheidt. Weigand, Edda. 2000. “The Dialogic Action Game”. Dialogue Analysis VII. Working with dialogue ed. by Malcolm Coulthard, Janet Cotterill & Frances Rock, 1-18. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Weigand, Edda. 2006. “Argumentation: The mixed game”. Argumentation 20:1.59-87. Zentrum für Türkeistudien. 2003. “Die Einstellung der deutschen Bevölkerung zum EU-Beitritt der Türkei. Ergebnisse einer telefonischen Befragung im Auftrag der Botschaft der Republik Türkei in Deutschland, Oktober 2003”. http://www.zft-online.de/deutsch.php (27 December 2004).
Appendix 3rd Session of the 22nd legislative period of the General Assembly of the Türkiye Büyük Millet Meclisi on 7 October 2004, Speaker: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan […] Strasbourg'ta bulunduğum sırada, Avrupa Konseyi Parlamenter Meclisinde, Hükümetimizce, son dönemde insan hakları ve demokratikleşme alanında atılan adımlar, ülkemizin Avrupa Birliği perspektifi ve dışpolitika önceliklerimiz konularında bir
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konuşma yaptım. Avrupa Konseyi Parlamenter Meclisi üyelerinin sorularını tek tek yanıtladım. Avrupa Konseyi Üst Yönetimi ve Avrupa İnsan Hakları Mahkemesi Başkanıyla görüşme imkânını buldum. Görüşmeler sırasında, muhataplarıma, Türkiye'nin, Avrupa Konseyinin Avrupa mimarisi içinde üstleneceği rol ve görevlerde başarıya ulaşması için mümkün olan her türlü katkıyı yapmaya hazır olduğunu belirttim. Ülkemizin Avrupa Konseyiyle mevcut işbirliğinden memnuniyet duyduğumuzu da ifade ettim. Muhataplarımız, Avrupa Konseyinin etkin bir üyesi olan ülkemiz ile Avrupa Konseyi arasındaki işbirliğinden ve Hükümetimiz döneminde insan hakları, demokratikleşme konusunda atılan adımlardan duydukları memnuniyetleri ifade ettiler ve bundan, tabiî ki, bizler de memnun olduk. Bu ziyaret vesilesiyle, ülkemizin dışpolitika önceliklerinin, Avrupa Birliği üyeliğiyle ilgili perspektife yönelik de çok farklı görüş alışverişinde bulunduğumuz Avrupa Birliği üyesi ülkelerin temsilcileriyle de görüşme fırsatımız oldu. […] Gerek Türk basını olarak gerekse şu ana kadar bu sürece destek verenlerin aynı desteği bundan sonra da sürdürmeleri, bizim işimizi kolaylaştıracağı gibi, süreci de hızlandıracaktır. Zira, Türkiye artık, gerek ülkemiz gerekse milletimizle, gerekse tüm Avrupa ve Avrupa'daki dostlarımızla birlikte, bir dönemeci, şu anda, evet, aşmaktadır. Burada, yine bir gerçeği özellikle vurgulamak istiyorum -az önce de ifade ettim- uzun ince bir yoldayız ve bu yolculuğumuz esnasında, dayanışmamız hiçbir zaman eksik olmamalı ve üzerimize düşeni en iyi şekilde yerine getirmek suretiyle, Avrupa Birliği müktesebatının içerisinde ne varsa, bunların gereğini ve uyumdaki eksikliklerimizi de, şüphesiz ki müzakereler esnasında, yine, bazı şeyler ortaya çıkacaktır, bunları da süratle yerine getirmeye muktedir bir Parlamentomuz var, bununla iftihar edebiliriz ve bunun yanında, tabiî, uygulamaya yönelik atılacak adımlar vardır ki, zaten, biliyorsunuz sıkıntı buradadır. Neden; bu bir zihniyet değişimidir, bir zihinsel değişimdir, bu bir süreçtir; bu zihniyet değişimini, hep birlikte, en batıdan en doğuya, en kuzeyden en güneye, 70 000 000 vatan evladına kabul ettirecek şekilde bunun çalışmasını yapmak durumundayız. Bunu ne kadar büyük ölçüde gerçekleştirirsek, inanıyorum ki bu süreç o kadar hızlanacaktır. Tabiî, zamanla ilgili olarak çok değişik ifadeler kullanılıyor; efendim, askıya alınmak; efendim, işte, tarih verilmedi, şudur budur gibi. Bence bunlara pek iltifat etmenin anlamı yok. Müzakereye başlayan bir ülke tam üye olma sürecine girmiş bir ülkedir. […] 135th Session of the General Assembly of the Deutscher Bundestag, 28 October 2004, Speaker: Joseph Fischer Ich war auch der Meinung, dass wir unbeschadet der Entscheidung über die Vollmitgliedschaft hinsichtlich der Bedeutung der zukünftigen Entwicklung der Türkei eine gemeinsame strategische Position vertreten haben. Wenn dies aber der Fall ist, dann müssen Sie sich fragen lassen, meine Damen und Herren von der Union und Frau Vorsitzende Merkel, warum Sie jetzt, nach 40 Jahren, in dem Wissen um die Konsequenzen eines Nein - ungeachtet dessen, wie Sie dieses Nein verpacken werden; ob als privilegierte Partnerschaft oder wie auch immer - diese Wende vornehmen, nachdem Ihre Partei vier Jahrzehnte lang eine ganz andere Politik verfolgt hat. (Beifall beim BÜNDNIS 90/DIE GRÜNEN und bei der SPD)
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[…]Herr Kollege Schäuble, Sie wissen doch genau, welche Konsequenz es hätte, wenn wir Ihnen folgen würden: Wir würden die Verhandlungen nicht aufnehmen. Deswegen frage ich Sie noch einmal: Warum vertreten Sie diese Position jetzt, nach 40 Jahren? Sie sprechen davon, dass es jetzt ein glaubwürdiges Angebot geben sollte. Haben denn Konrad Adenauer und Helmut Kohl keine glaubwürdigen Angebote vorgelegt? […] Nach Aufforderung durch den Europäischen Rat von Luxemburg vom Dezember 1997 das fällt also noch in die Zeit der Regierung Kohl - verabschiedete die Kommission die Mitteilung über eine “Europäische Strategie für die Türkei“, in der nochmals unterstrichen wird, was letztendlich in der Kontinuität aller Bundesregierungen steht. In den Schlussfolgerungen des Europäischen Rates heißt es: Der Europäische Rat bekräftigt, daß die Türkei für einen Beitritt zur Europäischen Union in Frage kommt. Das Beitrittsersuchen der Türkei wird auf der Grundlage derselben Kriterien untersucht wie im Falle anderer Bewerberstaaten. Obwohl die politischen und wirtschaftlichen Voraussetzungen, auf Grund deren Beitrittsverhandlungen in Betracht gezogen werden können, nicht gegeben sind, hält es der Europäische Rat für wichtig, eine Strategie zur Vorbereitung der Türkei auf den Beitritt festzulegen, und zwar durch eine Annäherung an die Europäische Union in allen Bereichen. Daraufhin verfasste Herr Glos eine nun wirklich historisch zu nennende Presseerklärung: Die Türkei darf auf dem Weg nach Europa nicht diskriminiert werden. (Beifall bei Abgeordneten der SPD) Wortwörtlich heißt es in der Presseerklärung von Michael Glos: Es ist nicht nur im deutschen, sondern im europäischen Interesse, die Türkei an Europa zu binden. An der Schwelle Europas, im Schnittpunkt der Krisenregionen des Nahen und Mittleren Ostens, war die Türkei über Jahrzehnte ein verlässlicher Partner und Freund der Deutschen. (Beifall bei Abgeordneten der CDU/CSU) Klatschen Sie weiter! Sehr gut! Weiter heißt es: Die Bedeutung der Türkei für die Sicherheit Europas besteht über das Ende des Ost-West-Konflikts hinaus. Es dient nicht europäischen Interessen, wenn die Türkei auf ihrem Weg nach Europa durch Übertaktieren vor den Kopf gestoßen wird. (Beifall bei Abgeordneten des BÜNDNISSES 90/DIE GRÜNEN und der SPD) So, und jetzt klatschen Sie gleich: Für Europa und die Türkei muss klar sein, dass ein türkischer Beitrittsantrag grundsätzlich an den gleichen Kriterien gemessen wird wie der jedes anderen europäischen Staates. […]
Diatexts of Media Dilemmas The rhetorical construction of euthanasia Giuseppe Mininni, Amelia Manuti & Rossella Rubino University of Bari
In the post-modern era the global conscience has to deal with various dilemmas, which are made more complex by media interaction. These issues mostly pertain to the bioethical sphere of human experience, i.e. the discursive sphere linked to the necessity to overcome any interpretative routine of marked separation between ‘public’ and ‘private’. A specific effect of such an enunciative claim can be seen in the social debate on euthanasia recently hosted by the media since through subtle argumentative strategies it focuses on different interpretative repertoires of the dignity of human life. The present paper aims to discuss the results of a qualitative study, the aim of which is to investigate certain segments of the “dialogue about euthanasia”, collected from the Italian media (press, television, internet). Diatextual analysis has been adopted as a methodological tool to highlight the recurrence of specific rhetorical assets of both pro and contra positions.
1. Introduction The opposition between rhetoric and philosophy (or science), which has its most authoritative exponent in Plato (Vickers 1989), might be disclaimed by the evidence that the use of signs could be interpreted as “l’atto di negoziare la distanza tra gli individui a proposito di un problema” (“the act of negotiating the distance between individuals solving a problem”, Meyer 1993:23). In fact, different positions activate almost automatically the rhetoric of dialogue, when people prefer the strength of words to the words of strength. This avoids any logic of opposition aiming at exclusion and implies the possibility of a reciprocal acknowledgement between positions (individuals, groups, cultures) which are conscious of being different and at the same time idealiter accessible among them. Conversely, a rhetoric of non-dialogue often manifests itself as the absolute incompatibility between versions of the world, implicitly justifying their eventual being in conflict. Between the rhetoric of dialogue and that of non-dialogue there is a whole range of rhetorics inspired by the enhancement of the enunciative asymmetry, where the different discursive power is distributed between domination and insubordination. When the content of a dialogue is too problematic, the interlocutors are caught in an enunciative deadlock, so that the practice of discourse
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‘spins round in a circle’. This happens when the discursive communities have to cope with a wide gap between the issues of real life, which are often linked to new cultural artefacts, and with the problem of negotiation of available resources for its symbolic elaboration. Often this gap becomes a dilemma. The present paper will attempt to give a contribution to the examination of the rhetorical strategies which are used when the dialogical ‘form of life’ meets the enunciative practices of a dilemma. The case study is taken from the argumentative context of a recent public debate in the media about the need for a law on euthanasia. 2. Rhetoric as a human form of life Within the past century there have been different attempts to define a “new rhetoric” (Richards 1936, Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca 1958, Toulmin 1958, Enos & Brown 1993). Since “rhetoric is rooted in an essential function of language”, that is “inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols” (Burke 1969:43), semiotics could be viewed as an effort to reintroduce the epistemological project of ancient rhetoric (Berlin 1993:13, 142). The desire to legitimize the renewal of rhetoric has been fostered by the growing awareness of its ‘cognitive’ dimension (Flower 1993:171), its ability to be considered a method of investigation into the social and individual process of meaning production rather than a simple technique of persuasive communication. Rhetoric can not be reduced to the obvious argumentative or persuasive dimension of discursive practices; rather, it “should be seen as a pervasive feature of the way people interact and arrive at understanding” (Potter 1996:106). Nevertheless, even as an investigation into laws and techniques of “reasonable argumentation” (Kienpointner 1996), rhetoric should not be reduced to the paradigm of individual cognition since its epistemic asset is intrinsically dialogical. In a sense, rhetorical analysis allows us to highlight the subtle transformations that the texts of daily life bring about in practices and in social relations (Stillar 1998). 2.1 The rhetorical dialogicity of discursive psychology The post-modern sensibility has engendered new reasons for revitalizing the homo rhetoricus (Hammersley 2003:772), thus fostering the hope that rhetoric could contribute to the redefinition or rather to the “substitution of philosophy and social sciences”. In a moderate vein, “the ancient ideas of rhetoric show the gaps in modern psychological theories” (Billig 1996:51). Discursive psychology, considered as a way of studying what people are and do through their dialogical practices (Harré & Gillett 1994, Mininni 1995), shifts the focus of theoretical and methodological analysis from “individual cognitive events and processes to situated interaction” (Hepburn & Wiggins 2005:595). Rhetorical analysis enhanced by discursive psychology aims to highlight the interactional, dialectical and situated nature of meaning production. People are
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recognizable as human beings through what they do within specific contexts of encounter where they strive (with different degrees of consciousness) to make sense of their experience. The rhetorical asset that defines ‘how’ is as relevant as the conceptual (propositional and semantic) asset which marks ‘what’. The situated interaction could be interpreted as a discursive matrix inspired by the double bound of affirming the self and welcoming the other. The dialogicity intrinsic to discourse consists in the fact “that the other cannot be eluded” as the subject involved “has to give an answer to the other and for the other” (Ponzio 2006:11). The ‘I’ is “constitutionally and structurally dialogic in the sense that it testifies to the relation with the otherness, whether that be the otherness of others or the otherness of self” (Ponzio 2006:11). The emphasis on the dialogical nature of discourse as a sense-making practice shows the need to develop what might be termed “semio-ethics” (Ponzio & Petrilli 2005). A route of analysis deriving from the convergence between psychology and semiotics and marked by the notion of “diatext” (Mininni 1992, 2003) could be adopted in the investigation of the processes of meaning production and interpretation. 2.2 The diatextual approach A text, as it unfolds, is in fact a diatext, for two main reasons, to which the term ‘diatext’ alludes (the Greek prefix dia means ‘through’). According to a dialogical view of communication (Weigand, 1999; 2000), sense does not reside permanently within texts, but rather goes through them as the result of the conjunct action of the enunciators which consists in the negotiation of the frame (enjeu) where they are actively involved. To take part in a conversation (and/or to come into a dialogical relationship) means to provide an enunciative contribution of sense, such as to show who is speaking, what could legitimize what she/he is saying and what its claim of validity is. In this perspective, argumentation is not simply seen as a communicative format but rather as a dialogically situated practice of reciprocal confrontation or as an action game (Weigand 2006). These premises do also organize the interpretative procedures of a diatextual researcher since they may highlight a series of markers (Mininni 2003) which allow us to point out the subjectivity, the argumentation and the modality of discourses and thus to catch the meaning within the dynamics of reciprocal coconstruction of text and context (e.g., agency markers, embrayage/debrayage markers, the network of logoi and antilogoi, rhetorical figures, etc.) The present contribution focuses on the procedures of the diatextual approach which have a greater rhetorical pertinence. 3. The rhetorical construction of the media debate on euthanasia The cultural asset of the human mind is shaped by the organization of beliefs and preferences in a wide range of situational formats which change with the passing
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of time. In the post-modern era, people are plunged into the networks of social communication and exposed to confrontation with issues of bio-politics and bioethics through the opportunities and the bounds of the media. The pervasive presence of the media within human experience implies the continuous passing through different discursive spheres characterised by different logical and rhetorical procedures. The media intersect with ethics in various ways, from confirming models to proposing a plurality of value systems. Ethic dilemmas belong to a discursive sphere where the argumentative aut – aut weakens the hope for reciprocal recognition, and leads towards ethical fundamentalism. Logoi and antilogoi broadcast by the media become not so much enunciative potentialities contending for discursive power to shape a shared world (Billig 1987) but rather discursive schemes to deny the legitimacy of the other. In Italy, the debate about euthanasia is influenced by the conflict between the Catholic culture, which can be considered the ‘default setting’ for public opinion on these issues, and the lay approach of those in favour of euthanasia, such as the supporters of the “Partito Radicale”. The public debate exploded over a period of three months, from 21 September 2006 (when a letter sent to the President of the Italian Republic by Piergiorgio Welby, who was suffering from progressive muscular dystrophy, was published) to 21 December 2006 (when the news that a doctor had ‘unplugged’ the artificial respirator which had been keeping him alive was broadcast). The “Welby affair” had a huge effect on public opinion since the popularity of Welby as co-chairman of the “Luca Coscioni Association” (set up for the legal recognition of prolonged artificial life support and the right to ask for euthanasia) fuelled the debate with unparalleled intensity. Starting from these premises, the aim of the present contribution is to investigate how the media presented the affair and thus contributed to the rhetorical construction of the public debate. So as to better capture the interlocutionary aspects of the discussion, the study focuses on two dedicated newsgroup discussions published on the web. The corpus of data is made up of a sample of 331 posts collected from September to November 2006 from two different virtual internet forums for discussing euthanasia. The first was the Repubblica newspaper forum (212 posts) and the other was set up by the Azione Cattolica association (119 posts). This choice was based on the different cultural positions of the two forums regarding bio-ethical issues, the first being a progressive source, the second a declared Catholic one. It was therefore supposed that they would offer different discursive constructions of the topic. The diatextual analysis of the data revealed certain common strategies and certain differences between the two corpora of posts.
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3.1 Rhetoric of the indefinite Most participants in both forums have a clear personal opinion on euthanasia. Nonetheless, they manifest recurrent doubts and huge difficulty in discursively constructing their claims of validity. Most frequently, participants justify their embarrassment by pointing to the sensitive nature of the discussion. (1) Per il resto non credo di essere in grado di esprimere un’opinione compiuta. Le questioni che solleva, drammaticamente, Welby riguardano ‘limiti’ che non è facile comprendere. C’è un confine tra eutanasia, accanimento terapeutico e diritto ad una ‘buona morte’ che non è così netto, anche perché le conquiste della tecnica permettono cose, come quella di mantenere in vita un uomo anche in condizioni non normali, che prima non c’erano. Cinquant’anni fa, Welby sarebbe morto prima di scrivere la sua lettera e noi non saremmo stati qui a porci il problema. (forum participant, Azione Cattolica) “As for the rest, I don’t think I can express a decided opinion. The issues dramatically raised by Welby concern ‘limits’ which are not easy to understand. There is a boundary between euthanasia, prolonged artificial life support and the right to have a ‘good death’ which is not so clear, also because technical progress now makes it possible to do things, such as keeping alive a person in an extreme state of physical incapacity, which were previously impossible. Fifty years ago, Welby would simply have died before writing his letter, and we would not be here discussing the problem.”
The complex nature of the topic under discussion is confirmed by the evidence that the contributions to the debate are often characterized by the overlapping of different discursive spheres. In fact, arguments project into: −
− − −
a legal frame: how should the State behave in response to a request for a new law? Is there a right which needs to be recognized and protected? Does this right damage others’ rights? Would the right thing be to avoid any legislative intervention? an ethical frame: what is right and what is wrong? What is the meaning of life? a religious frame: who is at the origin of life? Is life a gift? Should we trust miracles? Should we acknowledge the authority of the Pope as to interpret such topics? a medical frame: deontological questions, limits of prolonged artificial life support, accurate technical definitions of terms like ‘death’, ‘palliative cures’, ‘euthanasia’, ‘disthanasia’, ‘biological will’.
(2) Non riesco a capire se ne vuoi fare una questione giuridica, etica o tutte e due le cose … (forum participant, Azione Cattolica) “I cannot understand if you want to interpret the question as a juridical or as an ethical matter or as both …”
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(3) Ne abbiamo dibattuto tempo fa Filippo la logica è sempre la stessa, per me, la vita non è un bene disponibile del singolo ma in comodato d'uso per utilizzare un gergo giuridico. (forum participant, Azione Cattolica) “We have already discussed this, Filippo; the logic is always the same; for me, life is not a commodity at the disposal of the individual but, to use a legal term, a gratuitous loan.”
In both forums, the posts analysed could be conceived of as interlocutionary diatexts, characterised by great diversity which induces the interlocutors to focus on a dialectic of enunciative roles by the frequent use of discursive formulae which reveal the effort to define and re-define the context and the object of discussion by shifting the focus of attention. The participants adopt this kind of rhetorical strategy in order to establish the parameters of a topic which even the first participants struggled to define; it has opaque borders and implications which raise questions about the rationale of the meaning of life. (4) Tutti (o quasi) quelli che parlano di ‘vita’, nel senso di difesa della medesima, mi sembra che non si rendano conto che la ‘vita’ in quanto tale non esiste, è solo un concetto astratto. Nella realtà esistono le ‘vite’: la mia, la tua, ecc. E ogni ‘vita’ ha il diritto di decidere per sè. Anche di farla finite. (forum participant, Repubblica) “All (or almost all) those who talk about ‘life’, referring to the defence of it, do not, it seems to me, understand that ‘life’ as such does not exist, it is only an abstract concept. In reality there are ‘lives’: mine, yours, his, hers, etc. And each life has the right to decide for itself. Even to terminate itself.”
