FIORIN, José Luiz. Argumentação. [Argumentation]. São Paulo: Contexto, 2015. 272 p.

FIORIN, José Luiz. Argumentação. São Paulo: Contexto, 2015. 272 p.

In the book's Foreword, Professor Fiorin informs the readers that various of the texts that compose this book revisit previously published works in many journals or books; despite that, he also clarifies that "everything was widened and reorganized in order to achieve the completeness and coherence that the publication of this book demanded" (p.10).¹

In fact, Argumentação [Argumentation] is a book whose purpose is to "discuss the basis of argumentation" and "expose the main discursive organizations, that is, the main types of arguments" (p.10). ² This objective is carried out in a systematic and complete way combined with the author's erudition and a clear writing, full of examples that come from various sources.

The book presents a threefold structure: Part I, Problemas gerais de argumentação [General Problems of Argumentation], Part II, Os argumentos [The Arguments], and Part III A organização do discurso [The Organization of Discourse]. Due to the amplitude and the nature of this division, it is not hard to notice that the word that gives title to the current work, in fact, points to the rhetorical-argumentative domain of discourse.

Nevertheless, if in the foreword the thesis that "every discourse has an argumentative dimension" (p.10) is advanced, it is equally affirmed that "undoubtedly, in the history of the West, Rhetoric is the discipline that gave birth to the studies of discourse" (p.22).³ This idea is supported by its reference to dialogism, which is inherent to the functioning of discourse, such as Bakhtin conceived it. Therefore, it forces the study of argumentation not only to surpass the microanalysis enabled by its theorization, such as "argumentation in the language," but also to be situated in a discursive dimension.

Thus, we could affirm that this book assumes that nowadays the rhetorical-argumentative approach has become a perspective of crucial importance to the field of discursive studies. Moreover, bringing together the terms rhetoric and argumentation implies that the so called "Rhetoric Restrained," once limited to stylistic studies and ornamental figures, has now evolved to a new approach intertwined with the argumentative discourse. In this sense, Professor Fiorin affirms that "if the rhetorical figures cannot be considered ornaments of discourse, then they should be analyzed in their argumentative dimension" (p.27). ⁴ However, differently from Figuras de retórica [Figures of Rhetoric] (FIORIN, 2013), this book deals with a wider spectrum of subjects not limited to the theme of figures. On the contrary, it is immersed in the essential aspects of argumentation without losing sight of the backdrop of rhetorical strategies.

Inferential weaving is one of the essential aspects by means of which a discourse progresses. In this book, it is analyzed from three points of view, namely that of logic, semantics, and pragmatics.

Concerning the first, the diverse types of inferences are listed and exemplified: elimination, modus ponendo ponens (affirming the consequent), modus tollendo tollens (the denying of the antecedent), exclusive disjunction, hypothetical syllogism, contraposition, neither/nor rule, negation of double disjunction, biconditionality rule, and finally, double negation rule. All these logical operations are determined by relations between propositions and are necessarily ruled by inferentiality.

As regards the semantic inferences, the relationship between the explicit and the implicit is confronted, and the author lingers over presupposition (and respective markers) and the implied. As for the latter, he highlights the characteristics that allow one "to say without saying" or "to suggest, without stating" (p.39). ⁵

Finally, as far as pragmatic inference is concerned, the fundamental reference is the principles that govern the use of language in verbal exchange as they were enunciated in the four maxims of Grice. Here, they are enunciated, explained, and widely exemplified.

After the analysis of inference in its threefold dimension, the forms of reasoning are studied: deduction, induction, and analogy.

His approach to deduction centers on syllogism. After characterizing, enumerating and exemplifying its extensional rules, the author runs through its types and figures. He still makes reference to the complex syllogisms, such as ephichireme, sorites, and polysyllogism. He also lingers over the enthymeme and prefers the approach that defines it as a syllogism whose conclusion is based on likely but not necessary premises - even if the enthymeme be regarded as a fragmented syllogism due to the fact that one of its premises is not explicit.

As for induction, the complete and the amplifying inductions are differentiated by the analysis of the conditions by which an induction is weak or strong.

Finally, concerning analogy - whose conclusion is also always probable -, the author describes and exemplifies the functioning of logical reasoning and shows what makes an analogy strong or weak. Besides, he includes comparison and example in the forms of analogical reasoning. It is worth noticing that, in many situations, the author not only explains the functioning of reasoning, but he also analyzes how some kinds of reasoning are questioned and refuted. Thus, he puts the principle of antiphony into practice.

