In this paper I intend to argue that teacher training in the Philosophy for Children Program can be significantly improved through the Pragma Dialectical Approach. For that purpose, I will first make a brief and necessarily sketchy presentation of the fundamentals of the Philosophy for Children Program. Then I will make a few comments on its potential for an education for democracy, making specific reference to the Chilean experience. Next I intend to discuss the concept of a “Community of Inquiry”, central to the Philosophy for Children Program , in order to show 1) how the building of such a community can contribute to the development of reasoning skills and democratic attitudes in the participants and 2) what is expected from the Philosophy for Children teacher.
Based on this discussion, I intend to reflect on what I see as some shortcomings, as far as helping teachers meet those expectations, in the presentation of the formal and informal logic contents of the novels and teacher manuals, which are the standard materials used for teacher training in the Program. I shall also comment on the bearing that the usual structure and length of the Workshops may have on the results of that training.
Finally, I intend to show how the Pragma Dialectical Approach can help overcome the difficulties and contribute to improve the teachers’ training. For this purpose, I shall discuss some features of the Pragma Dialectical Approach such as the formulation of a code of conduct for rational discussants and the analysis and evaluation of various types of argument attempting to show how these can help the teachers in training become the kind of model of reasonableness that the Philosophy for Children Program expects them to be.

1. The Philosophy for Children Program
The Philosophy for Children Program is deservedly renown and appreciated worldwide for its merits in helping to develop reasoning skills and reasonableness in children through philosophical dialogue. Using philosophical novels for children, the teachers trained in the Program are able to organize lively discussions in the classroom about things that matter to the students, thus breaking the monotony and lack of meaning of which traditional education, through the imposition of an “Adult Agenda”, is usually accused.
As Matthew Lipman, creator of the Philosophy for Children Program explains, the main purpose of the Program is “to help children learn how to think for themselves” (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan,198O: 53). Rather than aiming at teaching philosophical topics to children, the Program aims at helping them “to think philosophically” (Bosch,1992:18).
According to Lipman (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan,1980: 22), the most adequate means for stimulating thinking is dialogue. When we are intensely engaged in dialogue about things that matter to us vitally, says Lipman, we perform a number of mental activities such as listening attentively, considering carefully, rehearsing what we might say next, establishing connections with what others have said or written on the topic earlier or somewhere else, trying to figure out what the speaker is aiming at and what the assumptions are from which he or she is starting, etc. In other words, although we may not be aware of that, we are exercising our reasoning skills and thus stimulating their development. The same applies to children. Therefore, if we manage to engage them in dialogues that are meaningful for them, Lipman argues, we will contribute to develop their reasoning skills. If we help them, in this process, to become  more sensitive to the variety of perspectives and the complexity of the problems involved, we will contribute to develop their reasonableness.

The role of Philosophy in this endeavour is twofold:
1. to maintain or repair the connection with the children’s curiosity making it possible “to elicit from them the wondering and questioning characteristic of philosophical behavior at any age” (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 198O:1O3), and
2. to give dialogue the necessary structure and rigour that makes of it an effective tool for the development of reasoning skills.

The first is taken care of by the novels and by the methodology. The novels cover a great variety of topics from the philosophical tradition. The methodology stimulates children to ask and wonder about anything that the readings may prompt them to ask and guides them in following the inquiry where it leads.
The second is covered by Logic, both formal and informal. Lipman says that there are three meanings of Logic in Philosophy for Children: Formal Logic, Giving Reasons and Acting Rationally.
Formal Logic’s main purpose in the Program is “to help children discover that they can think about their thinking in an organized way” (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan,198O:131). Giving Reasons or “The Good Reasons Approach” emphasizes seeking reasons and assessing reasons given by others. Its main purpose in the Program is to help children “discover the broad range of applications of structured, deliberate thinking” (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 198O:139).
Acting Rationally designates the kind of Logic whose purpose it is “to encourage children to use reflective thinking actively in their lives”(Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 198O:146). Neither the philosophical questions and ideas nor the logical notions are contents or subject matter that the students are expected to learn as that. The teacher’s role is to promote among the children a philosophical discussion of the highest level, using the novels’ contents to stimulate them to discuss those issues that really interest them, and to become him or herself an arbiter that guarantees the discussion’s impartiality. Therefore, Philosophy and Logic are blended, so to speak, in the activities the students and the teacher perform and it is rather artificially that one separates them for the purpose of analysis.
For my present purposes in this paper, it is important to note that the teacher not only is expected to know and to be sensitive to an enormous amount of philosophical material, but also is supposed to be aware of the rules of good reasoning and to be able to point them out to students as needed during the discussion and to help them apply those rules to their reflection and everyday experience.

2. Education for Democracy
Beside its remarkable results in improving children’s reasoning and reading comprehension, the Philosophy for Children Program is also known for its impact on the development of other areas of the child’s personality, such as creativity, dedication to work and what in the Program is referred to as “personal and interpersonal growth”(Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 198O:65). This expression refers to an increased awareness of the own personal value and the value of others and an increased sensitivity to one another’s personalities that emerges as a result of being engaged in the common venture of philosophical inquiry. Learning to think together respecting rules of thinking and discovering different and unthought of ways of thinking and looking at things helps develop a special sensitivity for what it means to belong to a community. This will become more clear later when we discuss the concept of a “Community of Inquiry”. For the moment, it is enough to say that in the very conception of Philosophy for Children is the seed of an education that is both democratic and for democracy.

In a research project ( Fondecyt[i] Project O7O3-91), conducted for four years in a suburban area of Santiago, Chile, in a school that serves a population of extremely socially deprived children, my husband, Celso López, and I were able to show that the Progam can be an effective tool for educating for democracy in Chile.( Cf. Vicuña,1991).
What we did was to work with the children from 4th to 7th grade using the philosophy for Children materials, train the teachers so that they could do the same, and observe and register in every session the “democratic behaviours” that were being developed. For this we used an observation chart in which we included fourteen democratic behaviours. The research assistants, all university students majoring in philosophy, were in charge of this task. We also measured the development of reasoning skills in the children and contrasted it with a control group. The results showed significant improvement in the experimental group.( Cf. Vicuña & López, 1994).
I think that the Program’s enormous potential for an education for democracy is obvious to those who know and reflect on its foundations and methodology. The only merit of what we did resides in showing that these ideas really could work in Chile, and in the most difficult setting. Now that we have shown it, we must be able to prepare teachers that can replicate the experience. Hence the importance of improving the quality of teacher training, especially in places like Chile where democracy is still quite far from being completely realized.

3. The Concept of a Community of Inquiry
According to Lipman, the expression “Community of Inquiry” was presumably coined by Charles Sanders Peirce and was originally “restricted to the practitioners of scientific inquiry, all of whom could be considered to form a community in that they were similarly dedicated to the use of like procedures in the pursuit of identical goals”(Lipman, 1991:15).
Applied to the field of Philosophy for Children, the expression designates a group of persons (the children and the teacher) who are engaged in a common search that is both cooperative and mutually challenging. In Lipman’s conception, whenever children are stimulated to think philosophically following the inquiry where it leads and submitting themselves to the procedures that are proper to that inquiry, the classroom is converted into a community of inquiry. This means that “students listen to one another with respect, build on one another’s ideas, challenge one another to supply reasons for otherwise unsupported opinions, assist each other in drawing inferences from what has been said, and seek to identify one another’s assumptions” (Lipman, 1991:15).
The repetition of the reciprocal expression “one another” in the above characterization is indicative of the communitary and cooperative aspect of this endeavor, also present in the words “build” and “assist”. But there is also reciprocity in the mutual challenge to be critical, to supply reasons, to draw inferences, to identify assumptions. What becomes manifest, then, in this characterization are the two aspects that ought to be part of the community of inquiry: the communitary and the logical.
Some images that Lipman uses may serve to explain what the community of inquiry is all about. I consider the following four images to be the most suggestive and therefore I propose to elaborate on them in order to get a better grasp of the concept and especially of the teacher’s role.

1. The kittens and the ball of yarn.
“Under suitable circumstances, says Lipman, a room full of children will pounce on an idea in the way a litter of kittens will pounce on a ball of yarn thrown in their direction. The children will kick the idea around until it has been developed, elaborated upon, and even in some instances applied to life situations, although the latter is seldom achieved without the teacher’s artful guidance.” (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 198O:1O4).
Doing philosophy with children is inviting them to play with ideas, to make them roll around, to take them apart, and to take out the different threads until they apparently make a big entanglement. They may think that they are just playing and that what they are doing does not have much sense, but a skilled teacher will be able to help them find sense in that apparent entanglement, what the lines of convergence and divergence are, and how to go about to clarify the issue.

2. The human pyramid (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 198O:105).
Doing philosophy with children is also similar to the building of a human pyramid by the children in the school yard. They are all necessary in order for the construction not to fall and each one contributes in a different way to the balance of the whole. It belongs to the teacher’s role to show where there is need of support and where of counterbalance.

3. The construction of bricks (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 198O).
The way in which all children participate in the discussion and contribute to bring about clarity and to make sense of the problems at issue is similar to a construction made of bricks in which everyone is placing his or her own brick making it fit in harmoniously in the whole. The teacher should be able to point out where there is a brick lacking and how to make the building become more stable and more harmonious.

4. The boat tacking into the wind (Lipman,1991:16).
When the children and the teacher are committed to this kind of inqury, the whole group advances like a boat that goes into the sea following the wind’s impulse that sometimes pushes in one direction and sometimes in another. The wisdom of the teacher, as that of an expert sailor, lies in knowing how to benefit from the favorable wind and how to resist the adverse one, when to unfurl the sails and when to pick them up.

Through this last image Lipman intends to show the most significant feature of the community of inquiry: that the progress of the group resembles the process of thinking itself. “Consequently, when this process is internalized or introjected by the participants, they come to think in ”moves” that resemble its procedures. They come to think as the process thinks” (Lipman,1991:16). By means of these four images I have attempted to make understandable in a few words a concept that is rather difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t lived through the experience. What is important to note for my present purpose is that the communitary aspect and the aspect concerned with the development of reasoning skills are intertwined. Therefore, in the process of building such a community the teacher has to attend to both.

Through participating in such a community, students become aware of the diversity of perspectives and the diversity of thinking styles from which an issue can be looked at and are willing to examine rigorously all possible alternatives. In the process, they learn how to think better because they are enriched by the different perspectives and learn to correct their thinking in the light of the other participants’ objections or suggestions. In order for them to be able to come to this ideal situation, they need to be guided by a teacher that helps them learn to respect each other, to become aware of one another’s thinking processes and to develop a sense of what thinking rigorously entails.
According to Lipman, the conditions required to build a Community of Inquiry are intrinsic to philosophy itself (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 1980:45), therefore doing philosophy with the children is the best way of fostering its development.
What is needed, says Lipman, is “a teacher who is provocative, inquisitive, impatient of mental slovenliness and a classroom of students eager to engage in dialogue that challenges them to think and to produce ideas” (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 1980:102). The model for this ideal teacher is Socrates. In Lipman’s view, Socrates’ most remarkable features, as he is portrayed in Plato’s dialogues, are his ability to question, his rigurosity and his belief that knowledge is not something that one transmits to other, but something that one helps the other to elicit from himself.
The Philosophy for Children teacher is expected to emulate Socrates, becoming for his/her students a model of inquisitiveness, rigurosity, openness, intelectual honesty and humility. He or she must be someone who challenges the students to think and who is able to show them how to think well and how to improve the quality of their thinking. The most important of the teacher’s abilities should be the ability to foster and to guide a philosophical discussion, representing for their students an impartial arbiter and a challenging, inquisitive, open minded facilitator of it. There are a number of skills that the teacher should master for this purpose.
Among the ones mentioned and analyzed by Lipman are the following (Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 198O:1O2-128): the teacher must be able to elicit from the students their views or opinions, to help them express themselves more clearly, restating, explicating or interpreting what the children say when necessary, to request definitions, to point out to fallacies, to indicate underlying assumptions, to maintain the relevance, to center the discussion, to examine alternatives, to request reasons, to request evidence and to orchestrate the discussion conducting it to a higher level of generality.
It becomes clear from this that the teacher is expected not only to think philosophically but also to be able to analyze and appraise all the children’ s contributions, to show how they relate to one another and to help the discussion grow and become a meaningful experience to all participants.
The question, of course, is how to train a teacher in order that he or she develops these features.

4. Some shortcomings in teacher training
To train a teacher in Philosophy for Children is no easy task. It is necessary to help them develop a genuine curiosity, a commitment to philosophical inquiry, an abilty to question, a sensitivity both to rules of rigorous thinking and to different thinking styles, and the skills required for conducting a philosophical discussion mentioned above. In relation to this, Lipman says:
“No explanation of the art of teaching philosophy can be adequate for the teacher-in-training. First, it must be admitted that philosophers themselves have never been very clear about what they do when they teach philosophy. We therefore lack a complete understanding on which an adequate explanation could be based. Second, even if we had such an explanation, it would be insufficient without a competent modelling by the philosopher coupled with the teacher’s experiencing what it is to engage in philosophical dialogue. These three components– -explanation, modelling, and experiencing- are indispensable in preparing teachers to teach philosophy on the elementary grade level.”(Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 1980:125).

In consequence, in the Philosophy for Children practice everywhere the teachers are trained in workshops where they are expected to experience in themselves what it is like to be a participant in the building of a community of inquiry. Using the same materials that they will later use with the students, i.e. the novels and teacher’s manuals, they are guided by an Instructor or teacher trainer in building a community of inquiry with their colleagues in training.
True to its Deweyan origins, the Program provides each of the teachers in training the opportunity of “learning by doing” through the experience of guiding at least one of the sessions. This and being a participant in the building of a community of inquiry constitute the “experiencing component”. The “modelling component” is provided by the Instructor, a philosopher trained by Lipman himself. The “explanation component”, however, is less visible in the workshops. What is usually done is giving the teachers to read “Guiding a Philosophical Discussion” (Chapter 7 of Lipman’s “Philosophy in the Classroom”: Lipman, Sharp & Oscanyan, 1980:102-128). In this text they will find very clear and practical explanations on how to do their work. But, even in this text, there are things that a teacher with no background in logic will find hard to understand or to apply in practice, for instance, inferring logical implications, seeking consistency, indicating fallacies, etc.

As I see it, the explanation component doesn’t seem to be sufficiently accounted for in the workshops, especially in what regards to the logic contents of the Program. This also hinders the exercise by the teachers of the experiencing component in this matter. There are several reasons for this:
1. The logic contents included are not the same in all the novels. Therefore, the teachers trained in “Pixie”, for instance, will not have the same opportunity of being exposed to some logical contents as the ones trained in “Harry”.
2. The logic contents of the Program do not include a thorough treatment of the fallacies. Although many excellent exercises on faulty reasononing are provided in the teacher’s manuals, there is no systematic treatment that may ensure that the teachers will be able to use them profitably.
3. The logic contents of the Program do not include as a topic the procedural aspects that the teachers are expected to be able to point out to the students when guiding the philosophical discussion, like going to the point, avoiding personal attacks, providing reasons, avoiding contradiction, maintaining relevance, etc.
4. Due to the methodology of the Program, one only gets to discuss what the group chooses to discuss in every session. Therefore, it is quite possible that the logical aspects are not discussed, just because they are never chosen to be discussed. Of course, the teacher, being a member of the community of inquiry, can always propose to discuss logical topics, but he or she cannot impose them. This should never be a problem with the children, because the teacher has countless opportunities and ways during the school year to introduce the issues that have been left aside. However, given the length (usually 60 hours distributed in an intensive week) and the somewhat artificial nature of the workshops, the teacher trainer does not have this luxury, but has to move on in order to cover all the ground assigned to that workshop.