3.2 Rhetoric of argumentative claims In the “Repubblica” forum the marked opposition between the for and against positions develops into a wider debate about the role of the Church in modern society. Many interventions display open disagreement with the interference of the Pope on a topic which should remain personal. (5) La Chiesa ha tutto il diritto di dire ciò che pensa riguardo a questo argomento e anche altri (aborto, omosessualità, divorzio); detto questo lo dica però ai Cattolici. Io non lo sono quindi non devo essere costretto a seguire le loro ridicole (a me ovviamente) leggi basate sull’amore cristiano. Amore che porta la donna alla sofferenza … gli omosessuali a una vita di persecuzioni, i divorziati a una etichetta sociale di un certo tipo, i malati terminali alla sofferenza e i malati genetici a vedersi negata la ricerca. Viva l'Amore, grande amore però amatevi fra voi ... io ne resto fuori. Inoltre. Tutti parlano di rispetto della vita … e la morte? Che la morte non deve avere rispetto? Non è altrettanto importante nel ciclo vitale? (forum participant, Repubblica) “The Church has the right to give its opinion on this topic and also on some others (homosexual relationships, abortion, divorce). However, let it tell Catholics what to do. I am not Catholic, therefore I should not be obliged to follow their ridiculous
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(for me, of course) rules based on Christian love. A kind of love which leads women to experience suffering, homosexuals to have a life of persecution, divorced people to bear a social label, terminally ill people to suffer and genetically ill people to be hindered by the creation of obstacles to research. Long live love, great love but keep your love among yourselves; leave me out of it. Moreover, everyone talks about respect for life … and what about respect for death? Doesn’t death deserve respect? Isn’t death as important as life in the vital circle?”
In the “Azione Cattolica” forum, the field of confrontation is wider. Often it appears to be centred on the conflict between respect for one’s own will and conformity to heteronomous prescriptions. (6) Come possiamo permetterci di far prevalere che una visione morale contrasta con la volontà di un uomo? (forum participant, Azione Cattolica) “How can we allow a moral vision to prevail over the will of a man? “
In the “Repubblica” forum, discussion very often focuses on life, which is sometimes seen as a gift from God and sometimes as the fruit of human free will, depending on who is addressing the forum. As a consequence, the right to live and the right to die is not always a ‘human matter’. (7) Perché se abbiamo il diritto alla vita non possiamo avere il diritto alla morte? Spero che ci si convinca presto della giustezza dell’eutanasia, perché ognuno è padrone del proprio destino. (forum participant, Repubblica) “Why, if we have the right to life, should we not also have the right to death? I hope that people will soon understand that euthanasia is right, since everyone is the master of his own destiny.”
Curiously, from the moment it opened, the debate in the Azione Cattolica forum centred not so much around the ‘gift of God’ versus ‘personal belonging’ dichotomy but rather around the unclear distinction between natural and artificial life conditions. (8) Se io stacco la spina ai macchinari che tengono in vita artificialmente un paziente che altrimenti sarebbe già morto oppure sappiamo non avere speranza di guarigione non commetto un crimine ma evito l’accanimento terapeutico. (forum participant, Azione Cattolica) “If I unplug the machines that artificially keep a person alive, who would otherwise be dead or has no hope of being healed, I do not commit a crime. Rather, I avoid prolonged artificial life support.”
Less frequently, similar contributions also appear in the forum of “Repubblica”:
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(9) Così come i Cattolici amano la vita e sono contrari all’ aborto perché non dovrebbero essere contrari ad un macchinario che tiene in vita forzatamente ...? L’omosessualità, l’aborto sono contro natura? Benissimo (si fa per dire) e un siffatto macchinario no? Riflettete riflettete ... mi pare che per voi sia naturale solo quello che vi fa comodo. Restate pure nel vostro grande amore ... RICORDATE che nessun laico vi obblighera mai all’eutanasia o all’aborto MAI. (forum participant, Repubblica) “If Catholics love life and are against abortion why aren’t they against a machine which maintains life artificially? So homosexuality and abortion are unnatural? Fine, then why is this kind of machine not unnatural? Think about it … it seems to me that you define as ‘natural’ what suits you to define as ‘natural’. Hold on to this great love you have, by all means … REMEMBER no lay person will ever force you to euthanasia or to abortion … EVER.
The expected divergence between the two forums in the discursive construction of the topic was not confirmed by closer analysis: both host a variety of voices, and very often extreme positions but also doubts and open questions. 3.3 Rhetoric of diatextual power A common strategy in all texts is the use of ‘diatextual power’. Very often enunciators use communicative resources in order to define ‘how things should be said’. This means that ‘through the text’ the enunciator exercises his own capacity to shape the world of meaning. Authors are availing themselves of diatextual power when they adopt the stylistic options not − but or the point is not − rather it is. (10) Ascolta, il punto non è cosa significa per me piuttosto far sì che il punto di vista di ognuno venga rispettato. (forum participant, Azione Cattolica) “Listen, the point is not what it means to me; rather it is to allow everyone’s view to be respected.” (11) Il punto è decidere cosa è una vita rispettabile e cosa non lo è … (forum participant, Azione Cattolica) “The problem is to decide what a respectable life is and what is not ...”
As regards the discursive construction, it is worth remarking upon the problematic structure of the posts. Most of the interventions are characterized by a high frequency of questions. The preference for the interrogative contributes to shaping the debate into a process of questioning about ideological orientations and higher religious and ethical values. (12) Sinceramente, non capisco molto i problemi di morale che si pongono all’eutanasia. Perché, come essere umano, non devo avere il diritto e la libertà di disporre della mia vita quando il mio atto non nuoce nessun altro essere umano? CHI SIAMO noi
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per impedire ad una persona di scegliere? Mi sembra che anche Dio abbia dato il libero arbitrio all’uomo, allora perché voler impedire ad ogni costo quello che neanche Dio impedisce? (forum participant, Repubblica) “Frankly, I cannot understand all those problems of morality connected to euthanasia. Why, as a human being, should I not have the right and the liberty to choose how to arrange my life when what I do does not hurt anybody? WHO ARE WE to prevent a person from making his own choices? It seems to me that even God has given us free will, so why should we do all we can to prevent someone from doing something that not even God does?”
The use of recurrent questions reveals the difficulty in using one’s own argument to persuade others to one’s point of view. Very frequently in both forums the posts conclude with a rhetorical question, thus avoiding adopting a clear position and leaving the interlocutor the task of deciding where he/she stands. (13) Rispettiamo il suo desiderio (questo è ciò che farò) o ignoriamo la sua richiesta dal momento che il nostro codice morale (che ovviamente non è il suo) ci impedisce di praticare l’eutanasia? (forum participant, Azione Cattolica) “Are we going to respect his wishes (this is what I will do) or ignore his request because our moral code (which is obviously not his) prevents us from practising euthanasia?”
The nature of the data collected and the features of the medium considered reveal the argumentative nature of the debate which is characterised by the opposition between logoi and antilogoi, between different claims of validity. In fact, the discussion is constructed around the confrontation between two different identities, discursively marked as we and you in the forum of “Repubblica” and I and you in the forum of “Azione Cattolica”. (14) Forse tu hai ragione o forse no. Io parto da un punto differente. Diversamente da te, io non dico che fa bene né che fa male a voler morire. Dico che ci sono scelte che riguardano la propria esistenza che spettano soltanto al diretto interessato. (forum participant, Azione Cattolica) “Maybe you are absolutely right, maybe not. I start from a different point. Unlike you, I say neither that he’s doing the right thing or that he’s doing the wrong thing in wishing to die. I say that choices about existence are the responsibility only of the person directly concerned.”
In the “Repubblica” forum particularly, these diametrically opposed positions are represented by the Catholic and lay positions. As a consequence, the discursive construction of euthanasia is mostly framed as a matter of ‘believing or not believing’.
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(15) La vita è intesa come un dono di Dio perché Dio te la da e Dio te la toglie. Perciò la vita non ti appartiene e quindi non puoi decidere se interromperla o meno. Solo Dio può decidere quando chiamarci a sé. (forum participant, Repubblica) “Life is considered a gift from God since God gives it to you and God takes it from you. Therefore life does not belong to you and you cannot decide whether to end it or not. Only God is allowed to decide when to call us to him.”
Nonetheless, there is not always an automatic correlation between religious status and attitude towards euthanasia. Sometimes (as in the following example), even believers are in favour. (16) Sono cattolica e credente, ma credo che nessuno possa imporre ad alcuno uno stile di vita o un comportamento finché questo non danneggi altri. Sono quindi favorevole alla possibilità di scegliere la propria vita e la propria morte ... La ‘buona morte’ non è certo un obbligo, ma solo una possibilità per chi invece non accetta per sé questo stato ... Insomma la libertà è un dono concessoci da Dio, finché non viene lesa la libertà di altri. (forum participant, Repubblica) “I am Catholic and I believe in God, but I also believe that nobody should ever impose a lifestyle or behaviour on others. I am for the freedom to make choices regarding one’s own life and death ... The ‘sweet death’ is not an obligation, it is simply an alternative for those who cannot accept an impossible situation ... In short, liberty is a gift from God as long as it does not infringe upon the freedom of others.”
The argumentative nature of the texts analysed is to be found in the recurrence of some typical discursive structures such as I agree − but and if so − then which broaden the debate and show the dialogic positions of each contributor. (17) Sono d’accordo con te quando dici che la vita è un dono e che Dio ha un piano per ciascuno di noi. Ma poi c’è il libero arbitrio e quindi ognuno può ridisegnare il piano come vuole. (forum participant, Repubblica) “I agree when you say that life is a gift and that God has a plan for all of us. But then there is free will and everyone can redesign the plan as he/she wants.”
Both ‘for’ and ‘against’ camps claim the moral high ground in order to achieve a perlocutionary effect. (18) Chi dice che deve essere bella a tutti i costi? Chi è che non ha una tribolazione nella sua vita? E se iniziamo a pensare che in determinate condizioni è lecito ammazzarsi chi deciderà quale è il limite minimo per essere autorizzati a farlo? La vita va sempre difesa, poi il tuo o mio libero arbitrio ci potrà far decidere liberamente e facendo i conti ognuno con la propria coscienza o con Dio o con chi vogliamo: semplicemente credo che non si può permettere per legge o per delibera di autorizzare qualsiasi uccisione! (forum participant, Repubblica) “Who says that life should be wonderful at all costs? Are there people who do not have tribulations in their lives? If we start thinking that in certain situations it is
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legitimate to commit suicide, who will decide where to draw the line? Life should always be defended. An individual’s free will may help him decide freely while at the same time explaining himself to his conscience, to God, to whoever he wants. In simple terms, I do not believe that any law can authorise a killing!”
3.4 Rhetoric of participation The mode of personal participation in the debate is not the same in the two forums. Although almost all posts in both are characterised by involvement and passion, different rhetorical approaches are adopted. In the “Repubblica” forum, the agent markers and the pathemic cues, the attitude and personal markers (e.g., the recurrence of epistemic markers such as I believe, according to me) are linked to clear embrayage rhetorical strategies aimed at signalling an active charging of the topic. Moreover, some participants further mark their involvement by referring to actual personal and family experiences, which help to reinforce this effect. (19) Io ho perso mia madre, anche io l’ho sentita chiedere di morire, ed anche io ho avuto la stessa reazione egoistica e non volevo lasciarla andare. Ma l’ultimo giorno in ospedale è stato terribile ed ho dovuto prendere una decisione. Io sono assolutamente e fortissimamente a favore dell' eutanasia. Per quelli di voi che difendono ‘la vita a qualsiasi costo’ vi prego di credermi sulla parola: a volte è davvero la cosa migliore. (forum participant, Repubblica) “I lost my mother, and I too had heard her asking to die. I too had the same selfish reaction: I didn’t want to let her go. But the last day at the hospital was terrible. I had to make a decision. I am absolutely and completely in favour of euthanasia. I would beg those of you who defend ‘life at any cost’ to take my word for it: sometimes euthanasia is the best thing to do.”
In this example, particular attention should be given to the phatic dimension of communication. The speaker explicitly invokes the interlocutor – those of you who defend ‘life at any cost’ – in an attempt to change their minds by showing how far actual experience is from theoretical assumption. Some discursive markers reveal that she has probably changed her mind about euthanasia as a result of her personal situation (I had the same selfish reaction). She uses the forum in an attempt to be useful to those who are undergoing a similar experience. In order to reach them she tries to create common ground (me too). She reinforces her position by using metadiscursive cues which mark the degree of her participation in the debate (absolutely and completely). Participation is differently constructed in the “Azione Cattolica” forum through the use of extended quotations. This is a recurrent communicative strategy which involves speaking with the voice of an authoritative and/or expert other. This strategy of legitimation (Wodak & van Leewen 2002) is designed to endow the contents with greater crediblity, to strengthen one’s position. Quoting
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others also reveals the desire to share external contributions, information and opinions on the topic which might be interesting, well-expressed and convincing. (20) Noi tutti probabilmente dobbiamo continuamente imparare che morire è anche un processo di apprendimento, e non è solo il cadere in uno stato di incoscienza … Benedetto XVI ha detto che “di fronte alla pretesa, che spesso affiora, di eliminare la sofferenza, ricorrendo perfino all’eutanasia, occorre ribadire la dignità inviolabile della vita umana, dal concepimento al suo termine naturale”. Ma che cosa c’è di ‘naturale’ in una sala di rianimazione? Che cosa c’è di naturale in un buco nella pancia e in una pompa che la riempie di grassi e proteine? Che cosa c’è di naturale in uno squarcio nella trachea e in una pompa che soffia l’aria nei polmoni? Che cosa c’è di naturale in un corpo tenuto biologicamente in funzione con l’ausilio di respiratori artificiali, alimentazione artificiale, idratazione artificiale, svuotamento intestinale artificiale, morte-artificialmente-rimandata? (Piergiorgio Welby quoted by a Forum Participant, Azione Cattolica) “We should all remember that dying is also a learning process and it does not simply mean falling into an unconscious state … the Pope, Benedict XVI, has said that ‘in the face of the desire to eliminate sufferings, even through euthanasia, we should remember the inviolable dignity of human life from birth to its natural conclusion’. But what is natural about a reanimation room? What is natural about a hole in the stomach or a pump that fills it with fats and proteins? What is natural about a gash in the trachea or a pump that blows air into the lungs? What is natural in a body which is kept biologically functioning through artificial respirators, artificial nutrition, artificial hydration, artificial emptying of the intestine, and artificially delayed death.
Although dialogue is invoked, the interlocutors mark their positions without really meeting, without even moving the tiniest bit closer to each other. The awareness of the distance between enunciative positions, which is so difficult to accept, is often highlighted in an attempt to come to terms with its inevitability. (21) Ovviamente il mio è un punto di vista, tu ne hai uno differente, ed io do voce al mio … (forum participant, Azione Cattolica) “Obviously I have one point of view, you have a different one, and I express mine”
Sometimes the participants appear to be moving towards agreement: they ask for a reasonable explanation, but without hope and thus using a quite sarcastic tone. (22) mmm … per una questione di coerenza, allora, mi pare di capire che sei favorevole anche al suicidio, è così? (forum participant, Azione Cattolica) “mmm… in order to be coherent, then, it seems to me that you are in favour of suicide. Have I understood correctly?” (23) Ma devi dimostrarmi perché razionalmente. Sto ancora aspettando. Se poi preferisci dimostrarmi il senso della vita, l’unico ed assoluto, ti prego di farlo
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allegando la formula matematica con tanto di dimostrazione ed alla fine scrivi come volevasi dimostrare. Grazie. (forum participant, Azione Cattolica) “But you have to rationally demonstrate it. I’m still waiting. If, however, you prefer to demonstrate the meaning of life, the only and absolute meaning, then please attach the mathematical formula complete with demonstration, and at the end write q.e.d. Thanks.”
3.5 The metaphoric construction of the dignity of life The contrasting positions on euthanasia are defined through two rhetorical macro strategies that are based on different views of life: either it is something privately owned or a gift. The metaphors Life is private property and Life is a gift have such a huge argumentative power because they highlight a difference between discursive acts. If life is private property, then society recognizes the personal conscience (or ‘free will’) as the only source of right; if on the other hand it is a gift, then everyone has an obligation to show gratitude to the Giver and to be respectful of his laws. The two analogies are at odds not so much at a pragmatic-operational level (what can we do with our lives?) as at an enunciative level (what can we say about life?), where they are radically different: the former belongs to the juridical discourse and the latter to the religious discourse. (24) Ogni cristiano sa che la vita è un dono di Dio, perciò non è una sua proprietà. Appartiene al Signore e solo lui può decidere se e quando interromperla. (forum participant, Repubblica) “Every Christian knows that life is a gift from God, therefore, it is not his/her own property. It belongs to the Lord; only He is allowed to decide whether and when to stop it.”
Similarly, the idea that life is a right rather than a duty reveals the two different interpretative repertoires of the for and against positions on euthanasia. Probably the use of a legal metaphor meets the need to provide a clear frame for an intricate question. (25) Credo che la vita sia un DIRITTO non un OBBLIGO. Perciò se il desiderio della signora è quello di continuare a vivere, nessun problema. Ma questo desiderio dovrebbe riguardare la propria vita e non quella di una terza parte. (forum participant, Repubblica) “I believe that life is a RIGHT and not an OBLIGATION. Therefore, if the lady’s wish was to continue living, then no problem. But the wish should be her own and not that of a third party.”
Another metaphor used is that of life as a candle. In the following excerpt, life is compared to a candle in terms of its relationship to time (it is consumed as time passes) and the risk it runs of being extinguished or thrown away. This kind of
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analogical frame is artfully used by those who are opposed to euthanasia in order to stress that even if partly burnt down a candle can still produce light. (26) È come se accendiamo una candela e questa piano piano si consuma. Quando ormai mancano 3 cm la prendiamo e la buttiamo perchè pensiamo che sia inutile, ma in realtà non è così. Può essere benissimo riaccesa e continuare a fare luce. Buttarla sarebbe uno spreco, anche se è vecchia e consumata! (forum participant, Repubblica) “It is like lighting a candle which gradually burns down. When it is reduced to a stub of 3cm, we throw it away because we think it is useless, but actually this is not the case. It could easily be relit and continue to provide light. To throw it away it would be a waste, even if it is old and burnt down.”
Our last contributor employs the bizarre metaphor of the Trojan Horse to describe the Welby case, which is seen as the thin end of the wedge, the beginning of a move towards legalization of euthanasia, or what in bioethics is called the “slippery slope”. (27) Beh se questo è il punto Filippo ti ribadisco che se vuole suicidarsi è una sua scelta, ma non può chiedere ad un altro di farlo al posto suo. Tanti soffrono ed un domani il cavallo di Troia Welby giustificherà altri che soffrono perchè sono stati lasciati dal fidanzato o perchè non sono in linea con i dettami della moda? (forum participant, Azione Cattolica) “Well, if this is the point, Filippo, I repeat that if Welby wants to commit suicide, that is up to him, but he cannot ask another to do it in his place. Many people are suffering and probably tomorrow the Welby Trojan Horse will be used as a justification for those who suffer because they have been left by their partners or simply because they are not in line with the dictates of fashion?”
4. Concluding remarks The present conditions of human existence push the ‘moral I’ to often live situations where “the growing gap between what makes us (indirectly) aware and what we could (directly) influence brings the uncertainty that characterizes each moral choice to unprecedented heights” (Bauman 2003:134). Most of the situations where it is difficult to take a moral decision concern the body in the threshold phases of existence (birth and death) or specific turning points in an individual’s life. Such situations push the inner dialogue of personal conscience into a vortex of conflicting positions. The resulting dilemmas are dialogical bends which activate specific rhetorical resources. When caught in a dilemma, speakers adhere to a form of (intrapersonal) dialogue which tests the claims of validity of at least two positions (for instance, ‘life is a gift’, ‘life is private property’).
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The analysis of the two dedicated forums has revealed discursive traces which show how the effort to mark one’s own position is always linked both to external voices which shape the context of the discussion and to the necessity to recognize the other’s position as an invitation to exercise diatextual power. The texts analysed have also shown how difficult it is to elaborate shared interpretative schemes for dilemmas. References Bauman, Zygmunt. 2003. Dentro la globalizzazione. Bari: Laterza Berlin, James A. 1993. “Poststructuralism, Semiotics, and Social-epistemic Rhetoric: Converging agendas”. Defining the New Rhetorics ed. by Theresa Enos & Stuart C. Brown, vol. 7, 137154. Newbury Park: Sage. Billig, Michael. 1987/1996. Arguing and Thinking. A rhetorical approach to a social psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burke, Kenneth. 1950/1969. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press. Enos, Theresa & Stuart Brown. 1993. Defining the New Rhetorics, vol. 7, 137-154. Newbury Park: Sage. Flower, Linda. “Cognitive Rhetoric: Inquiry into the art of inquiry”. Defining the New Rhetorics ed. by Theresa Enos & Stuart C. Brown, vol. 7, 171-190. Newbury Park: Sage. Hammersley, Martyn. 2003. “Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis: Methods or paradigms?” Discourse & Society 14:6.751-781. Harré, Rom & Grant Gillett. 1994. The Discursive Mind. Sage: London (transl. by Augusto Gnisci, La mente discorsiva. Milano: Cortina Editore 1996). Hepburn, Alexa & Sally Wiggins. 2005. “Developments in Discursive Psychology”. Discourse & Society 16:5.595-601. Meyer, Michel. 1993. Questions de rhétorique. Langage, raison et séduction. Paris: Librairie Générale Française. Italian transl. La retorica. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1997. Mininni, Giuseppe. 1992. Diatesti. Napoli: Liguori. Mininni, Giuseppe. 1995. Discorsiva mente. Profilo di Psicosemiotica. Napoli: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane. Mininni, Giuseppe. 2003. Il discorso come forma di vita. Napoli: Guida. Perelman, Chaïm & Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. 1958. Traité de l'argumentation. La nouvelle rhétorique. Paris: P.U.F. (transl. Trattato dell' argomentazione. La nuova retorica. 1966. Torino: Einaudi). Petrilli, Susan & Augusto Ponzio. 2005. Semiotics Unbounded: Interpetative routes through the open network of signs. Toronto: Toronto University Press. Ponzio, Augusto. 2006. “The I Questioned: Emmanuel Levinas and the critique of occidental reason”. Subject Matters 3:1.1-45. Richards, Ivor A. 1936. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. London: Oxford University Press (transl. by Beniamino Placido, La filosofia della retorica. Milano: Feltrinelli 1967). Stillar, Glenn E. 1998. Analyzing Everyday Texts. Discourse, rhetoric, and social perspectives. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Toulmin, Stephen. 1958. The Uses of Argument. London: Cambridge University Press (transl. by G. Bertoldi, Gli usi dell'argomentazione. Torino: Rosenberg & Sellier 1975). Vickers, Brian. 1989. In Defence of Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford University Press Weigand, Edda. 1999. “Rhetoric and Argumentation in a Dialogic Perspective”. Rhetoric and Argumentation ed. by Eddo Rigotti (in collaboration with Sara Cigada, 53-69. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Weigand, Edda. 2000. “The Dialogic Action Game”. Dialogue Analysis VII. Working with Dialogue ed. by Malcolm Coulthard et al., 1-18. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
250 Giuseppe Mininni, Amelia Manuti & Rossella Rubino Weigand, Edda. 2006. “Argumentation − the mixed game”. Argumentation 20:1.59-87. Wodak, Ruth & Theo van Leewen. 2002. “Discourses of Unemployment in Europe: The Austrian case”. Text 22:3.345-367.