After his way through logic - which, indeed, suggests that the author values a propositionalist vision of reasoning, that is, the one that considers the proposition the essential element of discourse - he enters into "the factors of argumentation" precisely with the following definition: "an argument is the propositions destined to cause a given thesis to be admitted" (p.70). ⁶ For him, "be admitted" is equivalent to the "purpose of persuading." If his considerations about logic referred to the monological discourse of demonstration, the purpose of persuasion is opened up to the dialogical and rhetorical dimension of discourse. It is dialogical because any discourse inhabits the interdiscourse and rhetorical due to the presence of an audience who is to be persuaded by discourse in which ethos, pathosand logos have to be taken into account.

Ethos is the image of the self discursively constructed by the orator: "ethos (...) is a discursive author, an implicit author" (p.70).⁷ This construction can be more or less efficient in terms of the credibility of the orator. It is also possible to find its marks in the interior "of the discursive materiality of totality" (p.71).⁸

Concerning the audience, from a rhetorical point of view, it arises as an essential variable of the force of the arguments, and it is crucial that the orator know "the pathos or the state of spirit of the audience" (p.73).⁹ Actually, this knowledge is a construction of the orator and is not neutral to the discourse that somehow has to get adjusted to the audience it addresses.

Logos or discourse, in turn, must always be considered a situation of communication in which the adherence of the audience has to be taken into account. Besides, it can only pertain to the domain of the plausible, the likely, and the probable. The conclusions of argumentations have neither a coercive nature, nor an impersonal validity. On the contrary, they bring into play the preferable and can only be helped from the variable intensity of the force of the arguments.

Fiorin still defends that, despite the distinction between demonstration and argumentation made by Perelman, it does not have to be interpreted in terms of a rigid opposition: "The distinction between argumentation and demonstration is not so rigid. On the one hand, even based on the preferable, argumentation can admit demonstrative elements. On the other hand, even sciences present high controversies; therefore, its discourse is argumentative in Perelman's sense" (p.78).¹⁰ Nevertheless, for us, it seems important to highlight that, according to Perelman, argumentation refers to the domain of opinion which does not admit formal criteria of validation. It is in this sense that this theoretician affirms that "correction is to grammar as validation is to logic and efficiency to rhetoric."¹¹ Furthermore, he affirms that every discourse that does not claim impersonal validation lies in the field of rhetoric in which the argumentative discourse develops.¹²

Argumentation implies the use of language, and as Fiorin affirms, "argumentation is a language issue" (p.78).¹³ Well, language is not only polysemic, but it is also susceptible to vagueness and ambiguity. It is inseparable from interpretation; therefore, ideas such as "objectivity," "impartiality," and "neutrality" are, in fact, impossible concepts. Fiorin writes that "language is always full of points of view" (p.83)¹⁴ and is never neutral. We always say things by using certain words and leaving others in the shadow. In other words, to say is simultaneously a process of salience and filtering. Thus, the interpretative selection is a surpassing condition of the human use of language.

However, if ambiguity and vagueness are inherent to natural languages, alluding to "discursive formations that imply interpretations and conflicting appreciations" (p.81),¹⁵ there are still ambiguities that must be avoided. In these cases, syntactic and lexical ambiguities are included, as well as other misunderstandings associated with the polysemy of words.

The author, however, notes that "the natural language has its own logic, which means that, in its daily use, it is not always possible to apply the laws of Logic" (p. 87).¹⁶ This has also been highlighted by Perelman as he classified argumentation as an informal logic, associating it with rhetoric and to the question of adherence.

Along the lines of Perelman, Fiorin also sees the condition of any argumentation in the previous agreement. We could thus say that argumentators are people that understand each other without agreeing: They understand each other because they share common points (for example, the importance and the terms of a problem), but they are not in agreement because they differ as to the solution to this problem. Obviously, even the points of agreement can be strategically negotiated, and currently many people avoid answering questions which use terms that they do not accept.

In any case, there are always shared values and common places in society (not as clichès) that are propitious for previous agreements, and Aristotle identified many of them. Besides revisiting some of them, Fiorin explains and provides examples of their functioning. He similarly focuses on values, highlighting that they can function in an inclusive or in an exclusive fashion by maintaining a relation to doxa.

