The paper starts from the assumption that rhetoric is inherent to dialogue. Such a view is based on the Theory of Dialogic Action Games or the Mixed Game Model, which is a theory about human beings’ complex ability to come to terms with dialogic issues in ever-changing surroundings. Human beings are not lost in the chaos of ever-varying empirical data but are competent-to-perform in their own interests, i.e. competent to effecttively achieve their purposes in dialogic action games. Models of dialogue usually proceed either by abstraction to rule-governed patterns of competence or by reducing the object-of-study to empirical elements. In contrast to such reductionist models of the simple, the theory of the dialogic action game represents an adventure in the complex of the mixed game of human action. Basic premises and methodological principles of the theory will be briefly introduced. A sample analysis of a political Round Table discussion demonstrates how the model works.
I propose to open up the dialogic scene by showing that a dialogue is never just about discourse and language. It is also about facts, principles, passions, values, ideologies, collectives, worldviews, etc. that can (or cannot) make a difference, i.e., do something, in a given interaction. According to this approach, dialogue is one of the most important phonation devices through which a plethora of ‘things’ – which I call actants – can come to act from a distance. Showing that these actants can be rhetorically mobilized in a given interaction allows me to account for phenomena of ‘ventriloquism,’ that is, the various ways by which human interactants make certain entities (collectives, procedures, policies, ideologies, etc.) speak in their name and vice versa. We will see that this way of dislocating the dialogic scene allows us to address thoroughly the question of power and authority, a question that tends to be relatively downplayed by dialogue analysts.
Distinguishing three concepts of dialogue, we describe a dialogic approach to rhetoric that conceives rhetoric as coexperiential, collaborative, constitutive, open, expansive, and both traditional and radical. Further, we offer an emergent approach to studying dialogic rhetoric that draws on both rhetorical criticism and discourse analysis. We then review briefly four empirical projects in which we have studied conversational dialogue or dialogic rhetoric, including a series of studies of the 1957 dialogue between Martin Buber and Carl Rogers, as well as other conversations involving Gregory Bateson, B. F. Skinner, and Rush Limbaugh. We conclude by identifying the implications of our work to scholarship related to the conversations we have studied, to communication theory and practice, to the facilitation of public dialogue, and to the study of dialogic conversations.
Regarding ‘dialogue’ as a normative rather than a purely descriptive concept, this study describes the rhetoric of practical arguments about the possibility or impossibility of dialogue in a corpus of discourse samples primarily drawn from the Internet. Political, social, and personal domains of dialogue are distinguished and associated respectively with realist, moral, and experiential discourses that intermix in practical argumentation. Arguments for or against the possibility of dialogue may appeal to objective conditions (convergence of interests or beliefs, relatively equal power, a just and supportive sociopolitical order) as well as to morally accountable attitudes and actions (respect, trust, and reaching out versus hatred, dogmatism, dishonesty, and violence). Arguments may also appeal to critical events that interrupt routine patterns of thought and communication and are said to open a potential for dialogue that may or may not be realized in practice. Implications for normative theories of dialogue and rhetoric are considered.
First, we should recall that a rhetorical dimension is forcibly present in the performance of dialog, if we understand dialog both as an invitation and as a reciprocal openness for a constructive process; it can be demonstrated if we look at some proposals of dialog (Buber 1922, and more recently Isaacs 1999). Usually the refusal to consider that there is a rhetorical aspect aims to keep a specific communication process protected against undue manipulation or abuse; but a false assumption is then made. To guard us against such a slope, many authors have pleaded for a rhetorical ethic or an ethic of the rhetoric (Johannesen 19964). We should discuss whether some distinction should be made between valid and non valid forms of rhetoric, review the conditions of an ethical rhetoric, ask how and if they could be meaningfully used as criteria of exclusion (of the nonrhetorical as non-ethical and vice-versa).