Recontextualization of Concepts in European Legal Discourse Anne Lise Kjær University of Copenhagen
This paper falls within the research field of legal linguistics. The subject is a question of great concern in current comparative legal research: Is it possible to develop a common legal language in the European Union, given the cultural and linguistic plurality of Europe? I argue that it is. What it requires is a common legal discourse and the development of a common European interpretive community. A key mechanism of this development is the recontextualization of legal concepts , i.e. the circulation of concepts among and across the national and international interpretive communities of the European Union accompanied by the discursive interactions of the legal actors at national and supranational levels of EU law. The contribution provides one element in a wider discourse analytical framework for the study of the paradox of ‘unity in diversity’ inherent in the ambition of developing a common legal language in Europe.
1. Introduction On January 1 2007, Romania and Bulgaria joined the European Union and thus became part of the common legal system of the Union. Prior to the enlargement, all EU legislation was translated into the national languages of the new Member States. As a consequence of the language rules of the European Union, the new language versions are binding EU documents, on a par with the original versions, so that EU law is now expressed in no less than 23 official languages. This extreme degree of multilingualism is primarily a matter of language policy and equal treatment of large and small, old and new Member States. Nevertheless, the multilingual regime of the European Union has far-reaching implications for the functioning of the legal order and makes drafting and interpretation of EU law a particularly demanding and complex task. In my paper I shall focus especially on the problems posed by multilingualism in the process of establishing common legal concepts. I shall study the formation of common concepts from the point of view of what one might call the discursive embedding of legal interpretation within the EU. What interests me, is not the formal interpretation methods adopted by the European Court of Justice, but the communicative efforts adopted by legal actors on national and European levels in order for them to obtain mutual and common understanding of concepts of EU law.
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I presume that discourse analysis in the tradition of Norman Fairclough is a useful tool for the description of the mechanisms at play in the complicated process of concept formation in EU law. I shall tentatively apply the notion of recontextualization to describe the discursive spreading and recycling of legal concepts in the European Union. I understand ‘recontextualization’ as a discourse analytic counterpart to the notions of ‘legal transplantation’ or ‘legal adaptation’ in the theory of comparative legal cultures. My paper falls within the research field of ‘legal linguistics’ (which is the English translation of the French linguistique juridique and the German Rechtslinguistik). In a narrow sense, legal linguistics is a cross-discipline that applies insights and methods of linguistics to legal analysis. In a broader sense, it is an independent research field, which covers topics lying between topics of law and language, and draws upon a variety of theories, including, of course, linguistics, language theory, and legal theory, but also e.g. sociology, political science, and cognitive science (Busse 1992; for an overview of the field see Mattila 2006). 2. A common legal language in Europe? 2.1 Point of departure My point of departure is a question of great concern in current comparative legal research, the question of whether or not convergence of European legal systems is possible, given the cultural and linguistic plurality of Europe. What puzzles me in this respect is the seemingly paradoxical requirement, which accompanies the argument of integration optimists, viz. that it is necessary to develop a Common European Legal Language if the integration project is to succeed. The interesting thing is that the proponents of a Common Legal Language do not refer by that phrase to a lingua franca, such as Latin or Esperanto or English. What they have in mind is a common language expressed in the 23 interacting national legal languages of the European Union. 1 This would seem a contradiction in terms: developing a common language in 23 languages. If we add the great variety of legal cultures and traditions that are
1
Several research groups in Europe are dealing with the task of developing – in some form – a common legal language. Cases in point are the so-called NICE-movement (Novum Ius Commune Europeanum), especially Christian von Bar’s project on the “Foundations for a European Civil Code” (organized as a transnational Study Group on a European Civil Code), the “Principles of European Contract Law” (developed by the Lando Commission on European Contract Law), and the “Principles of European Tort Law” (developed by the European Group on Tort Law). Relevant in this respect is also the ‘integrative’ comparative law project of Ugo Mattei and Mauro Bussani (The Trento project – a “Common Core of European Private Law”), and the casebook project initiated by Walter van Gerven (“Casebooks for the Common Law of Europe”). Finally, the Action Plan of the European Commission aims at establishing a more coherent European contract law, by setting up a “Common Frame of Reference”, i.e. common principles of contract law, definitions of legal terms, and model rules (OJ C 63, 15.3.2003, p.1).
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represented in the EU, the paradox of the required commonality must be apparent to everyone, including the keenest proponents of EU integration. Nevertheless, I shall argue – against some prominent sceptics of EU integration, especially Pierre Legrand (1999), – that it is possible to develop a common legal language across linguistic and cultural barriers. What it requires is a common legal discourse and the development of a common European interpretive community. This is a question of interaction across open borders, and of legal actors reading, writing, and commenting on the same texts in order to achieve a rhetoric of common understanding. The challenge, however, is to explain why and how a common language in this sense may develop in spite of cultural and linguistic diversity in Europe. What are the mechanisms of that development? And how may one describe those mechanisms from a Law and Language point of view? Finding adequate methods of analysing these questions should be a major concern of legal linguistics today, not only because they are core problems of the very nature and functioning of language in general and legal language in particular, but also because sustainable answers to the questions are imperative, if one wants properly to understand the process of legal integration. In this sense, the language problem should also be a topic in general integration theory. Unfortunately, however, multilingualism and linguistic diversity seem to be blind spots in European integration theory – even for those academics that analyse integration from the point of view of discourse. 2 The subjects indicated above constitute a research programme, covering a variety of perspectives and theories. In this article, I cannot treat the subjects in any depth. So, the following is only meant to be an introduction to an approach that I find promising. I am not going to report final research results; my presentation provides but one aspect of a wider discourse analytical framework for the study of the paradox of unity in diversity inherent in the ambition of developing a common legal language. My focus will be on legal concepts of EU law, with a view to explaining how they are established, developed, and circulated among and across the national and international interpretive communities of the European Union. One important aspect of this process is the constant de-contextualization and re-contextualization of concepts – accompanied by interpretive efforts of changing discourse communities. Below, I am going to describe and exemplify this discursive flow of concepts, but before doing that, I will comment programmatically on the essential role of theory in explaining the role of languages in the integration process.
2
Wæver (2004) describes discursive approaches to the analysis of European integration, without mentioning or considering the inherent complexity of discourses in Europe caused by the plurality of languages in which those discourses are expressed.
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2.2 The importance of theory It is important to make sure that the theory one employs can adequately account for the factors one wants to analyse. It is my impression that the pessimism of researchers like Pierre Legrand is partly due to the fact that they argue on the basis of theories that analyse languages as stable systems and that cannot explain the dynamics of language and languages in use. But if one wants to analyse the role of language in the process of legal integration, one has to apply a theory of language that can account for language as it is used in actual communication between the legal actors taking part in that process. Theoretically, this means that one has to “rescue discourse from [the] marginal and precarious exile imposed on it by modern (structural) linguistics” (Ricour 1976:2), and focus on the role of discourse in processes of communication and understanding across languages and language barriers. As Gadamer puts it, “Language has its true being only in dialogue, in coming to an understanding” (Gadamer 1989:446). What is also needed, is to confront the philosophical issues of linguistic relativity and untranslatability 3 which by some scholars are revitalized in discussion of the possibility of legal integration in Europe. 4 The question is to what extent our world-views, understanding, and cognition are shaped by our native languages and to what extent meanings may be transported from one language into another. Following Gadamer, my assumption is that “even if our experience of the world is bound to language, this does not imply an exclusiveness of perspectives” (Gadamer 1989:448). We are not unable to understand the ways in which other languages have depicted the world. Therefore, we can surmount linguistic barriers and communicate successfully with people speaking other languages. If one wants to give an adequate description of the functioning of language in the process of European legal integration, one has to choose a theory that satisfies at least the following five partly overlapping demands: 1. The theory can account for the functioning of legal languages in actual use. 2. The theory can account for the social embedding – the legal context – of languages in use. 3. The theory can account for the role of language users – legal actors interacting at national, international and supranational level.
3
The thesis of linguistic relativity is normally ascribed to the German philosopher von Humboldt in his treatise Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaus und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts (1836) and to the American anthropologists Sapir and Whorf (see Whorf 1956). The idea of untranslatability is inherent in most translation theories, but is elucidated from a philosophical perspective in Quine (1959). 4 Legrand (1999) draws on the relativity thesis, as does Baron (2003) from a linguistic point of view.
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4. The theory can account for language use in multilingual and multicultural settings. 5. The theory must allow for the possibility of language change – the change of national legal languages under the influence of harmonization processes. In other words, the key concepts are: language use, language users, context, contact, and change. There is hardly one single theory that meets all requirements, but I suggest that discourse analysis in the cross-disciplinary tradition of Norman Fairclough is a fairly good starting point. Importantly, however, other theories should not be neglected. Insights from cognitive semantics 5 , contrastive linguistics 6 , translation theory 7 , and comparative law 8 are necessary supplements to the pragmatic approach of discourse analysis to which I have given priority. On the whole, it is important to apply a general theory of language that focuses on the actual functioning of language in practice and aims to account for language users’ ability to orientate themselves in ever-changing surroundings on the basis of their competence-in-performance, such as the Mixed Game Model developed by Weigand (Weigand 2003, Weigand forthc.). 3. The meaning of ‘discourse’ If we analyse language from the perspective of discourse, we want to stress the fact that language is never used in a social vacuum. Discourse analysis, therefore, aims at giving a comprehensive description of language use in context, including the social actors taking part in a communicative act, time, place, and circumstances of the communicative act, and the wider social framework in which it is embedded. In the words of Fairclough (1996:73):
5
Cognitive theories concentrate on individuals’ thinking and cognition, whereas discourse analysis focuses on the social dimension of language and communication. Engberg (2004) presents the framework of a cognitively oriented semantic theory that can account for the role of individuals’ processes of understanding in the multilingual, dynamic interpretation of Community law. Engberg’s approach is a cognitive counterpart to the social theory of linguistic integration which I suggest. 6 For a fruitful discussion of the relevance of contrastive linguistics in the structural tradition of Saussure, Hjelmslev, and Jakobson to integration studies, see Smith (2003). 7 Of special relevance are theories of translation in multilingual settings, see, e.g., Schäffner (1997) on translation without a source text. 8 Of special interest is the work of Alan Watson on “legal transplants”, including the ongoing commenting on this notion in comparative law and legal anthropology, see, e.g., Nelken & Feest (2001). Also important is the work of Patrick Glenn, esp. Glenn (2000) on legal traditions of the world, in which the discursive character of traditions is maintained. Finally, the major role of Pierre Legrand in comparative legal studies should be emphasized (Legrand 1999 provides a selection of his articles on the subject of law-as-culture).
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Any discursive ‘event’ (i.e. any instance of discourse) is seen as being simultaneously a piece of text, an instance of discursive practice and an instance of social practice.
Thus, discourse consists of three layers as shown in Fairclough’s threedimensional model (1996:73):
Figure 1: Fairclough’s three-dimensional discourse model
If Fairclough’s model is applied to legal discourse, we see that legal discourse likewise consists of three interdependent layers. Legal discourse is manifested in legal texts, which are written and read by legal actors as part of the legal practice they perform – as attorneys, as judges, as academics, as civil servants.
Figure 2: Legal discourse
From Fairclough’s model description of discourse, one may get the impression that discourse analysis stops at text level. This is not the case. Discourse analysis
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also encompasses words and phrases applied in the text, assuming that words and phrases – just like texts – derive their meaning from the context in which they are embedded. This implies that a discourse approach to the analysis of words and phrases in a given language will always include the actual uses that social actors make of them in specific discursive events. If we consider legal concepts from this perspective, the point is that their meaning can be described adequately only with reference to their application by language users in legal discourse. Concepts are used in texts as part of wider processes of communication and legal practice, as indicated by the extended discourse model in figure 3. Contrary to the impression one gets from studies of comparative law and contrastive linguistics, legal concepts do not live a life of their own. Without legal actors communicating – writing, reading, and interpreting legal texts – there would be no legal concepts. The meaning of concepts is not realized independently from the actors and the discourses in which they are engaged. This is important to bear in mind, if one wants to consider the mechanisms of concept formation in the EU.
Legal concepts
Figure 3: The context-dependency of legal concepts
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4. Recontextualization of concepts in EU law 4.1 The meaning of ‘recontextualization’ Let us now turn more specifically to the legal discourse of the European Union. An adequate description would be to characterize this as a network of overlapping and interdependent discursive events at national, international, and supranational level. In order to describe this network of discourses, I shall now introduce the concept of recontextualization, which I have used in the title of my paper. Recontextualization may be defined as the dynamic transfer-and-transformation of an element from one discourse/text-in-context to another discourse/text-incontext (Linell 1998:144f.). Aspects of discourse that can be re-contextualized include, among other things, linguistic expressions, concepts, arguments, ways of seeing things, ways of thinking, and ways of saying things. In the broader terms of Fairclough (2003:222), recontextualization of an element of discourse implies that it is transferred from one social practice to another and integrated in a new social context. Graphically, the process of recontextualization may be illustrated as shown in the following extended discourse model:
Figure 4: Recontextualization
If the above description is applied to the practice of EU law, it is clear that recontextualization of concepts is inherent in the national and supranational discourses that accompany interaction between the national legal systems, on the one hand, and the supranational institutions of the European Union, on the other hand. One might even say that recontextualization of ways of thinking, seeing, and saying things (in the words of Linell) is the fundamental principle underlying the very functioning and coherence of the European legal order.
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But processes of recontextualization are more complicated in European legal practice than provided for in the general description. First, it should be borne in mind that in the case of EU law, the discourse flow indicated by the arrow in figure 4 may be two-directional. Often, concepts originating in the national legal systems enter the discourse of EU institutions and return as EU concepts to the national legal systems. As we shall consider in a moment, a transfer of national concepts to the supranational legal system of Community law implies a transformation of their content. Once the concepts are recontextualized in the Community legal context, they gain new meanings. In the terminology of the European Court of Justice, they become autonomous concepts of Community law. Therefore, difficulties may arise when the concepts are transferred back – now as Community concepts – to the national legal systems, especially if the concepts are expressed in terms and phrases that conventionally designate national legal concepts. Second, the interplay of supranational and national levels of discourse covers, of course, a plurality of national legal contexts. Community legal concepts have to be relocated in the legal systems of 27 Member States. The variety of local legal systems and local legal discourses has a centrifugal effect on the stability of EU concepts and their meaning. Stability is secured only when elements of the local discourses re-enter the Community level of discourse. As we shall see below, the EU legal order has built-in a formalized procedure (preliminary rulings at the European Court of Justice), with the very purpose of recontextualizing local discourses at the supranational level. Moreover, the fact that national legal actors are increasingly reading the same texts (not only judgments of the European courts, but also academic articles commenting on EU legal matters) helps in restoring and establishing coherence. Finally, in the case of EU law, recontextualization of concepts involves not only change of context, but also change of language. Entering the national legal systems, concepts are not only adapted to local legal discourses, but are also translated into the national legal languages. This means that Community law cannot comply with the fundamental requirement of legal language – that legal concepts should be recognizable by the names they are given (Luhmann 1993). EU legal concepts cannot be recognized by their names, because they have 23 different names, bearing their meaning in mutual dependency (van Calster 1997). The point is, however, that the concepts can be recognized by their position in the network of interdependent discourses that form EU law. So even though national legal actors may be insecure as to the proper meaning and interpretation of an EU legal concept, they will still know that the concept is a concept of EU law and that it derives its meaning from the context of the European legal order. Recontextualization of concepts finds its textual expression in so-called genre chains, i.e., different genres that are regularly and systematically linked together (Fairclough 2003:216). In the case of EU law, a typical genre chain is composed of the intertextual relationship existing between preparatory texts – directive –
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national instruments implementing the directive – request by a national court for a preliminary ruling at the European Court of Justice – ruling of the EC Court – judgment of the national court on the basis of ECJ rulings – national and international 9 textbooks, casebooks, and legal periodicals commenting on the directive and the judgment of the EC Court. In the discursive flow through this typical genre chain, legal concepts are decontextualized and re-contextualized every time they move from one genre to the next, and are adapted to the conventions governing the different genres. The metaphor of ‘chain’ indicates two important aspects of recontextualization: on the one hand, the progressive movement of a concept from one ‘link in the chain’ to the next; on the other hand, the connectedness of the ‘links’, implying that the meaning of the concept – even if it is transformed or extended in the process – never loses its relation to the former ‘links in the chain’. In the following, I shall give a few examples that illustrate the mechanisms and complexities of recontextualization in the legal discourse of the EU. 4.2 Examples from the practice of EU law The first example is drawn from the practice of the European Court of Justice.10 The Court was called upon by the German Supreme Court to give a preliminary ruling on the interpretation of a concept applied in Article 50 of the Brussels Convention. 11 The case illustrates several aspects of concept formation in the EU, including problems of multilingual interpretation and the change of meaning of national legal concepts when they are recontextualized into the framework of the Community legal order. The case involves the interplay not only between domestic law and EU law, but also between the national legal systems of Germany and Denmark. Thus, in a case brought before the German Supreme Court it was relevant to ascertain whether the Danish gældsbrev (“acknowledgement of indebtedness”), which is enforceable under Danish law according to Article 478 of the Danish code of civil and criminal procedure (Retsplejeloven), is “an authentic instrument” within the meaning of Article 50 of the Brussels Convention. If so, it would also be enforceable in Germany. The wording of Article 50 is as follows in the English and German versions of the text: (1) A document which has been formally drawn up or registered as an authentic instrument and is enforceable in one Contracting State shall, in another Contracting 9
By national texts I refer to texts that are intended for a national readership only, in contrast to international texts which – being written in a language of wider communication (English) – are written and read by legal actors across the boundaries of national legal systems and languages. 10 Judgment of the Court of 17 June 1999 in Case C-260/97. 11 Convention of 27 September 1968 on “Jurisdiction and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters” (now no longer in force). Council Regulation No. 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 supersedes the Convention.
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State, be declared enforceable there, on application made in accordance with the procedures provided for in Article 31 et seq. Öffentliche Urkunden, die in einem Vertragsstaat aufgenommen und vollstreckbar sind, werden in einem anderen Vertragsstaat auf Antrag in den Verfahren nach Artikel 31 ff. für vollstreckbar erklärt.
In the German version of the Convention the concept of ‘authentic instrument’ is rendered through a term that also signifies a German legal concept, ‘öffentliche Urkunde’, the meaning of which is defined in Article 415 of the German Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO): (2) Urkunden, die von einer öffentlichen Behörde innerhalb der Grenzen ihrer Amtsbefugnisse oder von einer mit öffentlichem Glauben versehenen Person innerhalb des ihr zugewiesenen Geschäftskreises in der vorgeschriebenen Form aufgenommen sind (öffentliche Urkunden), begründen, wenn sie über eine vor der Behörde oder der Urkundsperson abgegebenen Erklärung errichtet sind, vollen Beweis des durch die Behörde oder die Urkundsperson beurkundeten Vorganges.