As stated before, there are many excellent exercises in the teacher’s manuals, e.g. on analogical reasoning, part-whole relationships, syllogistic reasoning, inductive reasoning, and so on. But, if they do not come up during the training period, it is very unlikely that the teachers will attempt to use them later on with their students.
In our experience in teacher training in Chile, we have seen that teachers do, in fact, avoid discussing logical subjects. In so doing, they fail to get the necessary experience to work these subjects later on with their students and they are deprived of discussing the theoretical explanations that may help them understand how these logical aspects can be introduced in the practice of successfully guiding a philosophical discussion.
The explanation and the experiencing components being absent, the only way that is left for the teachers to learn is by imitating the Instructor’s modelling. This is hardly sufficient, for excellent that the Instructor may be.
What we often see is that the teachers “learn the music but don’t learn the words”, as we say in Chile. That is, they go through the stages of reading, inviting the students to formulate questions, helping them find relationships between the different contributions and grouping them. They are also able to create an open, inviting atmosphere, promoting questioning and discussion. But, when it comes to providing the necessary help to center the dicussion, or to pointing out to some fallacy that has been committed, or to showing that some contribution is not relevant to the issue at hand, they simply fail to do it.
In order to counter this deficiency in the explanation component, we have intoduced in the structure of our workshops in Chile some short lectures followed by discussion. One of the subjects of these lectures is the role of logic in Philosophy for Children. Although this helps, it is by no means enough. What is needed is a basic and systematic treatment of the logic involved in the Program.

5. The Pragma Dialectical Approach
I think that the Pragma Dialectical Approach could help to overcome some of the difficulties just mentioned and contribute to the improvement of teacher training in Philosophy for Children I shall limit myself to pointing out to four features of the Pragma Dialectic Approach that make of it a useful tool for helping teachers meet the challenges outlined above.

1. The Pragma Dialectic Approach formulates a code of conduct for rational discussants and gives ten rules to be observed in a critical discussion (van Eemeren & Grootendorst 1992: 208-209). These rules are to some extent equivalent, yet much more precisely expressed than the Philosophy for Children requirements for the building of a community of inquiry. For example, the building of a community of inquiry requires from the participants:
a. mutual respect and mutual challenging.
This could be expressed by
rule 1: “Parties should not prevent each other from advancing standpoints or casting doubt on standpoints”, and
rule 2: “A party that advances a standpoint is obliged to defend it if the other party asks him to do so”.
b. openness.
This, again, could be expressed by rule 1.
c. intellectual honesty.
This is expressed by rule 5: “A party may not falsely present something as a premise that has been left unexpressed by the other party or deny a premise that he himself has left implicit”, rule 6: “A party may not falsely present a premise as an accepted starting point nor deny a premise representing an accepted starting point” and rule 9: “A failed defense of a standpoint must result in the party that put forward the standpoint retracting it and a conclusive defense in the other party retracting his doubt about the standpoint”.
d. rigurosity.
This is expressed by rule 3: “A party’s attack on a standpoint must relate to the standpoint that has indeed been advanced by the other party”, rule 4: “A party may defend his standpoint only by advancing argumentation related to that standpoint”, rule 7: “A party may not regard a standpoint as conclusively defended if the defense does not take place by means of an appropriate argumentation scheme that is correctly applied”, rule 8: “In his argumentation a party may only use arguments that are logically valid or capable of being validated by making explicit one or more unexpressed premises”, and rule 10: “A party must not use formulations that are insufficiently clear or confusingly ambiguous and he must interpret the other party’s formulations as carefully and accurately as possible”. Although these rules are formulated for discussions between two parties and not for group discussions such as the ones that take place in the community of inquiry, being aware of these rules may be of great help for the teachers in their role of arbiters of the discussions. For this purpose, of course, they must understand what lies behind each rule and have had the opportunity of discussing them. From a pedagogical point of view, being able to summarize this information in these Pragma Dialectical ten rules is most advantageous.

2. The Pragma Dialectic Approach explains the fallacies as violations of the rules for a critical discussion. Therefore, knowing the rules may help the teachers get a better understanding of the fallacies. Since, as stated before, the training workshops’ structure makes it difficult to take up the logical issues in a thorough and organized way, the summarizing and comprehensive vision that the Pragma Dialectic treatment of the fallacies offer, represent a significant improvement for the teachers.
This is not to say that this will replace the necessary experience that ought to be acquired through time and practice, but I think that it will hepl the teachers in gaining confidence in their handling of the logical aspects.

3. Through the analysis of various types of argument the Pragma Dialectic Approach provides the teachers in training with different models to evaluate different situations. Particularly helpful in this context are the “argumentation schemes” that the Pragma Dialectical Approach distinguishes. According to van Eemeren and Grootendorst, arguers usually rely on ready made argumentation schemes : “a more or less conventionalized way of representing the relation between what is stated in the argument and what is stated in the standpoint” (Eemeren van, & Grootendorst 1992:96). Therefore, arguments can be analyzed as belonging to one of the three following categories ot types. The arguer may try to convince his interlocutor by pointing out that something is “symptomatic” of something else, or something is “similar” to something else, or that something is “instrumental” to something else. Of course, there are many subcategories of argumentation schemes that the teachers should be made aware of, but there is a great advantage for them in knowing and learning to identify these main types, because this will help them to better understand and evaluate the children’s contributions.

4. Through the acquisition of the skills for dialectical analysis and normative reconstruction the teacher can be helped in developing an ability for better guiding the children during the different stages of the building of their discussion.

The brief mention of these Pragma Dialectical features may serve to indicate how this approach can help improve the quality of teacher training in the Philosophy for Children Program.
During the last three months a special course on the logical aspects of the Program has been offered to public school teachers already trained in one of the novels. For this purpose the Pragma Dialectical Approach is being used. We do not have results yet, but the teachers report that they are extremely pleased with the course and that it has helped them greatly in their work with the children.

NOTES
i. Fondecyt is the Chilean National Fund for the development of Science and Technology.

REFERENCES
Lipman, M., Sharp, A.M. & Oscanyan, F. (198O) Philosophy in the Classrooom. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Bosch, E. (1992) Entrevista con Matthew Lipman. Cuadernos de Pedagogía. 2O5, 18-2O.
Vicuña,A. M. (1991) Filosofía para Niños y Educación para la Democracia. Revista de Educación 184,41-44 &185, 33-37.
Lipman, M. (1991) Thinking in Education. Philadelphia: Cambridge University Press.
Vicuña, A. M. (1994) Filosofía para Niños: Algo más que Desarrollar Habilidades de Razonamiento. Pensamiento Educativo 15,177-195.
Vicuña, A. M. & López, C. (1994) “Informe Final del Proyecto Fondecyt 0703-91″ ( Final Report on the Fondecyt Research Proyect) (Unpublished).
Eemeren, F. H. van & R. Grootendorst (1992). Argumentation, Communication and Fallacies. A Pragma Dialectical Perspective. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

1. Introduction
This essay represents a preliminary report on ongoing conversations between Michael Lorimer and myself over the connections between architecture and rhetoric. Michael not only teaches architecture but he is also a practicing architect. He has designed churches, hospitals, homes and office buildings, and added an extension to the local art museum. In order to indicate the tenor of our exchanges, let me offer a transcript of a recent dialogue we had at Michael’s home over a cup of tea.
“There is for me,” I began, “a profound difference between structures designed for religious organizations and those designed for domestic or commercial purposes. Commercial buildings find their foundations in the bottom line, while Catholic and Protestant Churches as well as Taoist and Buddhist temples, by way of contrast, have as one of their purposes the inspiration and instruction of the faithful. We recognize this difference in our experience of sacred in contrast to secular space.”
Ponderous, I admit, but it reflected my honest experience and a modest amount of thinking on the subject. Michael is a good listener, but he had an odd look on his face. When I had finished, he leaned back from the table and, without even a hint of irony, responded. “There is,” he said, no real difference, from an architectural point of view, between secular and religious structures. Both take as their goal the manipulation of people. What you refer to as “the sacred” and assume a difference in the response of those who enter such spaces has much to do with structure. Is the purpose to fill people with awe or to engender a sense of community? Is it to move them, in procession, from one point to another or to have them gather together as a family? A reverential attitude arises out of certain kinds of structures and is blunted by others. Your attitude about “sacred space” is evidence that the structure achieved its desired effect. He saw that I was puzzled, so he went on to explain this in architectural terms:
Department stores, churches, and casinos all try to divorce you from the outside. None of them has clear glass windows. Airports and fast-food restaurants, on the others hand, try to move you quickly from point A to point B, from inside the structure to outside the structure. Harsh lighting, uninviting colors, noise, a clear vision of the out-of-doors announces their purpose and accounts for the response, seemingly voluntary, of flyers and customers. This all made sense to me, but I asked him if he thought that reflected what architects he knew generally thought or how they are trained in the universities or if this represented his peculiar take on
the subject.

The above is a reasonably accurate transcription, as I took notes on it during and immediately after the exchange. I report it less because I think it conveys something profound, though it certainly did for me, but because it highlights a way of knowing that precedes recorded history and continues to inform the production, reading, and interpretation of books and articles. It is a way of knowing that operates in villages and towns, developed and developing countries, among the rich and poor, those who possess word processors and those who have never heard of them. I report it because academic writing, by its very nature conceals this process, substituting in its place a product, a text flattening out everything into soundless marks on a page or, in the case of this conference, represents presentations filled, one hopes, with lively exchanges afterward into a chapter in these “conference proceedings.”
It is important to mark this product-process confusion for a number of reasons, not the least of which is to avoid the silliness that comes from a gradual disengagement from the world of affairs into a quasi-monastic retreat into books, libraries, and web-sites. Leaving off this little polemic in favor of earthy, here and now dialogue, I return to the topic of the new Guggenheim, a rhetorical turn in architecture, and the degree to which Michael’s understanding of architects and architecture, which is remarkably friendly to rhetoric, is somehow representative.

2. The Rhetorical Function of Contemporary Museums
This last question weighed upon me: how much weight to place on Michael’s analysis. Understand me here. I value his insights and find them profound, but what I wanted to avoid was assuming this his rhetoric-friendly analysis was widespread in the profession. In researching the New Guggenheim, Michael came across an article about museums in, World Architecture:
Museums are attracting more visitors than ever before, and although the building boom in Europe is over, in many countries, especially in North America, architects are benefiting from opportunities for new galleries and museums to satisfy the demand. The key to their success is tourism, and the accompanying ticket and merchandise sales (Cost 1997: 106).
Apart from the importance of profits in understanding museums is the emphasis on building them to attract audiences. What this refers to is an effort to attract audiences able and willing to spend money (which is to say that somewhere near the heart of the museum industry is a conscious and quite concrete effort to create a structure that will accomplish this task). It is not too great a stretch here, given the various kind of museums that one might build – children’s, science, high-tech, rock and roll, sports halls of fame, as well as art – that those who design these structures must give some thought to the available means of persuading audiences to enter into their enclosed, semi-sacred spaces.

3. Rhetoric in Relation to “Great” Architecture in the Past
I wondered about the extent to which this kind of analysis, linking building with money, audiences, and politics, worked in relation to “sacred spaces” in the past. The great cathedrals, for example, and the early more academically oriented museums. Michael had recently lectured the faculty and graduate students at UC Berkeley on two seemingly disparate tracks of his work: (a) the use of computers in design (he had in fact recommended CATIA – a software used to design aircraft – to Gehry’s firm as appropriate to his approach to architectural design, and it was this software which enabled the successful realization of the Guggenheim), and (b) the restoration of historic structures.
On the extent to which the practical, consciously manipulative was present in early architecture, Michael was not certain. This was so in part because it was a question of conscious intent and in part because, as he remarked, his graduate education had focused on modernist theories of building and on form and material to the exclusion of socio-political and economic issues related to pushing projects and securing commissions.

For twenty years, I had kept a three volume paperback edition of primary documents on art and architecture edited by Elizabeth G. Holt. They stood on my shelves as potential reference works, something someday I might consult. One evening I glanced through them. Michael had told me about the great architect, Abbot Suger, who had built the first Gothic Cathedral at the abbey of St.-Denis in the twelfth century. Happily Professor Holt had included a selection from Suger’s memoirs. In English and not in the original Latin, of course, and nearly a thousand years later, his words were nevertheless haunting. They spoke of the purpose of renovation and they fixed on the need to persuade. But persuade in the context not of the here and now of a mundane world but a world toward which the great Gothic Cathedrals pointed as they fluted upward toward the heavens.
Its an odd language, at least to those of us who have backed away from Christianity (or were never there in the first place) and do not feel the need to read theology, but it is a language that locates architecture in relation to potential audiences and desired effect. Suger’s copper-guilt inscription on the gilded bronze doors he had cast talks about the effect he was seeking:
Whoever thou art, if thou seekest to extol the glory of these doors,
Marvel not at the gold and the expense but at the craftsmanship of the work
Bright is the noble work; but, being nobly bright, the work
Should brighten the minds, so that they may travel, through the true lights,
To the True Light where Christ is the true door.

In what manner it be inherent in this world the gold door defines:
The dull mind rises to truth through that which is material
And, in seeing this light, is resurrected from its former submersion.

On the lintel over the doors, the abbot’s words continue to establish the distance we here and now stand from in trying to fathom the role of architect there and then:
Receive, O stern Judge, the prayers of Thy Suger;
Grant that I be mercifully numbered among Thy own sheep.

As a lamb of God, the architect builds to brighten the minds of the faithful, enabling them to see in the wondrously crafted doors to the Church a deeper and more profound meaning, the earthly doors becoming a metaphor for Christ the true door through which one must past in order to be received into heaven. The doors are gilded, so that the dull mind might be resurrected, so that those obsessed by the wealth of this world might encounter a richer and more rewarding truth.
The same reasoning guides Suger’s discussion of the altar:
Into this panel, which stands in front of his most sacred body, we have put, according to our estimate, about forty-two marks of gold; [further] a multifarious wealth of precious gems, hyacinths, rubies, sapphires, emeralds and topazes, and also an array of different large pearls – [a wealth] as great as we had never anticipated to find (Suger 1957 [orig. eleventh century]: 25).

It does not require much of a leap to see how attractive such a display might be for pilgrims and the visible precedent it sets for making sizable donations. The size of the donation being related both to the nature of the indulgence sought and to what was previously given and to how much this or that abbey or Cathedral might, through its magnificence, command.
I called our friend, Professor Hohmann and asked him how Suger might have responded to our equation of St.-Denis with rhetoric. That the clergy should be resolute and effective in propagating the faith would have struck him as natural enough, but he (Suger) would have though of rhetoric and architecture as correlative arts, related to be sure, but not to be confused. One had to do with persuasive speech, the other with transforming stone, glass, wood and metal into buildings. Michael, on the other hand, thought that the ethos of the period did not distinguish between manifestations of the divine, cosmic order be they spoken, written or built of stone. Later I happened on a collection of essays by the classicist, Harry Caplan. In an essay on medieval preaching, he commented on the carvings of dame rhetoric to be found on various churches and cathedrals throughout Europe.