Any rhetorical exchange can involve a form of ‘identity theft’ if others attempt to wrest authorship from the rhetor. The paradigms of the late 1900s that privileged mutual inquiry into shared knowledge have now evolved into ones that privilege not only the shared, but also difference, debate, even dispute – and the ways in which we might change as a result of a negotiation between what is shared and what is unshared. Such paradigms seek to defang the antagonistic even as they recognize that inquiry into difference is an essential part of rhetorical exchange, as well as increased individual (and social) responsibility for position-taking, i.e. our very identities as social and thinking beings. Whereas ‘common ground’ now represents the acceptance of difference and responsibility as the starting point of any rhetorical exchange, a ‘rhetoric of recognition’ represents an increased awareness of the possibility of change as a result of rhetoric.
In our Western democracies, parliamentary debates are seen less as a collaborative effort to achieve a shareable interpretation of an issue than a fight between contestants to be arbitrated by the media as the sole interface between text producers and text consumers. Arguments are no longer designed to convince or persuade. Rather the role of argumentation is twofold. By constant repetition, arguments construct ideological identity. But reformulations, permutations and recombinations of arguments can also give rise to gradual innovation. My illustration is the House of Commons debate of the Lisbon Treaty’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. That the argumentation we find in this debate is full of blatant repetition and void of any new aspects may be caused to some extent by the media industry’s growing grip on text production. Yet it also questions the role assigned to argumentation in our society.
The opposition ‘logic/rhetoric’ represents a fundamental cultural antagonism. Surprising as it may seem, contemporary revival of the art of rhetoric has not been primarily promoted by scholars or professional users of rhetoric but developed itself through alternative, unusual paths, such as those of epistemology, logic and science. This is the case of the theory of knowledge (Polanyi) or of the improvements brought to informal logic by Perelman and Toulmin. As far as our specific interest in rhetoric is concerned, significant contributions to the history of science as well as to the Philosophy of Science have been made (by Thomas Kuhn among many others). At the core we always find the same eternal and unresolved dilemma opposing truth to persuasion, i.e. to be true or to persuade/convince someone to believe that something is true. Persuasion and conviction are intimately connected with debate.
The fallacies are one of the most significant research topics in the study of argumentation. After Hamblin (1970) revealed the inadequacy of the dominant Logical Standard Treatment of the fallacies, several kinds of alternative treatments have been developed. The “pragma-dialectical” alternative developed by van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984, 1992, 2004) involves replacing the logical standard definition of fallacies as “arguments that seem valid but are not valid” by a broader communicative definition of fallacies as pragmatic argumentative moves that are “violations of dialectical rules for critical discussion”. To account for the deceptive role the fallacies may have, van Eemeren and Houtlosser (2002) have taken this approach a crucial step further by bringing in the notion of “strategic manoeuvring”: the systematic combination in argumentative discourse of the pursuit of dialectical and rhetorical. Fallacies can be analysed as derailments of legitimate ways of strategic manoeuvring that can only be identified in contextualized argumentative discourse.
From the standpoint of Weigand’s concept of ‘competence-in-performance’, I will analyse the communicative function of sangdae-nopim in conversations at Korean workplaces. The aim of this investigation is to show that in the modern Korean society speakers draw on sangdae-nopim in a more and more strategical fashion. Rather than reducing its function to the traditional value of ‘showing respect to one’s dialogue partner’, I will demonstrate how sangdae-nopim is used to mediate between both respect and selfinterest.
In the present article I will critically discuss various approaches to irony originating from different disciplines. Besides traditional definitions of ironic speech dating back to Roman times as well as present-day linguistic models, I will also deal with irony from a psychological perspective. As this inquiry will show, all the approaches under discussion are exclusively monologic and so do not provide a full account of the communicative functions of ironic expressions in language use. I will therefore suggest a dialogic perspective which highlights the communicative effects of ironic talk neglected by previous models. As a result, I will show that irony need not merely be used by a speaker to bypass direct criticism in order to avoid conflict or to compensate for psychological incongruities but as a skilful rhetorical device to motivate the interlocutor to act for the good of herself or of other people around.
