Page 29 - Žagar, Igor Ž. 2021. Four Critical Essays on Argumentation. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut.
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topoi in critical discourse analysis
rule would be formulated that could—applied to a certain subject matter—
serve as a general premise of an enthymeme.
What is especially important for our discussion here—that is, the use
of topoi in critical discourse analysis—is that though they were primarily
meant to be tools for finding arguments, topoi can also be used for testing
given arguments. This seems to be a much more critical and productive pro-
cedure than testing hypothetical arguments ‘against the background of the
list of topoi’. But in order to do that, DHA analysts should:
(1) clearly and unequivocally identify arguments and conclusions in
a given discourse fragment,
(2) show how possible topoi might relate to these arguments.
In the DHA works quoted in the first part of this article, neither of the
two steps was taken.
We have seen how topoi were treated in the Topics. But when we turn
from the Topics to the later Rhetoric, we are faced with the problem that the
use and meaning of topos in Aristotle’s Rhetoric is much more heterogene-
ous than in the Topics. Beside the topoi complying perfectly with the de-
scription(s) given in the Topics, there is an important group of topoi in the
Rhetoric, which contain instructions for arguments not of a certain form, but
with a certain concrete predicate, for example, that something is good, hon-
orable, just, etc.
In Rhetoric I.2, 1358a2–35, Aristotle distinguishes between general/
common topoi on the one hand and specific topoi on the other. In that same
chapter, he explains the sense of ‘specific’ by saying that some things are
specific to physics, others to ethics, etc. But from chapter I.3 on, he makes
us think that ‘specific’ refers to the different species of rhetoric, so that some
topoi are specific to deliberative, others to epideictic, and still others to ju-
dicial speech. While he is inclined to call the general or common topoi sim-
ply topoi, he uses several names for the specific topoi—idiai protaseis, eidê,
idioi topoi. Therefore, it may be tempting to call the specific topoi ‘material’
and the common topoi ‘formal’, as it happened several times in the histo-
ry of rhetoric. But in doing so, we may overlook that some of the common
topoi (in chapters II.23–24) are not all based on those formal categories on
which the topoi of the Topics rely (the four predicables). Most of them are
‘common’ only in the sense that they are not specific to one single species
of speech, but to all of them. Aristotle calls those koina, ‘what is general,
29
rule would be formulated that could—applied to a certain subject matter—
serve as a general premise of an enthymeme.
What is especially important for our discussion here—that is, the use
of topoi in critical discourse analysis—is that though they were primarily
meant to be tools for finding arguments, topoi can also be used for testing
given arguments. This seems to be a much more critical and productive pro-
cedure than testing hypothetical arguments ‘against the background of the
list of topoi’. But in order to do that, DHA analysts should:
(1) clearly and unequivocally identify arguments and conclusions in
a given discourse fragment,
(2) show how possible topoi might relate to these arguments.
In the DHA works quoted in the first part of this article, neither of the
two steps was taken.
We have seen how topoi were treated in the Topics. But when we turn
from the Topics to the later Rhetoric, we are faced with the problem that the
use and meaning of topos in Aristotle’s Rhetoric is much more heterogene-
ous than in the Topics. Beside the topoi complying perfectly with the de-
scription(s) given in the Topics, there is an important group of topoi in the
Rhetoric, which contain instructions for arguments not of a certain form, but
with a certain concrete predicate, for example, that something is good, hon-
orable, just, etc.
In Rhetoric I.2, 1358a2–35, Aristotle distinguishes between general/
common topoi on the one hand and specific topoi on the other. In that same
chapter, he explains the sense of ‘specific’ by saying that some things are
specific to physics, others to ethics, etc. But from chapter I.3 on, he makes
us think that ‘specific’ refers to the different species of rhetoric, so that some
topoi are specific to deliberative, others to epideictic, and still others to ju-
dicial speech. While he is inclined to call the general or common topoi sim-
ply topoi, he uses several names for the specific topoi—idiai protaseis, eidê,
idioi topoi. Therefore, it may be tempting to call the specific topoi ‘material’
and the common topoi ‘formal’, as it happened several times in the histo-
ry of rhetoric. But in doing so, we may overlook that some of the common
topoi (in chapters II.23–24) are not all based on those formal categories on
which the topoi of the Topics rely (the four predicables). Most of them are
‘common’ only in the sense that they are not specific to one single species
of speech, but to all of them. Aristotle calls those koina, ‘what is general,
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