Page 76 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
P. 76
What Do We Know about the World?
es. Consequently ethos cannot possibly be understood as one fixed set
of traits which can be demonstrated and sold to any audience at any
time in order to gain its confidence. The concept of ethos doesn’t have
anything to do with permanent and timeless values. On the contrary,
it depends on ideology, religion, culture, current philosophical trends,
the zeitgeist as well as the respective historical epoch. For this reason
a very pragmatic and practical question has to be answered, namely
which kind of ethos should be elaborated in the concrete speech. The
orator’s first main goal being to please the listeners in order to conquer
them emotionally, which is indispensable for persuading them of his or
her ideas in the course of argumentation, the central guideline for the
elaboration of ethos can be seen in doxa, which again depends on all
the variables listed above. For Aristotle the term doxa designated the
opinion of all, of the majority or of competent and wise men (Amossy,
2002a: 11). Seen in a somewhat simplified or even reduced way doxa
can therefore be understood as common opinion (Maingueneau, 1991:
233). The specific contents of the thus displayed common opinion are
facts, truths, assumptions, and values (Maingueneau, 1991: 232; Perel-
man and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1992) which constitute the respective cul-
ture- and time-dependent topoi. As opposed to Aristotle’s and Perel-
man/Olbrecht-Tyteca’s concept of topoi as empty schemes which allow
the concatenation of utterances, topos is here to be understood as prag-
matic topos which can be equated with commonplace (Amossy, 2002a:
15 ff.; 2002b: 166 ff.). To cut a long story short, the pragmatic topoi as
the backbone of doxa constitute the common basis of shared values for
sender and addressee from which the sender can very well start his or
her argumentation.
A final distinction between rhetorical argumentation and linguis-
tic argumentation seems useful for our purpose. Ducrot generally un-
derstands by rhetorical argumentation the verbal activity which aims
to make somebody believe something whereas linguistic argumenta-
tion refers to the different means of linguistically connecting proposi-
tions (Ducrot, 2004: 18). The concrete linguistic issues which are of in-
terest under the aspect of linguistic argumentation are for example the
functions of the different syntactic structures such as question and ne-
gation, the function of adverbs of quantity, the role of interjections and,
first and foremost, the function of the different syntactic connectors
(Maingueneau, 1991: 234 ff.). When going back to ethos now, we would
like to recall that it comes about procedurally (Amossy, 2006: 71) as a re-
es. Consequently ethos cannot possibly be understood as one fixed set
of traits which can be demonstrated and sold to any audience at any
time in order to gain its confidence. The concept of ethos doesn’t have
anything to do with permanent and timeless values. On the contrary,
it depends on ideology, religion, culture, current philosophical trends,
the zeitgeist as well as the respective historical epoch. For this reason
a very pragmatic and practical question has to be answered, namely
which kind of ethos should be elaborated in the concrete speech. The
orator’s first main goal being to please the listeners in order to conquer
them emotionally, which is indispensable for persuading them of his or
her ideas in the course of argumentation, the central guideline for the
elaboration of ethos can be seen in doxa, which again depends on all
the variables listed above. For Aristotle the term doxa designated the
opinion of all, of the majority or of competent and wise men (Amossy,
2002a: 11). Seen in a somewhat simplified or even reduced way doxa
can therefore be understood as common opinion (Maingueneau, 1991:
233). The specific contents of the thus displayed common opinion are
facts, truths, assumptions, and values (Maingueneau, 1991: 232; Perel-
man and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1992) which constitute the respective cul-
ture- and time-dependent topoi. As opposed to Aristotle’s and Perel-
man/Olbrecht-Tyteca’s concept of topoi as empty schemes which allow
the concatenation of utterances, topos is here to be understood as prag-
matic topos which can be equated with commonplace (Amossy, 2002a:
15 ff.; 2002b: 166 ff.). To cut a long story short, the pragmatic topoi as
the backbone of doxa constitute the common basis of shared values for
sender and addressee from which the sender can very well start his or
her argumentation.
A final distinction between rhetorical argumentation and linguis-
tic argumentation seems useful for our purpose. Ducrot generally un-
derstands by rhetorical argumentation the verbal activity which aims
to make somebody believe something whereas linguistic argumenta-
tion refers to the different means of linguistically connecting proposi-
tions (Ducrot, 2004: 18). The concrete linguistic issues which are of in-
terest under the aspect of linguistic argumentation are for example the
functions of the different syntactic structures such as question and ne-
gation, the function of adverbs of quantity, the role of interjections and,
first and foremost, the function of the different syntactic connectors
(Maingueneau, 1991: 234 ff.). When going back to ethos now, we would
like to recall that it comes about procedurally (Amossy, 2006: 71) as a re-
