Page 28 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
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Slovenian Lectures
A third remark will concern c and c’ given to support, respectively, a
but b and a’ but b’. Formally, nothing indicates that they have different val-
ues: they are more or less homonymous. However, every reader immedi-
ately feels that the eyeglass, the quiff and the smile, which are admired in
the first segment of discourse, are given as being ridiculous in the second,
so that one must utter c and c’ with utterly opposed intonations. That fact
illustrates the idea, which is to be discussed at length in the following lec-
tures, that, in argumentative strings of discourse, the argument and the con-
clusion have no semantic value independently from one another. Here, the ar-
guments draw their meaning from the conclusions (to interpret c and c’,
one must know the conclusions they move towards). That is for me the es-
sential difference between discursive argumentation and logical reasoning:
in reasoning, the argument must have a meaning which is complete in it-
self, irrespectively of the conclusion; in argumentation, on the contrary, the
argument can be understood only as from the conclusion (I would say as
much of the conclusion in its relationship with the argument). It is besides,
I think, what Proust is out to show in that and many other texts: it is not the
case, for him, that our attitudes are determined by our knowledge of things
but the reverse. That makes one think of Spinoza: “We do not like things
because they are good; they are good because we like them”.
A fourth and last remark on the notion of orientation. I have said that
a (“He is not handsome in a standard way”) and a’ (“He is not positive-
ly ugly”) moved, respectively, towards criticism and praise, and that it was
that feature which enabled them to be connected, through but, to praise (b)
and to criticism (b’). But that does not mean that in themselves, they con-
stitute criticism or praise. To say of someone that he is not positively ugly
is a strange kind of praise indeed. You have there a characteristic feature of
the notion of argumentative orientation, to which, eventually, the whole of
my lectures will be devoted, for it is that feature that constitutes the way of
perceiving language which I am going to try to get you to accept and which
is far more important, for me, than the whole technical apparatus that I am
going to set up: if “the theory of argumentation in the language-system” has
meaning, if it says anything, that meaning consists only in getting one to
feel, getting one to perceive utterances as having a certain orientation, and
that irrespectively of the information they give and the inferences that one can
draw as from that information. That Swan at the time of his worldly down-
fall is not “positively ugly” undoubtedly implies that ugliness prevails over
beauty in him. But it so happens that, in the segment, the utterance moves
towards a favourable appreciation – a movement which is then countered
A third remark will concern c and c’ given to support, respectively, a
but b and a’ but b’. Formally, nothing indicates that they have different val-
ues: they are more or less homonymous. However, every reader immedi-
ately feels that the eyeglass, the quiff and the smile, which are admired in
the first segment of discourse, are given as being ridiculous in the second,
so that one must utter c and c’ with utterly opposed intonations. That fact
illustrates the idea, which is to be discussed at length in the following lec-
tures, that, in argumentative strings of discourse, the argument and the con-
clusion have no semantic value independently from one another. Here, the ar-
guments draw their meaning from the conclusions (to interpret c and c’,
one must know the conclusions they move towards). That is for me the es-
sential difference between discursive argumentation and logical reasoning:
in reasoning, the argument must have a meaning which is complete in it-
self, irrespectively of the conclusion; in argumentation, on the contrary, the
argument can be understood only as from the conclusion (I would say as
much of the conclusion in its relationship with the argument). It is besides,
I think, what Proust is out to show in that and many other texts: it is not the
case, for him, that our attitudes are determined by our knowledge of things
but the reverse. That makes one think of Spinoza: “We do not like things
because they are good; they are good because we like them”.
A fourth and last remark on the notion of orientation. I have said that
a (“He is not handsome in a standard way”) and a’ (“He is not positive-
ly ugly”) moved, respectively, towards criticism and praise, and that it was
that feature which enabled them to be connected, through but, to praise (b)
and to criticism (b’). But that does not mean that in themselves, they con-
stitute criticism or praise. To say of someone that he is not positively ugly
is a strange kind of praise indeed. You have there a characteristic feature of
the notion of argumentative orientation, to which, eventually, the whole of
my lectures will be devoted, for it is that feature that constitutes the way of
perceiving language which I am going to try to get you to accept and which
is far more important, for me, than the whole technical apparatus that I am
going to set up: if “the theory of argumentation in the language-system” has
meaning, if it says anything, that meaning consists only in getting one to
feel, getting one to perceive utterances as having a certain orientation, and
that irrespectively of the information they give and the inferences that one can
draw as from that information. That Swan at the time of his worldly down-
fall is not “positively ugly” undoubtedly implies that ugliness prevails over
beauty in him. But it so happens that, in the segment, the utterance moves
towards a favourable appreciation – a movement which is then countered
