Peter Houtlosser

Strategic Manoeuvring in Argumentative Discourse

This article reacts against the undesirable ideological separation between dialectical and rhetorical approaches to argumentative discourse. It argues that a sound evaluation of argumentation requires an analysis that reveals all aspects of the discourse pertinent to critical testing. To explain the rationale of the various moves made in the discourse and the strategic patterns behind them, not only the interlocutors dialectical goals must be taken into account, but also their rhetorical goals. After explaining how rhetorical insight can be instrumental in deepening and justifying a dialectical analysis, an integrated analysis is made of the rhetorical strategies that are brought to bear in an advertorial published by the oil company Shell.

Strategic maneuvering with the burden of proof.

According to Johnson (Argumentation & Rhetoric (CD-ROM). OSSA, St. Catherines, Ontario, 1998), to engage in the practice of argumentation is “to enter argumentative space.” The problem with this endeavor is that different theoreticians see this space in different ways. We, from our point of view, distinguish between two general meta-perspectives in the study of argumentation: a dialectical perspective focusing on critical debate, and a rhetorical perspective concentrating on the most appropriate means of persuasion in a certain context. This distinction, of course, corresponds with the well-known Aristotelian division.

Rhetorical Analysis Within a Pragma-Dialectical Framework

The paper reacts against the strict separation between dialectical and rhetorical approaches to argumentation and argues that argumentative discourse can be analyzed and evaluated more adequately if the two are systematically combined. Such an integrated approach makes it possible to show how the opportunities available in each of the dialectical stages of a critical discussion have been used strategically to further the rhetorical aims of the speaker or writer. The approach is illustrated with the help of an analysis of an `advertorial published by R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company.

The development of the pragma-dialectical approach to argumentation

This paper describes the development of pragma-dialectics as a theory of argumentative discourse. First the development of the pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion is explained, with the rules that are to be complied with in order to avoid fallacies from occurring. Then the integration is discussed of rhetorical insight in the dialectical framework. In this endeavour, the concept of strategic manoeuvring is explained that allows for a more refined and more profoundly justified analysis of argumentative discourse and a better identification of fallacies. The paper ends with a brief overview of current research projects.

Seizing the Occasion: Parameters for Analysing Ways of Strategic Manoeuvring

People who are engaged in argumentative discourse are characteristically not only out to conclude their differences of opinion their way but also oriented towards reaching this conclusion in a reasonable way: they may be regarded committed to norms that are instrumental in maintaining critical standards for being reasonable and to expect others to comply with the same standards. This means in practice that, while being out for the optimal rhetorical result, they may at the same time be presumed to hold at every stage of the resolution process to the dialectical objective of the stage concerned.

The Study of Argumentation as Normative Pragmatics

Apart from a shared interest in the study of argumentation, in their academic work students of argumentation with a rhetorical outlook and students of argumentation with a dialectical outlook have not much in common. Although Aristotle, who may be regarded as the intellectual father of both rhetoric and dialectic as a fully-fledged academic discipline, considered rhetoric to be the ‘counterpart’ (antistrophos) of dialectic, so that the distinction reflects primarily a division of labour among students of argumentation, the two intellectual enterprises have over time and by irregular stages grown apart.

William the Silent’s Argumentative Discourse

This paper is the second part of a two-part paper; the first part is entitled Delivering the goods in critical discussion (this volume). The general outlines of the framework we are developing for analysing argumentative discourse are explained in the first paper. As a brief illustration of the application of our method, we shall here reconstruct some important features of an argumentative discourse produced by William the Silent, our 16th century revolutionary.

Strategic Maneuvering: Maintaining a Delicate Balance

“Quirites!” This is the infamous one-word speech by which Julius Caesar won his rebellious legions over to fight the republican army in North Africa, in 46 BC. After having fought a great number of battles under Caesar’s command, the soldiers had refused to follow him again. Caesar’s use of the word quirites as form of address had a devastating effect. According to the classical scholar (Leeman in Argumentation illuminated. Sic Sat, Amsterdam, pp. 12–22, 1992), ‘quirites’ was the dignified word a Roman magistrate used to address an assembly. Caesar’s use of this word to his soldiers made it clear to them that they had not only lost their privilege of being addressed as commilitones, or ‘comrades,’ but were even no longer entitled to a Roman general’s normal form of address for his soldiers: milites. “We are milites!” they reportedly shouted when they all volunteered to follow Caesar once more into battle. Ceasar’s use of the ‘neutral’ quirites as a qualification is an excellent illustration of how the communicative and interactional meaning of argumentative language use can only be grasped if the discourse is first put in a functional perspective in which its social context and the commitments assumed by the participants are duly taken into account.

A Pragmatic View of the Burden of Proof

In an earlier paper, entitled’ strategic maneuvering with the burden of proof,’ we have explained our dialectical perspective on the division of the burden of proof in a critical discussion (van Eemeren and Houtlosser, 2002). We did so by answering a series of interrelated questions from a procedural view of critical reasonableness: Why is there a burden of proof? A burden of proof for what? For whom? What exactly does the burden of proof involve? When is it activated? What means can be used to acquit oneself of the burden of proof? And when is one discharged? Because our responses were given in a critical rationalist vein, they are attuned to resolving a difference of opinion by critically testing the acceptability of a standpoint in the most systematic, thorough, perspicuous, and economic way. In the present paper we aim to complement this approach by offering a pragmatic solution for an important problem that may arise in ‘mixed’ disputes, where opposite standpoints are put forward regarding the same issue. The problem concerns the order in which the opposing standpoints are to be defended.

The rhetoric of William the Silent's Apologie. A dialectical perspective

Inspired by Toulmin’s views on the ‘formal turn’ in post-Renaissance appreciation of reasonableness, we react in this paper against the strict separation between dialectical and rhetorical approaches to argumentation. For a sound analysis of argumentative discourse we believe that these two approaches must be systematically combined. We shall illustrate our integrated method of analysis by a partial reconstruction of William of Orange’s famous Apologie (1581), which justifies his actions as leader of the Dutch Revolt against King Philip II, the Spanish ruler of the Low Countries. Let us begin by offering some historical background information.