Michael and I had also talked about museums. I wondered when they had been invented and what had been their purpose. Again I consulted my little reference work and here happened across one Alexander Lenoir who, in 179l, had been charged in the aftermath of the French revolution with organizing a depot for art objects acquired from the Church. The paintings went to the Louvre, while the medieval and renaissance sculpture, church furnishings, and stained glass went into the Musee des Monuments Francis. The Oxford Companion to Art tells us that he arranged in the cloister and gardens at a convent in Paris some 500 examples of French art that included the finest French work of the Middle Ages now known to us.
Lenoir in his memoirs speaks with pride about his efforts at recovering the royal vaults from the Abbey of St.-Denis which had been burned to the ground during the civil war. After the defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of the monarchy, Lenoir was made Administrator of Monuments at St. Denis. In l816, the Museum was suppressed and most of the exhibits divided between the Louvre and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts or returned to the monasteries and families from which they had been taken. Lenoir’s schemes of classification, however, arranging art according to historical periods (Carolingian, Merovingian, etc.), and his genealogical approach (arranging art work chronologically in an effort to show its rise and decline, as one moved from one room to another) influences art museums up to the present day.
Neither Michael nor I had ever heard of Lenoir. But what was not relevant to our thinking was his argument about the importance of his Musee in 1803. Here he strikes a distinctly pragmatic note: A museum in its institution ought . . . to have two objects in view: the one political, the other that of public instruction. In a political point of view, it should be established with sufficient splendor and magnificence to strike the eye and attract the curious from every quarter of the globe, who would consider it as their duty to be munificent amongst a people friendly to the arts . . . (Lenoir 1966 [orig. nineteenth century]: 281). I think what this meant, in the context of the Napoleonic wars and France’s efforts to cement alliances against the English and their allies with France and throughout the world, was that the Musee was ideologically important. Evidence of a superior culture, it could inspire in others a willingness to tender support.
Michael read through my little pass at drawing Suger and Lenoir, St.-Denis and the Musee into our conversation. I thought it thin, not anything that I knew much about beyond reading a couple of selections in an anthology, but both of us found it suggestive. Churches and museums are not simply given, structures we happen onto, enter into, and talk about with our friends. In the here and now of constructing such buildings, we may speak of purpose, design, and effect on specific audiences – the faithful, Christians, revolutionaries, nationalists, potential allies, etc.

A few days later, Michael called. He said that he had a book on the first know architectural design for a building anywhere in the world, the plan of St. Gall drawn up in the eighth century. He brought this book over which turned out to be a three-volume set authored by Horn and Born and published by UC Press. Huge books, they looked as though they contained newspapers. Michael explained that, since its discovery in the eighteenth century, generations of scholars have argued over the plan. It had apparent inconsistencies having to do with a shift between the measurements provided in the text and the actual scale of the drawing. The monastery it so painstakingly laid out seemed never to have been built. Horn and Born, he said, proved quite conclusively that the inconsistencies were actually the result of monastic upheaval of the time, a conflict between two orders with radically different views on the nature and function of monastic life in relation to the individual and society.
I looked at those books he had dumped down on my table, they were enormous, and asked him if he had ever read them. Many times he said, though not in the last few years. It turns out he had purchased them while still in college and that for him they represented a kind of retreat from day to day cares and confusions. I looked through them briefly. They are a triumph of scholarship and also, as Michael pointed out, an entry into monastic politics and the purposes served by buildings great or small.

4. The Rhetoric of the New Guggenheim
Fortified in the belief that a link between rhetoric and architecture could be shown historically, that it was a fact of contemporary life, at least as Michael understood it and current writing in architectural journals talked about it, and that it was, to coin a phrase, intellectually sweet, we continued assembling documents having to do with Bilbao. Michael cut out articles from journals he subscribed to about the new museum. Both of us did computer searches for information relative not only to the museum but also to Basque nationalists, the history of Bilbao, etc. What follows leaves off the autobiographical approach, organizing our conversations in a way that reveals the utility of a method of analysis which a colleague of ours, and my wife, Professor Wen Shu Lee calls “rhetorical contextualization” (see her essay in this volume).
Instead on fixing on rhetoric as a particular object, carefully differentiated from other objects, rhetorical contextualization seeks to recover the socio-historical dimension of any cultural artifact. Understanding it as “speech,” an artifact recovers the notion of speaker or author and with it intent or purpose. As a text, it invites interpretation and does so, as speech necessarily does, in relation to audiences. A critical take on rhetorical contextualization inquires into who did not and does not get to speak, what did not a does not get said, who does and who does not count as the appropriate audience/s.
Rhetorical contextualization situates and transforms an artifact into a relational thing, placing it in relation to what it affirms and what it negates, it also provides for an uplifting vertical move, what Wen Shu calls “inter-rhetoricity.” Inter-rhetoricity contrasts with “inter-textuality” through its efforts to recover both the text and the speakers and audiences in trying to understand historical events as well as efforts to talk about them and then to talk about such talk. Inter-textuality encounters “texts” that range from artifacts to everything that can be talked about and places them in hypothetical space. Inter-rhetoricity encounters texts ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime, but insists on establishing some human scale in trying to get at their meaning and significance.
Considering the new Guggenheim as speech raises issues that might be lost in paeans to great art (or architecture) and the assumption that great art is both timeless and placeless. Why did the Guggenheim foundation decide to build a museum at Bilbao? This is a group of people. They have names. We know that Thomas Kerns, the Guggenheim’s new director, approached people in Venice and Vienna about building a new museum and was turned down.

Why were the Basques in Bilbao interested in building a museum there? So much so that they were willing to provide $100,000,000.00 for that purpose and, at the same time, relinquish their right to pass on the structure being built? Karen Stein, writing in Architectural Record, hazards an answer. In 1991, she writes, members of the Basque regional government concluded that an international institution of contemporary art would bring them cultural prestige and a steady stream of tourism and more importantly tourism dollars to their state capital, Bilbao (Stein 1997: 75). Why were the elites in Spain willing to allow this project to go forward, and it should be remembered that the King of Spain was there to inaugurate the building when it opened. And what was the architect, Frank Gehry, trying to do with this vast, shiny, titanium skinned effort?
On the other hand, we do not know the view of the Church in this matter or, more to the point, Basque nationalists for whom the modernist, late modernist, or postmodern design – an internationalist and decidedly non-Basque in its inspiration and associations – must be considered a political and cultural affront? What were the views of the citizens of Bilbao about the structure or about having such a museum built there?
From questions about the speaker/creators or collaborators and those who were left out and not part of the collaboration, we turn to questions about the speech/text? What is it? An art museum! But what sort? One that, in its structure, dominates, at least in its publicity and certainly in its visual impact in relation to what surrounds it, anything and everything it houses. A post-modern or late-modernist structure housing modern art, the labels are breath-taking and must not be allowed to conceal what this text does not contain. Little that is Spanish and virtually nothing Basque, save for Guernica, the painting by Picasso depicting the execution of Basques by Spanish fascists, members of Franco’s invading army. A painting promised by Spain (a loan from the museum in Madrid) but which has not yet arrived. When and if it does, it seems unlikely that its connection with Spanish fascism or Basque nationalism will be heavily featured. And if mentioned, it will more than likely be overwhelmed, since it will be surrounded by concentric circles or resolutely non-representational art whose political content, fresh perhaps at one time or another, has bled back into a dark and spreading aesthetic pool of priceless art.
Nothing there will call attention to the more recent executions by Spanish agents or the bombings and executions conducted by Basque guerrillas. Nothing there will focus on the connection between Guggenheim senior whose moneys derived from mining and from breaking up unions in the Western United States. Nothing will indicate that the Guggenheims are Jewish and that Spain expelled its Jews during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella or that Spanish fascists during the 1940s, including General Franco, came close to bringing Spain into the war on the side of Germany (Churchill authorized the expenditure of what amounts to a bribe of $100,000,000.00 to keep Spain from entering the war on the side of the Axis powers).
Little or nothing will be said about the origins of the structure itself. The fact that Gehry visited the proposed site and demanded that it be changed and that, after the change, the Guggenheim announced a design competition, inviting an Austrian and a Japanese architect, neither of whom were known for designing museums, to apply and gave them three weeks to submit a plan. Gehry, who had months to prepare, not surprisingly won the “competition.” The other designs were never shown. The fact that someone in Gehry’s firm, trying to determine what skin to drape over a traditional post and lintel structure, noted that the price of titanium had taken a huge dip, owing to Russia’s need to raise capital quickly.
These facts – the fixed “competition,” the mundane approach to structure, and the opportunistic use of titanium – will not be inscribed in copper and gilt on the museum doors. Neither will the fact that well-known builders of museums, Richard Meier for example the designer of the new Getty museum, orient their work around providing adequate space and natural lighting for the objects on display or that they and others of their guild have noted that the Guggenheim is ridiculously ill-designed in this regard with its little sky lights and windows high above.

5. Architectural Criticism and Rhetoric
But then the function of the structure is only secondarily about housing art. Its primary function is, as with other new museums, to attract tourists and tourist dollars. This explains something else that will not be talked about inside the museum: The intricate PR campaign (flying in “architectural critics” from newspapers and TV networks and the like to attend the grand opening to be wined and dined for a week at no expense to themselves with an eye to encouraging them to write “dispassionate, objective, neutral” reports of the event) designed prior to the opening. Herbert Muschamp, architecture critic for the New York Times, met Gehry in Bilbao for a preview of the museum: “Do you want to see the building?” he asks, when we meet at my hotel. What a card” (Muschamp 1997: 58). Muschamp’s title is “The Miracle in Bilbao.” “If you want to look into the heart of American art today,” he writes, “you are going to need a passport. You will have to pack your bags, leave the USA and find your way to Bilbao, a small rusty city in the north east corner of Spain” (Muschamp 1997: 54).

The puffery is remarkable. Sue Peters wrote a feature story in the San Francisco Examiner Magazine, entitled “Basque-ing in Glory”:
There are no Jeff Koons’ “Puppy” Chia Pets for sale yet, nor even an faux titanium mini-museum key chains. This is a good sign that this city in Northern Spain isn’t rushing to exploit its new tourist attraction. But it may soon have to face the fact that it is home to one of the most significant modern buildings of this century, and if you build it – even in a little-known post – industrial town in the heart of Basque country – people will come.

What kind of people will come? They won’t be just the art critics: Already, school groups from nearby France, retirees from San Francisco and New York, and local families are making the pilgrimage to the new Guggenheim Museum, whose brilliant architecture defies description – and even photography [a considerable claim given the spread of photos ranging from the front of the magazine and five more in the article (Peters 1998: 58). We will get back to this in examining the audiences for the Guggenheim, but we want to hang onto the extent and success of the PR campaign to reach these audiences.
Since neither of us (the authors of this essay) watch TV, we will have to trust our theoretical instincts in predicting massive campaigns covering the opening on CBS, ABC, and NBC “news” and various cable channels. Magazines like Newsweek, Time, and US News also, not surprisingly, featured this event. The “text” of the Guggenheim was being designed even as the structure was being built and, from the standpoint of buying advertising time, it was a multi-million dollar campaign befitting the introduction of a new line of cologne.
Who are the speakers, the players, and who are not? Already, given who the speaker/agents are in the process, members of the Guggenheim foundation, the Basque and Spanish elites, Kerns (the director of the Guggenheim), Gehry himself, we can map out various speaker audience relationships. Krens, for example, had to put together a coalition that included members of the above groups who determined whether or not funds would be gathered and dispersed to build something, a museum before Gehry ever got involved. If Kerns could not persuade key decision makers in these groups of the viability of his ideas and later Gehry’s “design,” the structure would never have made it off the page or out of the computer.
The Guggenheim elite persuaded the Basque elite that building a museum was somehow in their interests to the point of ponying up a hundred million dollars (or was it the Basque elite, armed with a hundred million dollars, persuaded the Guggenheim elite that it should plant its museum in a depressed, rust-belt city in a war zone). What this line of questioning suggests is that we begin envisioning dialogue, negotiation, persuasion as central to the process of design and construction. It further suggests that, with a coalition in place, the money raised, and the building under construction becomes, in our thinking if not in our speech, reified, a “given.” It becomes an “art museum”, instead of a project whose purpose has to do with attracting tourists, to take only one example.

Once the coalition of decision makers in these various groups is in place and Gehry has been engaged, another audience looms intimately related to whatever shared sense of purpose guides coalition deliberations and collaborative activities. This is the aggregate of PR machinery existing in various countries operating in different media that have the potential of reaching the audiences of potential tourists whose travel plans and willingness to spend is part of the object. Who was responsible for targeting the opinion leaders in the media interested in promoting the arts and more specifically the arts envisioned by the Guggenheim project we do not know. But there is no doubt, surveying the broad based, favorable, and efficacious response from newspapers, magazines, and TV, that somewhere someone or some group was responsible for designing and implementing a campaign.
The strategies employed in this campaign and in the “stories” planted and inspired by this campaign to persuade viewers and readers to place themselves imaginatively in Bilbao, to examine their travel funds to realize this vision, to take the steps necessary to actualize the visit, this constitutes suasion of various speakers in relation to different audiences. Among them wealthy retirees, faculty and students, culture vultures, women’s tours, etc. which, by PR consultants, may be broken down demographically according to age, income, education, nationality, gender, etc. and according to technology.
Another venue for reaching the target audiences, one combining money and travel, lies in the internet. The Guggenheim has a home-page and so does one of the Basque groups, though not the separatists. The Guggenheim page makes no mention of Basques when it celebrates the museum at Bilbao, and the Basque page makes no mention of the Guggenheim and its cultural implications for the Basque people or its economic consequences for the region. Internet surfers, unaware of the politics of web-pages and the importance of what is included and excluded, may be tempted to take in the prose, the pictures, and a succession of informational windows a-critically which is to say equate what is given with what is real or what ought to be or necessarily is.
The audiences who are not included in these calculations are, among others, the poor, those who do not care about “high culture,” travel, or talk about the arts. Certain groups of Basques, the separatists for example, may be ignored at one level only to play a role at another as an audience which needs to be neutralized. The agreement to make Guernica the centerpiece of the museum may be understood as a message sent to an audience in a position to oppose or disrupt the project and another audience whose willingness to be taxed to create this museum must also, at some point, be taken into consideration.

6. Conclusion
At the theoretical level, we are content with displaying the potential for pressing certain questions associated with the rhetorical tradition, questions having to do with speaker, message, and audiences (who are the players, and who are not; what is said, and what is not said). Through rhetorical contextualization even the most esoteric text can be dislodged from a hypothetical world of ideas to particulate in the systems that work to create such texts. Through it, the text recovers its place in history. Put another way, no text can be detached from speakers on the one hand or audiences on the other and a critical response to this  re-engagement obliges us to identify those who are or have been systematically left out in the production and interpretation of such artifacts.
At a practical level, in relation to the practice of architecture in our time, rhetorical contextualization marks systems in various communities that prevent citizens from participating in or deliberating over the structure of the most important structures in their communities. Yes, there is a text, in the more expansive meaning of the term, but it is a text created by and attended to by people with names. To admit this and to seek out those names (and the people so named) scales down the talk to the truly human, human beings in the here and now of trying to make sense of the world in which they find themselves. Put another way, we have tried to scale down our own talk, step out from behind our professional vocabularies and our disciplinary boundaries to make sense of the world in which we find ourselves.

REFERENCES
Cost, H. (1997). Special Report. World Architecture 55, 104-112.
Lenoir, A. (1966/orig. nineteenth century). In: Holt, E. (Ed.), From the Classicist to the Impressionists: Art and Architecture in the Nineteenth Century (pp. 280-285), New York: Anchor.
Muschamp, H. (1997). The Miracle in Bilbao. The New York Times Magazine, 54-59, 72, 82.
Peters, S. (1998). Gehry-ing for Art. San Francisco Examiner Magazine, 9-11, 20-21.
Stein, K. D. (1997). Project Diary: Frank Gehry’s dream project, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, draws the world to Spain’s Basque Country. Architectual Record 10, 75-87.
Suger, (1957/orig. eleventh century). In: Holt, E. (Ed.), A Documentary History of Art (pp. 25-36), New York: Anchor.