Given the nature of fixed visual images, visual rhetoric is usually seen as monologic. However, in some cases, an analysis of images can reveal them to be dialogic in a weak sense. This hypothesis is examined taking as examples political images, mostly posters, protesting against war. One obvious possibility consists in introducing a written dialogue in the poster. More interestingly, in many posters there is a play between text and image: since an image cannot directly negate, it often shows the crude reality of war. In these cases, it is the text that negates what is affirmed by the image. The opposition between images showing the destructiveness of war and texts rejecting war is analysed both rhetorically and in terms of Ducrot’s theory of polyphony. Finally, parodies and pastiches provide good examples of a kind of dialogue between an image and its source.
Communication principles are culturally determined and are, without doubt, omnipresent in every dialogue. In some languages, these culturally determined principles can directly be linked to sociocultural concepts. These concepts are wellelaborated in Japan. In this article, I shall emphasize three concepts: harmony as the communication ideal, visceral communication and intuitive understanding (concept of haragei and inshin denshin), and the different roles of the individual depending on social distance honne (private, true self) vs. tatemae (official, mask).
In this paper the concepts of dialogic interaction, of circular communication and the role of logic and emotions will receive special attention. In the first part of my manuscript I will show that banks’ annual reports are a two-way communication where two heterogeneous subjects exchange information, and feed-back from them is crucial for a success. In the second part I will focus on the coexistence of logic and rhetoric in annual reports, which have often been considered linguistically distant from everyday interaction. To do this, I will provide examples of devices like the order of elements conveying positive or negative ideas, rhetorical questions, repetitions, metaphors and appeals directed at stakeholders. The third and last part of my paper will stress the importance of emotional linguistic tools with particular reference to the concepts of “central” and “peripheral” routes to persuasion (Petty et al. 1994).
Rhetoric as the art of using human communicative abilities effectively in order to promote individual or collective interests is a permanent and inherent feature of dialogue as a mixed game. In parliamentary debates, influencing attention is used as a rhetorical strategy. Speakers anticipate their audience’s as well as the public’s perception. They target and influence the direction and intensity of attention in various political domains. Politicians have to mediate between institutional functions and roles and their electorate’s expectations. If they do this, they can easily get into conflicts of interest. In October 2004, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan and the then German Foreign Minister Joseph Fischer declared their positions regarding the scheduled accession of Turkey to the European Union. Two sample analyses are taken from their speeches given during two national parliamentary debates. Rhetorical strategies dependent on different cultural conditions were used by these political leaders to shift attention from internal conflicts which could weaken their position.
In the post-modern era the global conscience has to deal with various dilemmas, which are made more complex by media interaction. These issues mostly pertain to the bioethical sphere of human experience, i.e. the discursive sphere linked to the necessity to overcome any interpretative routine of marked separation between ‘public’ and ‘private’. A specific effect of such an enunciative claim can be seen in the social debate on euthanasia recently hosted by the media since through subtle argumentative strategies it focuses on different interpretative repertoires of the dignity of human life. The present paper aims to discuss the results of a qualitative study, the aim of which is to investigate certain segments of the “dialogue about euthanasia”, collected from the Italian media (press, television, internet). Diatextual analysis has been adopted as a methodological tool to highlight the recurrence of specific rhetorical assets of both pro and contra positions.
This paper falls within the research field of legal linguistics. The subject is a question of great concern in current comparative legal research: Is it possible to develop a common legal language in the European Union, given the cultural and linguistic plurality of Europe? I argue that it is. What it requires is a common legal discourse and the development of a common European interpretive community. A key mechanism of this development is the recontextualization of legal concepts , i.e. the circulation of concepts among and across the national and international interpretive communities of the European Union accompanied by the discursive interactions of the legal actors at national and supranational levels of EU law. The contribution provides one element in a wider discourse analytical framework for the study of the paradox of ‘unity in diversity’ inherent in the ambition of developing a common legal language in Europe.
Dialogue is of cardinal importance in maintaining the interpersonal relationship between judges and facilitating judgment drafting as collaborative problem solving. It is also important for the check and balance between courts and the legislature. A court judgment can therefore be taken as a dialogue between judges as well as that between courts and the legislature. Based on the analysis of some judgments in Hong Kong, the purpose of the paper is to exemplify rhetorical preferences of the dialogue and to unravel the underlying pragmatic rationale. The paper further identifies rhetorical strategies such as modality and intertextuality as creating space for dialogue.