The Danish gældsbrev does not comply with the formal requirements of a öffentliche Urkunde in German law, the reason being that the content of the document need not be (and is not) certified by a notary; only the signature of the debtor has been attested by witnesses. 12 Consequently, the German Supreme Court would not have any difficulty in rejecting the validity of the gældsbrev as an enforceable instrument, if it were to understand öffentliche Urkunde according to its meaning in German law. However, öffentliche Urkunde has been de-contextualized from German law and re-contextualized in EU law, so that the German judges cannot be (and are not) sure whether the meaning of the concept has been transformed so as to cover documents such as the Danish gældsbrev. In other words, ‘öffentliche Urkunde’, as applied in Article 50 of the Convention, is not a German concept, but a concept in German, the meaning of which is derived from the context of European law – and decided by the European Court of Justice. The Court answered the question of the German court as follows: (3) An acknowledgement of indebtedness enforceable under the law of the State of origin whose authenticity has not been established by a public authority or other authority empowered for that purpose by that State does not constitute an authentic instrument within the meaning of Article 50 of the Convention […]. 12
Requirements as to form are not a prerequisite for the validity of documents under Danish law. Unlike the legal systems of the 6 civil law countries, including Germany, which originally drew up the Brussels Convention in 1968, before the accession of new Member States, the Danish law is not based on a notarial system. For a comment on the problems of translation, interpretation, and application of the Brussels Convention arising out of the difference between new and old Member States in this respect, see Mallet & Jaspers (2001).
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So, according to this ruling, a Danish gældsbrev is not an öffentliche Urkunde in the European sense either. Recontextualization is also helpful in explaining other aspects of concept formation in the network of legal discourses within the EU. Consider the next example, which is about the proper meaning of a phrase applied in the 6th VAT Directive 13 : premises and sites for parking vehicles. Whereas the English phrase is rather broad and undoubtedly also covers ‘garages’, the other language versions – especially the Danish text – are somewhat unclear in this respect. (4) Article 13B of 6th VAT Directive: Without prejudice to other Community provisions, Member States shall exempt the following [from VAT] […] (b) the leasing or letting of immovable property excluding: […] (2) the letting of premises and sites for parking vehicles; [...] locations d’emplacement pour le stationnement de véhicules Plätze für das Abstellen von Fahrzeugen pladser til parkering af køretøjer
The phrase used in the Danish version of the Directive (literally: ‘sites for parking vehicles’) is an unconventional expression in the Danish language the meaning of which seems uncertain. Accordingly, the concept has been reworded as follows in the Danish instrument 14 implementing the Directive (English translation): (5) The following shall not be subject to tax: […] (h) the letting, leasing, and management of immovable property. However tax shall be payable on […] the letting of sites for camping, parking and advertising [in Danish: camping-, parkerings- og reklameplads]
Parkeringsplads is the idiomatic Danish expression for ‘parking space’, a phrase that in normal Danish usage would exclude ‘garages’. In a case brought before the Danish High Court (Østre Landsret) this is exactly the conclusion arrived at by the judges:
13 Council Directive 77/388/EEC of 17 May 1977 on the harmonisation of the laws of the Member States relating to turnover taxes. 14 Section 13 par. 8 of the Danish statute on VAT (Momsloven).
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(6) ‘sites for … parking’ do not, in accordance with the literal meaning of that expression, encompass garages. The terms of the Directive do not support the contrary interpretation.
But even if the concept, having entered Danish law, has been recontextualized into domestic law, it still owes its existence and meaning to the text of the Directive. This implies, in accordance with rules of multilingual interpretation, that the Danish text must be compared with the other language versions. Thus, irrespective of the wording chosen in the Danish statute and the Danish version of the Directive, the European Court of Justice arrived at the opposite conclusion in a preliminary ruling on the request of the Danish Supreme Court. 15 The answer to the question should therefore be that Article 13B (b) of the Sixth Council Directive must be interpreted as meaning that the phrase premises and sites for parking vehicles covers the letting of all places designed to be used for parking vehicles, including closed garages. The interdependence of the language versions of the Directive and the genre chain – the inter-textual relationship existing between the national instrument and the Directive – secure the coherence of the concept across languages and local contexts. However, the decisive role that the ECJ plays in establishing the meaning of EU concepts cannot be accomplished if no national courts ask for preliminary rulings. Therefore, the discourse and dialogue between the national and the supranational levels of EU law, which are imperative for establishing an international discourse community across the confines of domestic legal systems, may be interrupted – by silence on the part of the national legal actors. This is illustrated by the next – and last – example, concerning the interpretation of Council Directive 93/13/EEC on unfair terms in consumer contracts. The interpretation of the Directive is no easy task, due to the discrepancy that exists between the different language versions of the text. Article 1 defines the purpose of the directive as follows: (7) The purpose of this Directive is to approximate the laws, regulations and administrative provisions of the Member States relating to unfair terms in contracts concluded between a seller or supplier and a consumer.
The question now is, whether the Directive is applicable to the sale of goods only, or whether it may encompass the sale of land as well. If one reads the English version, the Directive undoubtedly only covers the sale of goods, cf. Article 4: (8) Without prejudice to Article 7, the unfairness of a contractual term shall be assessed, taking into account the nature of the goods or services for which the contract was concluded and by referring, at the time of conclusion of the contract, to all the 15
Judgment of the Court of 13 July 1989 in Case 173/88.
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circumstances attending the conclusion of the contract and to all the other terms of the contract or of another contract on which it is dependent.
Goods and services would not normally include ‘land’. One arrives at the same conclusion if the interpretation is based on the German, Dutch, Danish and Swedish versions of the text: (9) German: Güter oder Dienstleistungen Dutch: goederen of diensten Danish: varer eller tjenesteydelser Swedish: varor eller tjänster
However, the Latin versions of the Directive (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese) do not preclude ‘land’: (10) French: biens ou services Italian: beni o servizi Spanish: bienes o servicios Portuguese: bens ou services
Biens and the corresponding terms applied in the other Latin language versions simply means ‘property’ without specifying whether it is real property (immovables; land) or personal property (movables; things) and thus may cover both. Goods and the corresponding terms in the Germanic language versions, on the other hand, can only mean ‘things’ – personal property. This difference between the Germanic and the Latin language versions, which cuts across the civil law/common law divide, provides the text of the Directive with what Hartley (1996) calls ‘linguistic uncertainty’. Consequently, as reported by Hartley (1996:267), the national interpretive community in the United Kingdom has expressed doubts as to the proper understanding of the scope of application of the Directive: (11) The “Guidance Notes” issued by the Department of Trade and Industry in July 1995 are equivocal on this point: Par. 3.4 states that the Directive’s provisions appear to be limited to contracts concerning the sale of goods or supply of services. In para. 3.19, it is said: “As to land, it is arguable that since it is neither a good nor a service, it does not fall within the scope of the Directive.” After referring to counter arguments, however, par. 3.20 concludes that the matter is by no means free from doubt and that it would be prudent to assume that the Directive could extend to transactions in land.
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So far, it has not been established in the case law of the European Court of Justice whether or not the sale of land is actually covered by the Directive, because no national court has asked the Court for an interpretation of the concept of goods and services/biens ou services. As long as the genre chain is incomplete and the interpretive efforts of legal actors do not cross the boundaries of the national legal systems, the meaning of the concept remains uncertain. 5. Conclusion Coming to a conclusion, I shall first of all say that the concept of recontextualization – as I hope to have indicated by the examples above – can be helpful in explaining the inherent conflict in the desire to establish a common legal language in Europe. On the one hand, recontextualization explains the mechanisms of the discursive flow of concepts between the separate - but interconnected - legal contexts of the Community legal order and gives a picture of a coherent legal discourse surrounding the concepts across interpretive communities. On the other hand, recontextualization also implies that concepts are transformed and adapted to local contexts and languages and subjected to the interpretations that local interpretive communities normally ascribe to them. One could say that the notion of recontextualisation circumscribes the fact that legal discourse in the European Union is not a single discourse, but a network of overlapping discourses centred around legal concepts that are de-contextualised and re-contextualised in a constantly progressing flow of interpretations, definitions, and comments both at national and at Community levels. Basically, such discursive interactions are what constitute a common language in Europe, and in that sense a common European legal language is indeed possible. For it to succeed, however, national legal actors should be willing to engage themselves in an international discourse on European law with a view to establishing a rhetoric of common understanding across linguistic and cultural barriers. Only as long as a common legal discourse is conducted, can a common legal language develop. References Baron, Irene. 2003. “Diversité linguistique et cultures juridiques: les langues constituent-elles un obstacle à l’intégration européenne?” Language and Culture ed. by Irene Baron, 153-166. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur. Busse, Dietrich. 1992. Recht als Text. Linguistische Untersuchungen zur Arbeit mit Sprache in einer gesellschaftlichen Institution. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Engberg, Jan. 2004. ”Statutory Texts as Instances of Language(s): Consequences and limitations on interpretation”. Brooklyn Journal of International Law 29:3.1135-1166. Fairclough, Norman. 1996. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Text analysis for social research. London: Routledge.
266 Anne Lise Kjær Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1989. Truth and Method. 2nd rev. ed. London: Sheed & Ward. German original: Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 1960. Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik. Tübingen: Mohr. Glenn, Patrick. 2000. Legal Traditions of the World. Sustainable diversity in law. New York:Oxford University Press. Hartley, Trevor C. 1996. “Five Forms of Uncertainty in European Community Law”. The Cambridge Law Journal 55:2.265-288. Kjær, Anne Lise. 1998. “Ret og sprog i EU: Mangfoldighed, sprogforbistring og grænser for integration”. Retfærd 83:21.4-14. Kjær, Anne Lise. 2001. “Europas retskulturelle pluralisme – grænser for den EU-retlige integration?”. Tidsskrift for Rettsvitenskap 4-5/.870-905. Kjær, Anne Lise. 2004. “A Common Legal Language in Europe?” Epistemology and Methodology of Comparative Law ed. by Mark van Hoecke, 377-398. Oxford: Hart. Legrand, Pierre. 1999. Fragments on Law-as-Culture. Deventer: Tjeenk Willink. Linell, Per. 1998. “Discourse across Boundaries: On recontextualizations and the blending of voices in professional discourse”. TEXT. 18:2.143-157. Luhmann, Niklas. 1993. Das Recht der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. Mallet, Nicolai & Michal Bo Jaspers. 2001. “Fuldbyrdelse af domme og officielt bekræftede dokumenter i Tyskland i henhold til Domskonventionen – tillige en kommentar til EFdomstolens afgørelse I retssag C-260/97, Unibank A/S mod Flemming G. Christensen”. Ugeskrift for Retsvæsen, 71-75. Mattila, Heikki E. S. 2006. Comparative Legal Linguistics. Aldershot: Ashgate. Nelken, David & Johannes Feest. 2001. Adapting Legal Cultures. Oxford: Hart. Quine, Williard van Orman. 1959. “Meaning and Translation”. On Translation ed. by Ruben A. Brower, 148-172. Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 1976. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Texas University Press. Schäffner, Christina. 1997. “Where is the Source Text?” Modelle der Translation, Models of Translation. Festschrift für Albrecht Neubert ed. by Gerd Wotjak and Heide Schmidt, 193211. Frankfurt/Main: Vervuert. Smith, Viktor. 2003. “Linguistic Diversity and the Convergence of European Legal Systems. Is Legrand’s pessismism justified?” Language and Culture ed. by Irene Baron, 139-151. Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur. Swales, John M. 1990. Genre Analysis. English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Van Calster, Geert. 1997. “The EU’s Tower of Babel - The interpretation by the European court of justice of equally authentic texts drafted in more than one official language.” Yearbook of European Law 17.363-393. Von Humboldt, Wilhelm. 1968 [1836]. Ueber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaus und ihren Einfluss auf die geistige Entwicklung des Menschengeschlechts Bonn: Dümmler. Wæver, Ole. 2004. “Discursive Approaches”. European Integration Theory ed. by Antje Wiener and Thomas Diez. New York: Oxford University Press. Watson, Alan. 1993. Legal Transplants. 2nd ed. Athens & London: University of Georgia Press. Weigand, Edda. 2003. Sprache als Dialog. Sprechakttaxonomie und kommunikative Grammatik. 2nd rev. ed. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Weigand, Edda. (forthc.) “Towards a Common European Legal Thinking: A dialogic challenge”. Paradoxes of European Legal Integration ed. by Hanne Petersen, Anne Lise Kjær, Mikael Rask Madsen & Helle Krunke. Aldershot: Ashgate. Whorf, Benjamin Lee. 1956. Language, Thought and Reality. Selected writings. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1984. Philosophische Untersuchungen. Werkausgabe Band 1, Frankfurt/ Main: Suhrkamp.
A Court Judgment as Dialogue Le Cheng & King Kui Sin City University of Hong Kong
Dialogue is of cardinal importance in maintaining the interpersonal relationship between judges and facilitating judgment drafting as collaborative problem solving. It is also important for the check and balance between courts and the legislature. A court judgment can therefore be taken as a dialogue between judges as well as that between courts and the legislature. Based on the analysis of some judgments in Hong Kong, the purpose of the paper is to exemplify rhetorical preferences of the dialogue and to unravel the underlying pragmatic rationale. The paper further identifies rhetorical strategies such as modality and intertextuality as creating space for dialogue.
1. Introduction A discourse is a socially accepted association among ways of using language, other symbolic expressions, and ‘artefacts’ of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or ‘social network’, or to signal (that one is playing) a socially meaningful ‘role’ (Gee 19962:131). There is a close relationship between knowledge, social practice and language. At a general level, discourse is the relation of bodies of knowledge to social practice and social structure. There exists the diversity of linguistic practices and the socially and historically divergent meanings produced by these linguistic practices. A discourse can therefore be taken as a social practice applying knowledge peculiar to a discourse community, or the linguistic realization of a social practice, which suggests we should take a discourse in a dynamic way rather than a static one. If the term [discourse analysis] is to avoid becoming no more than a catchphrase for the textual character of ideology, it is indisputably necessary to examine how it works as discourse, as a linguistic practice or as the taking up of a position in language. By failing to analyse the specific dialogic features and the actual language of the reports, and by ignoring the lexical and syntactic features of legal discourse, a great deal of the credibility of the study is, unfortunately, lost. On the one hand, there is a contradiction inherent in stating that discourse itself is necessarily dialogic if no attempt is made to analyse or exemplify the specific and linguistic forms of that dialogue. (Goodrich 1987:168)
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That means analysis of discourse as a dialogue necessarily involves the study of the specific and linguistic forms of that dialogue. Dialogue can be understood in a broader sense, meaning not only direct, faceto-face, vocalised verbal communication between persons, but also verbal communication of any type whatsoever. Thus the printed verbal performance engages, as it were, in ideological colloquy of a large scale: it responds to something, affirms something, anticipates possible responses and objections, seeks support, and so on (Voloshinov 1973). A court judgment is typically the written form of verbal performance, because “law and jurisprudence are not purely abstract logical systems which exist on paper independently of human beings. They are created by human beings by means of language and dialogue and have to be applied in every individual case” (Weigand 2008). Consequently legal thinking in court judgments is an integrated part of human action and behaviour and turns out to be a dialogic challenge (Weigand 2000, 2002). A court judgment is often taken as a dialogic discourse in many aspects – it might involve a dialogue between litigants and judges, between judges and expert witness, and between judges themselves, etc. Dialogue is important because it is the primary way by which groups think and interact. “Lack of dialogue leads to poor decisions, lack of team learning, and a general deterioration of the group” (Hargrove 1995:176f.). Dialogue is of cardinal importance to maintaining the interpersonal relationship between judges and facilitating judgment drafting as a collaborative problem solving. The purpose of the paper is to exemplify the specific and linguistic forms of inter-judge dialogue and institutional dialogue (cf. Weigand & Dascal 2001, also Weigand 2005). 2. Institutional dialogue between the legislature and the court In this part, the cases related to right of abode in Hong Kong will be examined according to a chronological order, to show that there exists institutional dialogue between the legislature and courts, which means the dialogue between the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong (HKCFA) and the legislature (NPC) in terms of the latter’s ability to respond to judicial decisions regarding right of abode (in these cases) with interpretation, amendment or new legislation, seeking to limit or override the right as interpreted by the HKCFA. 2.1 The court’s decisions in Ng Ka Ling and Chan Kam Nga On 9 October 1997, in Cheung Lai Wah (later to be known as Ng Ka Ling), the High Court of Hong Kong held: The requirement that persons who claim the right of abode in Hong Kong by descent should (a) prove the facts on which their claim is based to the satisfaction of the Director of Immigration, and (b) have obtained a one-way exit permit from the Chinese authorities, before being admitted to Hong Kong is not incompatible with Arts. 24, 31 or 39 of the Basic Law or Art. 8(4) of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights.
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On 26 January 1998, in Chan Kam Nga, the High Court of Hong Kong held that the time of birth limitation provided in the No. 2 Ordinance was incompatible with Art. 24(2)(3) of the Basic Law. It further recognized that persons of Chinese nationality born outside of Hong Kong permanent residents had the right of abode in Hong Kong no matter whether their parents had become permanent residents by the time of their birth. On 29 January 1999, the HKCFA delivered judgments in two cases. In Ng Ka Ling and Others v. Director of Immigration [1999] 2 HKCFAR 4, the HKCFA decided that the statutory scheme enacted on 10 July 1997 was unconstitutional, because the scheme required permanent residents of HKSAR who were residing on the Mainland to hold a one-way permit issued by Mainland authorities before they could enjoy their right of abode in Hong Kong. In Chan Kam Nga and Others v. Director of Immigration [1999] 2 HKCFAR 82, the HKCFA held that those born before either parent became a permanent resident were also permanent residents. 2.2 The interpretation of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (hereinafter as NPCSC) On 26 June 1999, upon the request by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government through the State Council, the NPCSC made an interpretation of Arts. 22(4) and 24(2)(3), pursuant to its power under Art. 158(1) of the Basic Law (the “Interpretation”). According to the Interpretation, Art. 22(4) qualifies Art. 24(2)(3) so that persons falling within Art. 24(2)(3) must apply for approval from the Mainland authorities to enter the HKSAR. The Interpretation also stated that, for a person to qualify under Art. 24(2)(3), at least one of his parents must already be a Hong Kong permanent resident at the time of his birth. In these two respects, the Interpretation in effect displaced the interpretation of this Court on the relevant provisions of the Basic Law in Ng Ka Ling and Chan Kam Nga. It also provided that as from the promulgation of this Interpretation, the courts of the HKSAR, when referring to the relevant provisions of the Basic Law of the HKSAR of the People’s Republic of China, shall adhere to this Interpretation. This Interpretation does not affect the right of abode in the HKSAR which has been acquired under the judgment of the Court of Final Appeal on the relevant cases dated 29 January 1999 by the parties concerned in the relevant legal proceedings.
Afterwards, the HKCFA in FACV Nos 10 and 11 of 1999 and its following cases admitted that the Standing Committee has the power to make the Interpretation under Article 158(1) and it is a valid and binding Interpretation of Article 22(4) and Article 24(2)(3) which the courts in the HKSAR are under a duty to follow.
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2.3 Discussion In fact, the HKCFA did leave space for dialogue rather giving an absolute judgment. On 26 February 1999, facing a notice of motion filed by the Director of Immigration on 24 February 1999 applying for clarification of that part of the judgment which relates to the National People’s Congress and its Standing Committee, the HKCFA held that the ground stated in the motion is that the matter is of great constitutional, public and general importance. This application invites the Court to take an exceptional course. After a judgment is given, it is for the public and the legal profession to consider that judgment.
The HKCFA agreed that the court judgment per se was subject to multiple interpretations as indicated in the expression “various different interpretations have been put on the part of the Court’s judgment referred to in the motion and this has given rise to much controversy”. Furthermore, the Court has in effect implied that this judgment might be only oriented to the specific cases by claiming “where appropriate, the Court can be asked to consider it in a subsequent case”. The Court had successfully anticipated that the legislature might intervene in the future, so in the judgment the Court subjected its interpretation to the authorization, as indicated as follows: Having regard to these circumstances and the limitations on the proper exercise of judicial power, we are prepared to take the exceptional course under our inherent jurisdiction of stating the following. The courts’ judicial power is derived from the Basic Law. Article 158(1) vests the power of interpretation of the Basic Law in the Standing Committee. The courts’ jurisdiction to interpret the Basic Law in adjudicating cases is derived by authorization from the Standing Committee under Articles 158(2) and 158(3). In our judgment on 29 January 1999, we said that the Court’s jurisdiction to enforce and interpret the Basic Law is derived from and is subject to the provisions of the Basic Law which provisions include the foregoing. The Court’s judgment on 29 January 1999 did not question the authority of the Standing Committee to make an interpretation under Article 158 which would have to be followed by the courts of the Region. The Court accepts that it cannot question that authority. Nor did the Court's judgment question, and the Court accepts that it cannot question, the authority of the National People's Congress or the Standing Committee to do any act which is in accordance with the provisions of the Basic Law and the procedure therein.
By so doing, the court successfully prevented its potential conflict with the NPC or the NPCSC, which was proved to be the case by the reaction of the NPCSC as noticed in 2.2. According to Article 158(2), the NPCSC shall authorize the courts of the HKSAR to interpret on their own, in adjudicating cases, the provisions of this Law which are within the limits of the autonomy of the Region. Article 158(3) provides that the courts of the HKSAR may also interpret other provisions of this Law in adjudicating cases except in case of interpreting the provisions of this Law concerning affairs which are the responsibility of the Central People’s Government, or concerning the relationship between the Central Authorities and the Re-
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gion. However, judgments previously rendered shall not be affected. In this sense, the reasonable authorization clause and the limitation clause work complementarily, which leaves room for dialogue between the Court and the legislature. Such a practice is considered to be natural and reasonable by the Court itself as indicated in the following comments (by Sir Anthony Mason, 1999, 3 HKLRD 820f.): The Standing Committee’s power to interpret laws is necessarily exercised from time to time otherwise than in the adjudication of cases. So the expression “in adjudicating cases” makes it clear that the power of interpretation enjoyed by the courts of the Region is limited in that way and differs from the general and free-standing power of interpretation enjoyed by the Standing Committee under Article 67(4) of the PRC Constitution and Article 158(1) of the Basic Law. This conclusion may seem strange to a common lawyer but, in my view, it follows inevitably from a consideration of the text and structure of Article 158, viewed in the light of the context of the Basic Law and its character as the constitution for the HKSAR embodied in a national law enacted by the PRC.
