Abstract
The aim of this paper is to show that classical rhetoric can provide valuable insights in the contemporary debate in pragmatics. This is especially true for Aristotelian rhetoric, due to its philosophical approach. In the first part of the paper, I discusses the conditions under which ancient rhetoric can be a real partner of current pragmatics: (1) rhetoric must be understood as a type of knowledge (a techne) and not as a “jumbles of techniques”; (2) we need to consider persuasion as an anthropological feature and not only as a specific case of communication; (3) we should not exclude truth from the rhetorical field. The second part of the paper focuses on what can be considered the basic insight of classical rhetoric (stated in a well-known passage of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, 1358a 37-b1): speakers and listeners are inside and not outside discourse. If adequately interpreted, this statement has important consequences that can be interesting for current pragmatics. These consequences can be schematically summarized as follows: (1) a broader conception of persuasion, useful to overcame the opposition informative/persuasive; (2) the consideration of speaker and listener as internal component of discourse (with the latter in a key position); (3) the consideration of the stylistic elements of a discourse from a cognitive point of view; (4) the overcoming of the sharp opposition cognitive/emotional due to the consideration of ethos and pathos as discoursive elements.
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Notes
- 1.
I refer, for example, to Sperber and Wilson who state that «if relevance theory is right, then it offers a solution to the rhetorician's dilemma, a way of being precise about vagueness, of making literal claims about metaphors and ironies, without abandoning any of the Romantics' intuitions. However, rhetoricians could not adopt this solution without jeopardizing the very foundations of rhetoric. For what this solution implies is that metaphor and irony are ordinary exploitations of basic processes of verbal communication, rather than devices based on codified departures from the ordinary use of language. Moreover metaphor and irony exploit quite different basic processes and are more closely related, the former to loose talk, the latter to a variety of echoic uses, than to one another. The very notion of a trope is better dispensed with. If so, then rhetoric has no subject matter to study, or to teach» (Sperber e Wilson 1990, italics mine).
- 2.
In ancient rhetoric, inventio was the part concerning the discovering of arguments, dispositio that relating to the arrangement of these arguments, while elocutio mainly dealt with stylistic elements of a discourse.
- 3.
- 4.
Concerning the word antistrophos, commonly translated “counterpart”, see Kennedy (1991: 28, n.1).
- 5.
- 6.
See Piazza (2008: 13–29).
- 7.
Arist. Pol. 1252b 30–1253a 35. Concerning the link between logos and polis see Lo Piparo 2003: 3–33).
- 8.
Concerning this distinction, Larrazabal and Korta (2002) sustain a partially different position. They distinguish “communicative” and “persuasive” intention and claim that «it is very clear that these two intentions are in different levels. We need first the fulfillment of communicative intentions in order to make possible then the fulfillment of persuasive intention (particularly, the intention to convince in argumentative discourse). Both in monological discourse and in dialogical (or multilogical discourse)—in what we are more interested—the unit of analysis is a unique speech act, where by means of the satisfaction of the communicative intention one can get the satisfaction of a persuasive intention (we are speaking of course of persuasive communication)» (p. 7). In their view, the main distinction between the two types of intentions is that «persuasive intention in general is not an overt intention. It can be an overt intention as in the case of intention to convince (by arguments) or as in particular kinds of persuasive intentions in special discourse contexts. But it can clearly also be a covert intention: think, for example, about a situation where the speaker intends to persuade the hearers hiding the real persuasive intention behind her discourse behaviour, because this is just the way of getting her goal in that particular situation» (p. 8). According to Larrazabal and Korta, the focus on persuasive intentions allows rhetoric to also include «perlocutory effects on the audience, intended or not intended by the speaker (…). usually ignored by pragmatics studies. This is where Rhetoric can make its contribution. Persuasive as well as convincing and other kinds of perlocutionary intentions seem to constitute the basis of rhetorical studies of linguistic use» (p. 5).
- 9.
See Piazza (2004).
- 10.
- 11.
See Mortara Garavelli (2006: 3).
- 12.
It is not possible here to deal in detail with all of the consequences of this idea on the entire Aristotelian rhetorical system. I limit myself to only indicating that the classical distinction between the three species of rhetoric: deliberative, judicial, and epidictic (cfr. Rhet. 158b 1 sgg.) is also based on it.
- 13.
Arist. Rhet. 1355b 37-40: «I call atechnic those that are not provided by “us” [i.e. the potential speaker] but are preexisting: for example, witnesses, testimony of slaves taken under torture, contracts, and such like; and artistic whatever can be prepared by method and by “us”; thus one must use the former and invent the latter» (transl. Kennedy 1991).
- 14.
- 15.
- 16.
I do not agree with Kennedy that here «Aristotle is not thinking of style and delivery but of thought and content» (Kennedy 1991: 38, n. 41). I believe that we have no textual reasons for thinking so. On the contrary, the use of the verb legein seems to indicate that Aristotle is referring to speech as a whole, therefore also including style and delivery.
- 17.
See also Garver (1994: 196): «the ethos which the audience trusts, then, is the artificial ethos identified with argument. It is not some real ethos the speaker may or may not possess. It is an ethos not necessarily tied to past experiences of the speaker, not an ethos acquired through performing similar actions in the past. It may be likely that the good speaker is able to deliberate intelligently because of past experiences, but it is not ethos qua product of past experience that the audience trusts, but the ethos as exercised in some particular argument. Insofar as audiences do actually draw that further inference about moral character, demonstrating its superfluosness should be seen as a contribution the Rhetoric makes to political science and legislation» (Garver 1994: 196).
- 18.
- 19.
See also 1410b 20–27: «Those things are necessarily urbane, both in lexis and in the enthymemes, which create quick learning in our minds. That is why superficial enthymemes are not popular [with audiences] (by superficial I mean those that are altogether clear and which there is no need to ponder) nor [are] those which, when stated, are unintelligible, but those of which there is either immediate understanding when they are spoken, even if that was not previously existing, or the thought follows soon after; for [then] some kind of learning takes places, but in neither of the other case» (transl. Kennedy 1991).
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Piazza, F. (2013). Rhetoric and Pragmatics: Suggestions for a Fruitful Dialogue. In: Capone, A., Lo Piparo, F., Carapezza, M. (eds) Perspectives on Pragmatics and Philosophy. Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01011-3_25
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