This article focuses on the development of argumentation studies in France and their complex relations with discourse analysis. First, the meanings of the basic word `argument' in French and in American English are discussed and contrasted. Second, a brief historical section summarizes the complex history of rhetorical argumentation in France up until the late 1980s and the Perelmanian revival. Third, Grize `natural logic' and Anscombre and Ducrot `argumentation within language' are briefly discussed from the discourse analysis point of view. These (...) programmes have restored argumentation study to favour in France, where it is currently the research paradigm most referred to in recent work. The fourth section examines the present situation in France which is characterized by a strong new interest in argumentation in all disciplines; this is fuelling a tendency towards the use of argumentation theories — classical or modern — for practical, short-term analysis purposes. Fifth, a proposal is made for a better integration of argumentation studies in discourse analysis, based on the conception of argumentation as opposite points of view, either in face-to-face disputes or in written arguments, sometimes lasting for several centuries. This article is based on the premise that research into the history of rhetoric and argumentation, as well as in specific discourse analytic trends that emerged in France during the 1970s, has some permanent value in that a better understanding of an academic discipline's historical development can be a good introduction to its current problems. (shrink)

This paper deals with the treatment of figures of speech in Perelman’s and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s Treatise on Argumentation (TA), and, more broadly, with the place of figures in argumentation theory. The contrast between two conceptions (or two domains)\n of rhetoric, “a rhetoric of figures” and “a rhetoric of argument” can be traced back to Ramus, and it has been revived in\n the seventies through the perception of an incommensurability between Perelman’s “New Rhetoric” and the École de Liège’s “General\n Rhetoric”. Modern theories (...) of argumentation, oriented towards the characterization and denunciation of fallacious discourse,\n emphasize the gap between sound argumentative discourse and rhetorical discourse seen as a “powerful instrument of error and\n deceit” (Locke). This concept of argument presupposes a vision of language as ideal/transparent—a revised language that is\n not the language of ordinary argumentation. Figures are not basically “decorative”; they are manifestations of the complex\n process of language structuring in speech. Thus rejecting figures amounts to a negation of discourse as such. The second section\n turns to a somewhat neglected aspect of the TA, its both decisive and somewhat cavalier theory of figures of speech, and its extended use and re-definition of a complex set of figures. We argue that the TA, in its quest for descriptive adequacy, breaks with the traditional and comfortable concept of figures as useless fallacious\n “ornaments” and provides us with the first description of what could be characterized as the semantic level of ordinary argumentative\n discourse. This will be shown on the case of “figures of choice, presence and communion”, and could be extended to the discursive\n construction of objects and participants, including the speaker and her emotions. (shrink)

One of the most crucial questions in the philosophy of law deals with the very nature of legal reasoning. Does this reasoning belong to logic or to rhetoric? This debate, increasingly centered on rhetoric, is not merely a question of language use; it covers and indicates a more basic choice between formal legalism — focusing on rational deduction from the law — and pragmatic judiciarism — focusing on reasonable debate in the court.Today, it is necessary to circumscribe the respective fields (...) of logic and rhetoric in the language of law, while showing how they are sometimes complementary in the resolution of legal problems.But, even when we have acknowledged the need for a rhetoric accompanied by logic, we have to define that rhetoric cautiously. I confront a narrow rhetoric, often called argumentation, with a wider one of interrogative nature. There are two conceptions of rationality at stake. Their comparison enables us to raise the question of the foundation of law, as a locus to use arguments, as well as to solve social problems. (shrink)