Argumentation and discourse

Abstract

After demonstrating that studies of argumentation, which spread throughout modern linguistics from Ducrot and Anscombre’s pragmatics, do not align with discourse studies because, for these authors, argumentation is a fact of langue and not a discursive fact, this text aims to show how discursive theories can work with the issue of argumentation. They cannot be restricted to linguistic microanalysis as adopted by integrated pragmatics, although eventually they can make use of it. They should revisit the classical tradition. If, on the one hand, the rhetoric studied the discursive construction of arguments and on the other studied the antiphonic dimension of discourses, the discursive theories should inherit from the rhetoric work; that is, they should read it in the light of the theoretical issues expressed today. To inherit from rhetoric work means, therefore, taking into account centuries of previous studies, to describe according to current discursive studies the discursive mechanisms which enable the speaker to produce meaning effects that make the audience believe what is said; it also means to analyze the actual operational mode of argumentation, i.e., the dialogism in argumentation.