Truth is deeply complicit in argument wherever logic is, for independent of the purposes of different argument kinds, in so far as they use standard logic they are compelled by its underlying theory of truth. And the notions of truth underlying the two giant contributions in the history of logic: that of Aristotle, and that of the logicians preoccupied with the foundations of mathematics in the early twentieth century – show deep theoretical and even metaphysical assumptions that make them suspect as the underlying theory of a logic adequate to support the theory of argument as currently construed. That is, argument seen as the rational core of ordinary and specialized discourse of the widest variety of sorts. Such a theory of argument with a clear empirical and practical component cannot assume the usefulness of underlying images of logic drawn from rather different conceptions of how reason manifests itself in discourse.
First: as to the problems with the logical core James Herman Randall, in his classic exposition of Aristotle, offers a complex view of the relationship between truth, logic and inquiry. The to dioti – the why of things, connects apparent truths, the peri ho, with explanatory frameworks, through the archai of demonstration, that serve as ta prota, the first things – a true foundation for apparent truths. Although Aristotle was more ‘post modern’ then many of those that work in his tradition, the archai after all were subject matter specific, the envisioning of archai readily knowable if not known, reflected a classic and overarching optimism about knowledge. This enabled Aristotle to graft a determinate logic onto the various indeterminancies inherent in much of inquiry.
Logic is central in dialogue as well: to dialegesthai, the premise seeking activity that seeks to identify the appropriate archai of kinds of things. The theory of the syllogism, along with eristics, offers the basic tools of the logikos or dialectikos, one who thinks and questions.

When all works well, the result is the demonstrative syllogism, apodeixis which shows the necessity of a that, a hoti, in light of the dioti, the cause, in relation to the archai. From whence the archai? Quoting Randall, by “”experience” of facts, by repeated observations, we become aware of the archai, the universal that is implicit in them.” Citing Aristotle: “When the observation of instances is often repeated, the universal that is there becomes plain” pp. 42-3. Such a crude inductivist epistemologically has little appeal to moderns  and offers little danger for modern views of inquiry, but Aristotle’s logic, remains within the normative core. That is perhaps even worse for understanding inquiry, for unlike the crude inductivism which is quickly seen as too crude, his logic has both necessity and inherent plausibility. The result: the basic truth structure of his logic has been built into the normative structure of reasoning from his time till now.
The problem is how to distinguish the archai from among endoxa, the merely accepted opinions prevalent at the time. Again Randall “It is nous, working with and in the midst of facts, working in the subject matter itself, that ”sees” the truth of the archai“ p. 44. Not in Platonic isolation, to be sure, but in the context of subject matter. But still, this noetic ‘recognizing’ shares with Plato’s view a phenomenological (Randall calls it ‘psychological’ (ibid.)), rather than a logical account of what it means to come to see the truth of archai.
Even given the primitive necessity of noetic recognition of archai, the archai must still prove their logical worth by being the framework within a subject matter becomes truly known. Archai yield the conceptual structures that is determined by syllogistic reasoning from them to consequences. As Randall puts it. ‘”Science” episteme, is systematized “formalized” reasoning; it is demonstration, apodexsis, from archai … [it] operates through language, logos; through using language, logismos, in a certain connected fashion, through syllogismos‘ p. 46. Syllogismos points back to the  basic constraint on nous that it see beyond the accidental and the particular, that it deal with the essential the ti esti, and so syllogism deals with what all of a kind have in common.
Syllogistic reasoning within episteme deduces the particular from what all particulars of the kind have in common, and in dialectic looks at the proposed archai or endoxa, through the strongest possible lens – counter examples as understood in the traditional sense of strict contradictories, systematized, then canonized as the square of opposition.
All of this is so familiar that it seems hardly worth recounting, but without the deep conceptual understanding of the context, the problem with syllogism, and particularly with the theory of truth that underlies the practice of offering counter-examples, the issue will not be clear.

The focus on episteme, on theoria places the bar high for those who would propose archai. The ‘inductive’ epistemology of concept formation along with the noetic interpretation of their apperception presupposes that human beings can know reality with an immediacy that seem silly given the course of scientific discovery over the past several centuries. Too much conceptual water has gone under the bridge to think that concepts are to be seen clearly within percepts. Rather, the conceptual frameworks that human beings have elaborated, modified and discarded have been multifarious and extend far beyond the imaginative capabilities of Aristotelian views that take the perceptually presented as representative of underlying realities. Once the enormous difficulty of the task of finding the conceptual apparatus that will undergird a true picture of reality is realized, Aristotle’s demand that concepts hold true without exception becomes a serious drag on inquiry. Yet it still prevails, built into the very meaning of logic as used.
Why this is so, is in part because of the power of the next major advance in logical theory. Syllogism, the only completed science as late as Kant, took on a new life when the issues of the foundations of mathematics became the central concern of theorists. The historical connection is not hard to trace; for from Plato on mathematics was seen as the prototype of knowledge, and its truths a model for the outcome of inquiry. Galileo and Newton linked mathematics to science and so it is no surprise that the logical model, based on the needs of mathematics retained its grasp on theorists of science as recently as logical empiricism. But there is more to that story, for the enormous advances of the twentieth century took the rudimentary mathematization of syllogism by Boole and others, to a theory whose major achievement: completeness, became a model for both what logic is and how it should be understood.

The magnificent achievement of Russell and Tarski offered a model for understanding logical inference and offers an elaboratable structure – quantification theory, that congruent with much of syllogism, offered a clarity of understanding that surpassed anything dreamt of by centuries of logicians. The Aristotelian core remained, now rethought in terms of extensional interpretations of function symbols that offered a new grounding for the all or nothing account of argument built into the square of opposition. The Boolian interpretation of Aristotle’s quantifiers retained the high demand that universal claims are to be rejected in light of a single counter-instance, as did the modern semantics of models within which a natural theory of truth was to be found. Mathematizing the clear intuition of correspondence, Tarski’s theory of truth gives the stability needed to yield vast areas of mathematics and even offered some precious, but few, axiomatizations of physical theory. The price was that the truth was relativized to models, yet there was no reason to think that any of the models in use in science were true. This remark requires clarification.
Since the optimistic days in Greece when the early meta- analysis was innocent of many real examples, the claim that archai are “noused” from particulars with ease seems a historical curiosity, irrelevant to human inquiry. For the history of human inquiry in the sciences, contrary to Aristotle, showed that the identification of archai is no easy thing. Rather centuries of scientific advance have shown the utility of all sorts of truish or even down-right false models of phenomena. Concepts, and the laws, generalizations, principles and etc. that cashed them out into claims, have shown themselves to be mere approximations to a receding reality. As deeper elaborations of connections among concepts, and underlying explanatory frames, have characterized successful inquiry, truth in any absolute sense becomes less of an issue. The issue is, rather, likelihoods, theoretic fecundity, interesting plausibility and etc. The operational concepts behind these: confirmation and disconfirmation, however, in the once standard philosophical reading (Hempel and the rest) retained the absolutist core that Aristotelian logic exemplifies – amplified by quantification theory. Even Popper saw falsification as instance disconfirmation.
Much work since then has offered a more textured view; I think here of Lakatos and Laudan. Students of science no longer see the choice as between deductivism as standardly construed as an account for scientific explanation and some Feyerabendian a-logical procedure that disregards truth. Students of science see, rather, a more nuanced relation between theory building and modification. Argument theorists and informal logicians should be thrilled at this result for it opens the door for what they do best: the analysis of complex arguments. But not if they are crippled by the very logic that has dominated the discussion so far.

Truth, one of the key meta-theoretical underpinnings of logic – along with entailment and relevance – looks rather different when we move from traditional accounts to scientific practice. Let’s take an example.
Second: a constructive theory of truth
If you ask a sane moderately informed person what the world is really made of in just the general sense that Greeks might have asked, the answer is something like “atoms.” Let’s start there. At the core of modern science stands the Periodic Table. I take as an assumption that if anything is worth considering true of all of the panoply of modern understanding of the physical world it is that. But why? And what will learn by changing the paradigm?

The periodic Table stands at the center of an amazingly complex joining of theories at levels of analysis from the most ordinary chemical formula in application to industrial needs, to the most recondite – particle physics. The range of these ordinary things – electrical appliances to bridges, has been interpreted in sequences of models, developed over time, each of these responding to a particular need or area of scientific research. Examples are no more than a listing of scientific understanding of various sorts: the understanding of dyes that prompted organic chemistry in Germany in the late 19th century; the smelting of metals and the improvement of metal kinds, e.g. steel; the work of Farraday in early electric theory; the the development of the transistors and the exploration of semi-conductors. This multitude of specific projects, all linked empirically to clear operational concepts, has been unified around two massive theoretic complexes: particle physics and electromagnetic wave theory. The deep work in science is to unify theories. The mundane work in science is to clarify and extend each of the various applications and clarify and modify existing empirical laws, and this in two fashions: 1) by offering better interpretations of empirical and practical understanding as the underlying theories of their structure becomes clearer. 2) By strengthening connections between underlying theories so as to move towards a more coherent and comprehensive image of physical reality, as underlying theories are modified and changed. On my reading of physical chemistry the Periodic Table is the lynch pin, in that is gives us, back to Aristotle again, the basic physical kinds.
We need a theory of truth that will support this. And, surprisingly perhaps, I think the image is just what current argumentation theorists need as well. Since argument is not frozen logical relations but interactive and ongoing, we need a logic that supports dialectical advance. That is, we need a dynamics of change rather than a statics of proof. We need to see how we reason across different families of considerations, different lines of argument, that add plausibility, and affect likelihoods. Arguments are structured arrays of reasons brought forward; that is, argument pervades across an indefinite range of claims and counter-claims. These claims are complex and weigh differently as considerations, depending on how the argument moves. So we need a notion of truth that connects bundles of concerns – lines of argument, and to different degrees.

Back to quantification theory. Quantification theory was developed in order to solve deep problems in the foundations of mathematics. And the standard interpretation of mathematics in arithmetic models proved to be a snare. What was provable is that any theory that had a model, had one in the integers, and models in arithmetic became the source for the deepest work in quantification theory (Godel, most obviously). But the naturalness, even ubiquity of a particular model kind did not alter that fact that truth in a model could only be identified with truth when a model of ontological significance was preferred. This seems to have escaped Tarski’s followers who spent little effort in exploring the difference. Now, truth in a model is an essential concept. Without it we have no logic. But the identification of truth in a model with truth just reflects the metaphysical and epistemological biases of the tradition with the univocal character of mathematics as it was understood then. If I am right, it is not truth in a model that is that central issue for truth, but rather the choice of models that represent realities. And this cannot be identified with truth in a model for it requires that models be compared.
To look at it another way, if we replace mathematics with science as the central paradigm from which a logical theory of truth is to be drawn, the identification of truth with truth in a model is severed. For there is no model in which scientific theories are proved true. Rather science shows interlocking models connected in weird and wonderful ways. The reduction rules between theories are enormously difficult to find and invariably include all sorts of assumptions not tied to the reduced theory itself. The classic example is the reduction of the gas laws to statistical mechanics. The assumption of equiprobability in regions is just silly as an assumption about real gases, but the assumption permits inferences to be drawn that explain the behavior of gases in a deeply mathematical way, and in a way that gets connected to the developing atomic theory at the time, much to the advantage of theoretical understanding and practical application.

What are the lessons for the theory of truth? We need to get rid of the univocal image of truth – that is truth within a model, and replace it with the flexibility that modalities both require and support, that is truth across models. We need the metatheoretic subtlety to give mathematical content to likelihoods and plausibilities, a theory of the logic of argument must address the range of moves that ordinary discourse permits as we qualify and modify in light of countervailing considerations. These can not be squeezed into the Procrustean Bed of all or nothing construals of logical reasoning. Formal logic has been captured by Tarski semantics. It offers a clear analogue to the notion of correspondence, but at an enormous price. The power of Tarski semantics – the yield being completeness, that is all formally valid proofs yield logical true conditionals – requires that the models be extensional, that is, all function symbols in the formal language are definable in terms of regular sets, that is sets closed under the standard operations of set theory, and definable completely in terms of their extensions.
The problem, of course, is that the overwhelming majority of both ordinary and theoretic terms have no obvious extensional definition, and the most interesting functional concepts are intentional (causation, in all of its varieties). The clue is the formal solution to modalities (necessity, possibility, and variants such as physical possibility): that is relationships among worlds as in Kripke semantics. This moves the focus from truth within models, extensionally defined – to relationships among selected worlds. Such relationships may vary widely, each one specific to a relationship, as in the analysis of physical causality in terms of a function that maps onto physically possible worlds (worlds consistent with relevant aspects of physical theory). Little can be said about the general restrictions on mappings across worlds, for inter-world relationships, if we take the intuition behind the account of physical causality, are broadly empirico-historical. That is, what makes a world physically possible is relative to that laws of physics interpreted as restrictions on functions across worlds.
The lack of a logical decision procedure – a consequence of the inter-model relations being empirical in the world-historical sense, need not make us despair as to a solution to the problem of truth in principle. For although essential details of the model require an empirico-historical investigation of concepts in use — the functional relations that are concretized in warrrants that support entailments and the procedures that determine the relevance of claims and counter-claims, that is, the structure of logical possibilities, can be furnished a priori.
A solution in principle becomes possible when we look beyond truth in models to truth across models. Within models something very much like the standard interpretation holds, for it enables us to refute our models as we find disconfirming instances. (I say very much like because I don’t want to rule out holding out, even within a model, against disconfirmation. But the clear case of classic contradiction is within models: think of why all men are mortal). But across models we need something very different indeed.
As mentioned, the account I offer has an affinity with Kripke’s solution to the problems of modalities. We look to functional relations across models, and the history of relations over time and in relation to their logical surround. What I will try to do is induce  you to imagine a mental model. For those interested I have some copies of a precise mathematical description. Bereft of the mathematics a mental image must suffice.

Think, if you will, of physical science as some beautiful array of tubing of different thickness and different color – the color infusing the tube – arranged vertically before you. And see them with vessels at the joins of tubes, gradually changing color. Each individual vessel, can you imagine them, changes colors as the colors from the various tubes from which it feeds alter the composition of the color in the vessel The ‘vessel’ is a complex composite function of the tubes to and from which it draws. What is this strange image I ask you to envision?
Truly, the vessels are models drawn from our scientific concepts, the most general models at the top; at the bottom models of data: observations, if you will. Although the models are connected they are individuatable. The richest space of vessels – many vessels, much changes in color, myriad connections – is in the middle of the array. I think here of systems of chemical formula; the aggregate laws of of medium level physics (rigid body dynamics, perhaps); models of DNA; computer models of weather systems and other complex phenomena – nodes in the array to which and from which connections are made. Color fields are systems of principles, laws, generalizations, and other regularities, connected by inference – functions that map models onto models. But that is to introduce the mathematics. An easier understanding is that the connecting tubes are the conduits of evidence. Confirmation from below, systematic support from above, although that is a misleading simplification since higher level theories generate new empirical support for theories they explain (reduce). The ‘colors’ change with the results of inquiry as the relationship between the various models becomes clearer, as the evidence from reducing theories and empirical confirmation alter the evidentiary weight flowing to and through the various theoretic nodes.
Truth becomes a property of the field. A few suggestions. First, the crucial empirical dimension, for this is science after all. There is a set of privileged models: empirical models of the data. What makes science empirical is a constraint that all models have connections with empirical models. Second, for models at any level short of the highest there may be found higher level models. So for first level models of the data, these data are joined through a more theoretical model. Theoretic models take their epistemic force first from the empirical models that they join, and then, and more importantly, from the additional empirical models that result from the theoretic joining in excess of the initial empirical base of the models joined.
Truthlikeness is defined in terms of considerations such as: The increase or decrease in the complexity of particular models over time. The depth with which any model is supported by other models (the height on the vertical of any set of nodes (vessels) connected by tubes) at a time, and as a function of time. The breadth, the horizontal width which a supporting model is represented in the field of lower level – more empirical – models at a time, and as a function of time. The persistence of a set across the array. In terms of the visual image: vessels whose color tends to diffuse across the system.
Gradient of color, literally in a physical or computer model of the array, is a metric across the field. Analogically, gradient of color stands for the changing weights assigned to models as they interact. The metric correlates with evidence of varying degrees of robustness flowing from different sources. Truthlikeness in complex ways becomes a function of the structure itself.
Pretty dense, but turn the image to the example. The Periodic Table, up pretty high and to the center connects with the vast domain of chemistry – physical and organic, which in association with roughly parallel theoretic clusters, mechanics – statics and dynamics, electro-magnetic wave theory – explains just about everything we do and can do in the physical world in the last century, and has increased in its explanatory power as individual theories are expanded and refined, and inter-theoretic connections made. There is logic there, dare we deny it? Students of each field learn translation procedures to and from observable phenomena – to and from related theories. The connections are often the result of higher order theories. Above the Periodic Table: particle physics, quantum theory, quantum electro-dynamics, general relativity. These are the massive contributions of 20th century physics. Do we deny that there is logic there?
By the way, there is no requirement for the the highest order models be univocal (that is the lesson of indeterminancy). Nor that all model chains (paths up the vertical) go particularly high. But since higher order theories deepen the support, we like connections and go as high as we can: the tip of the Einstein cone – TOES (theories of everything).
There is a logic, but it is not the all or nothing logic of Aristotle and mathematicians. An argument is not as weak as its weakest link, nor are really weak links much trouble at all. (Think of all of the relatively unsupported empirical phenomena that are part of science without having any clearly seen connections to theories. Nobody changes organic chemistry when the latest results on cholesterol in the diet are reported).
Each member of the array supports the others, but they hang separately. That is, particular evidentiary moves affect each model differently. In the immediate neighborhood (that is actually a technical expression, but think of the vessel image again and picture tubes that connect directly to a vessel), inquiry affects models in the most intimate way – a near relative of standard logic probably works fine here. But there are relations with other theories, consequences for related theories. How does change percolate through the system? These are questions that the shift from a mathematical to a scientific paradigm of truth affords.