3. Multiple opinions as an inter-judge dialogue: ratio decidendi, concurring opinion and dissenting opinion A dialogue is a conversation where there is a free flow of meaning in a group and diverse views and perspectives are encouraged (Hargrove 1998:176). That implies divergent views and perspectives are gathered and shared understanding of divergent views and perspectives are built in a dialogue (p.165ff.). Under the framework, the following options (which may be multiply present in a given utterance) are seen as enabling the textual voice to represent the engagement of judges with alternative voices and alternative positions. Theoretically, there should be a black-or-white attitude held by judges because they should declare and justify the litigant’s rights and obligations. Therefore, dialogue between judges can be divided into agreement and disagreement in a broad sense. However, concession always occurs during the dialogue, so an agreement might be an absolute agreement or complement (acceptance with additions). Similarly, a disagreement might include an implicit disagreement and an explicit one. Disagreement can lead to a dissenting opinion..The three different types of dialogue can be formulated as follows: 3.1 Ratio decidendi: Proclaim/pronounce The judges usually use the signal expression such as conclude or declare to explicitly declare their point of view in ratio decidendi, the majority or unanimous rationale for court decision. For example, in HCA 2733/2002: (1) [I conclude], for the reasons which I have stated below, that the compensation agreement was supported by consideration and was enforceable as such.
272 Le Cheng & King Kui Sin 3.2 Concurrence − Agreement: offer → acceptance For example, in the case CACV 302/2002, 9-11: (2) Hon Woo VP:
I am not persuaded by Mr Westbrook that the costs order that we made should in any way be varied. In the circumstances, I would dismiss the application with costs. Hon Cheung JA: I agree. Hon Burrell J: I agree.
− Complement: offer → acceptance + addition (immaterial) A dialogue with panel judges and previous judges (CACV 427/2002, 17) (3) I agree with the reasons given by Cheung JA. I will only add that the case of Zuliani v. Veira [1994] 1 WLR 1149 marked a watershed in the way the Privy Council dealt with applications for leave involving monetary amounts.
A dialogue with panel judges (CACV 302/2002, Hon Burrell J:220) (4) I have had the advantage of reading the judgments of Woo VP and Cheung JA. I agree with all the final conclusions and orders made therein in relation to this appeal save for two matters with which I shall deal briefly.
A dialogue with panel judges in the form of a separate judgment (CACV 302/2002, 31, 32) (5) I agree with the judgment of Woo VP on the merits of the appeal and the orders he proposed to make. As important questions have been raised on the application of the Basic Law, Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance (HKBORO) and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), I will give a separate judgment on this topic.
− Endorsement Of course, concurrence is not only indicated via the cue word agree, but in other various forms such as endorsement and acknowledgement: A dialogue with previous judges (FACV No. 15 of 2003, 9) (6) As Lord Woolf observed in Wall v Lefever [1998] 1 FCR 605 at 614, it should be used where the need for such an order is “reasonably obvious”; when there is “a clear picture” of the fault of the lawyer. In Ridehalgh v Horsefield [1994] Ch 205 at 238H, Sir Thomas Bingham MR (as he then was) observed that hearings under this summary jurisdiction should be measured in hours, and not in days or weeks and
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cautioned that the judges should be astute to control what threatens to become a new and costly form of satellite litigation.
A dialogue with panel judges (FACV No. 15 of 2003, 79) (7) As the Chief Justice has emphasized, the types of cases which can appropriately be dealt with by the summary procedure under O 62 r 8 are necessarily limited.
A dialogue with judges below (FACV No. 15 of 2003, 87) (8) The courts below also correctly rejected the contention that the evidence was insufficient to make good the complaint.
3.3 Dissentience − Implicit disagreement: omission For example, in the case CACV 71/2003, 22, 31, 23: (9) Hon Rogers VP: I would therefore allow this appeal, make an order dismissing the plaintiff’s claim, make a further order granting an injunction in terms sought in paragraph 2 of the prayer for relief sought in the notice of appeal and make an order for an enquiry as to damages as sought in paragraph 3 of the prayer for relief in the notice of appeal. Hon Yuen JA: I must respectfully differ from the judgments of the Vice-President and Hon Le Pichon JA in this appeal and that of Hon Sakhrani J in Unijet Ltd v Yiu Kwai Hoi [2003] 1 HKC 90. Hon Le Pichon JA: I have had the advantage of reading in draft the judgments of the Vice President and Yuen JA. I agree with the Vice President that the appeal should be allowed for the reasons he gives in his judgment and the order he proposes.
Hon Le Pichon JA mentioned I have had the advantage of reading in draft the judgments of the Vice President and Yuen JA and then omitted Yuen JA in I agree with the Vice President that the appeal should be allowed for the reasons he gives in his judgment and the order he proposes as to create an implicit disagreement with Yuen JA. − Explicit disagreement: offer → rejection/denial A dialogue with panel judges and previous judges (CACV 71/2003, 31) (10) I must respectfully differ from the judgments of the Vice-President and Hon Le Pichon JA in this appeal and that of Hon Sakhrani J in Unijet Ltd v Yiu Kwai Hoi [2003] 1 HKC 90.
274 Le Cheng & King Kui Sin − Counter expectation A dialogue with the court below (CACV 751/2000) (11) Having regard to all of this it is surprising that the Judge was prepared to attach as much weight as he did to Mr Kam's testimony.
4. Types of rhetoric for dialogue Rhetoric, in a wider sense, is patterns of talking and thinking, about ongoing communication challenges and the elemental, existential way humans constitute themselves in and for the world (Cissna & Anderson 2002:251). The practices such as publication of individual judge’s opinions and majority rules in vote in the common law court judgments are of course a kind of rhetoric. Coexistence of divergent opinions and final decision based on majority rule necessarily involve negotiation and dialogue. Besides, under the heteroglossic framework, various options can be used to create space for dialogue, such as attribution, hearsay, probability, appearance and proclamation (White 1998:155f.), intertextuality (Bakhtin 1984, Fairclough 1992). Court judgments as texts are not the judge’s own monologue. On the one hand, the intra-vocalisation can be modified by modality or hedges; on the other hand, court judgments, just as any other type of texts, necessarily draw on elements from other sources. In this paper two general terms are used to include those options for dialogue: modality (including probability) and vocalisation (including attribution, hearsay, appearance, proclamation and intertextuality). In order to carry out an in-depth analysis, this paper only takes modality and intertextuality (Fairclough 1992) as examples to demonstrate how judges employ dialogic rhetoric in court judgments. 4.1 Modality Modality has an important part to play in discourse, as the participants express their opinions and attitudes and, in general, interact with one another. It is not wholly surprising, therefore, that there are systems which are more concerned with discourse relations (Palmer 20012:58). Halliday suggests that “these intermediate degrees, between positive and negative roles, are known collectively as MODALITY. What modality system does is to construe the region of uncertainty that lies between ‘yes’ and ‘no’” (Halliday 19942:88, Halliday & Matthiessen 2004:146). Halliday (19942:88) defines modality as “these intermediate degrees, between the positive and negative poles”, and divides modality into two subtypes: modalization and modulation. He holds that in philosophical semantics probability is referred to as ‘Epistemic’ modality and obligation as ‘Deontic’ modality (Halliday 19942:357). One further category that needs to be taken into account is that of ability/potentiality (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004:621f.). The orientation of modality can be objective/subjective and explicit/implicit (Halliday 1994:355). The
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value can be “attached to the modal judgment: high, median or low” (Halliday & Matthiessen 2004:620). For the purpose of the paper, the discussion in this part will be focused on Epistemic Modality and Deontic Modality. The former mainly deals with the factual judgment and the latter is related to rights, obligations and liabilities. In court judgments, we can establish the framework of modality as follows: 4.1.1 Epistemic Modality – [implicit, subjective, low] (12) This [may] not be the only reason, but at least one of the reasons. – [implicit, objective, low] (13) [Perhaps] the Presiding Officer did not believe the evidence of the applicant's witnesses. –
[explicit, subjective, low]
(14) [I guess] he meant that the appellant touched the victim intentionally. – [explicit, objective, low] (15) [There is a possibility] that the defendant is addicted … – [implicit, subjective, median] (16) When the defendant and his cousin reached the land, it [should/ought to] be in the daytime. – [implicit, objective, median] (17) [Probably] what it means is that the evidence of the defendant did not reach the standard of proof as required by law. – [explicit, subjective, median] (18) [I feel] when the Presiding Officer heard the case, his attitude towards it was lack of persuasiveness. – [explicit, objective, median] (19) The defendant alleges to be an executive at school; [it is supposed that] he is a welleducated gentleman. – [implicit, subjective, high] (20) The defendant claims he [must] be at the scene.
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– [implicit, objective, high] (21) Nevertheless, if none of the appellants are entitled to any relief, all the appeals [necessarily] fail. – [explicit, subjective, high] (22) [I am satisfied that] Lo Ching, Lo Kin and Lo Kun have no intention at all to appropriate their mother’s assets. – [explicit, objective, high] (23) [It is certain that] they thought the applicant’s defense couldn’t be true.
4.1.2 Deontic Modality – [implicit, subjective, low] (24) Chinese nationals of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region with right of abode in foreign countries [may], for the purpose of travelling to other countries and territories, use the relevant documents issued by the foreign governments. – [implicit, objective, low] (25) At that time he [was allowed to] come to stay in Hong Kong for two weeks. – [explicit, subjective, low] (26) [I permit] the appellant waivers his appealing against conviction. – [explicit, objective, low] (27) [It is allowed that] the employers buy vacation from the employee. – [implicit, subjective, median] (28) Her wish [should] be respected by the Court and the trustees. – [implicit, objective, median] (29) Otherwise the defendant [is supposed to] be found not guilty. – [explicit, subjective, median] (30) [I want] the plaintiff to pay the deposit for appeal costs. – [explicit, objective, median] (31) There is nothing improper, rather, [it is appropriate], for the trial judge to take into consideration the fact that the drugs found on the Defendant were packed in 137 packets when considering the latent risk factor.
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– [implicit, subjective, high] (32) In order to be fair to all the parties, I [must] make it clear that it is not the least a case of appropriation by sons and daughters of their mother’s property. – [implicit, objective, high] (33) The plaintiff [is ordered to] pay the costs. – [explicit, subjective, high] (34) [We would also make an order nisi] that costs be to the Applicant at the trial as well as in this appeal. – [explicit, objective, high] (35) [It is necessary that] the prohibition covers all courts.
4.1.3 Discussion Coates (1983) relates modality to the speaker’s confidence. Under the monologue model, a modal expression such as perhaps or I may is seen as indicating lack of confidence in or lack of commitment to the value by the individual speaker epistemologically or deontically. However, under the notion of heteroglossia any speaker is him-/herself a respondent to a greater or lesser degree and any utterance is a link in a very complexly organized chain of other utterances (Bakhtin 1986:69). In other words, modality does not necessarily reflect the speaker’s confidence or certainty; modality can additionally or alternatively be seen as signalling that the meanings at stake are subject to heteroglossic negotiation. It is beyond doubt that the judge can render a black-or-white judgment without using modality. Therefore, when modality is used in court judgments, it can be treated as a strategy to acknowledge the contentiousness of a propositional content and the competing existence of different constructions of reality. In summary, the use of modality creates the space for dialogue, with the high-value modal for a narrow space and the lowvalue modal for a wide space. Besides, modality is used for the sake of politeness, which is a principle of primary importance for dialogue among colleagues. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), politeness is the phrasing of one’s remark in such a way as to manage the face or public identity of each interactant. As a strategic conflict avoidance, or strategic construction of cooperative social interaction, the basic social role of modality is to function as way of controlling potential aggression or conflict between participants, often of equal status, and therefore facilitating social communication. For the most cases, court adjudication and judgment delivering are undoubtedly a collaborative dialogue between judges, those of the same panel, of the same court, and of different courts. Disagreement or conflict obviously threatens the judge’s negative face, and one of the ways is to use modality to mitigate such a threat. Therefore, modality is an interpersonal system
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to construe the region of dialogue and to perform the principle of politeness in dialogue by way of concession. 4.2 Intertextuality An utterance originates in a social dialogue and is part of a social dialogue. This involves understanding an utterance against the background of the language system itself as well as against the background of other utterances on the same topic, their opinions and value judgments (Bakhtin 1981:281). That is, intertextuality itself is a dialogue between one’s own text and other texts. Intertextuality can operate at two levels. The manifest intertextuality is the presence of specific words of others such as insertion and quotation marks. The constitutive intertextuality, or interdiscursivity, includes the combination of different genres and different discourses (Fairclough 1992). Intertextual analysis often implies the dialogic nature of texts, because it emphasizes the meaning of a particular utterance arising from relations between utterances and social viewpoints, not just from the minds of individuals. Therefore, intertextuality in court judgments enables the textual voice to represent the engagement of judges with alternative voices and alternative positions. In other words, intertextuality is the cause, the process and the result of dialogue. Based on Fairclough’s manifest intertextuality-interdiscursivity division and White’s attributed and unattributed attribution, we would like to propose a three-fold framework for intertextual analysis: overt intertextuality (corresponding to Fairclough’s manifest intertextuality and White’s attributed attribution), covert intertextuality (corresponding to White’s unattributed attribution), and interdiscursivity. We herein just give a few examples in court judgments to explain these terms. 4.2.1 Overt intertextuality Overt intertextualtiy is a way to refer to other sources with explicit attribution, and the forms can be graded as follows: (36) He said: “They are worth a big fortune which Mr Wong could not even make up with all the monies he could earn in a few life’s time.” (direct quotation) (37) Wang Sr testified that his relationship with Teddy was “very good”, like “one heart, one soul”, and that Teddy was “a very filial son”. (mixed quotation) (38) She said that Teddy told her that he was forced to terminate his study because of the business failure of his father. (indirect quotation) (39) It had been said by Cons ACJ in a decision in 1989 in the case of Petroliam Berhad v. Tan Soon Gin (1990) 1 HKLR 4 that there is no established principle of law that a defendant is entitled to be excused from taking any procedural step in the civil action which might result in disclosing. (nominalisation and embedding)
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(40) Liu JA in SFC at 513B quoted the decision of Dyson J in R. v. Executive Council ex parte Hipps. (nominalisation) (41) This authority was followed in Hong Kong in a case of R. v. Yeung Kwok Fai [1996] 1 HKC 754. (assimilation)
4.2.2 Covert intertextuality The civil standard of proof, the balance of probabilities, was firstly introduced by Lord Denning as follows in Miller v. Minister for Pensions (1947) 2 AER 372, 374: (42) If the evidence is such that the tribunal can say ‘we think it more probable than not’ the burden is discharged, but if the probabilities are equal it is not. (emphasis added)
We can find many court judgments using the expressions “more probable than not” without explicit attribution. For example, (43) I find that it is more probable than not that when the defendant purchased the car in 1979 it also was fitted with seat belts. I am equally willing to infer that on the balance of probabilities those seat belts remained fitted at the time of the accident in 1983. (emphases added)
It is in this sense such intertextuality that is termed as covert intertextuality in the paper. Such a type of intertextuality is also used when the judge implicitly uses some information from the litigants to support his/her own arguments. 4.2.3 Interdiscursivity The most obvious interdiscursivity in court judgments is the hybridity between legal discourse using many technical terms and daily discourse using common language. (44) I hold [legal discourse] that where no seat belt is worn [daily discourse] the same burden which rests on a defendant who pleads contributory negligence also rests on such a defendant to establish [legal discourse] that seat belts were fitted to the car [daily discourse] where that fact is disputed [legal discourse]. (explanation added)
Sometimes, different genres can be identified in the same court judgment. For example, court judgment HCAP8/1999, of course basically a legal discourse, begun and ended with the same poetic genre: (45) Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it. (Psalm 39:6, NIV)
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In first section, a poetic genre also appeared as follows: (46) Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred. (Proverbs 15:17, NIV)
And in the epilogue, a paragraph like a condolence letter was included as follows: (47) The plaintiff, Mr Wang Sr and the defendant, Mrs Nina Wang, both have lost the one near and dear to them, Wang Sr his son and Mrs Wang her husband. To both of them I want to extend my deep condolences.
5. Conclusion A court judgment as legal discourse includes text but goes beyond legal text; it is a mode of action, a mode of applying and interpreting law and a multi-participant dialogue. A court judgment is often taken as a dialogic discourse in many aspects. Conventionally and procedurally, it is judges who have a final say in the formation of a court judgment. A court judgment is therefore taken as a dialogue between judges, but it is not just a dialogue between panel judges, but between panel judges and judges below, and between panel judges and judges of previous cases. Besides, we can find the dialogue between the courts and the legislature, which is considered as institutional dialogue. Dialogue is of cardinal importance to maintaining the interpersonal relationship between judges, facilitating judgment drafting as a collaborative problem solving, and enforcing law application as legal continuum. References Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four essays by M.M. Bakhtin ed. by Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics ed. by Carol Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1986. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays ed. by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Brown, Penelope & Stephen Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cissna, Kenneth & Rob Anderson. 2002. Moments of Meeting: Buber, Rogers, and the potential for public dialogue. Albany: State University of New York Press. Coates, Jennifer. 1983. The Semantics of the Modal Auxiliaries. London: Croom Helm. Kristeva, Julia. 1980. Desire in Language: A semiotic approach to literature and art. New York: Columbia University Press. Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press. Gee, James. 19962. Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in discourse. London: Falmer Press (1st ed. 1990).
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Goodrich, Peter. 1987. Legal Discourse: Studies in linguistics, rhetoric and legal analysis. London: Macmillan. Halliday, Michael A.K. 19942. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold (1st ed. 1985). Halliday, Michael A.K. & Christian M.I.M. Matthiessen. 20043. An Introduction to Functional Grammar. New York: St Martin’s Press. Hargrove, Robert. 1995. Masterful Coaching. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass & Pfeiffer. Hargrove, Robert. 1998. Mastering the Art of Creative Collaboration. New York: McGraw-Hill. Palmer, Frank R. 20012. Mood and Modality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1st ed. 1986). Voloshinov, Valentin N. 1973. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, transl. by L. Matejka and I. R. Titunik. New York: Seminar Press. Weigand, Edda. 2000. “The Dialogic Action Game”. Dialogue Analysis VII. Working with dialogue ed. by Malcolm Coulthard, Janet Cotterill & Frances Rock, 1-18. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Weigand, Edda & Marcelo Dascal, eds. 2001. Negotiation and Power in Dialogic Interaction. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Weigand, Edda. 2002. “The Language Myth and Linguistics Humanised.” The Language Myth in Western Culture ed. by Roy Harris, 55-83. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon. Weigand, Edda. 2005. “Conflict Resolution in Court”. Argumentation in Dialogic Interaction. Special issue of Studies in Communication Sciences, 193-202. Weigand, Edda. 2008. “Towards a Common European Legal Thinking: A dialogic challenge.” Paradoxes of European Legal Integration ed. by Hanne Petersen, Anne Lise Kjær, Mikael Rask Madsen & Helle Krunke. Aldershot: Ashgate. White, P.R. 1998. Telling Media Tales: The news story as rhetoric. Unpubl. doctoral thesis. Sydney: University of Sydney.
PART III Round Table Discussion Concepts of Rhetoric, Dialogue and Argumentation
Round Table Discussion Chairperson: Wolfgang Teubert Participants: Adelino Cattani, François Cooren, Frans van Eemeren, Franz Hundsnurscher, Christian Plantin, Neelakshi Premawardhena, Edda Weigand
Chair I would like to introduce the members of our Round Table discussion to you. As you can see we have seven participants on our panel. There is Christian Plantin from Lyon University, Franz Hundsnurscher from Münster, François Cooren from Montreal, Neelakshi Premawardhena from the University of Kelaniya in Sri Lanka, Frans van Eemeren from the University of Amsterdam, Edda Weigand from Münster, and finally Adelino Cattani from the venerable University of Padua, and not everybody knows that this university is a lot older than Oxford or Cambridge. We have, for our discussion, up to two hours. To make it more interesting and perhaps even a bit adversarial, I think it would be a good idea if each member on this panel would come up with an introductory statement of no more than three minutes or so where they might say something that they think their colleagues might not agree with. As a consequence, another member might say something against it. This first round would take around 20-25 minutes or so if everything goes according to plan, and then we would have a second round – still inside the panel. In this second round, the members of our panel respond to the controversial claims made in the first round. And then of course we want to include you, the audience. And I would then like to ask you where you disagree with our panellists. You could, of course, also tell us what you agree with. But to repeat what we all know to be true will hardly keep us awake, after these eventful three days, and after this lovely reception we had last night. So let me ask our first panellist, Franz Hundsnurscher, representing the University of Münster and also the most senior member to discuss with us a few contentious issues. Hundsnurscher Yes, thank you very much. I’m going to make three points.
