Ruth Amossy

Introduction to the Study of Doxa

Inherited from ancient Greece, the notion of doxa as common knowledge and shared opinions haunts all contemporary disciplines that put communication and social interaction at the center of their concerns. To be sure, the specific term is not always used: doxa appears under various guises, such as public opinion, verisimilitude, commonsense knowledge, commonplace, idée reçue, stereotype, cliché. Broadly speaking, however, all that is considered true, or at least probable, by amajority of people endowedwith reason, or by a specific social group, can be called doxic.Whether the Greek term is explicitly mentioned or not, the functions of doxa in social life and in verbal exchanges have been the subject of continuous inquiries, if not of sharp polemics, for the two last centuries. In this domain, francophone literary and linguistic theories, from Gustave Flaubert’s studies to Oswald Ducrot’s pragmatics and to Chaïm Perelman’s ‘‘new rhetoric,’’ offer important insights.They seem to have explored the question in two main directions. The first, rooted in the modern consciousness of banality, carries to a paradoxical extreme the obsession with accepted ideas, trite expressions, and (bourgeois) stupidity. In this perspective, doxa is a major obstacle to individual thinking and creativity as well as to genuine communication; as such, it constitutes a source of alienation. This approach ismasterfully exemplified byRolandBarthes’s essays, widely drawing on Flaubert’s heritage. The second direction, going back to ancient rhetorical sources, unveils the constructive functions of doxa and its multifold uses at all levels of human communication. This is the position

How to Do Things with Doxa: Toward an Analysis of Argumentation in Discourse

Based on a rhetorical approach, claiming that shared values and beliefs work not only for communication but also for verbal efficacy, this essay explores the constructive functions of doxa in literary and nonliterary genres of discourse. Instead of condemning commonplaces in the name of innovation, or of denouncing collective representations by exposing their ideological foundations, the analysis of argumentation in discourse views doxa as an essential ingredient of all literature, classical and modern. This essay raises first the question of the nature of doxa: is it an orderly whole to be reconstructed as such or an aggregate of elements participating in a loose intertext? Is it the expression of a universal common sense or the mark of a given sociohistorical worldview? There follows an attempt at a taxonomy to provide some tools for text analysis. Rhetorical topoi as empty structures (Aristotles topoï koinoï) are distinguished from pragmatical topoi in Oswald Ducrots sense and from commonplaces in the positive sense of the term; the notions of idée reçue, of cliché, and of stereotype are described and reinterpreted in an argumentative perspective stressing their fundamental role in human communication. Expressed through a series of implicit and explicit forms—previously discussed within different disciplines and here integrated in a coherent model of text analysis—doxa appears as a condition of intersubjectivity and as a constitutive element of any verbal interaction.

Pragmatic and value-based argumentation in the 2015 Israeli elections

Abstract A discursive and argumentative analysis of the Israeli 2015 elections reveals how electoral strategies displayed unexpected similarities between rival parties such as the Likud and the Zionist Union, on the one hand, and the Jewish Home and Meretz, on the other hand, in their respective approaches to foreign policy and to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. While the mainstream Right and Left mainly emphasized security motives, used consequence-based arguments, and appealed to fear, the practical reasoning of the two smaller parties (Jewish Home and Meretz) competing with the Likud and the Zionist Union applied a value-based rather than a merely instrumental argumentation. This reconfiguration of the political map enlightens the peculiar dynamics of the 2015 elections.

From National Consensus to Political Dissent: The Rhetorical Uses of the Masada Myth in Israel

This paper explores the rhetorical functions of myth and of cultural analogies in the making of consensus and dissents in the public sphere. It shows how a founding myth, the Masada story – first used to elicit national consensus and build a collective identity – has eventually turned into a reservoir of analogies fueling polemical discussions on the Middle East conflict. After a brief overview of the epideictic uses of the Masada myth, and of its progressive disintegration, the analysis focuses on the rhetorical uses of the analogies drawing on Masada in public controversies. Analyzing examples mainly borrowed from the media, it shows how these analogies are exploited by adverse parties in a contemporary debate characterized by polarization and passion. The breaking down of a unifying myth and its transformation into a tool of discord and divide is analyzed in the framework of a so-called rhetoric of dissent , in order to unveil the workings as well as the constructive function of public controversy.

A rhetorical approach to rewriting: genre and Vera Brittain's experience of mourning

Set in the framework of a theory of argumentation in discourse, this paper examines the impact of generic constraints on rewriting. More specifically, it analyses the way in which an episode of Vera Brittain’s life, the loss of her fiance during World War I, is rewritten in her autobiographical texts – diary, correspondence and memoir. The attempt at coming to terms with the terrible loss, at understanding and interpreting its circumstances, at sharing it with others, changes when rewritten for another audience in another situation of communication. The exploration of the means through which a new version is worked out – quotation, copying, rephrasing, reframing, addition of details, change of point of view, polyphony, etc. – throws light not only on the rhetoric of rewriting, but also on the experience of mourning in its relation to the 1914–18 ‘war culture’. By showing how mourning as a cultural phenomenon is differently constructed in variable verbal contexts, rhetorical analysis aspires to complement ...

Doxa and Related Notions: A Selected Annotated Bibliography of Francophone Research

Adam, Jean-Michel, and Marc Bonhomme  L’argumentation publicitaire: Rhetorique de l’eloge et de la persuasion (Paris: Nathan). Drawing on rhetoric and on pragmatics, an approach to the discourse of advertisement as amode of communicationmeant to persuade by verbal and iconic means. Doxa plays a role in helping to establish a consensus on a given product, in the strategies used to overcome previous negative images, and in manipulating syllogistic forms. The analysis also adapts to its own ends the notion of topos as developed by the contemporary French pragmatists Jean-Claude Anscombre and Oswald Ducrot. Adert, Laurent  Les Mots des autres (Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion). Literary analysis of contemporary writers who inherited Gustave Flaubert’s obsession with received ideas, particularly of how Nathalie Sarraute and Robert Pinget treat the Other’s discourse. Amossy, Ruth  ‘‘The Cliche in the Reading Process,’’ Sub-stance : –. On the uses and functions of verbal cliches in the reading process.  Les idees recues: Semiologie du stereotype (Paris: Nathan). Examination of the contemporary notion of stereotype elaborated by the social sciences (mainly by social psychology) and by different trends