The paper starts from the assumption that rhetoric is inherent to dialogue. Such a view is based on the Theory of Dialogic Action Games or the Mixed Game Model, which is a theory about human beings’ complex ability to come to terms with dialogic issues in ever-changing surroundings. Human beings are not lost in the chaos of ever-varying empirical data but are competent-to-perform in their own interests, i.e. competent to effecttively achieve their purposes in dialogic action games. Models of dialogue usually proceed either by abstraction to rule-governed patterns of competence or by reducing the object-of-study to empirical elements. In contrast to such reductionist models of the simple, the theory of the dialogic action game represents an adventure in the complex of the mixed game of human action. Basic premises and methodological principles of the theory will be briefly introduced. A sample analysis of a political Round Table discussion demonstrates how the model works.
I propose to open up the dialogic scene by showing that a dialogue is never just about discourse and language. It is also about facts, principles, passions, values, ideologies, collectives, worldviews, etc. that can (or cannot) make a difference, i.e., do something, in a given interaction. According to this approach, dialogue is one of the most important phonation devices through which a plethora of ‘things’ – which I call actants – can come to act from a distance. Showing that these actants can be rhetorically mobilized in a given interaction allows me to account for phenomena of ‘ventriloquism,’ that is, the various ways by which human interactants make certain entities (collectives, procedures, policies, ideologies, etc.) speak in their name and vice versa. We will see that this way of dislocating the dialogic scene allows us to address thoroughly the question of power and authority, a question that tends to be relatively downplayed by dialogue analysts.
Distinguishing three concepts of dialogue, we describe a dialogic approach to rhetoric that conceives rhetoric as coexperiential, collaborative, constitutive, open, expansive, and both traditional and radical. Further, we offer an emergent approach to studying dialogic rhetoric that draws on both rhetorical criticism and discourse analysis. We then review briefly four empirical projects in which we have studied conversational dialogue or dialogic rhetoric, including a series of studies of the 1957 dialogue between Martin Buber and Carl Rogers, as well as other conversations involving Gregory Bateson, B. F. Skinner, and Rush Limbaugh. We conclude by identifying the implications of our work to scholarship related to the conversations we have studied, to communication theory and practice, to the facilitation of public dialogue, and to the study of dialogic conversations.
Regarding ‘dialogue’ as a normative rather than a purely descriptive concept, this study describes the rhetoric of practical arguments about the possibility or impossibility of dialogue in a corpus of discourse samples primarily drawn from the Internet. Political, social, and personal domains of dialogue are distinguished and associated respectively with realist, moral, and experiential discourses that intermix in practical argumentation. Arguments for or against the possibility of dialogue may appeal to objective conditions (convergence of interests or beliefs, relatively equal power, a just and supportive sociopolitical order) as well as to morally accountable attitudes and actions (respect, trust, and reaching out versus hatred, dogmatism, dishonesty, and violence). Arguments may also appeal to critical events that interrupt routine patterns of thought and communication and are said to open a potential for dialogue that may or may not be realized in practice. Implications for normative theories of dialogue and rhetoric are considered.
First, we should recall that a rhetorical dimension is forcibly present in the performance of dialog, if we understand dialog both as an invitation and as a reciprocal openness for a constructive process; it can be demonstrated if we look at some proposals of dialog (Buber 1922, and more recently Isaacs 1999). Usually the refusal to consider that there is a rhetorical aspect aims to keep a specific communication process protected against undue manipulation or abuse; but a false assumption is then made. To guard us against such a slope, many authors have pleaded for a rhetorical ethic or an ethic of the rhetoric (Johannesen 19964). We should discuss whether some distinction should be made between valid and non valid forms of rhetoric, review the conditions of an ethical rhetoric, ask how and if they could be meaningfully used as criteria of exclusion (of the nonrhetorical as non-ethical and vice-versa).