There are at least two uninteresting sorts of truths: statements of the cat on the mat variety and logical truths. Everything else relies heavily on movements across inference sets. Sentences ranging from ‘the light is red’ to ‘John has pneumonia,’ in their standard occurrences, are warranted as true (or likely, or plausible, etc) because countless other statements are true (or likely or plausible, etc.). To verify each of these, or any other interesting expression, is to move across a wide range of other statements connected by underlying empirical and analytical theories (systems of meaning, generalizations etc). All of these have deep connections with observable fact, but more importantly are connected by plausible models of underlying and related mechanisms. These include all sort of functional connections that enable us to infer from evidence to conclusion, and to question, in light of apparent inconsistencies connected to indefinitely elaborate and elaboratable networks of claims and generalizations of many sorts. For most estimations of the truth of a claim offer a rough index of our evaluation of the context that stands as evidence for it. Under challenge, that body of evidence can be expanded almost indefinitely, all of this still governed by the available meaning postulates and inference tickets cited, assumed, or added as inquiry and argumentation proceed. And without a logic adequate to the understanding the give and take of counter-example and claim, argument and argumentation fall asunder.

My claim, for now three presentations at Amsterdam, is that real argument will be better understood if the best arguments was seen as the prototype – what I call argumentation in regularized discourse communities. What I have tried to show here is that looking at the these also yields a model theoretic understructure for truth in logic.

REFERENCES
Randall, J.H. (1960). Aristotle. New York: Columbia University Press.

The work of American self-described “wordman”, Kenneth Burke, is having tremendous impact on rhetorical and literary theory and criticism, speech communication, sociology, and many other academic areas, including in some small ways argumentation.Despite this recent attention, particularly in the work of Arnie Madsen (1989, 1991, 1993) and James Klumpp (1993) as well as the recent special issue of Argumentation and Advocacy on “Dramatism and Argumentation” (1993) and occasional argument criticisms which invoke Burkean perspectives, Burke’s work still remains relatively unknown to many argumentation scholars, and potential contributions of Burkean theory to argumentation studies remain to be developed fully. Moreover, as Madsen (1993) observed, “the works of Kenneth Burke have gone relatively unnoticed in the field of argumentation theory” (164). And although it is certainly true that “Burke offers no systematic and complete theory of argument” (Parson, 1993, 145), it is also nonetheless equally the case that Burke’s work on human symbol systems and motives, summarized as his theory of “dramatism,” encompasses the traditional domains of rhetoric, poetic, and dialectic, thereby at least by most traditional accounts encompassing as well argumentation (See van Eemeren, Grootendorst, and Kruiger), subsuming, re-defining, and re-positioning “argument” within the orientation of “dramatism.”
The current study attempts to “locate” argumentation within Burke’s theoretical edifice, dramatism, and, more generally, to examine how “dramatism” transforms traditional approaches to “rationality.” As “rationality” is transformed, so too, necessarily, is argumentation. The specific objectives of this paper are per force more restricted. I will sketch, generally and broadly, dramatism’s encompassing argument move, with its attendent transformations of “rationality.” Second, and a bit more specifically, I will offer a description of Burke’s theory of dialectics, before concluding with some remarks suggesting how, via the agency of Burke’s “psychologized” rhetoric of identification, dialectic becomes enacted as what Burke calls the “great drama of human relations” (1955, 263).

I
Burke’s “Dramatism” is set forth broadly in his informal Motivorum Trilogy: A Grammar of Motives (1945), which treats generally of dialectics and transformational processes, A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), which treats of rhetoric as “consubstantial” with “identification,” and A Symbolic of Motives (unpublished), which treats of poetics and ethics variously (depending upon which design for the unfinished project is featured) from within the orientation of “dramatism.” A related manuscript, Poetics, Dramatistically Considered (unpublished), is a relatively complete treatment of precisely what the title promises; it may be a re-titled version of what began as A Symbolic.[i] Burke’s proposed “trilogy” of “a grammar,” which centered generally and paradoxically on dialectics, “a rhetoric,” and “a symbolic,” which subsumed both poetics and ethics, parallels in many ways classical formulations including the trivium,[ii] but Burke’s interests, lying at the intersection of language, psychology, and circumstance, focus concern on human motives rather than upon probable truth, “right” action, or divine telos. As such, “’finding’ a theory of argument, or positions that inform argument theory,” in Burke’s writings, Parson suggests, “will be an inferential process” (146; see also Madsen, 1993, 165). But given the sweeping nature of the Motivorum project, the process is not one of merely extending the domain of “dramatism,” a theory derived most explicitly from literary studies, to the domain of “argumentation,” for “dramatism” in subsuming and re-defining “dialectic” and “rhetoric” has already positioned itself atop much of the traditional “argument” domain. And in so-doing, it transformed the nature and function of argumentation itself. As Klumpp (1993) puts it, a “rapprochement” between mainstream argumentation studies and Burkean studies takes one more “toward adapting argumentation rather than dramatism” (149). One important reason for this is that frequently argumentation studies appears as a Phoenix arisen amid the detritus of formal logics, remaining under the sign of “Reason” and genuflecting instinctively toward Reason’s traditional consort, Truth. Burke’s orientation explicitly re-defines “rationality” and de-privileges, indeed de-stabilizes, truth. For a “rapprochement,” to borrow Klumpp’s terminology, to occur, “argumentation” needs to be approached from within the orientations of dramatism; that is, perhaps the most productive point of entry into a “conversation” between dramatism and argumentation is not “Where does dramatism ‘fit’ in argumentation?” but rather “Where does argumentation ‘fit’ in dramatism?”

Burke offers a new contextualization of rationality in the nexus of mind, body, language, and circumstance, all infused with the spiritual goads of perfectionism, in the betweenness of action/motion: he calls this nexus “motive” and insists that its structure and functioning can be “read” in the text or verbal encompassments of a situation. These motives are visible in the “ratios” which best encompass the discourse, and the “ratios” – to be discussed more fully below – are products of dramatistic analysis. Burke’s “dramatism” is an account of human “motives” and, ultimately, humans attitudes and actions. It professes to encompass vast chunks of the classical domains of dialectic, rhetoric, ethics, and poetics, as well as much of more contemporary psychology, sociology, and philosophy. While not discounting the biological, psychological, or material, dramatism privileges the linguistic in its account of motives; certainly, for Burke, motives per se are linguistic: they are to be located in the accounts people give of why they did what they did (1945, x). In other words, Burke, the word-man, begins always with “logos,” the word. In “Curriculum Criticum,” an appendix to the second edition (1953) of Counter-Statement (1931), Burke writes of his proposed trilogy: “The whole project aims to round out an analysis of language in keeping with the author’s favorite notion that, man being the specifically language-using animal, an approach to human motivation should be made through the analysis of language” (218-19). “Dramatism” is an explanatory and critical theory which works through language to better understand human motives; in its sweeping embrace of rhetoric, dialectic, poetics, and ethics dramatism also includes in its embrace the traditional domain of argumentation.

Argumentation’s break from logical formalism has moved the field toward Burke’s orientation. As Klumpp notes (1993), “Through Wallace, and Toulmin, and Perelman, and Fisher, and Scott, and others, we have treatments of argument that seek to return to the root of ‘logic’ in ‘logos’, in the linguistic power of humans. The resources of dramatism with its commitment to a dialectical working of text and context, permanence and change, identity  and identification, and dozens of other tensions resolved in linguistic acts may point argumentation more clearly to the constructive appeal of argument” (162). Yet this return to “the root of ‘logic’ in ‘logos’” has not meant a purging of formal logic; indeed, “argumentation” may be seen as an encompassment of formal logics, and as an encompassment it both retains (or preserves) and reduces logic. Logic is now a part of the whole, no longer a metonym standing in place of a larger dynamic. Logic is never repudiated: it is retained, yet transformed. Just as the nascent field of argumentation has moved to encompass formal logic, so too does Burke’s Dramatism move to encompass argumentation itself.
From within a dramatistic perspective, the association between rationality and probability is, well, problematic: probability begs the questions, probable relative to what? That progressive linkage between the probable, the rational, and, often at least implicitly, the true, viewed from the dramatistic frame, is necessarily only a partial explanation, and hence a reductive one. A more comprehensive perspective would from the Burkean framework be the more “rational” (that with the maximum self-consciousness); that is, rather than emphasizing the probable, with its implicit this rather than that, either/or orientation, Burke emphasizes situational encompassment, “testing” the adequacy of a explanation relative to both  the social and the material recalcitrances it encounters: progressive encompassment, rather than precise differentiation, becomes the desired end, the telos of the rational from within the dramatistic frame (See 1940, 138-167). That is, there is a situational encompassment via a perspective; the “rationality” of the perspective is evaluated relative to the adequacy of the orientation to the structure, including exigencies, of the rhetorical situation (See Burke, 1973).

From the Burkean orientation, a productive approach to “argument” is not simply how it functions in the constructions of formal appeals but rather how it operates from within a given motive structure. That is, questions of “validity” must be framed within the Weltanschauung of the audience; only then can how such appeals operate be seen in the full conspectus of their function. To appropriate Burke’s admonition in “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ‘Battle’” (1940, 191ff), it is not sufficient to dismiss an argument as being ‘unscientific’ or lacking formal validity when that argument is holding popular sway. Along these lines, Burke writes somewhat sarcastically in 1940, “We thus need not despair of human rationality, even in eruptive days like ours. I am sure that even the most arbitrary of Nazis can be shown to possess it; for no matter how inadequate his chart of meaning may be, as developed under the privations of the quietus and oversimplifying dialectical pressure, he at least wants it to tell him accurately what is going on in his world and in the world at large” (114). From the perspective of  dramatism, it would appear that argumentation’s central concern with reason-giving or justificatory behavior is retained, yet the “rationality” of the reasons/justifications is not separate from the motivational Weltanschauung from which it emanated. That is, motives are “rational” relative to their own structural/functional design and adequacy to the situations they encounter rather than to any a priori or non-contextualized form. Form, for Burke, is in the psychology of the audience (1931, 30-31); definitionally, “form” as such cannot exist apart from “situation” and “audience.” Through this process, the “tests” of “rationality” are radically transformed. For instance, “that which is ‘rational’ is that which satisfies or would satisfy an aroused appetite, remembering always that in Burke’s interpretation ‘logical’ structures are one of the forms of appetite and desire. It is precisely here that we have the ‘psychologizing’ of rationality, for the operative ‘logics’ in his system of rationality are the logics of desire, of the appetites” (Williams, 1990, 185). The “rationality” of desire is not to be confused with inchoate yearnings or impulsive actions: “That which is rational within a given order of desires may be seen in contrast to that which is incongruous with that order. That is, rationality is, above all else, an ordered structure of relationships; to ‘be rational’ is to operate within the structure or order of relationships apropos to one’s time and situation” (Williams, 1990, 185). It is also, as Madsen emphasizes, to operate within the constraints of a particular terministic orientation (1989, 11; see also Jasinski).
Burke tends to equate “rationality” with but an aspect of human’s symbol-using capabilities, and then he views rationality as the human genius for tracking-down the implications of our creations, linguistic and otherwise, for “perfecting” and “purifying” our categories, our dialectical desire for not just difference but opposition. In “Variations on ‘Providence’” (1981), Burke writes, “The Logological concept of our species as the ‘symbol-using animal’ is not identical with the concept, homo sapiens, the ‘rational’ animal – for whereas we are the “symbol-using animal” all the time, we are nonrational and even irrational some of the time. Somewhat along Freudian lines I take it that the very process of learning language long before we have reached the so-called ‘age of reason’ leaves upon us the mark of its necessarily immature beginnings; and only some of these can be called ‘childlike’ in the idyllic sense of the term”.[iii] And overly diligent pursuit of the rational proper, as with any such purification, may being about its obverse, and it certainly brings about something different. From Burke’s dramatistic perspective, “rationality’s” penultimate perfection is ultimately a transformation into something new, different, other. From a more well rounded account of human motives, such genius, as Burke is fond of citing Santyana as saying, is almost always a catastrophe, culminating in scapegoating, wars, and ecological destruction, for instances. Burke continues, “But implicit in its [language’s] very nature there is the principle of completion, or perfection, or carrying ideas to the end of the line, as with thoughts on first and last things – all told, goads toward the tracking down of implications. And ‘rationality’ is in its way the very ‘perfection’ of such language-infused possibilities. And what more ‘rational’ in that respect than our perfecting of instruments designed to help assist us in the tracking-down-of-implications, the rational genius of technology thus being in effect a vocational impulsiveness, as though in answer to a call?” (182-83). Burke’s alignment of traditional rationality and technological prowess, each containing its own genius for catastrophe, offers fruitful parallels to Habermas’s critique of technical rationality, parallels which must wait another day for further examination. Burke’s alternative in “maximum self-consciousness,” however, may diverge significantly from Habermas’s “life world.” What is needed instead of more “rationality” is what Burke calls “maximum self-consciousness”: an awareness of the very framing and structure of our own motives (and hence of alternative motive structures), a state of mind in which we use language rather than letting language use of, in which we think through the categories of language rather than letting the categories of language do our thinking for us.[iv] In expounding upon the educational and political value of dramatism, Burke maintains that dramatism “contends that by a methodic study of symbolic action men have their best chance of seeing beyond this clutter, into the ironic nature of the human species” (1955, 269-70).
That which is most “rational” within a dramatistic orientation (if not within others) is that which opens-up the linguistic possibilities, that which interferes with perfection and forestalls genius’s fulfillment in catastrophe, that which moves us toward “maximum self-consciousness.” The objective of such dramatistically “rational” argument is not its fulfillment as truth, or victor over dialectical opposition – ”the stylistic form of a lawyer’s plea” – , but rather as full an understanding as possible of what Burke at times calls a “calculus” of human motives: “An ideal philosophy, from this point of view, would seek to satisfy the requirements of a perfect dictionary. It would be a calculus for charting the nature of events and for clarifying all important relationships.” Or, in other Burkean language, it encompasses the situation. Burke continues, “…the only ‘proof’ of a philosophy, considered as a calculus, resides in showing, by concrete application, the scope, complexity, and accuracy of its coordinates for charting the nature of events.” “What, in fact, is ‘rationality’ but the desire for an accurate chart for naming what is going on?” (1940, 113-14). In dramatistic rationality, of course, accuracy is encompassment, not precise differentiation; it is a “heaping up,” not a purification (1940, 143-49). For Burke, dramatism’s reflexive analytic methodologies – e.g., so-called pentadic analysis – force us toward preservation of the dialectic, toward a disavowal of the absolutism of relativism and an acceptance of the encompassing nature of paradox and irony (1945, 503-517). Burke’s encompassing, or transcending, move culminates in dialectic, which is also where it started.

