Publication details

Argument of reciprocity: a unique scheme or not?

Authors

SVAČINOVÁ Iva

Year of publication 2016
Type Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Description In their famous The New rhetoric Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca presented a category of quasi-logical arguments as persuasive because of their similarity with mathematical and logical demonstrations. In this article, the persuasiveness of the quasi-logical argument is viewed from the perspective of pragma-dialectics. The first part of the article deals with the possibilities of transformation of the concept of quasi-logical arguments presented by the new rhetoric in accordance with meta-theoretical principles of pragma-dialectics. The crucial problem seems to be the identification of the function of quasi-logical arguments in solving a conflict of opinion. The second part compares the options of functionalization of quasi-logical arguments in a case study of their subtype, arguments of reciprocity. This paper presents a functionalization submitted by Bart Garssen that identifies quasi-logical reciprocity as one argument scheme appealing to the principle of “giving in return.” A competing functionalization is then presented based on the reconstruction of illustrations in The New rhetoric that correspond to the type of reciprocal relationships as “give-give” that are also considered by Garssen. It is shown that reciprocal arguments in The New rhetoric are not limited to one scheme in a pragma-dialectical sense, but the arguments with this type of reciprocal relationship can implement three different schemes.
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