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First point is we have to consider the goals of dialogue analysis (DA). I think there is too little reflection on the goals of dialogue analysis and what dialogue analysis is supposed to explain in contrast, for instance, to turns in conversation or discourse or Gespräch in general, because DA sometimes – as I see it – tends to be merged in a very blurred concept of communication in general which is not good for the purposes of DA. Second point: How do we assess purpose in DA? We could imagine three different ways of assessing this. First of all we could – my favourite – go and find out if there is a universal typology of dialogues and work out these various types with their subtypes in detail. Or we could take up different fields of communication: politics, economy, religion and so on and work these out. Or we could pick up literary genres and try to find out dialogic structures in these literary genres. Because – as I see it – most DA simply starts from the same point all over again every time, so we miss any firm foundation in DA. And the third would be, as I see it from the German scene, competition with text linguistics. But there’s too little interconnection between DA and Text Linguistics. And I’m convinced that dialogue, the concept of dialogue itself, is the dominating aspect that can also explain the problems of Text Linguistics but there hasn’t been any attempt to do this so far as I see. Thank you. Chair Thank you very much. So it’s the very nature of dialogue analysis, and secondly the goals of DA, the various ways in which we, the observers, evaluate and assess dialogue, and it's, thirdly, finally the question how can we merge dialogue analysis with text linguistics. That should give us something to discuss. Wonderful. Now I would I like to ask Neelakshi for her core issues. Premawardhena Thank you very much. First I would like to thank Professor Edda Weigand for this opportunity given to me, somebody from Sri Lanka, far away, and the little representative of South Asia and other languages of the Indo-European family. So I would like to make proposals of two points. One would be the role culture plays in Dialogue Analysis, because culture has a very important role to play and I don’t think we discussed that in detail at this conference because it was mostly rhetoric, politics, the media and the like. But we had a session on culture which however was not focused on our Asian region. So I suggest that we invite more speakers from these regions who can contribute a lot. Because there are a lot from India, for instance, who are engaged in this type of research. And the next point would be argumentation. We discussed a lot on that and on what kind of a role culture plays in argumentation. Because when we argue as
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Asians we try not to hurt people, but, on the other hand, we also try to hurt people by the choice of expressions, reference indices and gestures that we use during discourse. Emotions play a major role in the Asian region when you argue. So maybe we could pay attention to that area as well, the cultural background and also argumentation. Chair Neelakshi, I didn’t quite understand. Did you say that you in South Asia are more emotional or less? Premawardhena Not that. We in South Asia are more easily overcome with emotion. And you get angry when you argue; you take it personally – which doesn’t happen here. (laughing) At least not to the extent we have in our countries. (laughing) Chair Adelino, what are your issues? Cattani It is my persuasion and conviction that until all good people will not be clever and until all clever people will not be good, we need rhetoric. Rhetoric, in my view, is the theory and practice of argumentation, not the mere rhetoric of figures. Argumentative rhetoric is useful, is convenient, is necessary, both in society and in school. Rhetoric has obviously many negative traits, many faults. We can roughly summarize its negative traits: rhetoric is vacuous and only a stylistic art, it only deals with elocutio, is a practice of persuasion, of manipulation, of indirect suasion, is simply a discursive technique, a natural talent, educationally irrelevant or negative. But many people judge, on the contrary, that rhetoric may contribute to create a “Vir bonus dicendi peritus”, it is an argumentative art, deals not only with elocutio but also with inventio and dispositio, is a theory of persuasion by argumentation, is a global strategical behaviour, a teachable ability and finally it has an educational value. It seems important from different points of view: from the cognitive, from the methodological, from the ethical and from the social point of view. From the cognitive point of view rhetoric offers argumentative skills which are heuristically valid and apt to grasp the multiform aspects of reality. It has an educational value and it deals with reasoning not only with stylistic facts. From the methodological point of view certainly we find in it fallacies and superficiality and enthymematic arguments, but on the other hand rhetoric is associated with critical open-mindedness. From the ethical point of view – this is
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a serious and questionable question, being rhetoric blameworthy for its deceitful, simulating pseudo-truth nature – rhetoric is associated with prudence, antiauthoritarianism, antidogmatism. And finally, from the social point of view rhetoric certainly is dangerous because it is partial, demagogical use, is seducing, but it is also a sign and above all it is a promoter of broad-mindedness, of antidogmatism, of tolerance, and (if we want to use a ‘rhetorical’ word) of democracy. Chair Well, thank you very much, Adelino. Your first claim was that until we have achieved a state where everyone is good and intelligent we need rhetoric. Is that what you said? Your first sentence? Cattani Yes. If we intend rhetoric as argumentative rhetoric and clever as skilful, smart rather than intelligent. Chair So does that mean that if we are trained at rhetoric we become better people? Cattani I think so. And this was the opinion not only of Cato and of Quintilian, in the ancient times, but also of many educators in our times. To teach rhetoric makes people grow. We can teach rhetoric at least for the aim of defense. Chair I think this is very clear now. I wonder if everybody agrees with you, but this is what we’ll see. So can I ask now Frans van Eemeren from Amsterdam for his initial statement? van Eemeren I’m always amazed that people who study dialogue put such an emphasis on rhetoric. Because I would say when you study argumentative dialogues, for instance, the first thing you should do is involve insights from dialectic into that enterprise. And then I would say rhetoric comes second, because rhetoric can deepen and enrich the analysis but the theoretical framework should come from dialectic. But that is only to explain that I do not fully agree with Adelino. What I wanted to contribute myself is first of all that I think a lot of attention should be paid to the matter of theoretical starting points of dialogue studies. I agree – and that’s not what we’re out for here – with what Franz already said about the study of dialogue in general but the next step would be – I think – also
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to pay attention to the matter of theoretical starting points. What I’m thinking of in fact is that at least four starting points are necessary to my mind. One is functionalisation – that you look at dialogues from the perspective of functional units of language use. I would suggest that speech act theory is a good candidate to start from. And the second matter of theoretical starting point would be externalisation − we cannot know what people think but we can see what they say and we can apply Gricean and Searlean and other insights to what they say so that we can determine their commitments. So commitments are very important and require externalisation of implicit, indirect and other forms of language use in dialogues. Third starting point would be – I think – socialisation, that it’s neccessary to be taken into account that in dialogue there is always an addressee, there is always a discussion partner, so that commitments and concessions made by that partner should be taken into account right from the start. And I would even say that when you study so-called monologues, as soon as they’re argumentative, and that means they are directed in an implicit way to some kind of audience, you can analyse them as being dialogical. And the fourth point – that’s the closing point of these four meta-theoretical starting points – is what I call dialectification. It’s also necessary to think about normative regulation of different types of dialogues in order to be able to evaluate quality and things like that. Thank you. Chair Thank you. Well, we can only study what is happening between people … not what’s happening inside their heads. I can very much agree with that. So, can I pass on to you, François? Cooren I understood that we were asked to react to something that was said during the conference that we found controversial. It doesn’t mean that I necessarily disagree with it, but it really triggered my interest and that’s what Christian actually told me at the end of his presentation. As I was asking him a question about persuasion, he said: “You know, I don’t believe in persuasion.” I found that quite interesting, I liked it because it said “I don’t believe in”, which means that if you say “believe” – I don’t want to put words in your mouth, or thoughts in your mouth – it means that many people believe in this and you don’t. So there is this idea that there is a confrontation of beliefs and the other thing he said was: “I am more interested in repetition”, and, in a way, this makes a link with what you presented just before (speaking to Chair), which is the idea of being interested in the repetition of words, of formulaic expressions and so on, and to make another link with what you said (still speaking to Teubert), actually about, uh, you made a reference to genes a little bit, very quickly, and it made me think right away about Dawkins, about the selfish gene – I don’t know it was on purpose. [Chair: Yes yes]
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Because the way I see your point is that, like Dawkins basically sees human beings as available means that genes are using to reproduce themselves and the way I see your presentation – and I don’t know if it is close to what Christian had in mind – is that, in a way, human beings are the means by which texts reproduce themselves. So I find that quite controversial, I like it, I like it at the same time, for me it’s just one way to see the issue because I like to think in terms of chains of agencies but I like, for example, what you said on your third slide today when you said, a new text repeats, a new text permutes, recombines, modifies and you also say formulaic expressions situate the text, they reinforce the continuity of the discourse, they construct the identity of the discourse community, they use as their nodes a mix of keywords, which means that – for me that’s how I would translate that – there is a lot of attribution of agency to texts. To a certain extent, and I believe in that, we can have this kind of interpretation. Of course, you can focus on texts and you then see what people do as means by which texts reproduce themselves. So I find that quite controversial and that’s why I wanted to point it out. Chair Well thank you François. You mentioned Christian. (To Plantin) So, Christian, do you want to comment on this right away? Plantin First of all, let me say that I agree on what you said about repetition; this is quite in line with Napoleon’s observation that the best form of argument is just repetition. I think I’ve also found two or three things with which I can disagree. First, if not all the presentations, at least most of the presentations I have heard, deal with dialogue or forms of written or oral dialogue taken in isolation. Here is the first point I’d like to make: I think that we should not just verbally adhere to, but really apply and deepen the Bakhtinian concepts which were widely assumed in this conference. For example, a lot was said about primary genres but actually we haven’t heard or seen so much of those famous primary genres. I think that just ordinary conversation between colleagues at the university, ordinary conversations in passing, are not such prototypical examples of primary genres. I’d like to suggest that primary genres basically involve objects and manipulation of objects; I’d like to contest the total autonomy of discourse analysis in relation with substantial context. Somehow ‘objects of discourse’ are linked with ‘external’, context-given non-discursive objects. Some interesting presentations have mentioned expert knowledge and expert discourse; such expert knowledge is essentially built in relation with ‘external objects’. This goes with my second point: These objects are accessible through video data, which should be considered as the basic stuff constituting dialogue analysis corpora. We should really think about how we can use more video data in
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argumentation analysis. I think that we have a kind of fascination for the so-called autonomy of discourse. In the wake of old structuralism, dialogue is considered as a kind of autonomous self-sufficient, purely linguistic activity, and I think that this is not correct, particularly in relation with the analysis of argument. My third point will be on the necessity and the difficulty of introducing normative regulations on dialogue. Fallacy theory can be an excellent pedagogical manner to account for the critical-collaborative dimension of dialogue. My way to understand fallacy theory as exemplified in pragma-dialectics – I had a discussion about this point with Agnes van Rees – is to say, well, if people belonging roughly to the same culture intend to clarify their personal views, or even intend to reach an agreement on a disputed and obscure topic, it would be a good idea to follow, or negotiate, such and such rules in order to eliminate, as far as possible sterile (“fallacious”) moves. So, fallacy theory obeys a kind of ‘if-then’ condition: if we intend to achieve such and such a goal, we have to proceed in such and such a way. This doesn’t transform the analyst into a kind of rational super-hero. I think that Hamblin has the decisive words on this point, well worth remembering: Consider, now, the position of the onlooker and, particularly, that of the logician, who is interested in analysing and, perhaps, passing judgement on what transpires. If he says “Smith’s premises are true” or “Jones’ argument is invalid”, he is taking part in the dialogue exactly as if he were a participant in it; but, unless he is in fact engaged in a second-order dialogue with other onlookers, his formulation says no more than the formulation “I accept Smith’s premises” or “I disapprove of Jones’s argument”. Logicians are, of course, allowed to express their sentiments but there is something repugnant about the idea that Logic is a vehicle for the expression of the logician’s own judgements of acceptance and rejection of statements and arguments. The logician does not stand above and outside practical argumentation or, necessarily, pass judgement on it. He is not a judge or a court of appeal, and there is no such judge or court: he is, at best, a trained advocate. It follows that it is not the logician’s particular job to declare the truth of any statement or the validity of any argument. (C. L. Hamblin. 1970. Fallacies, p.244f., italics in the text).
My final point bears on the inter-cultural validity of fallacy theory. Let’s take Muslim argumentation. According to the traditional view, any valid argument (qiyâs) has to start from a sentence taken in the Koran or in the tradition (hadith). This is very different from what we use to call “data”. Should we say that all this kind of reasoning just commits a gigantic fallacy of “falsely stating premises as undisputable”, and nothing more? Does that help when we try to deal with deep disagreement? Chair Thank you Christian. I think Adelino will all agree with lots of what you said, as regulating the dialogue is what he is interested in doing; and we’ll come back to
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that later. Now, let’s have Edda, also representing Münster University. So Edda, what is on your mind? Weigand There are many things. I find it difficult to identify specific points because we address so many interesting, stimulating topics, aspects, for instance, as my colleagues mentioned, culture and emotion, or in general rhetoric, dialogue, argumentation. I am really impressed by the multiplicity of these topics and I don’t consider it surprising because, in my view, all these topics, all these areas are interconnected, interact as complex subsystems of what I consider the complex whole. And that for me is dialogic interaction, the human capacity of being competent in performance. So, in bringing together rhetoric, dialogue and argumentation, all these different issues, this is for me the most exciting idea – you are asking me for the most exciting idea – and I think we have made some progress in demonstrating how these different areas are interconnected. Chair So thank you, that is very suitable. Meta-statement on top of all the other statements: let us embrace the diversity, the unity of dialogue studies. This was a kind of a very brief crash course of dialogue studies, particularly for me who is so much an outsider to this field. What is it we can do and what is it we should do in dialogue studies? To me, it seems that some of the ideas that have been promoted here are not so popular and others are much more accepted. Maybe we start again with Franz Hundsnurscher. Is there something you cannot agree with? Hundsnurscher Oh yes, quite a lot. I’ll pick on Edda Weigand. Just for the conference’s sake (laughing). I think rhetoric and dialogue analysis do not go well together and in fact have been misleading quite a few of the contributions given in concentrating on the rhetoric side, which in fact is – as I call it – intransigent speech. Rhetoric has been invented in order to win over, to win one’s game so that nothing is left of the other’s standpoint. This is not dialogue as I see it. I think people talk to each other and they get on well with each other and we should concentrate on the mechanisms of getting on well instead of trying to persuade the other to do that which we want, instead of making him look like a fool if he is wrong in what he says, because there are lots of dialogue types that are not based on fact alone. For instance, if you want to console someone, if you want to teach someone, if you want to bargain with someone, there are lots of dialogue types which in normal life do reach an understanding and we should put more emphasis on this reaching-
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agreement type of thing than on the rhetoric side of just demolishing the opponent. Thank you. Chair Thank you! I think Adelino would say we have a very narrow picture of rhetoric. I mean, wouldn’t we have to concede that there could be something like the rhetoric of consoling someone successfully? Don’t you think that that is something that can be learned, that can be trained in a similar way as the rhetoric of logical argumentation? Well, of course, I am here just the moderator. We’ll come back to that. Maybe we come back to Neelakshi, and Neelakshi – are you more on the rhetoric or more on the dialogue side? Premawardhena I am more on the dialogue side actually. I would like to agree especially with Professor Edda Weigand because everything is interrelated, and my point is to make it more global because this is more Western oriented, we know most of the scholars come from the West. And to make it broader in order to have the viewpoints from the Asian countries as well, so that the theories that we make here can be applied and maybe argued as well according to our data that we have. So, that is one thing for the future that I can suggest, otherwise I don’t have any controversial points, because when we find the data from Asian countries from those who are deeply involved in research it will be possible to make some applicable theories on their own as well and then we can argue with other theories. I am more of a pragmatic person than of a theoretician, so I am not that suitable to argue here. Chair Well, we had other people here talking more in a pragmatic voice. Adelino was very keen on introducing regulations for training people how to engage in a dialogue, and I think that’s something you might agree with. Was there anything said here that you would not agree with, Adelino? Cattani About argumentation. I think that argumentation, not demonstration, is our usual way of proving, also in science. Science is essentially controversial. Sometimes we use the metaphor of ping-pong: a debate is a game where two teams play and confront themselves, where a ball goes back and forth. This metaphor is good for science too and for rival scientific teams. Having a conclusion in mind and then proceeding to bend the facts to support this conclusion is surely a fallacious procedure, but the history of science exhibits many cases of such lucky fallacies and of hazardous forms of reasoning, where invention, cues, presuppositions and persuasion were determinant. Does this mean that scientists are rhetoricians? No,
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this only means that science is not based on an impressive array of facts and that in turn scientific facts are not simply observed and measured. Demonstration exhibits a rhetorical foundation. Science should normatively be a search for true, proved knowledge, but actually it is a search for argumented knowledge based on consensus. This datum, a historical datum, requires rethinking of the relationship between the argumentative instrument of rhetoric and the demonstrative instrument of science. And it calls for a more logical foundation of argumentative theory and practice. If a debate is such a game, it is useful, it is important for the audience that every debater manifests clearly his/her basic choices (premises, starting points, presuppositions, often unexpressed), that is what team he/she is fan of. Chair What I find interesting is that you connect two diverse perspectives, that of logical argumentation and that of taking a specific stance, like being a fan of a football club. I have a student who exposed himself a fan of a football club named West Bromwich Albion who notoriously lose just about every game. When I asked him: “Why are you a fan of this club? Why wouldn’t you rather be a fan of a club playing good enough to make it reasonable to be its fan?”, he told me: “You know my father was already a fan of this club and this is why I am too.” Does this have anything to do with rationality? Is supporting a certain football club something that needs to be argued, or could be argued? It has a lot more to do with emotion, I think. It is part of someone’s identity to be a member of a football club regardless which arguments you have. Cattani About this, I think that debate generally is not useful for the two parties involved in the debate, but only for a third party (audience, judge, virtual voters …). Commonly in a debate the discussants do not change their opinion, but their confrontation can indeed change the opinion of the audience. The most unprofitable and hopeless debates are those where the two debaters discuss as they were fans or supporters of rival teams, namely firmly convinced of a different starting point or premise, often without being conscious of this incompatibility. Chair You see we are getting more informal as we go on. So it’s Frans now, isn’t it? Now Frans could tell us if there was something you didn’t agree with. van Eemeren I must say I am inclined to connect with Edda’s statement, meta-statements, and to think about the relationships between things that were presented here and of
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course I have to confine myself to these things that I am more or less familiar with and that is rhetoric, dialectic, argumentation and dialogue. I leave emotions and things like that out, I know what they are, it’s not my topic of study at the moment. And then when I hear people speak about the connections it strikes me that it depends a lot on how you define these different kinds of fields. Adelino goes for a very broad definition of rhetoric and I recognise that there are many things in it that are interesting but there are also things in it that I would not consider to be rhetoric. And then, on the other hand, Franz has a different definition of rhetoric that is more narrow, I also recognize that. You see that quoted all the time and you see rhetoricians becoming angry and saying things like “We are much broader than that. You are narrow!” And in America, of course, where rhetoric is more popular than it is – generally speaking – in Europe, and where a lot of theoreticians have developed rhetoric in senses that I cannot see any connection between what they call rhetoric and what I would call rhetoric in the classical sense. And I think it’s time now to define these fields at least for the purposes of your own theorizing in such a way to make clear what you are connecting and what you are disconnecting. And then without claiming that my definitions are the right definitions, there are more definitions than I give for myself in order to make clear what I am talking about. Then, I would say I cannot do with rhetoric alone when I study argumentation I need more than rhetoric in a sense of what way people try to get their own points across if you consider rhetoric to be that. Adelino would say we need also logic and I would say I am inclined to agree with that but what do you mean by logic again. The logic that I am most familiar with, the logic that I studied is of no use at all to analysing everyday dialogues or at least of a limited, very limited use. The study of logic is of course very useful, formal logic, in order to sharpen your mind and to get an idea of what theorizing might be. But you need to do other things than would formal logicians normally do in order to get a grip on what is happening in everyday argumentative discourse. And that is something that was discovered not by me but a long time ago by many other people, among them Armin Naess in Sweden or Toulmin in England, and they said things like that, often more or less in passing, because they’re working on other projects and often what they said was either criticized severely by their colleagues or totally neglected. That happened also to Toulmin, for instance, no logician accepted anything of what Toulmin said. They said: “This is all ridiculous and nonsense, not interesting at all.” The reviews were very bad and only after people in a soft science life communication, speech communication discovered the Toulmin model which was located in the book “The uses of arguments”. This is a model that is simple, we can understand it, we can apply it, and after that model got a certain popularity Toulmin became popular in a broader sense. All these people were aware of the fact that logic the way it had developed in the last hundred years or so, is not useful to the analysis and the evaluation of argumentation. Something else has to happen and I do not
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believe that any of these models by itself will be enough. I really think that we need to combine insights from various sources. So I agree with Adelino that rhetoric by itself is not enough when you also take into account a critical dimension but I do not agree that logic could help us. I go for dialectic in that case and dialectic has developed by the works of I should say the Erlanger Schule in Germany at first as a starting point of something new that could develop a dialectical idea of looking at logical consistency and things like that, formal dialectic developed that was still formal but closer to the way in which in a dialogue certain kinds of reasoning develop and certain kinds of argumentation develop. From there on, I think the next step is to connect that type of logic with what we call discourse analysis inspired by speech act theory, Gricean theory and things like that, and then again after we have done that, combine that with insights from rhetoric that can make clear what people add to the reasoning the way they, as it were, they bridge the reasoning gaps in order to make it work. So, I am all in favour of combining things but provided that they are clearly defined and different kinds of roles are clearly delineated. Chair Well thank you. Adelino, very brief? Cattani Briefly, very briefly. Rhetoric has a dialectical and a logical dimension. Socrates is a good example of a logical-dialectical rhetoric. I agree with Aristotle and his reflections concerning rhetoric as “antistrophos” of dialectics (it would be its counterpart or co-extensive with it). And logical demonstration is a special form of argumentation. Only formal logic has nothing to do with rhetoric. Chair I have to say I was very surprised when I read what Alexander Luria had written in the thirties when he investigated abstraction in the discourse of several semiliterate different ethnicities in Siberia. It seems that to understand a simple syllogism was something outside of their life experience and therefore something they couldn’t cope with. This level of abstraction just didn’t mean anything to them, and even prompted they did not come up with the right answers. It seems our Western concept of logic is very specific and limited and has to do something with our culture of literacy. Anyway I shouldn’t talk. François can you elaborate? Cooren Yes, what could be interesting would be to polarize a little more the debate and one way for me to polarize the debate would be to say whom I agree with and whom I disagree with. So I tend to agree with Christian, I tend to agree with
