Contemporary Rhetoric and the Sciences

Scientists make decision about which

questions they will investigate.
Scientists’ presentation of results must be
persuasive, must gain a hearing among
colleagues and the general public.
Contemporary Rhetoric and the Sciences
Science is rhetorical “because it is a
collective enterprise that is sustained only
within a highly specialized network of
communication.
The language of science – its rhetoric –
affects actions and decisions in arenas we
do not typically identify as scientific at all.
Contemporary Rhetoric reveals:
the logical structure of
everyday arguments;
the values in such
arguments; and
the conditions under which
arguments are most
equitably advanced
Charles Erize P. Ladia Department of Speech Communication & Theatre Arts cpladia@up.edu.ph
Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca’s Clifford Geertz’s
Theory of Audience Rhetoric in Anthropology
Stephen Toulmin’s Michael Billig’s
Uses of Arguments Rhetoric of Social Psychology
Deirdre McCloskey’s Discussion Facilitation
Rhetoric of Economics Habermas / Foucault / Bitzer
 Perelman &
Olbrechts-Tyteca’s
 Perelman &
Olbrechts-Tyteca’s
The New Rhetoric
“All argumentation aims
at gaining the adherence
of minds and, by this
very fact, assumes the
existence of intellectual
contact.”
Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca’s
THEORY OF AUDIENCE

Searched for a nonscientific, nontheistic

foundation for a discourse on values
The audience “will determine to a great extent
both the direction of the arguments and its
success.”
Only through public discourse and
argumentation can we test propositions of
values and policy
 Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca’s
THEORY OF AUDIENCE

TWO (2) CLASSES OF

PARTICULAR AUDIENCE STARTING POINTS
“the actual audience of “the real”
persons one addresses facts, truths, and
when advancing an presumptions
argument publicly.”
“the preferable”
values, hierarchies,
and arguments
Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca’s THEORY OF AUDIENCE

UNIVERSAL OF ONE THE SELF

“trained specialists in Argumentation The self-deliberating
particular disciplines before a single subject is often
who can formulate hearer can also make regarded as an
norms and values to a special claim to incarnation of the
be proposed to reasonableness. universal audience.
reasonable beings”
The one, or the single Self-deliberation is
The reasonable is a hearer can claim the viewed as a kind of
precedent to inspire position of the argumentation, and
everyone in the same universal audience. not a different
circumstances. cognitive activity.
Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca’s THEORY OF AUDIENCE

PRESENCE
The goal of
argumentation is
to make certain
facts present to
an audience.
“the choice to
emphasize certain
ideas and facts, thus
encouraging an
audience to attend
to them.”
Deirdre McCloskey’s
 Deirdre Mccloskey’s
Rhetoric of Economics
Economics is a weird science.
It deals with humanity as well
as emotions, instincts and
brains. It deals with all these
things not one by one, but in a
system where each human
being is more or less free to
makes choices (Grazzini).
 Deirdre McCloskey’s
RHETORIC OF ECONOMICS

Scientists should use rhetoric in a skilled

way because style and contents are not
separable
“Most economists believe that once you
have reduced a question to numbers you
have taken it out of human hands. That's
where the rhetoric of quantification goes
crazily wrong” (McCloskey 1998, p.100)
 Deirdre McCloskey’s
RHETORIC OF ECONOMICS

McCloskey: “The arguments of economists

are persuasively intended, strategically
framed, stylistically shaped, and reflective
of biases, preferences, and values.
One should not be scared of the rhetoric of
economics because this is where the real
connection between theory, practice, and
connection with people lies.
 Deirdre McCloskey’s
RHETORIC OF ECONOMICS

Rhetoric is "the art of probing what men

believe they ought to believe, rather than
proving what is true according to abstract
methods";
"careful weighing or more-or-less good
reasons to arrive at more-or-less probable
or plausible conclusions”
 Deirdre McCloskey’s
RHETORIC OF ECONOMICS

Economists basically write for each other in a

language only they understand and their jobs
depend on impressing a limited number of
journal editors and referees, not correcting real-
world problems (Harvey, 2016).
Economics is broken and there is no internal
incentive to fix it.
Charles Erize P. Ladia Department of Speech Communication & Theatre Arts cpladia@up.edu.ph
Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca’s Clifford Geertz’s
Theory of Audience Rhetoric in Anthropology
Stephen Toulmin’s Michael Billig’s
Uses of Arguments Rhetoric of Social Psychology
Deirdre McCloskey’s Discussion Facilitation
Rhetoric of Economics Habermas / Foucault / Bitzer
 Perelman &
Olbrechts-Tyteca’s
Deirdre McCloskey’s
Stephen Toulmin’s
 Stephen Toulmin’s
The Uses of Arguments
Toulmin rejects the
logicians’ idea that
validity – a concern for
the arguments structure
without consideration of
its content – is the single
universal standard for
argument analysis.
Stephen Toulmin’s MODEL OF ARGUMENTS

Parts of the Model (The Uses of Argument, 1958)

CLAIM Assertion you hope to prove

EVIDENCE Support/rational for the claim
WARRANT Connection between claim & evidence
BACKING Support for the warrant
REBUTTAL Potential objection to the claim
QUALIFIER Limits put on the claim
Stephen Toulmin’s MODEL OF ARGUMENTS

EVIDENCE WARRANT CLAIM

QUALIFIER
BACKING

REBUTTAL
Stephen Toulmin’s MODEL OF ARGUMENTS
 Assignment for
FRIDAY, 28 Sept 2018

Ask three (3) people from different sectors

(students, working, academe, service) with the
question:

What do you think of the

prices of goods now?
Stephen Toulmin’s MODEL OF ARGUMENTS

EVIDENCE WARRANT CLAIM

QUALIFIER
BACKING

REBUTTAL
Clifford Geertz’s
 Clifford Geertz’s
RHETORIC IN ANTHROPOLOGY

The rhetoric of reporting one’s experience is

as much a part of anthropology as is careful
observation of a culture.

Anthropologists persuade us that this

offstage miracle has occurred, is where the
writing comes in.
 Clifford Geertz’s
RHETORIC IN ANTHROPOLOGY

The ability of anthropologists to get us to take

what they say seriously has less to do with
whether a factual look or an air of conceptual
elegance that it has with the capacity to convince
us that what they say is a result of their having
actually penetrated another form of life, of
having, one way or another, truly ‘been there’.
 Clifford Geertz’s
RHETORIC IN ANTHROPOLOGY

Rhetoric goes beyond purely textual matters

such as "how the text is constructed, how the
argument is developed, and why it is or isn't
persuasive" to consider the interplay of culture,
politics, and ideology in the production and
legitimation of texts.
Michael Billig’s
Michael Billig’s RHETORIC OF
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Billig used rhetoric’s appreciation for

argument to explore human social behavior
Similarities between ancient rhetoric and
modern social psychology:
(1) understanding why people act the
way they do
(2) what people believe in
(3) how people are persuaded to their
actions and beliefs
Michael Billig’s RHETORIC OF
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Protagoras: Arguments are always

available for / against any particular claim
Every form of though is contrasted with an
opposing one:
Logos vs Antilogos
Argument vs Counterargument
Billig is concerned with the mind’s rhetorical
capcity to “argue back”.
Michael Billig’s RHETORIC OF
SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Quintilian: uncertainty principle

there is an infinite variety of
human responses
Given the great and unpredictable variety of
possible human responses to any situation,
the rules of rhetoric must always be
provisional, never absolute.