II
Traditional approaches to dialectics constructed dialectics as a method toward discovery of the True or probably true; it was a method of resolution toward a category of the true. Burke’s approach stands the traditional orientation on its ear: for Burke, categories of the true or apparently true (e.g., the terms or categories of the pentad) become “resolved” into unnamable dialectic constructs, into “ratios” which define motive (e.g., a “scene/act” ratio). The dialectic is not resolved; instead, it is the resolution: human thought – symbolic action – is always dialectical. From this framework, “reason” must be understood not as a product of the dialectic (as a dialectically produced “sign” of the true) but rather as perpetually intrinsic to the dialectic, as itself always dialectical (1945). Again, in a Burkean orientation, a “ratio” (an explicitly dialectical construct) is a “reason” or, once ‘psychologized,’ a “motive.” As Klumpp notes (1993), “the etymological root of ‘ratios’ and ‘reason’ are the same” (162) (sic). They share an “alchemic” core: what can be “thrown up” as a “reason” at one moment may appear distinctly as a “motive” at the next (see Burke, 1945, x). There is, of course, a close and necessarily relationship between the motive structures (ratios) and dialectics: Motives are dialectical. “The elements of the pentad constitute human motives only when they interact, which is to say only when they found dialectical relations with each other: a scene/act ratio, for instance, is neither scene nor act but rather the betweenness of scene and act which allows for transformation, for symbolic action, for motives” (Williams, 1992, 3). Given this, it is instructive to flesh-out Burke’s approach to dialectics before suggesting how “drama” may be seen as the “psychologized” enactment of dialectics via the agency of rhetorical identifications.

Perhaps the most complete treatment of Burke’s dialectic qua dialectic is in the report of a seminar on “Kenneth Burke as Dialectician,” from the 1993 Triennial Conference of the Kenneth Burke Society (Williams, et.al.). The report offers “nine over-lapping assertions concerning Kenneth Burke as dialectician” (17) which, in summation, offer a brief summary of Burke’s orientation:
1. “Burke’s dialectic is, among other things, linguistic in character” (17). The ineradicable negative lurking within any linguistic demarcation of difference renders dialectic and meaning virtually co-terminus: for Burke, essence or substance is always paradoxically dialectic (1945, 21-35). As the Seminar report continues, “From the dialectical structure of language emerge characteristic features of linguistic processes, e.g. merger and division (identification and difference), transformation, polarization, hierarchy, transcendence, etc.” (17). Various “incarnations” of this “dialectical spirit” may be seen in various forms of social enactments.
2. “Burke’s dialectic allows humans to draw distinctions – but not to reify categories” (17). By being ineradicable, the negative always provides the resources to de-construct any hermetically sealed and protected linguistic construct.
3. “Dialectic can be converted to drama via psychological identification with linguistic distinctions” (17). I will elaborate upon this assertion in my conclusion.
4. “Burke’s dialectic is not one of oppositions but rather of betweenness. Burke’s dialectic does not operate in the realm of either/ or but rather the both/and; the dialectic is in the ‘margin of overlap’ between the two. The betweenness of the dialectic facilitates transformations of one term into another; it does not promote oppositions or polarization. Dialectic ‘dances’ in the betweenness of two terms or concepts. In this sense, the ‘attitude’ or ‘spirit’ of Burke’s dialectic is ironic, not contradictory or antagonistic: Burke’s dialectic is the ‘essence’ of the comic perspective” (17-18).
5. “Burke’s dialectic neither contains nor aspires toward a determined telos; rather, the telos of Burke’s dialectic is undetermined and open-ended” (18).
6. “Burke’s dialectic resides ‘in the slash’ between the terms under consideration, and dialectical freedom is enhanced as the slash is ‘widened.’ The metaphor ‘in the slash’ derives from Burke’s discussion of motives as ratios between terms of the pentad (hexad). Thus, in a ‘scene/act’ ratio, the motive is in the ‘betweenness’ of scene and act, which is to say ‘in the slash’” (18).
7. “Burke’s dialectic inaugurates/preserves symbolic action” (18). Burke insists that there is a hard and fast distinction between motion and action, such that action is a unique species of motion characterized in large part by choice, which is to say in large measure this multidimensional structure is the work of logology – or words about [symbolic, dialectical, inhabited] words” (20).
8. “Burke is a dialectician who uses dialectic in a ‘strong’ sense.” That is, he uses “dialectic” not as a general metaphor but rather “as a generating principle” for much of his thinking (20). Dialectic is at the “center” of Burke’s Motivorum project: the very “substance” of motives is dialectical. As Burke puts it in A Grammar, “Whereas there is an implicit irony in the other notions of substance, with the dialectic substance the irony is explicit. For it derives its character from the systematic contemplation of the antinomies attendant upon the fact that we necessarily define a thing in terms of something else. ‘Dialectic substance’ would thus be the over-all category of dramatism, which treats of human motives in terms of verbal action” (1945, 33).

Perhaps one of the most cogent descriptions of Burke as a dialectician is that offered by his life-long friend and confidant, Malcolm Cowley, in Cowley’s review (1950) of A Rhetoric of Motives: Burke “is a dialectician who is always trying to reconcile opposites by finding that they have a common source. Give him two apparently hostile terms like poetry and propaganda, art and economics, speech and action, and immediately he looks beneath them for the common ground on which they stand. Where the Marxian dialectic moves forward in time from the conflict of Thesis and antithesis to their subsequent resolution or synthesis – and always emphasizes the conflict – the Burkean dialectic moves backwards from conflicting effects to harmonious causes. It is a dialectic of reconciliation or peace-making and not of war. At the same time it gives a backward or spiral movement to his current of thought, so that sometimes the beginning of a book is its logical ending and we have to reads the last chapter before fully understanding the first” (250).

III
Burke’s theory of “dramatism” psychologizes his theory of dialectics through the agency of “identification,” which in turn is Burke’s encompassing term for “rhetoric.” For Aristotle, rhetoric aims at persuasion, tempered by the ethics of rationality and, ultimately, truth; in its ideal form, rhetoric reasons through contingencies toward the probable. For Burke, rhetoric names the psychological/linguistic process by which “identification” occurs. Identification is the dramatistic counter-part of the dialectical and transformational processes of merger and division: identification with differences carved-out dialectically animates agonistically as “drama.” Through drama, both “knowledge” and “identity” are constructed. “Identification” names a psychological process whereby a person interprets/constructs his/her symbolic world through certain constructs instead of others. By inhabiting certain constructs, a sense of identity is created: identification is constitutive of identity. “Rhetoric.” for Burke, is the process of identification (and alienation and re-identification, or re-birth). Identification, or rhetoric, is the internalization or inhabitation and enactment of the dialectical processes of merger and division. “Dramatism” is the theory of these enactments: drama, from the Burkean orientation, is literally the enactment of dialectically constructed agons of difference.
In Burke’s interpretation, dialectic demarcates differences, which refine into the agon of oppositions. Human agents inhabit the symbolic world through the process of identification with various and diverse dialectical distinctions. Such inhabitation, such psychological linkages, brings the dialectic to life: it quite literally enacts the agon of difference. The “lived” dialectic is thus literally drama; and since most vocabularies are lived, dialectic and drama are frequently virtually synonymous. But since the possibilities for linguistic transformations, which is to say dialectic, are not all “lived” or enacted, drama becomes a subset of dialectic (Williams, 1992, 9-10). Burke writes, “Though we have often used ‘dialectic’ and ‘dramatistic” as synonymous, dialectic in the general sense is a word of broader scope, since it includes all idioms that are non-dramatistic” (1945, 402). But when the dialectic is “lived,” when it is psychologized through the agency of identification, it is transformed into drama. Literally (Williams, 1992, 10). And it is here that the dialectic is encompassed and transformed in its enactment as drama.

Burke’s theoretical framework re-situates argumentation within his ‘psychologized’ dialectic, his dramatism. Burke’s theory of dramatism is, in his often invoked phrase, “well-rounded” in its account of human motives. Weaving together strands from dialectic, rhetoric, poetics, and ethics, Burke’s “dramatism” is framed within a general commitment to individualism (and its attendant longing for communalism; working in close conjunction with the related pairs: solipsism/communication, division/merger, etc.), pragmatism (with nagging idealizing undercurrents), and “Agro-Bohemianism,” Burke’s personal mode of adjustment to the material and social exigencies of life. Life occurs through a series of moralized symbolic choices, constrained and impinged upon by social and material conditions, and educated by the recalcitrances of the non-symbolic world as well as by other agents, agencies, scenes, purposes, acts, and attitudes in the symbolic world too. In the classical formulation, these “sites” of these choices could be understood as giving rise to recognizable discourse forms, e.g., poetics, rhetoric, etc., as well as recurrent symbolic genre, e.g., tragedy or deliberative rhetoric, and ultimately modes of appeal within the generic orientations, e.g., personification or such elements as the modes of artistic proof, ethos, pathos, and logos. Dramatism would analyze classical appeals such as a logos appeal not simply as a form of rational argument but rather as a form of rational argument within a broader realm of symbolic action, which must be understood as transforming the “site” of argument proper. In the dramatistic perspective, “ratios” are “consubstantial” with “motives,” In the traditional view, “reason” leads to “rational action” and perhaps even to “truth.” In the dramatistic view, “reason,” “rationality,” “truth,” etc., are all forms of symbolic action, not privileged above the functionings of language but rather as recurring forms of symbolic action themselves. Argument, for Burke, is not a linguistic process which leads toward an extra- or trans-linguistic truth but rather a dialectical process which yields greater understanding and appreciation of the resources and power of our symbol systems themselves. Burke’s encompassment and psychologized enactment of dialectics in his theory of dramatism offers a potentially productive re-situating of argumentation theory in what some fear may be the twilight of the Age of Reason.

NOTES
i. The unfinished drafts of both A Symbolic of Motives and Poetics, Dramatistically Considered are products of the 1950s, and for the most part the early 1950s. Portions of Poetics, Dramatistically Considered were published as journal articles in the 1950s; additional sections of both manuscripts will soon be published. See the forthcoming book, Unending Conversations: Essays by and about Kenneth Burke, Ed. Greig Henderson and David Cratis Williams, which includes several unpublished sections of both Poetics, Dramatistically Considered and A Symbolic of Motives, as well as essays about these manuscripts.
ii. Burke’s points of departure are frequently at least implicitly Aristotelian, as with the Motivorum project, and sometimes explicitly so, as with Poetics, Dramatistically Considered. But the reading should be Aristotle from a Burkean orientation, not Burke in Aristotle’s terms. Burke ‘came to’ Aristotle, at least as a serious subject of study, relatively late in his theory-building process; references to Aristotle become frequent initially in the early 1950s (See Henderson). From the ‘Dramatistic’ perspective, Aristotelian categories are simply subsumed – retained and reduced – within a broader and more descriptively accurate viewpoint.
iii. Perhaps because of its comfortable accomodation of the nonrational and irrational as well as the rational, Burke tends to hold poetic and literary models as more representative of human action than logical models. In charting one’s way through such a life, Burke’s holds forth the aesthetic as the best adapted metaphor for encompassing the situation: literature – not argument – is equipment for living. But this is not an either/or proposition for Burke: argument is subsumed within the broader anecdote.
iv. Burke is often fond of citing Coleridge from Biographia Literariato the effect that our linguistic categories, once ‘naturalized’, become self-evident ‘common-sense’: “the language itself does as it were for us” (Stauffer, 158).

REFERENCES
Burke, Kenneth. Counter-Statement. 1931; Second Edition. Los Altos, CA: Hermes Publications, 1953.
Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1945.
Burke, Kenneth. “Linguistic Approach to Problems of Education.” In Modern Philosophies and Education. Ed. Nelson B. Henry. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1955: 259-303.
Burke, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Literary Form.1940; Third Edition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.
Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1950.
Burke, Kenneth. “The Rhetorical Situation.” In: Communication: Ethical and Moral Issues. Ed. Lee Thayer. New York: Gordon and Breech Science, 1973: 263-275.
Burke, Kenneth. “Variations on ‘Providence.’” Notre Dame English Journal 13 (1981): 155-83.
Cowley, Malcolm. “Prolegomena to Kenneth Burke” (1950). In: Critical Responses to Kenneth Burke, 1924-1966. Ed. William H. Rueckert. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1969: 247-251.
Jasinski, James J. “An Exploration of Form and Force in Rhetoric and Argumentation.” In: Argumentation Theory and the Rhetoric of Assent, Ed. David Cratis Williams and Michael David Hazen. Tuscaloosa: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1990: 53-68.
Klumpp, James F. “A Rapprochement Between Dramatism and Argumentation.” Argumentation and Advocacy. Special Issue: Dramatism and Argumentation. Ed. Donn W. Parson. 29 (1993): 148-163.
Madsen, Arnie J. “A Dramatistic Theory of Argument.” Unpublished Paper presented at the Speech Communication Association Convention, San Francisco, November, 1989.
Madsen, Arnie J. “Alternatives to Debunking: A Dramatistic Perspective on Argumentation.” Unpublished paper presented at the Fifth Biennial Wake Forest Argumentation Conference. Winston-Salem, NC, March 1991.
Madsen, Arnie J. “The Comic Frame As A Corrective to Bureaucratization: A Dramatistic Perspective on Argumentation.” Argumentation and Advocacy. Special Issue: Dramatism and Argumentation. Ed. Donn W. Parson. 29 (1993): 164-177.
Parson, Donn W. “Kenneth Burke and Argument? An Introduction.” Argumentation and Advocacy. Special Issue: Dramatism and Argumentation. Ed. Donn W. Parson. 29 (1993): 145-147.
Stauffer, Donald A., Ed. Selected Poetry and Prose of Coleridge. New York: Random House, 1951.
van Eemeren, Frans L., Rob Grootendorst, and Tjark Kruiger. Handbook of Argumentation Theory: A Critical Survey of Classical Backgrounds and Modern Studies. Dordrecht, Holland: Foris Publications, 1987.
Williams, David Cratis. “’Psychologizing’ Dialectics: Kenneth Burke’s Dramatism.” Unpublished paper presented at the Southern States Communication Association Conference, San Antonio, April 1992.
Williams, David Cratis. “Revolution from Within: Burke’s Theory of Aesthetic ‘Form’ as Argument Technique.” In: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Argumentation 1A, F.H. van Eemeren, R. Grootendorst, J. A. Blair, C.A. Willard, Eds. Amsterdam: SICSAT: 1990, 183-188.
Williams, David Cratis, et.al., “Kenneth Burke as Dialectician.” In: The Kenneth Burke Society Newsletter 9.1 (December 1993): 17-18, 20.

1. Introduction
Since Brockriede (1975) and O’Keefe (1977) publicly recognized the importance of studying arguments as they are made in the context of everyday discourse (O’Keefe’s argument2), argumentation scholars have been increasingly interested in studying the phenomenon in terms of its value as a communication activity rather than a logical exercise. Rhetoricians have long been interested in the function of argumentation in persuading an audience but it has only been recently that argumentation scholars have taken up the task of examining how patterns of reason giving are created and used by those involved in everyday conversation. Scholars such as Jackson & Jacobs (1980), Trapp (1983), Walton (1992), and van Eemeren and his colleagues (e.g., van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992; van Eemeren, Grootendorst, Jackson, & Jacobs, 1993) have extended the study of  argumentation from the study of formal and informal logic structures to the study of the ways in which arguments function in resolving disputational communication.
One of the first and most productive lines of inquiry regarding the study of argumentation as it occurs in discourse has been the pragma-dialectical approach originating with van Eemeren & Grootendorst (1992). The pragma-dialectical (PD) perspective extends the traditional normative logical approach of evaluating arguments by creating standards for reasonableness that have a functional rather than a structural focus. An argument is evaluated in terms of its usefulness in moving a critical discussion toward a well reasoned resolution rather than concentrating exclusively on the relationship of premises to conclusions. The PD approach recognizes the importance of normative standards for judging the strength or cogency of single argumentative acts but in addition recognizes that arguments are constructed in order to achieve a communicative goal.
As evaluative criteria for the quality of arguments, the PD posits several normative guidelines for how communication in resolving or managing a dispute should proceed. While several argumentation scholars have elaborated, extended, or some way adopted portions of PD (e.g., Walton, 1992; Weger & Jacobs, 1995), there has been little direct empirical research seeking to verify that the violation of the kinds of discussion rules identified by van Eemeren & Grootendorst (1992) indeed causes problems in the management of disagreements. The purpose of this essay is to examine empirical research in interpersonal and small group argument in order to discover what harms, if any, result from the violation of rules for critical discussion. The essay will begin by examining the effects of following and violating discussions rules on the ability to resolve disputes and the quality of the decisions that result. The next section of the essay will examine the interpersonal and relational outcomes that are associated with following or violating discussion rules as articulated by van Eemeren and his associates.