Any rhetorical exchange can involve a form of ‘identity theft’ if others attempt to wrest authorship from the rhetor. The paradigms of the late 1900s that privileged mutual inquiry into shared knowledge have now evolved into ones that privilege not only the shared, but also difference, debate, even dispute – and the ways in which we might change as a result of a negotiation between what is shared and what is unshared. Such paradigms seek to defang the antagonistic even as they recognize that inquiry into difference is an essential part of rhetorical exchange, as well as increased individual (and social) responsibility for position-taking, i.e. our very identities as social and thinking beings. Whereas ‘common ground’ now represents the acceptance of difference and responsibility as the starting point of any rhetorical exchange, a ‘rhetoric of recognition’ represents an increased awareness of the possibility of change as a result of rhetoric.
In our Western democracies, parliamentary debates are seen less as a collaborative effort to achieve a shareable interpretation of an issue than a fight between contestants to be arbitrated by the media as the sole interface between text producers and text consumers. Arguments are no longer designed to convince or persuade. Rather the role of argumentation is twofold. By constant repetition, arguments construct ideological identity. But reformulations, permutations and recombinations of arguments can also give rise to gradual innovation. My illustration is the House of Commons debate of the Lisbon Treaty’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. That the argumentation we find in this debate is full of blatant repetition and void of any new aspects may be caused to some extent by the media industry’s growing grip on text production. Yet it also questions the role assigned to argumentation in our society.
The opposition ‘logic/rhetoric’ represents a fundamental cultural antagonism. Surprising as it may seem, contemporary revival of the art of rhetoric has not been primarily promoted by scholars or professional users of rhetoric but developed itself through alternative, unusual paths, such as those of epistemology, logic and science. This is the case of the theory of knowledge (Polanyi) or of the improvements brought to informal logic by Perelman and Toulmin. As far as our specific interest in rhetoric is concerned, significant contributions to the history of science as well as to the Philosophy of Science have been made (by Thomas Kuhn among many others). At the core we always find the same eternal and unresolved dilemma opposing truth to persuasion, i.e. to be true or to persuade/convince someone to believe that something is true. Persuasion and conviction are intimately connected with debate.
The fallacies are one of the most significant research topics in the study of argumentation. After Hamblin (1970) revealed the inadequacy of the dominant Logical Standard Treatment of the fallacies, several kinds of alternative treatments have been developed. The “pragma-dialectical” alternative developed by van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984, 1992, 2004) involves replacing the logical standard definition of fallacies as “arguments that seem valid but are not valid” by a broader communicative definition of fallacies as pragmatic argumentative moves that are “violations of dialectical rules for critical discussion”. To account for the deceptive role the fallacies may have, van Eemeren and Houtlosser (2002) have taken this approach a crucial step further by bringing in the notion of “strategic manoeuvring”: the systematic combination in argumentative discourse of the pursuit of dialectical and rhetorical. Fallacies can be analysed as derailments of legitimate ways of strategic manoeuvring that can only be identified in contextualized argumentative discourse.
From the standpoint of Weigand’s concept of ‘competence-in-performance’, I will analyse the communicative function of sangdae-nopim in conversations at Korean workplaces. The aim of this investigation is to show that in the modern Korean society speakers draw on sangdae-nopim in a more and more strategical fashion. Rather than reducing its function to the traditional value of ‘showing respect to one’s dialogue partner’, I will demonstrate how sangdae-nopim is used to mediate between both respect and selfinterest.
In the present article I will critically discuss various approaches to irony originating from different disciplines. Besides traditional definitions of ironic speech dating back to Roman times as well as present-day linguistic models, I will also deal with irony from a psychological perspective. As this inquiry will show, all the approaches under discussion are exclusively monologic and so do not provide a full account of the communicative functions of ironic expressions in language use. I will therefore suggest a dialogic perspective which highlights the communicative effects of ironic talk neglected by previous models. As a result, I will show that irony need not merely be used by a speaker to bypass direct criticism in order to avoid conflict or to compensate for psychological incongruities but as a skilful rhetorical device to motivate the interlocutor to act for the good of herself or of other people around.