The second part of the book deals with different types of arguments. It is organized by following the divisions of arguments proposed by Perelman and Tyteca. Thus, the author successively lingers upon the quasi-logical arguments, those that are based on the structure of reality, and those that underpin the structure of the reality. Besides, he analyzes the procedures of the dissociation of notions. However, the revisit to Perelman and Tyteca's typology is carried out in a broadening way, with explanations of great pedagogical value as well as with examples that the author finds in diverse sources. In fact, the author surpasses the typology proposed by Parelmen and Tyteca as he takes an incursion to "other argumentative techniques," generally associated with the idea of fallacy. In this sense, he takes into account the normative position inherent to everyone who thinks that it is possible to establish criteria for evaluating and distinguishing the good from the bad arguments. This position was already clear in the first part of the book due to the importance the author assigned to logic and logical reasoning. We then highlighted a propositionalist view of reason to which this appraisal of logical elements pointed.

This emphasis is important, for many of the current theoreticians of argumentation do not consider the proposition the best unit of approaching and studying argumentation. For example, for Ruth Amossy (2009, p.254), "the argumentative nature of discourse does not imply that the formal arguments are used, nor does it mean that a sequential order from premise to conclusion is imposed on the oral or written text."¹⁷ For her, the chosen unit for analysis of argumentation is discourse. It was in order to move her theory from logic and from "argumentation in language" that she assigned the perspective of "argumentation in discourse." Other scholars such as Michel Meyer¹⁸ preferred to choose the notion of problem and the answer-question pair as central. Still others, such as Marc Angenot,¹⁹ write about rhetorical argumentation as something anti-logical, yet others advocate that the propitious unit to the study of argumentation is the notion of "subject in question."²⁰

However, the study of fallacies is productive inasmuch as it brings a central question to the study of argumentation: the dimension of evaluating argumentations, though this should be treated differently when dealing with monologic, dialogic and in the dialogal discourses.

Following the aforementioned scheme, Fiorin revisits the quasi-logical arguments, the arguments grounded in the structure of reality and the arguments that underpin the structure of the real. Thus, a complete typology of arguments is exposed, its functioning explained, and its use exemplified. The inventory is thorough and rich, followed by a reference to the dissociation of notions. Here, again, the author follows Perelman, who had defined the procedures of connection and dissociation as the fundamental procedures of argumentative techniques.

Finally, transcending the parameters of Perelman's typology of arguments, the author separates a section of the book to "other argumentative techniques." Here, they are referred to as what has traditionally been termed "fallacies." However, as the author highlights, when we abandon a normative theoretical vision of argumentation, they are not more than argumentative strategies: "what has been called fallacy, however, are argumentative strategies that have been used in public discourse, in publicity, etc." (p.200).²¹

Obviously, what is at stake here is the frequent overuse of an argumentative strategy. When appealing to values, with the intent to pass something as natural or normal, it is always profitable to suspect this naturalization and to think about the dimension of the historicity of notions and concepts. The same can said about the use of common-places and specific places allied to narratives that they may construct. Besides, the use of the implicit in argumentation is a strategy that in certain cases can be questioned, namely when it is intended to pass something implicit as unquestionable, resulting in what the author calls "covered persuasion" (p.209).²²

In the group of strategies considered fallacies or potentially fallacious, the author refers to the use of misleading questions (that is, those that present implicit affirmations whose answer end up confirmed), the secundum quid (or inappropriate generalization), the principle petition (or circular reasoning), the ignoratio elenchi (or digression), the distortion of the opponents' point of view or the straw man argument (in its different modalities), paradox, irony and silences (as argumentative resources), and the excess argument (hyperbolic).

As Fiorin goes over this group of strategies - some of them linked to reasoning and others to interaction - he is aware of the fact that "currently, the theory of argumentation cannot consider the debate in terms of a normative rationality" (p.215).²³ Indeed, this is also visible in the group of argumentative strategies analyzed by the aforementioned author, either ascribed as "arguments that appeal to pathos," which include the argumentum ad populum, the argumentum ad misericordiam, and the argumentum ad baculum, or under the idea of resources related with the ethos of the enunciator.

As mentioned before, the last part of the book focuses on the organization of discourse. Here, the author revisits the disposition of Classical rhetoric and provides directions either related to the organization of discourse (reviewing Aristotle) or related to the organization of argumentative texts.