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Neelakshi, I tend to agree with Edda, but I tend to disagree with the two “Franses” and with Adelino. So, why do I disagree. First of all, I would like to speak about what Frans van Eemeren said about a mistake we make. We make the mistake of combining – maybe I am putting words in your mouth – dialogue with rhetoric, which is interesting because for me it is not at all a mistake. For me, one way of defining rhetoric, – of course, there are so many definitions that are possible – but, for me rhetoric is really the production of effects through discourse, through interaction, that is, you are trying to produce some effects, whether it is an aesthetic effect, whether it is a persuasive effect if we believe in persuasion. Discourse matters because rhetoric is this idea that we can change people through exchanging. Of course dialectics also, but when we look, for example, at Socrates’ maieutic techniques, for example, making somebody look like a fool was something Socrates was excellent in and he is considered to be the person who represents the quintessence of dialectics. And what I find interesting also is when Frans said, “I am not interested in emotion”, which is fine but ... van Eemeren That’s not what I said. Cooren No, no, no sorry. You were basically saying that you are not studying emotion, not that you are not interested in it. But I think it is difficult to study dialogue and to study interaction, to study any kind of exchange if you are not interested in emotion in a complex way, like Edda would put forward. You have to take into account all these different things that we call emotion that I think in my view participate in dialogue, that actually invite themselves in dialogue. And so I would say that to leave out all these actors is a mistake, whether we want to call them actors or things that move us, things that make us do things. For example, culture is an interesting actor. When we say that culture should play a role, or plays a role, what do we mean by that? When we say, “Culture plays a role in dialogue”, we mean that there are things that represent culture – that are, for example, values, beliefs, norms, that incarnate culture to a certain extent, that participate in the dialogue. If we believe that culture plays a role, I think that one way to speak about that is to say that we have to recognize that some principles are talking through me, some values are talking through me, some specific beliefs are talking through me, the Koran is now speaking through me, all these kind of things. And if we leave that aside, I don’t think we have a way to understand dialogue, the complexity of dialogue, the complex game, the mixed game that dialogue is and that is why I found so interesting this idea of combining rhetoric and dialogue because it is a way for me to show that there are so many things that can intervene and play a role and produce effects. That is what Christian said: When you speak to a Muslim – it could also be to a Christian, of course. I would
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not say all Muslims, but certain types of Muslim, a certain type of Christian – they cannot talk without referring to something that makes them say that, which is the Koran, which is the Bible, etc… So how could we leave that out and how can we say that specific rules should dictate how we should proceed in a dialogue. It is impossible to have a dialogue if we have such rules, if we say: “Now you are falling into such and such fallacy.” So, I’m sorry, I am just trying to create some reactions, you know… Chair That is exactly what we are about. Cooren Otherwise it’s gonna be too cute. (laughter) Chair Franz wants to make an interjection. Hundsnurscher I just want to make one remark on this. It’s actually the concept of rhetoric that bothers us, if you think historically, rhetoric is a principally monological matter and it goes to sway a body of decision in either the one or the other direction. And what we are talking mainly about rhetoric is the deteriorated type of rhetoric that has arisen in the form of literary rhetoric. Literary rhetoric also is text-bound and it has an audience, it doesn’t have a single interlocutor with yourself. So, embellishing as you said, producing effects, producing persuasion, these are all categories that concern an audience that is being swayed in a certain direction. But when you talk to each other, there may be emotions, but your examples about repetition as a sign of success, as I understood you, this is not a sign of success in dialogue. It’s just one move in dialogue against the other. Chair Yes, it shows that what we are supposed to perceive as a dialogue, like debates in a parliament, often is void of any dialogical interaction. This is, I think, quite a controversy here. And now it’s Christian’s turn, unless what you had wanted to say has already been said by François. This seems to be the case. Therefore we will turn to our last speaker in this round, Edda, to sum up. Weigand Yes, I think I have to take up Franz Hundsnurscher’s point: the separation of rhetoric and dialogue. That’s a very interesting point because to my mind it demonstrates that everything we think and express depends on our point of view, on our interests. While you told us they do not go together, I would like to say,
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they cannot be separated. Rhetoric is inherent in dialogue. I think I can say why they do not go together for you. If we start from methodological exigencies, and I think you start from methodological exigencies of generative pragmatics, we have to construct dialogue in advance, according to rules, move for move. Hundsnurscher Right, but to some purpose. Weigand For you, it means an important step of progress to include generative ideas in pragmatics. I however think it’s an obstacle in coming to grips with what we are doing in practice. And in this respect I would like to remind you of Martinet, the well-known structuralist, who told us we shouldn’t damage our natural object by methodological exigencies, and I think that’s the difference between your point of view and my point of view. I would like to grasp the natural object without being restricted by methodological exigencies. I think we have arrived at a turning point where we have left closed rule-governed models and are finally prepared to address complexity in an open model based on principles of probability, not on general definitions and rules. So the first step would be to get a view of the complex whole by making premises and then to derive an adequate methodology from these premises about the complex whole. That’s the way I take it. What Franz Hundsnurscher considers to be his object of study, well-formed dialogues, they certainly play a role in what we are doing. We start with, I would call it, standard forms, regularities, rules but when they come to an end, then we are able to go beyond rules. We include inferences, we include individuality, we include particular features of the situation and therefore we, of course, include our interests in being successful in pursuing our goals, a point which is most interesting for you, too. And therefore I think, that’s my point of view, all these concepts, methodological principles play a role in what we as competent beings, competent-in-performance, do in practice, and I think it should be our interest to develop a theory that can cope with this great challenge. Chair Thank you! There is also Franz who wants to have an interjection and it’s me who takes the opportunity as a moderator to say: You said that dialogues are natural objects. And what we do is, we try to analyse what really exists. Dialogue as a natural object … I have never in my whole life seen any natural object, I wouldn’t recognize one if I met one. They are all social constructs, and it is up to us, the members of a discourse community, to negotiate among ourselves what we accept as a dialogue, and what not. Franz you wanted to make a very short interjection.
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Hundsnurscher Yes, this is a methodological problem. So, as I would say, reality will never escape us because it’s there. What we can do is to try to understand how dialogues work, so we will have to construct models because we don’t know much at the beginning and we can’t get an overview by itself. We can only, as I understand it, postulate what are the interests of people that enter into a dialogue. And then I will put some sort of interest as a heuristic concept at the start and then try to deduce what is a plausible way to reach agreement. What are the points of breaking, or of not coming to an agreement. So this is my model of analysing dialogue in order to understand what is actually going on between people. Chair Oh, thank you. Is there anyone who would like to add up to it? I would now like to include our audience in this discussion. Yes, here is a voice from the audience. Emmel I am Barbara Emmel. I am an independent scholar and sometimes connected with Münster. And I’d like to start out somewhat with an anecdote which was a response that band members of Jim Morrison had after seeing the movie called “The Doors”, you may remember that, some ten years ago in which the band members said: “Who is this creep called Jim Morrison?” I’d like to say while listening to you: “Who is this creep called rhetoric that you are talking about?” Because it seems to me that some of the definitions that I am hearing cast rhetoric in a position in which it’s monologic, it’s manipulative and it’s outmoded. I would like to put onto the floor then a possibly different definition that is being attended to by scholars in America in which rhetoric is not that means by which we try to defeat others or win or manipulate them somehow into a position that they don’t really agree with but rather that means by which we ask them for their assent, and put forth − however you want to say it − communications, arguments, positions, and assumptions that invite them into a dialogue and discourse with us. In that way, I myself personally would put rhetoric in the centre between logic and argumentation – by which I mean the way that argument is informed by logic − and dialogue. And to look at logic as the way rhetoric is given sense and dialogue is the way that it is given voice. Put rhetoric in the centre because it is the way in which we even begin the process of trying to communicate and understand each other and either give assent or withhold assent. Thank you. Chair A lot of what you say is about moving. People want to move up their way in a hierarchy of aims. I think ever since humans developed language, language has taken over the role of moving other people. Would you accept rhetoric not just as
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something we can learn as a technique to move other people your way but as something more general, a way to communicate, to interact with other people? Cooren It doesn’t have to be to make friends. As it was said – and I completely agree with that – it can be a rhetoric of consolation, it can be an epideictic discourse, which just glorifies the nation or a group, it can be a rhetoric of hatred. I think it’s a mistake to reduce rhetoric to persuasion, it can be repetition. Rhetoric is I think crucial, but I wouldn’t put it at the centre – for me there is no centre really – it is one dimension of interaction that I think is crucial, which is the fact that we are going to produce some kind of effect whatever they are; it can be an aesthetic effect again, like in the Rhétorique générale, which is mostly interested in the tropes and the production of beauty in a discourse. But there can be of course some persuasive components. I think it is a mistake to see it pejoratively as it is also a mistake to see it euphorically. It’s just there and so we cannot say, Let us not talk about rhetoric when we speak about dialogue. That would be like saying, Let us not talk about the heart when you speak about the human being biologically. I think it is a component we have to deal with, which is pervasive. It does not mean that if you are interested in rhetoric, you cannot be interested in dialectics or in dialogue or in any other things, but it is a component of interaction. Chair Is that still the rhetoric that we find with the ancients that has been taught to the Western world by the Greeks and the Romans? Or is that a much wider and evolved or changed kind of rhetoric? Cooren I think if we look at what the sophists were saying – of course, we have lost almost everything from the sophists – but what the sophists were saying about rhetoric is I think close to what my position is about rhetoric. I mean someone like Hitler was using rhetoric, but somebody like Jesus Christ, Mandela or whoever we want to quote is using rhetoric to the extent that we can find in his speech some components that are there to please, to produce effects or maybe sometimes displease … So that is the way I understand rhetoric. Maybe it is misled, you know, I have been trained in North America, studied rhetoricians. We all know that there is this pejorative dimension. It is usually when something has a pejorative connotation that it makes it interesting. Chair Here we have a question from the audience.
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Audience I want to address a question to the specialists: Could we think that a logic argument like a non-contradiction argument could play a rhetoric role? Chair Well, anyone of you wants to answer? Yes Cooren I don’t want to monopolize this panel, but I could answer. Yes I think to the extent that you present this argument. If you want to counter someone’s position and you use an argument of non-contradiction to counter what the person is saying, to that extent this argument has – for me – a rhetorical dimension. Because you are going to present it in a specific way, you are responding to somebody, so it is not monological I don’t see it at all as monological. On the contrary, rhetoric is a lot about intertextuality, heteroglossia. So it is a lot about the fact that you are trying to make a point, you are trying to be persuasive or as interesting as possible … That does not mean you are not trying to reach out what the other person is saying, it does not mean that you cannot be in a dialogue, you can also try to reach some common grounds … If you believe in speech you believe that speech is going to make a difference, that it is going to produce some kind of effects and again multiple effects. Audience I want to come back not to the question of what is rhetoric but to the question of what is dialogue. I wonder, can we really decide that something is not dialogue? I would take it for granted that dialogue pervades all aspects at least of the human being, so in doing Dialogue Analysis we might be analysing practically anything human beings do and finding dialogical aspects there – analysing it from the dialogic angle. The question is, is there any non-tendentious way of saying well this is not dialogue they’re just punching each other up. This would be also a form of dialogue for me. Chair I think this should be the time to have a last round for our panellists, and to bring this discussion to a conclusion. Yes, is that an interjection or will that be another contribution? van Eemeren No, this is a response to you – it depends all on definitions I think and people can have all kinds of splendid ideas of what rhetoric is and where rhetoric is involved and it all isn’t really that important how you define it as long as it’s clear what
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you mean by rhetoric. And, for instance, in my theory of argumentation, the pragma-dialectical theory, we have as a starting point that every argumentative move always has a rhetorical dimension. It has a dialectical dimension and it has a rhetorical dimension. Sometimes the rhetorical aspect is stronger or more manifest than the dialectical dimension, sometimes it’s the other way round. Sometimes you would say from a certain perspective of goal-directed discourse in a certain activity type it would be good to discipline what you are doing, from that perspective by inviting to certain rules. I agree with other people who said it depends on the activity type, they are proposals, you cannot force to act by these rules and you would not like that. And sometimes you would say, no there is no reason at all to have any let’s say mandatory rules or whatever because we just leave it to the participants how they want to act. But to answer your question: Yes, there is always by definition, in my theory at least, a rhetorical dimension. But there are also theories, like for instance, the formal dialectical theory of argumentation, which is a great theory, but it does not take any rhetorical aspect into account. That is also possible of course, you can for some purposes develop a theory in order to make something clear, where you abstract from certain factors and then I would say, that’s a pity because this is a dimension that is in my view always so important in conversations and in dialogues. But they would say, yeah but we have something else in mind that we would like to demonstrate and then there is no rhetorical dimension. There are also people who are just doing rhetoric and giving the rhetorical analysis, leaving out, for instance, all kinds of things that have to do with psychology or things that have to do with logic. That’s also of course permitted, as long as it’s clear what you are doing, what your analysis is aiming at and what the tools are that you use. I wanted to add that because I think otherwise my own position would have been a little mis-portrayed. I am not going against rhetoric at all. I am just saying that for methodological reasons, I start from a dialectical perspective and that includes insights from rhetoric. But that’s only when I am talking about argumentative texts, that’s also something that is important because I can see that when you have to come to do other things that there might also be a rhetorical dimension to that, there always is. And it’s interesting to study that. But that is simply not what I am working on. Chair Thank you. And now let’s move on to our last round. Again we start with Franz Hundsnurscher. Hundsnurscher I reply to the last standpoint, namely, I am sure, it’s my conviction that everything that is spoken is dialogue. Dialogues are patterns, and well-formed patterns at their best. So you may distinguish different modes of reaching a dialogic goal. People will of course when they talk mix up things. Some will be alert and
304 Round Table Discussion
contemplative and give a well-formed dialogue, some will not be concentrated and the dialogue will just not be completed. So, I think about rhetoric, the other point, rhetoric in its form, in its latest form as literary rhetoric has been transformed into stylistics. And as to stylistics, if you perform a speech act, you are in a position to use different utterance forms, partially equivalent utterance forms to perform a speech act. And rhetoric is in fact the selection of optimal utterance forms in order to reach a certain speech act goal. So rhetoric is involved in every realization of a speech act but only as a form of stylistics. And you can’t give it another function because it’s a problem of utterance form and not of dialogue structure as such. Chair I am sure that this is sufficiently contentious. Let’s move on now to Neelakshi. Premawardhena What I can take from the conference is that we are developing a new theory which can be applicable to all the languages, dialogues and rhetoric, including everything. And to sum up, I can give you an example of the function of negation in our languages. Negation at times is expressed through the affirmative in our languages. If you want to say “no”, you say “yes”. I think that also should be included here because the socio-cultural aspects play an important role here and you do not want to offend your partner, the person who talks to you. You say “yes”, even if you don’t want to say yes due to the pressure of social norms. Even if one wants to vehemently refuse, reject or show dissent, one is compelled to agree and relent in many occasions out of politeness. Hence let us include aspects of culture and emotions, too, when we develop this new theory. Chair Thank you, thank you. Now, let’s move on to Adelino, Adelino, everybody is talking about rhetoric, and rhetoric is the centre of attention here. Is that your kind of rhetoric? Cattani I said that rhetoric is dialogical at least because it has to do with persuading other people. So rhetoric is a global strategic activity not only a monological tactical activity. It is monological if we define rhetoric only as a stylistic art, but not if we introduce the notion of argument and of argumentation: that changes its nature. It is my opinion that the best definition of rhetoric remains the Aristotelian one: ‘the faculty of discovering every possible means of persuasion’. We can obviously persuade with different means: persuasion may be based on a logical reason that tries to explain, on a material cause that tries to indicate what determines something, a psychological motive that tries to find what induces. And
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about dialogue, I think that also polemic may be dialogical. We have to distinguish many types of debates, ranging from constructive dialogue to hostile polemic, two extreme types of exchanges marked by opposite traits: co-operative vs. competitive patterns. All of them have their typical argumentative schemes, rules or moves, and standards of evaluation. But often the rules of dialogical debates and moves of polemic ones coincide. For example, polemic may function as a strong test. When a new washing machine or a computer is created, firstly the producer tries it out with a serious inspection. If the machine resists to the ‘critical’ test, it is confidently introduced to the market place. So I think we can do with our ideas. And polemics is our critical test, our means of natural selection, using logical, dialectical and rhetorical tools. It seems that a controversial attitude in debate, aiming to succeed in persuading using polemical moves, is not only a classical rhetorical protocol, but also a good paradigm for philosophy and a good pedagogical practice. Chair Thank you Adelino. Well, let’s give Frans another chance. Van Eemeren I have no final remark. Chair Then we move straight on to François. Cooren Ok. To respond to Franz, I am just surprised that you are saying that the last version of rhetoric is stylistics. I mean, if you read the articles and books that are published in the US about rhetoric right now, it is anything but stylistics. Stylistics is kind of dead over there. I think it has never been really popular and they would not even call it rhetoric. Rhetoric over there has nothing to do with stylistics, so that is why there is so much misunderstanding. I also would like to react to what was said about the definition by Aristotle of rhetoric as the available means of persuasion. To reduce rhetoric to persuasion is I think a problem precisely because there is stylistics. If stylistics is associated with rhetoric and I have no problem with that – we have the book of rhétorique générale in France about the art of rhetoric or how to create pleasing texts – then it has nothing to do with persuasion. It can be about persuasion but it should not be reduced to the available means of persuasion. Because aesthetics has nothing to do with persuasion. So, I think, we should not reduce it to one or the other. I want to open up. If you say that stylistics is today how we consider rhetoric, I say no, in the States, that is not how they consider rhetoric, it does not mean that this is not part of rhetoric. I think, it is and that is why Aristotle’s definition is
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reductive. He speaks about rhetoric only when we want to persuade. And I think as Christian says, persuasion is something that does not necessarily happen. It might happen after the fact, because we tend to change minds, so it must happen somehow but persuasion is not the central aspect of rhetoric. Chair It seems that our discussion is not going to end in perfect harmony. But without controversy there can be no progress. Our aim was to show the wide range of positions. Plantin First of all, I think we should be very careful not to turn the concept of dialogue into an ideological artefact, supposedly serving the universal union of peoples in the perspective of an ideal global village. There are in-group rhetorics and outgroup rhetorics. We have to focus more on out-group argumentation, to devote more fieldwork to out-group dialogue. Second, rhetoric. I would say that rhetoric is dead and it even died twice. First, at the end of the 16th century, and second, like God at the end of the 19th century. Now we have communication studies, discourse analysis and interaction studies, which are all now globalized professions. And we do have psychology and psycho-sociology and those disciplines are really interested in social persuasion. Is it still possible to imperviously define rhetoric through its so-called persuasive function, without at least trying to deal with concrete forms of persuasion? We are sometimes persuaded through verbal means; in other cases, like Pascal says, kneeling can be a short way to believing. Should we suggest that by taking another physical position, you will believe in another God? There is more in persuasion than verbal action; and I doubt that verbal persuasive action can be so easily isolated from non verbal instruments of persuasion. And I think that rhetoric is well alive through its legacy, through the ups and downs of its history, from the extraordinary sophistication of its semantics for discourse analysis and even from its first characterization of eloquent voice, which is now a topic for experimental phonetics. In my view, rhetoric shouldn’t be ‘re-enacted’, considering that it can provide ready-made answers to all our practical and theoretical questions. Argumentation studies can make a good work at reinterpreting and integrating the legacy of rhetoric; not all and sundry, but some of its concepts and techniques, and the substance of its intuitions. My final point will be about Geoffrey Lloyd: in a 1990 book, “Demystifying mentalities”, he distinguishes between argument as proof and argument as demonstration. I’ve heard several things during the conference showing that argumentation and rhetoric are still seen as forms of weakened, or pseudo demonstrations, and remain widely under the hypnotic influence of logic. I think that this ‘background model’ is negative for the correct development of argumentation studies as substantial studies. We should pay more attention to argument as
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proof; experimental sciences (physics isn’t an applied logic) or medicine, not logic, are our best ideal models. That is to say that, if I had to favour one kind of rhetoric, I’ll choose ancient argumentative rhetoric, a rhetoric which hasn’t broken all links with reality, even if, as Quine says, sometimes the role of reality is just to say “no!”. Chair Thank you very much. I am wondering, is this perhaps a memorial service to a concept of rhetoric as we used to have it? Edda, your concluding words. Weigand I wouldn’t like to start with definitions. I think everything depends on our abilities, our interests, our evaluations. And I think human beings are not only individuals, rhetorical individuals, cultural individuals, but at the same time we are dialogic, social individuals. And we have extraordinary abilities, for me it’s very exciting to see how quite simple abilities help us to deal with the complex, with the task of coming to grips with dialogue in the stream of life. I would like to mention two abilities, pointed out by Herbert A. Simon, first the ability to focus our attention. I think we start coping with the complexity we have to deal with by focusing our attention on some part of this complexity, but it is complexity from the very outset. And second, we have the ability, the extraordinary ability to adapt ourselves to ever-changing conditions in different situations and different cultures. So, I think we, and that’s an interesting and exciting point for me, too, I think we have arrived at a point where we can finally feel we are prepared for this adventure in the complex. We are proceeding as human beings competent-inperformance. Chair Thank you very much. Thank you, our panellists, and thank you, the audience, for your interest, and for your patience. We have reached a level of complexity that will enable us to move on to exciting new insights. We have discussed a wide range of issues, and I have learned quite a lot about rhetoric and argumentation. I think this is a nice conclusion of the 11th International Conference on Dialogue Analysis, with its topic of “Dialogue Analysis and Rhetoric”. We are all very grateful to Edda Weigand and her excellent team for these happy three days full of intellectual and cultural nourishment. Thank you very much, Edda!