In Argumentation, Communication and Fallacies, van Eemeren & Grootendorst (1992) lay the foundation for the pragmadialectical approach to argumentation study. They begin by arguing that the standard treatment of argumentation and fallacies either ignores the communicative functions in favor of examining reason/claim relationships or abandon entirely normative standards of evaluation in favor of examining whether the argument achieves the goal of gaining the acceptance of an audience. The traditional logical approach evaluates arguments based on decontextualized, abstract structural features of arguments that are applied across situations. The rhetorical perspective, on the other hand, tends to evaluates the quality of an argument in terms of its persuasiveness. PD provides an advance on these perspectives by suggesting that normative guidelines for evaluating the quality of an argument requires attention to the communicative functions served by arguing as well as the logical structure of the lines of reasoning used in the dialogue.
The functional perspective on argument is based first on the belief that argumentation is a communicative activity. And second, it is based on a functional view of communication in which messages are studied in terms of the purposes they serve and the goals they achieve. At its most fundamental level, the purpose of argumentative dialogue is the resolution and management of real or potential disputes. Therefore, it is a mistake to evaluate arguments out of the context in which they are used or in a way that looks only at the logical structure without a description of the way certain argumentative moves effect the ability to manage or resolve a dispute based on good reasons. A functional perspective requires that arguments be studied, in part, by how they contribute to the communicative goals of resolving or managing a dispute.

The PD perspective also commits itself to a dialectical framework in which arguments are assumed to be the basis of critical discussions aimed at arriving at the truth or falsity of some standpoint or set of standpoints. It is therefore, not enough to simply describe arguments and their effects. A complete picture of argument can only be arrived at by examining the quality of an argument both in terms of its usefulness in resolving or managing a dispute and in terms of its validity or cogency according to normative standards of reasonableness.
The dual requirements of usefulness and reasonableness have given rise to ten normative criteria for conducting rational critical discussions (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992). These rules are organized around the functions that argumentative speech acts perform at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of a critical discussion. In the opening stage of a dispute a speaker presents a standpoint as true while their counterpart casts doubt upon it through presenting objections or counterproposals. In order for the dialogue to continue toward a resolution of the disagreement, arguers must maintain a climate of open exchange of ideas. The first rule presented in the pragma-dialectical approach is that, “parties must not prevent each other from presenting standpoints or casting doubt on standpoints” (van Eemeren & Grootendorst, 1992; p. 108). Tactics such as attacking an opponent personally violate this rule because it is an attempt to forestall discussion by disqualifying an opponent to speak on the issue, or to distract the opponent from the issue under discussion. For a critical discussion to advanced past confrontation, arguers must also be willing to defend standpoints. The second rule for critical discussions requires that interlocutors defend standpoints once entered into discussion. Violation of the either of the first two rules essential precludes rational testing of the truth of a proposition.
At the argumentation stage PD discussion rules chiefly concern the ways in which lines of reasoning are developed and how logical structures are applied to defending standpoints. Rules three and four require that protagonists and antagonists extend their reasoning in a way that is relevant to their own and their opponent’s positions regarding the standpoint under consideration. Rule five deals with the responsibility of arguers to accurately represent the expressed and unexpressed premises that each party is actually accountable for. This rule declares as unacceptable the attack on an unexpressed premise that is either not relevant to the opponent’s standpoint or that the opponent has not committed herself to defending. Rules six and seven prohibit the representation of a premise as accepted or defended as true if the starting point has not been accepted or conclusively defended. The sixth and seventh rules also prohibit the denial of a previously accepted or conclusively defended premise. The final normative guideline at the argumentation stage stipulates that reasons ought to be logically related to the standpoint(s) they are meant to defend. Standpoints that can’t, at least in principle, be shown to follow logically from the arguments offered to support them, must be withdrawn from the discussion.

The ninth rule for the rational management of critical discussions involves the closing stage. The ninth rule necessitates that standpoints that are conclusively defeated or upon which doubt has been cast must be withdrawn. The goal of offering arguments that support or cast doubt upon a standpoint is to come to some conclusion about the point at issue. Rule nine is important because it recognizes that an issue can only be resolved if discussants are willing to recognized and acknowledge that their standpoint has been shown to be untenable.
Rule ten applies at all stages of a critical discussion. Rule ten requires that arguments be made clearly and unambiguously and that an opponent’s arguments must be given a faithful and charitable interpretation. Resolving a dispute on the merits of each person or group’s case depends on both party’s cooperation. The use of ambiguous wording, syntax, or logical schemes prevents cooperative discussion because what exactly is at issue or even whether or not a dispute actually exists is open to question. Cooperative disagreement management also depends on each party’s ability and willingness to accurately interpret their opponent’s messages so that counter reasoning is directed at the actual point at issue in the dispute.
These normative assumptions about what is required to successfully negotiate a controversy have a great deal of intuitive and theoretical appeal. Recent research has provided evidence of the PD model as a tool for argument criticism (e.g., van Eemeren et al, 1993). Little, if any, direct research has been conducted that examines the outcomes of following or violating these rules, however. Fortunately, a critical examination of empirical research in group and interpersonal argument illustrates that following or violating these rules are related to the kinds of decisions that are reached regarding the point at issue as well as the perceived satisfaction with the interaction, the perceived competence of the speaker, and the perceived quality of the relationship.

2. Fallacies and Quality of Decision Making in Group Argument
Research regarding the outcomes of critical discussions have largely appeared in the small group decision making literature. In general, two qualities of decision making outcomes have been studied. One is whether or not a group is able to come to a consensus. From a PD position, coming to a consensus about a standpoint is not essential but it is preferable since the goal of a critical discussion is to resolve a dispute to the satisfaction of all parties. Research indicates that violating discussion rules prevents groups from coming to consensus.
The failure to defend a standpoint, a violation of rule two, has been found to predict whether a group comes to a consensus (Canary, Brossmann, & Seibold, 1987; Hirokawa & Pace, 1983; Pace, 1985). For example, in a study examining low and high consensus groups, Canary et. al (1987) found that low consensus groups tended to produce more unsupported assertions than the high consensus groups. Furthermore, Pace (1985) found that standpoints were developed by a variety of group participants whether or not there was overt disagreement in high consensus, but not low consensus, groups. These studies point out the importance of offering evidence for standpoints in producing mutually agreeable decisions. The use of reasoning and support for asserted standpoints facilitates the critical examination of the issue by the group and exposes flaws in the quality of decisions advocated by group members. It is easier to derive a consensus about a decision when the flawed decision alternatives are unmasked. Group members are more persuaded to come to a common assessment about a decision alternative when they have been offered reasons to do so.
Another interesting characteristic of argument in high and low consensus groups involves the willingness of group members to switch their position during a discussion. Pace (1985) found that members of high consensus groups appeared to be more likely to explore both sides of a point at issue by offering reasons that both support and cast doubt upon it. This finding offers indirect support for the importance of following discussion rules that require that  parties be willing to give up defeated standpoints and be willing to accept opposing standpoints that have been successfully defended. When arguers are willing to explore and ultimately give up their own perspective in favor of a more reasonable alternative they are also more likely to find common ground in coming to a mutually agreeable conclusion based on the merits of the case for the standpoint under discussion. On the other hand, refusing to admit that a standpoint has been defeated and failing to accept an argument that is reasonable prevents groups from agreeing about which position appears to be the most sensible.
Finally, it appears that groups that reach consensus tend to follow rules regarding the relevance of their contributions to resolving the dispute (e.g., Gouran & Geonetta, 1977; Saine & Bock, 1973). Gouran and Geonetta (1977) for example, found that non consensus groups tended to be characterized by more random contributions than consensus groups. Non consensus groups also tend to be less responsive to issues raised by group members than consensus groups (Saine & Bock, 1973). Keeping argumentative contributions relevant leads to consensus because the discussion stays on track toward resolution. As van Eemeren & Grootendorst (1987) predict, the use of irrelevant argumentation prevents productive outcomes.

Along with predicting whether a group is able to reach consensus on an issue, violating rules for critical discussion is also associated with the quality of the decision a group makes. For example, Hirokawa and Pace (1983) found that groups that make effective decisions[i] engage in more support and defense of standpoints offered by group members than groups that make less effective decisions. This study indicates that the failure to defend standpoints once they are met with scrutiny, and offering standpoints with little or no reasoning in support of them, lead to conclusions that are judged to be unwarranted. Leathers (1970; 1972) has also found that irrelevant remarks (violation of rules three and four), negative messages (violation of rule one), and highly abstract statements (violation of rule ten) are all associated with decisions deemed by independent raters to be of poor quality. Small group research also indicates that groups who leave inferences implicit (Leathers, 1970), and groups who treat unexamined or unchallenged inferences as though they were facts tend to make poor decisions. Along with Leathers (1970), Hirokawa and Pace (1983) also find that ineffective groups tend to draw inferences that are at best only weakly supported by the facts of the case and that are characterized by unsound reasoning. Furthermore, the ineffective groups tend not to explore the strength of their inferential reasoning and once the inferences are drawn, treat them as uncontested facts upon which they base their decisions. It seems clear then that failing the requirement to produce logically sound arguments (rules six, seven, and eight) in a critical discussion leads to coming to conclusions that are judged to be of lower quality.

3. Fallacies and Interpersonal Outcomes
In general, critical research involving the pragma-dialectical perspective focuses on evaluating the effects fallacies produce on the strength of the reasoning used to arrive at a conclusion or the effects fallacies have on qualities of the conversation itself. It is intuitively appealing to predict that fallacious reasoning in interpersonal disagreements will have identity management and relational impacts beyond the more instrumentally oriented outcomes that have been the focus of dialectical argumentation research. Structural properties of conversation seem to point a preference for at least the appearance of rationality in managing disagreements (Jackson & Jacobs, 1980). It seems likely that serious deviations from rational dialogue will produce less favorable evaluations of those who argue fallaciously.
However, because everyday arguers don’t generally hold each other to strict standards of traditional logic in resolving disagreements, the traditional approach to fallacious argument doesn’t provide an especially useful framework for examining fallacies in interpersonal disagreements. The PD perspective’s conceptualization of fallacies as consisting of conversational moves that derail the problem solving process maps on well to what is known about how qualities of conflictual interaction are associated with identity and relational outcomes.

To begin, research indicates that tactics designed to prevent another party from advancing a standpoint are associated with negative perceptions of the arguer and the relationship. The use of ad hominem in the form of personal criticism and defensiveness have been shown to be associated with less relationship satisfaction (e.g., Gottman, 1979; 1994) and with perceiving the partner to be a less competent communicator (Canary and Spitzberg, 1989; Canary, Brossmann, Brossmann, & Weger, 1995). Complaints that focus on personal characteristics are perceived less favorably than complaints focusing on behaviors (Alberts, 1988). Finally, personal complaints tend to be associated with creating feelings of shame and rage leading to out of control escalation in personal disagreements (Retzinger, 1991). The use of ad hominem not only is logically irrelevant to the claim being examined it also prevents critical examination of a claim by creating strong emotional reactions in listeners that make critical inquiry almost impossible.
Another way in which conversational partners attempt to discourage the examination of a standpoint is to draw attention away from the substance of a partner’s complaint by responding to it with the assertion that the act of complaining is itself so objectionable that the respondent need not be held accountable for answering the complaint. In other words, a person may discourage the examination of the standpoint by complaining about the complaint (Matoesan, 1993). Similarly, cross complaining can inhibit the examination of a standpoint by offering a competing complaint about the complainer’s own actions, attitudes, or intentions. Complaining about a complaint is a type of ad hominem attack that forestalls discussion of the original standpoint by asserting the act of issuing the complaint points to some disagreeable quality in the complainer. Cross complaining is a form of tu qou que in which the original complaint is disqualified based on some equally disagreeable and complainable, though unrelated, attribute found in the source of the complaint. Cross complaining can be treated as a fallacy of consistency or as a fallacy of obscuration in which the dispute becomes mired in the attempt to resolve two entirely unrelated standpoints simultaneously. Each party in a cross complaint situation is attempting to defend their own standpoint while attacking their opponent’s unrelated assertion. Cross complaining both prevents another from advancing a standpoint and creates an over complicated mixed dispute in which the progression toward resolution of one issue is irrelevantly linked to the resolution of an unrelated issue. Both complaints about complaints (Alberts, 1988; 1989) and cross complaining (Gottman, 1979) have been found to be judged unfavorably or associated with dissatisfaction with a romantic partner.

Along with fallacies that prevent others from advancing standpoints, it appears that the failure to defend a standpoint (rule two) and the failure to offer reasons in support of a standpoint (rules two and seven) are related to problematic interpersonal outcomes. First, a great deal of research indicates that couples who engage in demand/withdraw interaction patterns have a substantially greater chance of being dissatisfied and eventually terminating their relationship (Gottman, 1995; Heavy, Layne, & Christensen, 1993). The demand/withdraw pattern can be interpreted as a violation of the requirement that disputants defend their standpoints when asked to do so. Characteristic of the demand/withdrawal patterns is one party attempting to advance or cast doubt upon a standpoint while the opposing party stonewalls by evading the issue or simply refusing to do anything beyond reassert their original standpoint. Stonewalling and withdrawing prevent resolution of important relationship issues, issues which left unresolved create tension and dissatisfaction with the relationship and the partner.
Second, standards for the logical acceptability of an argument require that a claim be accompanied by a supporting proposition that implies the truth of the asserted claim. Arguments which fail to provide reasoning for assertions therefore violate both rule two and rule seven (which requires that arguments be logically sound). Research by Canary and his associates (e.g., Canary, Brossmann, Sillars, & LoVette, 1987; Canary, et al, 1995) indicate that conversations that are characterized by the use of unsupported assertions result in less satisfaction with the interaction, with the perception that the conversational partner is an ineffective arguer, and with perceptions of decreased satisfaction with the relationship. Canary et al (1995) conclude by suggesting that everyday arguers have minimum standards for rationality in resolving disputes. In other words, in managing ordinary disputes, conversational partners prefer reasoned discourse over simple assertion and counter assertion. Not only does the use of reasoned discourse produce better decisions it produces more favorable interpretations of the conversational partner and the relationship.

