Beyond argumentativeness: the unity of argumentation

Abstract

Although the field of argumentation has been established as an area of relevant theoretical importance with Perelman and Toulmin, the state of the art of the theories of argumentation shows that we are still in a pre-paradigmatic stage, characterized by greatly diverse and often incompatible approaches. Still, in this stage, there are signs that more than studying argumentation through the analysis of argumentativeness in a discourse with specific purposes (be it persuasion, conflict resolution, influence over others, etc.), argumentation is finally starting to be thought of as not something that results from argumentativeness, but as something that produces argumentativeness. – This change of direction is well instanced, from my point of view, when the rhetorical thematization of argumentation with its roots in the model of oratory gave way to interaction (replacing the old speaker-audience image by the arguer-arguer one). That is the orientation of those so called dialectical approaches (pragma-dialectics) and, in a much more radical way, of those that claim to be “interactionist” (Willard) or “dialogal” (Plantin) approaches. These theories focus no longer on discourse and dialogism which is inherent to it, but in the presence of interacting discourse and counter-discourse polarizing over an issue in question. Such an approach has the advantage of providing a descriptive basis to identify an argumentation if we see one. It allows us to think that it must comprehend at least three speaking turns which in pragma-dialectics theorization correspond to the first two stages of argumentation, i. e., the confrontation and opening stages. Or, as Jean Goodwin emphasizes, it allows us to understand that not every speech is an argumentation, because, in fact, it demands that something susceptible of conflict be transformed into an issue and, moreover, into an issue over which it is worth arguing – an “issue in question” to use my proposed terminology.−It is therefore my purpose with this paper to support the thesis according to which the unitary framework of a general argumentation theorization must focus not on a theory of the argument and a theorization of argumentativeness and its mechanisms but on a higher order of concepts such as the afore mentioned “issue in question” in which the term “in question” derives from the presence of a discourse and a counter-discourse and argumentation entails a tryout process through which the participants interact watching over and separating what is to be left to work and count as arguments, or not. As a matter of fact, that is why I define argumentation as a kind of critical reading and interacting with discourses.