General Index A
B
actant 28, 33f. action 3, 6, 8, 17, 23, 26, 28, 33, 35, 73, 74, 76, 77, 97, 107, 124f., 131, 149, 157, 182, 215, 223f., 226, 237, 268, 278, 280 action game → dialogic 3, 7, 16, 178, 195, 221, 224, 237 action principle 8, 16 active listening 90f. activity type 143, 145f. adaptation 142, 225, 252 agency 23, 25, 32ff., 41, 237 agreement 32, 34, 86, 89, 96, 112, 115, 123, 126, 144, 146, 246, 271, 272 antagonistic 60, 83, 89, 190 argumentation 5, 13, 55, 57, 74ff., 83, 95, 97, 103ff., 114ff., 119ff., 125, 130, 133, 136ff. argument, argumentative 12f., 16f., 24, 32, 44, 57ff., 65, 72ff., 85ff., 91, 95, 97ff., 102ff., 106, 108f., 111f., 114ff., 120f., 126f., 130, 133, 136ff., 150f., 175, 185ff., 190, 209f., 214, 218, 222ff., 229f., 235f., 238ff., 243, 245, 247, 258, 264, 279 arguments about dialogue 57ff., 61, 65 attack 12, 15, 29, 91, 103, 110, 115, 130, 133f. 143, 149, 174, 177, 229 attention 4, 45f., 65, 95, 107, 140 ,144, 172, 209, 211, 213ff., 221ff., 225ff., 230f., 233, 240, 245 attitude 71f., 77f., 80, 147, 179, 189f., 217, 230, 244f., 271, 275 audience 44, 48f., 51, 64, 71, 75ff., 80, 85, 87, 89, 99, 130, 142, 150, 185, 224, 226 authentic 8, 157, 169, 222, 260f. dialogue 71, 159 speech 160 text 6 authority 23f., 30, 34ff., 101, 114, 135, 140, 143ff., 150f.,177, 179, 201, 226, 239, 261, 270, 279
Bundestag 11, 17, 20, 103, 222, 230, 232
C change 5, 13f., 16, 44, 46, 50, 57, 59, 62, 65, 76, 83ff., 90, 116, 130, 155, 166, 211ff., 218, 229, 237, 245, 255, 259f. Charter of Fundamental Rights 95, 98, 102, 103f., 106ff., 112f. circumstances 26, 49, 56, 58, 60, 63, 78, 113, 143, 165, 174, 177, 180, 197f., 255, 264, 270, 272 claim 6, 12f., 13, 15, 17, 23, 47, 64, 75, 89, 96, 100, 106, 108, 116, 140, 185f., 221, 228, 235, 237, 244, 268, 273 cognition, cognitive 8, 16f., 121, 128, 157, 195f., 202, 205, 217, 221f., 225, 227, 236, 254f. coherence 8, 16, 258f. 263 collaboration 47, 50, 97, collective 72f., 96, 185, 198, 203f., 221ff. Common European Legal Language 252, 265 common ground 83, 85, 90f., 155, 229, 245 communication 5, 25, 35, 39f., 43, 45, 49f., 55ff., 64f., 69ff., 73ff., 78, 80, 84f., 88, 141, 161, 166, 179, 182, 195, 200ff., 209ff., 216, 218, 224, 236ff., 245, 254, 257, 268, 274, 277 communicative means 3, 8, 17, 157ff., 166, 182, 202 competence 3ff., 76ff., 86, 114, 145, 155, 159, 172, 255 competence-in-performance 3f., 6ff., 155, 159, 172, 255 complaint 25ff., 273 complex, complexity 3f., 6ff., 11, 17, 61, 65, 75, 78, 86, 95, 129, 157, 168, 176, 198, 204, 222ff., 235, 239, 251, conclusions 85ff., 91, 116, 138, 213, 218, 230, 270 conflict, conflicting 14f., 26, 60, 85f., 91, 116, 120, 123f., 129, 171, 192, 222,
310 General Index
224f., 227, 235, 238, 241, 248, 265, 270, 277 context 25, 43, 47, 58, 70, 74ff., 103, 123, 135, 144ff., 150, 157, 161, 178f., 187f., 191, 196, 202f., 213, 218, 223, 236f. 240, 248, 254f., 257ff., 261, 271 control 16, 39ff., 43, 48, 98, 117, 222, 273 convention, conventional 4f., 7f., 15, 17, 24f. 99, 104f., 138, 143, 215, 260f. conversation 23, 25ff., 35, 42ff., 51, 57, 65, 72, 76, 79, 85, 122f., 145, 157, 181, 203, 237, 271 Conversation Analysis 23 conviction 119, 122ff. 129, 212, 276 convincing 70f., 78, 119, 123, 126, 130, 143, 211f., 224, 245 cooperative 130, 203, 223f., 226, 229, 277 cooperative principle 5, 76, 79 court 28, 99, 103ff. 109, 111ff., 251, 259, 260ff., 265, 267ff., 274ff. court judgment 267ff., 279ff. creative 45, 47, 73, 84, 198, 223, critical discussion 5, 80, 128f., 133, 137ff., 141, 143f., 146ff. critical events 55, 59f., 63, 65 culture 91, 100, 105, 112, 126, 165, 167, 200, 215, 224, 230, 238, 236ff., 251ff., 265 cultural 86, 119, 178f., 193, 195f. barriers 253, 265 conditions 221 conventions 7 identity 84 surroundings 221, 225 unit 7 values195f.
dialogue, dialogic 3, 18, 23, 29f., 35, 40ff., 55ff., 95, 116, 120, 122, 129, 131, 155, 157, 159f., 162ff., 190f., 195, 221, 235, 246, 248, 254, 267, 271 dialogic action game 3, 178 dialogic rhetoric 39f., 43ff., 47ff., 274 dialogic speech act 16, 160 diatext, diatextual 235, 237f., 242, 248 difference 7, 23, 30, 34, 44, 79, 83ff., 90, 93, 116, 123f., 127, 138ff., 146, 149, 217, 247, 264 dimension 24f., 32, 69ff., 73, 78, 119, 196, 199, 236, 245 discourse 23, 34, 39, 44f., 49, 51, 55, 57ff., 62, 65, 72ff., 77ff., 84ff., 89ff., 95ff., 101, 104, 115, 130, 133, 135, 137ff., 144ff., 168, 174, 178, 182, 197, 216, 235, 237, 247, 251ff., 265f., 274, 279f. → argumentative discourse analysis 39, 44f., 51, 58, 252, 255f., 267 experiential discourse 59 discursive 35, 96, 121ff., 128, 235ff., 242ff., 251ff., 255ff., 260, 265, discussion 3, 5, 9, 14, 16, 17, 19, 23, 28ff., 41, 64, 72, 74, 78ff., 89ff., 115, 117, 120, 127ff., 133f., 137ff., 141ff., 146ff., 160f., 171, 238, 239ff., 243, 248, 254f., 270, 277 dislocation 24, 35 dispute 60, 83f., 135 dissent 86 dissuade 124, 186 Dutch 101, 134, 145, 264 duty (duties) 33, 114, 120, 127ff., 247, 269
E D debate 14, 74, 83ff., 90f. 95, 97ff., 101, 103ff., 111f., 115, 117, 119, 121ff., 125ff., 135, 224, 230, 234ff. decision 8, 11, 15, 33,69, 72, 77f., 112ff., 179, 217, 222, 228, 245, 248, 271, 278f. defend 120, 129, 140, 149, 150, 188, 223, 245 defense 33, 138ff., 150f., 229f., 276 deference 155f., 159ff., 167f. democracy 57, 99, 115f., 122, 125, 224, 227 descriptive 5, 8, 15, 18, 40f., 55f., 126, 129f. dialectics, dialectical 5, 119, 128, 133, 135, 138ff.
effect 29, 60, 63, 102, 111, 114, 163, 172ff., 176ff., 225, 235, 244f., 259, 269f. effectiveness 32, 122, 126, 130, 159, 164, 186, 230 emergent 39, 43ff., 56 emotions 8, 15ff., 23, 27ff., 124, 187, 190, 197, 202ff., 209f., 212f., 218 empirical, empiricist 3f., 5f., 39, 56f., 69, 157, 168 English 56, 58, 84, 95, 100, 110, 113, 123, 125, 203, 210, 252, 260, 262f. ethic, ethical 5, 8, 18, 69, 71, 73ff., 80, 86, 120f., 123f., 129, 150, 181, 238f., 242 euphemization 225
General Index 311
Europe, European 59, 61, 98ff., 102, 104ff., 109, 112, 115, 134, 137, 210, 221f., 226, 229f., 251ff. euroscepticism 101, 115 evidence 76, 78, 86, 91, 95ff., 105, 109, 123, 125, 127, 235, 239, 273, 275, 279 evolution, evolutionary 3, 7, 19, 24 exchange 11f., 32, 35, 42, 44, 83, 87ff., 95, 97, 102, 112, 122f., 126, 133f., 143f., 145f., 185, 209, 212f., 224
F face 48, 50, 98, 180, 191, 198, 200, 204, 268, 277 fallacies 74, 122, 127f., 131, 133ff., 143f., 146f. feed-back 209, 211f. feelings 27ff., 59, 190, 197, 213 freedom 48, 76, 78, 80, 102, 129, 139f., 149, 158f., 187, 223, 244 frustration 25, 27f. function 26, 71, 80, 96, 120f., 155, 157f., 160ff., 165ff., 172f., 182, 187f., 190, 215, 222f., 226, 236, 277
G genre 45, 186, 259f., 263, 265, 279f. German 9, 11, 15, 17, 19, 48, 64, 103, 114, 188, 199f. 221f., 225, 227ff., 252, 254, 260f., 264 gesture 34f., 59f. goal 4, 40f., 43, 46, 71, 86, 90, 115, 159, 161, 164f., 185, 217, 225 communicative goal 159, 161, 164
H harmony 158, 195ff., 199 hierarchy 99, 104, 116, 160, 165, 167f., 176, 200 holistic 4, 6 honorifics 155ff., 163, 165, 167f., 204 human abilities 4, 8, 225 hypertext 191
I identity 60, 65, 83f., 95, 100, 102, 117, 120, 198, 224, 226 277 → culture, cultural ideology, ideological 191, 225, 227, 267
image 60, 79, 83, 159, 161, 164, 166ff., 185ff. implication 56, 175, 181 individual 5ff. 39f., 43, 83, 88ff., 95f., 130, 137, 160, 175, 177, 198, 221, 223, 236, 240, 268, 274, 277 influence 7, 35, 40, 43f., 50, 71f., 101, 109, 135, 157, 195, 217, 221f., 224, 226, 230, 248, 255 information 32, 34, 47, 55, 78f., 128, 181, 202f., 209, 211ff., 217ff., 245, 279 inquiry 83f., 91, 171 insight 63, 72, 87, 141f., 144 instrumentalizes 225 intention 5, 42f., 71, 108, 163, 166., 173f., 176f., 222, 276 interaction 4, 8, 15ff., 23ff., 27f., 32, 35, 44, 127, 138, 156f., 159f., 164, 171, 182, 201, 205, 209ff., 216, 218, 221, 235, 236f., 258, 277 interest 44f., 60f., 70f., 91, 104, 109, 119, 155, 202, 217, 229f. self-interest 7f., 18, 159, 168 internet 55, 58, 89, 91, 107, 135, 235, 238 intertextuality 191, 267, 274, 278f. intertextual 258, 278 interventions 112, 240, 242 irony, ironic 11, 171ff., 181ff. irritating 229, 230 iterability 109, 116
J Japanese 49, 195ff. jealousy 28, 32 judge 78, 85, 126, 130, 268, 274, 276f., 279 → court judgment justice 43, 59, 61, 103, 105, 107ff., 116, 223, 251, 259f. 263, 265 justification 11, 13f., 70, 75, 79, 127, 248
K knowledge 8, 16, 40, 42, 70, 72, 76f., 80, 83, 86, 96f., 103, 117, 119, 122, 145, 178, 211, 217f., 267 Kommunikative Vernunft 116 Korean 155ff., 161, 165, 167f.
312 General Index
L language 4, 6, 23, 34ff., 40, 42, 55ff., 75, 83ff., 89, 100f., 110, 120f., 124, 130, 141, 145, 155ff., 168, 178, 182, 195ff., 204f., 213, 221, 225, 227, 236, 251ff., 257, 259f., 262ff., 267f., 278ff language-in-use 156f., 157, 160, 178, 182 language ideologies 57 legal 100, 104, 113, 134, 222, 238ff., 247, 251ff., 265, 267ff., 279f. concepts 251ff., 257, 259f., 265 discourse 251, 253, 255ff., 265, 267, 279ff. linguistics 251ff. lexical selection 226f. lingua franca 252 logic 9, 13ff., 32, 34, 61, 77, 119ff., 126, 129, 131, 137, 139, 141, 148, 183, 209, 212f., 218, 235, 240
M media 9, 11ff., 16, 95, 98ff., 107, 115, 117, 210, 226, 235ff metadiscourse 55ff metaphor 28, 71, 88, 188, 215, 218, 247f., 260 metonymy 28 middle ground 87 misunderstanding 25ff. modality 75, 237, 267, 274ff. moments of meeting 39, 41, 49 move 5, 27, 43, 57, 74, 90, 135, 139, 144, 146f., 178, 186, 210, 213, 248, 260 multilingualism 251, 253 mutual inquiry 83f
N normative theory 18, 55, 133, 137
O overdetermined 26
P partner-deference 155f., 160f., 168 paradigm 83f., 86ff., 116, 133, 236 pragma-dialectical 128, 133, 138ff. passions 23, 27f., 34f., 186, 190
parliamentary debates 95, 97, 103, 117, 221f., 224, 230 persuasion 3, 16, 39, 43, 77, 88f., 119ff., 128, 140, 185f., 209f., 212, 216f., 219, 224 perception 157, 195, 202, 209, 221ff., 225, 230 phonation devices 23, 29, 34f poetry 83ff., 90, 183 poet 83f., 92 politeness 8, 119, 157ff., 168, 196, 200ff., 277f., 280 politics 238 political culture 224 → culture political power 223f. postmodern thought 65 power 9, 16ff., 23f., 34ff., 50, 55, 59ff., 65, 73, 89, 95, 101, 108, 112, 115, 126, 129, 178f., 182, 201f., 223ff., 235, 38, 242, 247, 249, 269ff . principles 3, 8, 15f., 23, 29, 32ff., 57, 59, 84, 108, 113, 121, 128, 131, 195f., 199f., 211, 221, 225, 252 → action principle, dialogic principle protest image 185 public 5, 9ff., 14f., 39, 42ff., 48ff., 56f., 64f., 71f., 74, 76ff., 80, 84, 96ff., 101, 115, 117, 120, 123, 135, 186, 196, 199, 204, 210, 221, 223f., 226, 230, 235f., 238, 261, 270, 277 public dialogue 39, 42, 45, 49, 64 → dialogue, dialogic public knowledge 96 → knowledge public opinion 10f., 98, 101, 115, 238
R recognition 24, 50, 56, 83, 86f., 90, 134, 238 recontextualization 251f., 258ff., 262, 265 respect 8, 15f., 42, 55, 59, 62, 65, 75, 77f., 84, 120, 128, 155, 157ff., 163ff., 177, 198, 225, 227, 241, 243, 252, 262 responsibility 80, 83, 91, 243, 270 reputation 104, 110, 223 speaker’s reputation 104 rhetoric 3, 7, 9, 13ff., 29, 33, 35, 39f., 43f., 47ff., 55, 57, 59f., 65, 69, 71ff., 80, 83ff., 88ff., 97, 119ff., 126, 128f., 133, 135, 141, 172, 176, 185ff., 190f., 195, 209f., 212f., 215, 218f., 221ff., 225, 235f., 239f., 242, 245, 253, 265, 274 rhetoric of dialogue 55, 57, 60, 235 → dialogue, dialogic
General Index 313
rhetoric of recognition 83, 86 rhetorical criticism 39, 44f., 47, 51 rhetorical dialogue 44, 81 → dialogue, dialogic rhetorical exchange 83, 89f. rhetorical paradigm 84, 90 rhetorical responsibilities 87 → responsibility rhetorical setting 84 rhetorical theory 88 rules 4, 6, 8, 15, 23f., 33, 59, 74ff., 99, 119f., 122, 126ff., 133, 137ff., 142ff., 146, 149, 197f., 201, 241, 251f., 263, 274 rules for critical discussion 133, 137ff., 144, 146f., 149
156ff., 177, 195ff., 201, 204f., 211, 224, 235ff., 241, 254ff., 267ff. social group 86 strategic manoeuvring 133, 140ff. strategically disruptive acts 65 strategies of inquiry 91 symbolic representations 96f. synecdoche 28, 187f., 192
S
V
self-authorizing 226 shared inquiry 83 speech act theory 6, 18, 24f., 36f. speech act 16f., 24f., 70, 158, 160, 162f., 172, 195, 199f. → dialogic speech codes 57 social 3, 7, 24, 40, 42ff., 50, 55ff., 61f., 65, 73ff., 83, 86, 91, 96, 100, 102, 104, 106f., 112f., 116f., 122f., 135, 141,
vagueness 151, 225 values 23, 33ff., 77, 79f., 86, 115, 121, 131, 179, 195f., 223, 242 ventriloquism 23, 26f., 29f., 32f.
T telecommunication 25 topical choice 142 translation 24, 27f., 49, 176, 204, 254f., 261, Turkish 134, 221ff. turn taking 6, 26
W war 79, 84, 86, 88, 185ff., worldviews 23, 34f.
List of Contributors Prof. Adelino Cattani Department of Philosophy University of Padova Italy [email protected]
Prof. Robert T. Craig Department of Communication University of Colorado at Boulder USA [email protected]
Le Cheng M.A. & Prof. King Kui Sin Department of Chinese Translation and Linguistics City University of Hong Kong Hong Kong [email protected]
Prof. Frans H. van Eemeren & Dr. Peter Houtlosser Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric University of Amsterdam The Netherlands [email protected]
Dr. Yongkil Cho Department of German Language and Literature Hanyang University in Seoul Korea [email protected]
Prof. Barbara A. Emmel Altenberge Germany [email protected]
Prof. Kenneth N. Cissna & Prof. Rob Anderson Department of Communication, University of South Florida & Department of Communication, Saint Louis University Tampa, FL & Saint Louis, Missouri USA
Sebastian Feller, M.A. Department of Linguistics University of Münster Germany [email protected]
[email protected] [email protected] Prof. François Cooren Department of Communication University of Montréal Canada [email protected]
PD Dr. Marion Grein German Department – German as a Foreign Language University of Mainz Germany [email protected]
316 List of Contributors
Prof. Franz Hundsnurscher Institute of German Studies University of Münster Germany [email protected]
Prof. Christian Plantin ICAR - Université Lyon 2 France [email protected]
Prof. Anne Lise Kjær Faculty of Law University of Copenhagen Denmark [email protected]
Dr. Neelakshi Chandrasena Premawardhena Department of Modern Languages, University of Kelaniya Sri Lanka [email protected]
Prof. Alain Létourneau Department of Philosophy University of Sherbrooke (Québec) Canada [email protected]
Prof. Georges Roque University of Paris, CNRS France [email protected]
Dr. Marta Mignini Catholic University of Milan Italy [email protected]
Prof. Wolfgang Teubert Department of English University of Birmingham Great Britain [email protected]
Prof. Giuseppe Mininni, Dr. Amelia Manuti & Dr. Rossella Rubino University of Bari Italy [email protected]
Prof. Edda Weigand Department of Linguistics University of Münster Germany [email protected]
Didem Ozan, M.A. Münster Germany [email protected]
In the series Dialogue Studies the following titles have been published thus far or are scheduled for publication: 3 2 1
Weizman, Elda: Positioning in Media Dialogue. x, 206 + index. Expected November 2008 Weigand, Edda (ed.): Dialogue and Rhetoric. 2008. xiv, 316 pp. Grein, Marion and Edda Weigand (eds.): Dialogue and Culture. 2007. xii, 262 pp.
