Page 83 - Oswald Ducrot, Slovenian Lectures, Digitalna knjižnica/Digital Library, Dissertationes 6
P. 83
ture V
December 13
Let me start by reminding you where we have got to so far in this se-
ries of lectures. For two lectures, I have been trying to introduce the
theory of argumentation in the language-system. That theory must enable
the points of view of the different enunciators in discourse to be charac-
terized as argumentative and not as informative, truth-conditional or logi-
cal. In my account of the theory of argumentation in the language-system,
I started justifying the general thesis according to which the argumenta-
tive function of utterances was largely determined by their linguistic struc-
ture, that is to say by the sentences those utterances are occurrences of. The
problem which remains to be solved is how that linguistic structure can de-
termine the argumentative function of utterances. I tried to show that it
determined it, but how does it do so? Last time, to resolve that problem,
I studied argumentative strings, and especially relatively simple strings of
the A, therefore C (A C) type: an argument, therefore a conclusion. I
contended the following: behind those strings, there is a third term, a war-
rant, which authorizes the move from A to C. I call that third term a to-
pos. I tried to characterize topoi by saying (1) that they were represented as
the shared beliefs of a certain community, (2) that they were general, that
is to say, that they indicated a link between two general properties, P and
Q, connected with respectively A (argument) and C (conclusion). Finally,
I tried to show (3) that those topoi were scalar. What I meant by that was
on the one hand, that properties P and Q were scalar properties and on the
other, that the relationship between them was a scalar one too. That inter-
nal scalarity of a topos enables one to say that a topos which posits the pres-
ence of P as being favorable for the presence of Q can be represented under
December 13
Let me start by reminding you where we have got to so far in this se-
ries of lectures. For two lectures, I have been trying to introduce the
theory of argumentation in the language-system. That theory must enable
the points of view of the different enunciators in discourse to be charac-
terized as argumentative and not as informative, truth-conditional or logi-
cal. In my account of the theory of argumentation in the language-system,
I started justifying the general thesis according to which the argumenta-
tive function of utterances was largely determined by their linguistic struc-
ture, that is to say by the sentences those utterances are occurrences of. The
problem which remains to be solved is how that linguistic structure can de-
termine the argumentative function of utterances. I tried to show that it
determined it, but how does it do so? Last time, to resolve that problem,
I studied argumentative strings, and especially relatively simple strings of
the A, therefore C (A C) type: an argument, therefore a conclusion. I
contended the following: behind those strings, there is a third term, a war-
rant, which authorizes the move from A to C. I call that third term a to-
pos. I tried to characterize topoi by saying (1) that they were represented as
the shared beliefs of a certain community, (2) that they were general, that
is to say, that they indicated a link between two general properties, P and
Q, connected with respectively A (argument) and C (conclusion). Finally,
I tried to show (3) that those topoi were scalar. What I meant by that was
on the one hand, that properties P and Q were scalar properties and on the
other, that the relationship between them was a scalar one too. That inter-
nal scalarity of a topos enables one to say that a topos which posits the pres-
ence of P as being favorable for the presence of Q can be represented under
