Page 71 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
P. 71
Lecture IV
along the scale of property Q in a certain direction: a move up or down one
scale means a move up or down the other. I go back to my example “It’s less
than ten degrees, take a coat with you!” To say that the topos used here is sca-
lar means that the degree of cold implies a degree in garment warmth. That
can be formulated (a way of doing so which I keep for later but I am antici-
pating here) by saying: the cold-er it is, the warm-er you must dress.
***
Well then, how is one to go about proving that scalarity? I am going to
give a certain number of examples, the first of which are of a rhetorical or-
der, that is to say concern discourse-strategies and especially refutative dis-
course-strategies. Then, I will take examples which are more directly lin-
guistic. I will begin with the rhetorical examples.
Let us suppose that I suggest going for a walk, using my sempiternal ex-
ample: “It’s warm, let’s go for a walk!”
Having no desire to go for a walk with me, you are going to refuse my
suggestion politely. There are many ways for you to do that: you can say that
you are tired, you can say that, as a matter of fact, it is not all that warm.
You can also say (and I find this solution interesting because it makes you
feel the scalarity of a topos): “Tomorrow, it’ll be even warmer, let’s put off
that walk till then” – and the next day, you just forget about it. Let us think
about that type of argument a little. If you find that argument a rather clev-
er one, it is because you have recognized the scalarity of the topos I have used
and you turn it against me. I used a topos according to which the more you
went up along the scale of warmth, the more you went up along the scale of
pleasantness. And what do you do? You turn that scalarity against me, say-
ing that tomorrow there will more warmth and therefore more pleasant-
ness: consequently, putting off that walk is a reasonable thing to do. The ar-
gument is a clever one because, so to speak, I am beaten at my own game:
you use a principle against me which I was the first to use in my interest.
What am I going to be able to answer? No doubt many things, but there is
one thing I cannot do, which is to reject your argument as irrelevant, be-
cause your argument rests on something upon which mine also does.
Here is another type of counter-argument which brings out the scalar-
ity of a topos: it is what I call exaggeration or, refutation by exaggeration.. I
will stick to the same example and once again look for a way for you to an-
swer my argument. If you use the strategy of refutation by exaggeration,
you can say: “Well, in the Sahara desert, I suppose you’d spend your time
going for a walk, wouldn’t you?” If you can resort to that strategy, it is be-
along the scale of property Q in a certain direction: a move up or down one
scale means a move up or down the other. I go back to my example “It’s less
than ten degrees, take a coat with you!” To say that the topos used here is sca-
lar means that the degree of cold implies a degree in garment warmth. That
can be formulated (a way of doing so which I keep for later but I am antici-
pating here) by saying: the cold-er it is, the warm-er you must dress.
***
Well then, how is one to go about proving that scalarity? I am going to
give a certain number of examples, the first of which are of a rhetorical or-
der, that is to say concern discourse-strategies and especially refutative dis-
course-strategies. Then, I will take examples which are more directly lin-
guistic. I will begin with the rhetorical examples.
Let us suppose that I suggest going for a walk, using my sempiternal ex-
ample: “It’s warm, let’s go for a walk!”
Having no desire to go for a walk with me, you are going to refuse my
suggestion politely. There are many ways for you to do that: you can say that
you are tired, you can say that, as a matter of fact, it is not all that warm.
You can also say (and I find this solution interesting because it makes you
feel the scalarity of a topos): “Tomorrow, it’ll be even warmer, let’s put off
that walk till then” – and the next day, you just forget about it. Let us think
about that type of argument a little. If you find that argument a rather clev-
er one, it is because you have recognized the scalarity of the topos I have used
and you turn it against me. I used a topos according to which the more you
went up along the scale of warmth, the more you went up along the scale of
pleasantness. And what do you do? You turn that scalarity against me, say-
ing that tomorrow there will more warmth and therefore more pleasant-
ness: consequently, putting off that walk is a reasonable thing to do. The ar-
gument is a clever one because, so to speak, I am beaten at my own game:
you use a principle against me which I was the first to use in my interest.
What am I going to be able to answer? No doubt many things, but there is
one thing I cannot do, which is to reject your argument as irrelevant, be-
cause your argument rests on something upon which mine also does.
Here is another type of counter-argument which brings out the scalar-
ity of a topos: it is what I call exaggeration or, refutation by exaggeration.. I
will stick to the same example and once again look for a way for you to an-
swer my argument. If you use the strategy of refutation by exaggeration,
you can say: “Well, in the Sahara desert, I suppose you’d spend your time
going for a walk, wouldn’t you?” If you can resort to that strategy, it is be-