4. Implications and Conclusion
This research review points to several ways in which the fields of argumentation, interpersonal, and small group communication intersect and offer implications for each other. One important implication is the usefulness of evaluating and studying small group and interpersonal conflict in terms of dialectical fallacies. Research in small group and especially in interpersonal conflict resolution tends to focus on strategies and tactics as they relate to interpersonal dimensions of the interaction. Rarely does research on interpersonal interaction examine conflict tactics in terms of their acceptability as rational contributions to the resolution of a dispute (cf. Canary et al, 1987; Canary, Weger, & Stafford, 1991; Canary et al, 1995). Furthermore, as Gottman (1994) admits, the relationship of behaviors such as personal criticism, defensiveness, and withdrawal to relational outcomes is more descriptive than theoretical. One possible theoretical explanation for this relationship is that the use of unproductive tactics prevents disputes from being resolved in ways that are acceptable and/or workable for the parties involved. When problems go unresolved partners build resentment toward each other and feel that the costs of staying in the relationship outweigh the rewards. Resolutions to interpersonal disputes that are arrived through a process of reason giving and rational testing of ideas may not only produce logically sound conclusions but also personally satisfying ones as well.
Another implication of this research review is that argumentation scholarship would benefit by paying more attention to the relational as well as the content dimension of argumentative messages. For the most part, argument research devotes its attention to the propositional content of the messages in exclusion to any meaning the messages have for the identity of the hearer or the relationship between speaker and hearer. The dialectical approaches to argumentation theory, while better than traditional logical approaches, still tends to overlook the ways in which identity management and relationship goals have implications for the way people produce and respond to arguments. While correctly pointing out that speech acts such as expressives (i.e., messages that express a speaker’s feelings) can contribute or detract from the progress of a critical discussion, van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1993) largely ignore the relational dimensions inherent in speech acts such as assertives, directives, declaritives, and so on. For example, the fallacy of ad hominem can be accomplished through an assertive speech act by simply asserting that an opponent has poor character. An ad hominem, however, produces poor argument both because it shifts the focus of the dispute to an irrelevant issue and because personal attacks create a hostile and defensive communication climate in which an arguer’s attention to identity management and repair become more important than the original standpoint at issue. Being personally attacked also creates strong emotional reactions such as shame and rage (Retzinger, 1991) that place cognitive demands on the disputant that makes productive thinking about the situation difficult if not impossible (Zillman, 1990).
The research on small group, interpersonal, and relational argument and conflict can be taken together to suggest that normative requirements for an ideal model of critical discussion are operative in everyday instances of dispute resolution. We can see that the system developed by van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1987) for evaluating argumentation has more than intuitive appeal. Empirical research suggests that there are a number of instrumental, relational, and identity management advantages to avoiding dialectical fallacies.

NOTES
i. Effective and ineffective groups were determined by having independent judges rate the quality of each groups decision along four evaluative criteria.

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The centuries-long discussion as to what constitutes “good” argument has often found supporters and opponents on the basis of the standards selected to evaluate argument. Ancient standards of technical validity have been the subject of some twentieth-century scrutiny. No issue is more fundamental to the study of argumentation than the question of what constitutes good argument. Our legitimacy as critics, practitioners and teachers of argumentation rests upon our ability to evaluate, construct and describe good arguments. Historically, argument scholars have relied primarily upon formal standards borrowed from the field of logic to provide necessary evaluative criteria. In the latter half of this century, however, those criteria have increasingly been attacked as being inappropriate or, at least, insufficient for the study of both public and personal argumentative discourse. Stephen Toulmin has suggested we replace the mathematical model of argument with one from jurisprudence, thus focusing on the soundness of the claims we make, especially as we use argument in “garden variety discourse.”(Toulmin, 1958). Other theorists quickly followed Toulmin’s lead.

1. Recent Interpretations of Good Argument
While a few theorists (Willard, 1979) have gone so far as to reject logical standards, most others continue to recognize their usefulness as a part of broader schemas for evaluation of argument. Toulmin’s dissatisfaction with the rigidity and formalism of logic led him to propose a more open and flexible model of argument and to suggest that the evaluation of arguments involves the application of both traditional field invariant standards and previously overlooked field specific standards (Toulmin, 1958). Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca have advanced the concept of the universal audience composed of critical listeners, which presumably restrains advocates from making spurious arguments. At the same time, they suggest we consider adherence as the goal of argument, a focus on the intersection of psychological effects and logical strength (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969). Drawing on the work of earlier scholars, McKerrow describes a good argument as one  which provides “pragmatic justification (McKerrow, 1977). This interpretation places emphasis on the “rational perusal of arguments” by an audience in a dialectic-like relationship. Farrell interprets validity in terms of “soundness” of a rhetorical argument. An argument is sound if it conforms to three conditions:
1. is addressed to an empowered and involved audience,
2. conforms to the consensual standards of the specific field, and
3. is consistent with social knowledge (Farrell, 1977).

Zarefsky defines good argument as one that is “reasonable,” and one is reasonable if “the form of inference is free of obvious defects, and the underlying assumptions of the argument are shared by the audience” (Zarefsky,1981:88).

Collectively, these authors and others suggest that good arguments are ones that have, at least, some claim to rationality and are based upon premises and standards acceptable to the specific audiences being addressed. While these conditions serve as minimal standards for good argument, they are, in our judgment, incomplete and lacking in explanatory power. What is missing from current analyses is a consideration of the role of language. Careful language usage is necessary for the construction of sound arguments, and effective language is the key to persuasive argumentation. We define a good argument as one that is linguistically sound. The term “linguistically sound” is intended to encompass three conditions. A linguistically sound argument:
1. conforms to the traditional field invariant standards of inductive and deductive argument,
2. is based upon data appropriate to the audience and field, and
3. is expressed in language that enhances the evocative and ethical force of argument.

In the sections that follow, we will demonstrate how each of these conditions is linguistically based and how a linguistic perspective helps to explain the strength of the argument.

2. Field Invariant Standards
Even a cursory examination of argument suggests a close relationship between language and argument. It is through language that we describe relationships and create meaning about the world around us. Concepts such as correlation and causation allow us to perceive relationships differently than was possible before we had appropriated these methodological terms. We may have an intuitive sense of justice and love, but our ability to differentiate them occurs through language. Thus, language is the means by which we bridge the gap between the complex and confusing world of our senses and a more ordered world of meaning.
In his thoughtful essay, “Argument as Linguistic Opportunity,” Balthrop examines argument from a linguistic perspective and establishes a strong relationship between language and discurive reasoning. Discursive reasoning itself arises in discourse and shares its characteristics: that is, it posits relations both syntactically and semantically and through the fundamental representativeness of linguistic symbols. Second, discursive reasoning is sequential – for without sequence, verbal expression cannot exist. It is from such insights that Langer observed in Philosophy in a New Key, “the laws of reasoning, our clearest formulation of exact knowledge, are sometimes known as ‘laws of discursive thought.” If the symbolic function of argument is reason-giving or presenting justification, then that function is accomplished through discursive means – for reason giving requires analysis beyond mere expression. And, in the practical world of both the naive and the more sophisticated social actor, such analysis is usually conducted linguistically (Balthrop, 1980: 190).

Thus language becomes the key to discursive reasoning, and is central to the whole activity of reason giving. Balthrop goes further to argue that linguistic forms reflect how people think – at least at the deep structure level. He continues:
The subject-predicate structure for human thought may, in fact, be universal. Langer concludes that “to all speakers of Indo-European languages the classical syllogism seems to be a logic of ‘natural inference,’ because they speak and think in subjectpredicate forms.” Izutsu goes one step further contending that “far from being a peculiarity of Western thought /predicatesubject thought/ seems to be normal and universal wherever the human mind has attained a certain level of logical thinking as far, at least, as it is carried on by means of verbal symbols” (1980:195).
An understanding of the relationship between language and argument is important because it explains why the traditional field in-variant standards of inductive and deductive argument reveal potential problems in the thinking process. Even if the traditional standards are not a perfect reflection of the ways in which experience, language, and thought are related, no one has yet provided more useful tests. Although some may argue that Toulmin’s concept of field dependent standards makes traditional invariant standards irrelevant, it is well to remember that Toulmin, himself, did not propose field variant as a substitute for field invariant standards. Moreover, research to date has tended to reveal differences among fields only in the importance assigned to particular forms and standards of argument rather than in the forms and standards themselves. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s concept of a universal audience is too abstract to be of much practical use for either the construction or criticism of arguments. And even Fisher’s concepts of narrative probability and narrative fidelity are only more generalized, and therefore, less analytical, forms of the traditional standards for evaluating arguments.
Thus, the field invariant standards of argument are an important component of a linguistically sound argument. They are grounded in our language and thought structures; they are supported by historic experience, and alternative standards seem to be insufficient. As Zarefsky concludes, reliance on these standards “in the past has led to satisfactory results far more often than not” (Zarefsky, 1980:88).

3. Data Appropriate to the Audience
The second condition for a linguistically sound argument is that the data must be appropriate to the audience and field. The audience has always been central to rhetorical theory so that Toulmin’s concept of field invariant standards of argument has been readily embraced by rhetorical scholars. Much of the literature of both classical rhetorical theory and contemporary field theory emphasizes the need for advocates to build their arguments on premises that are shared by their audiences. Bitzer’s “revisitation” of the enthymeme grounds his analysis in what the rhetor shares with his or her audience (Bitzer, 1959). So much importance is placed on shared assumptions that it sometimes appears that audiences can only be addressed on subjects they already believe in. What is often not discussed, however, is how an advocate can proceed if her basic assumptions differ from those of her audience. An examination of the role of language in argument is helpful in this regard.
Language can be used to create a greater harmony of beliefs than might otherwise exist. The ambiguous nature of values and the abstract language used to identify them make it possible to minimize differences and maximize agreement through careful conceptual choices. Kenneth Burke’s description of how dialectical terms (terms of opposition) may become transcendent (or terms of union, god terms) is a good illustration of this process (Burke, 1945). In recent years, politicians have regularly assumed that they and their audiences share a comon commitment to equal opportunity. Although most American audiences probably believe in equal opportunity at some level, such a belief does not translate into a common commitment to affirmative action; nor is a belief in affirmative action the same thing as a belief in racial and gender quotas. Thus, the ability to identify a common assumption and to link that assumption to an audience may depend in large part in the language of identification employed.
Not only are our beliefs abstract, but our belief systems encompass many different assumptions that exist in some loose hierarchy of values. This multiple, hierarchical nature of premises provides an additional opportunity for using language to establish a common ground. A linguistic bridge that embraces multiple beliefs can sometimes create a common ground out of conflicting assumptions. President Kennedy’s concept of a Peace Corps created such a linguistic bridge. The Peace Corps’ concept incorporated elements of economic assistance, service opportunities for young and elderly persons, and greater American involvement in foreign nations.
While the community service aspect of the program had relatively broad appeal, the ideas of increased foreign spending and greater U.S. involvement in the problems of third world nations were not popular with large segments of the American public. Kennedy’s labeling of the program as the Peace Corps allowed him to embrace all of these values and minimize resistance by linguistically identifying it with the higher, and more encompassing, shared value of peace. Premises are, of course, not the only form of data. When the shared assumptions of speaker and audience are insufficient and need to be built upon, evidence is required. The amount and type of evidence needed depends upon the expectations of the specific field and audience. But even within those constraints, language factors can significantly affect the impact and acceptability of that evidence.
When a range of expert testimony is available, the author’s language should be a fundamental consideration in deciding which source to rely on. The language used in the evidence should be free of offensive references. Currently, evidence which relies on “he” as a pronoun for persons in general may function to alienate certain audiences. In addition, the language should be appropriate to the level and background of the audience, and it should enhance the emotional and ethical appeal of the argument. Similarly, even statistical evidence is frequently difficult for audiences to comprehend so that special attention should be given to explaining and interpreting its meaning. For general audiences, the use of non-technical terminology is especially important. Whether data of fact or opinion, language functions centrally in both creating understanding of evidence for an audience and shaping audience attitudes toward that data.

4. Enhancing Emotional and Ethical Force
A third condition for a linguistically sound argument is that it be expressed in language that enhances the argument’s emotional and ethical force. The two preceding conditions of a good argument have generally been recognized by other authors, although they have focused less attention on the linguistic dimensions of these standards. The third condition of argument, however, has been largely overlooked as a positive element of argument. Logicians have generally viewed language as a negative factor in argument. Many of the logical fallacies, for example, are based upon language problems or upon unacceptable emotional or ethical appeals. Much of the rhetorical discussion of style has viewed it as an artistic adornment that functions to enhance effect but is largely unrelated to argument.
It is not our purpose here to disagree with specific categories of logical fallacies. We recognize that language can be misused and that the substitution of emotion or appeals to authority for reasoned argumentation is inappropriate. Nor do we wish to devalue the artistic dimensions of rhetoric. Rather it is our position that language is not only inherent to the argument process, but that an understanding of its proper role resolves the tension between the standards of logical validity and audience effectiveness.
Alan Gross and Marcelo Dascal in their essay “The Question of the Conceptual Unity of Aristotle’s Rhetoric” argue that in the Rhetoric inference (argument) is intimately related to language and style as well as to ethos and pathos. They describe Aristotle’s theory of language and style in the following terms:
Though little more than a sketch, Aristotle’s theory of style and arrangement is clearly cognitive in that it depends on the inferential abilities of particular audiences. Style is both a level at which discourse is pitched (in modern linguistics register) and a set of semantic, syntactic and prosodic variants within that register. In the former sense, a particular style is appropriate if it is proportional to situation and subject matter; in Aristotle’s words, “the lexis will be appropriate if it is … proportional /analogon/” (3.7.1). The mathematical analogy is exactly right; it emphasizes the close fit between a rhetorical situation and its verbal response (Gross and Dascal, 1998: 9).
In another passage, Gross and Dascal elaborate on Aristotle’s theory of emotion: …….. with Aristotle’s theory of emotions, a cognitive theory in which inference plays a central role ….. an audience experiences an emotional state when the necessary and sufficient conditions of that state have been met. Beliefs that speakers instill in audiences can never guarantee their anger. It certainly helps when audiences are, as Aristotle says, “irascible and easily stirred to anger” (2.2.10). Nevertheless, since the belief that one has been belittled or insulted is a necessary condition for the presence of this emotional state, speakers can stimulate anger by increasing inferential likelihood of that belief. Equally, speakers can dissipate anger by decreasing that likelihood. Inference to a articular belief or set of beliefs is a necessary condition of each emotion with which Aristotle deals – fear, shame, kindliness, pity, anger, friendship and their opposites (1998:9).

In his classic article on Aristotle’s enthymeme, James McBurney makes much the same point concerning how the forms of proof in Aristotle – ethos, pathos, and logos –relate to the dominant deductive and inductive forms of argument, the enthymeme and the example.
Rather than viewing the enthymeme and example as derivative of logos alone, he depicts both forms of argument as a product of the possible interaction of ethos, pathos, and logos. Hence the appeal to emotion, the possible instrument of style, such as the metaphor, or the character of the speaker may all interrelate in the production of an enthymeme. In this sense, the distinction between between language and argument may disappear, even in Aristotle (McBurney, 1936).
Even without an elaborate analysis of the cognitive dimensions of particular figures of speech such as those found in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, it is possible to demonstrate with references to familiar examples the evocative force that appropriate language gives to an argument. In his “House Divided” speech Lincoln used a powerful metaphor to express the fundamental claim of his speech.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other (Peterson, 1954:491).

Lincoln’s metaphor was not a mere rhetorical flourish. It was, rather, an integral part of his proof, and functions as a good example of metaphor as enthymeme. At that point in United States history, families were literally being torn apart over the issue of slavery so that the reference to a “house divided” served both as a appropriate metaphor and as compelling evidence of the crisis facing the nation.
William Faulkner’s speech accepting the Nobel Price offers a different, perhaps even more moving example, of how language enriches and empowers argument:
I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure; that when the last ding-dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last red and dying evening, that even then there will be one more sound: that of his puny, inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s duty is to write about these things (Faulkner, 1954: 815-16).
Faulkner’s argument is a simple one, but it is the imagery, the language of his imagination which gives the argument its ethical and emotional force.
In the terminology of the ancient Greeks, logos is not necessarily separate from ethos and pathos. Through the effective use of language these three forms of proof become united to form a linguistically sound argument.
A focus on language as the primary instrument of argument suggests that three necessary conditions exist for good argument. This paper explores the role of language in field invariant standards, how language functions in selecting and presenting data appropriate to the audience, and how language can enhance the emotional and ethical force of argument.

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