Given the nature of fixed visual images, visual rhetoric is usually seen as monologic. However, in some cases, an analysis of images can reveal them to be dialogic in a weak sense. This hypothesis is examined taking as examples political images, mostly posters, protesting against war. One obvious possibility consists in introducing a written dialogue in the poster. More interestingly, in many posters there is a play between text and image: since an image cannot directly negate, it often shows the crude reality of war. In these cases, it is the text that negates what is affirmed by the image. The opposition between images showing the destructiveness of war and texts rejecting war is analysed both rhetorically and in terms of Ducrot’s theory of polyphony. Finally, parodies and pastiches provide good examples of a kind of dialogue between an image and its source.
Communication principles are culturally determined and are, without doubt, omnipresent in every dialogue. In some languages, these culturally determined principles can directly be linked to sociocultural concepts. These concepts are wellelaborated in Japan. In this article, I shall emphasize three concepts: harmony as the communication ideal, visceral communication and intuitive understanding (concept of haragei and inshin denshin), and the different roles of the individual depending on social distance honne (private, true self) vs. tatemae (official, mask).
In this paper the concepts of dialogic interaction, of circular communication and the role of logic and emotions will receive special attention. In the first part of my manuscript I will show that banks’ annual reports are a two-way communication where two heterogeneous subjects exchange information, and feed-back from them is crucial for a success. In the second part I will focus on the coexistence of logic and rhetoric in annual reports, which have often been considered linguistically distant from everyday interaction. To do this, I will provide examples of devices like the order of elements conveying positive or negative ideas, rhetorical questions, repetitions, metaphors and appeals directed at stakeholders. The third and last part of my paper will stress the importance of emotional linguistic tools with particular reference to the concepts of “central” and “peripheral” routes to persuasion (Petty et al. 1994).
Rhetoric as the art of using human communicative abilities effectively in order to promote individual or collective interests is a permanent and inherent feature of dialogue as a mixed game. In parliamentary debates, influencing attention is used as a rhetorical strategy. Speakers anticipate their audience’s as well as the public’s perception. They target and influence the direction and intensity of attention in various political domains. Politicians have to mediate between institutional functions and roles and their electorate’s expectations. If they do this, they can easily get into conflicts of interest. In October 2004, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan and the then German Foreign Minister Joseph Fischer declared their positions regarding the scheduled accession of Turkey to the European Union. Two sample analyses are taken from their speeches given during two national parliamentary debates. Rhetorical strategies dependent on different cultural conditions were used by these political leaders to shift attention from internal conflicts which could weaken their position.
In the post-modern era the global conscience has to deal with various dilemmas, which are made more complex by media interaction. These issues mostly pertain to the bioethical sphere of human experience, i.e. the discursive sphere linked to the necessity to overcome any interpretative routine of marked separation between ‘public’ and ‘private’. A specific effect of such an enunciative claim can be seen in the social debate on euthanasia recently hosted by the media since through subtle argumentative strategies it focuses on different interpretative repertoires of the dignity of human life. The present paper aims to discuss the results of a qualitative study, the aim of which is to investigate certain segments of the “dialogue about euthanasia”, collected from the Italian media (press, television, internet). Diatextual analysis has been adopted as a methodological tool to highlight the recurrence of specific rhetorical assets of both pro and contra positions.
This paper falls within the research field of legal linguistics. The subject is a question of great concern in current comparative legal research: Is it possible to develop a common legal language in the European Union, given the cultural and linguistic plurality of Europe? I argue that it is. What it requires is a common legal discourse and the development of a common European interpretive community. A key mechanism of this development is the recontextualization of legal concepts , i.e. the circulation of concepts among and across the national and international interpretive communities of the European Union accompanied by the discursive interactions of the legal actors at national and supranational levels of EU law. The contribution provides one element in a wider discourse analytical framework for the study of the paradox of ‘unity in diversity’ inherent in the ambition of developing a common legal language in Europe.
Dialogue is of cardinal importance in maintaining the interpersonal relationship between judges and facilitating judgment drafting as collaborative problem solving. It is also important for the check and balance between courts and the legislature. A court judgment can therefore be taken as a dialogue between judges as well as that between courts and the legislature. Based on the analysis of some judgments in Hong Kong, the purpose of the paper is to exemplify rhetorical preferences of the dialogue and to unravel the underlying pragmatic rationale. The paper further identifies rhetorical strategies such as modality and intertextuality as creating space for dialogue.