As a final account, it is necessary to say that we are before a book that provides the reader with a valuable and comprehensive set of knowledge about argumentative-rethorical discourse even though it does not enter into the debate over diverse theoretical viewpoints of argumentation and rhetoric. Besides, it makes the reader familiar with the metalanguage or the essential terminology of this field of investigation by always using elucidative examples that permit the realization of up-to-date argumentative-rhetorical analysis. Finally, it provides the reader with simultaneously clear and synthetic visions of the main concepts which give form to this fascinating domain of language studies. These teachings are of extreme importance when situated in the social life sphere as we think along with Fiorin's own words, in one of his main achievements: "it was not possible to solve every question by force; it was necessary to use the word to persuade others to do something."²⁴

• Translated by Oseas Bezerra Viana Junior - [e-mail]
• 1
  In the original: "tudo foi ampliado e reorganizado para ganhar a exaustividade e a coerência que a publicação deste livro exigia."
• 2
  In the original: "discutir as bases da argumentação"; "expor as principais organizações discursivas, ou seja, os principais tipos de argumentos."
• 3
  In the original: "a retórica é, sem dúvida nenhuma, a disciplina que, na história do Ocidente, deu origem aos estudos do discurso."
• 4
  In the original: "se as figuras retóricas não podem ser consideradas enfeites do discurso, então precisam de ser analisadas na sua dimensão argumentativa."
• 5
  In the original: "dizer sem dizer" [...] "sugerir, mas não afirmar."
• 6
  In the original: "fatores da argumentação [...] Um argumento são proposições destinadas a fazer admitir uma dada tese."
• 7
  In the original: "O ethos (...) é um autor discursivo, um autor implícito."
• 8
  In the original: "materialidade discursiva da totalidade."
• 9
  In the original: "o pathos ou o estado de espírito do auditório."
• 10
  In the original: "A distinção entre argumentação e demonstração não é tão rígida. De um lado, mesmo se fundando no preferível, a argumentação pode comportar elementos demonstrativos. Do outro, mesmo as ciências apresentam controvérsias muito grandes e, portanto, seu discurso é argumentativo no sentido de Perelman."
• 11
  In the Portuguese version: "a correção está para a gramática como a validade para a lógica e a eficácia para a retórica." The full reference is PERELMAN, Ch.; OLBRECHTS-TYTECA, L. Rhétorique et Philosophie: pour une théorie de l'argumentation en philosophie. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952. p.38.
• 12
  Perelman states that "[...] every discourse that does not claim impersonal validation depends on rhetoric. [...] Thus conceived, rhetoric covers a wide field of non-formalized thought [...]" (PERELMAN, 1993. pp.172-173). In the Portuguese version: "(...) todo o discurso que não aspira a uma validade impessoal depende da retórica. (...) Assim concebida, a retórica cobre o campo imenso do pensamento não formalizado (...)." The full reference is PERELMAN, Chaïm. O império retórico. Transl. by Rui Grácio and Fernando Trindade. Porto: Edições ASA, 1993. pp.172-173).
• 13
  Text in original: "a argumentação é uma questão de linguagem."
• 14
  In the original: "a linguagem está sempre carregada dos pontos de vista."
• 15
  In the original: "formações discursivas que implicam interpretações e apreciações conflitantes."
• 16
  In the original: "a linguagem natural tem a sua lógica própria, o que leva a que, no seu uso cotidiano, nem sempre se possam aplicar as leis da Lógica."
• 17
  AMOSSY, R. Argumentation in Discourse: A Social Approach to Arguments. Informal Logic, vol. 29, no. 3, 2009.
• 18
  Cf. MEYER, M. Principia Rhetorica. Une théorie générale de l'argumentation. Paris: Fayard, 2008.
• 19
  Cf. ANGENOT, M. Dialogues de sourds. Traité de rhétorique antilogique Paris: Mille et Une Nuits, 2008.
• 20
  Cf. GRÁCIO, R. A. Para uma teoria geral da argumentação: Questões teóricas e perspectivas didácticas. Coimbra: Grácio Editor, 2012
• 21
  In the original: "o que foi chamado falácia, no entanto, são estratégias argumentativas que sempre foram empregadas no discurso público, na publicidade, etc."
• 22
  In the original: "persuasão encoberta."
• 23
  In the original: "hoje a teoria da argumentação não pode pensar o debate em termos de uma racionalidade normativa."
• 24
  In the original: "não se poderiam resolver todas as questões pela força, era preciso usar a palavra para persuadir os outros a fazer alguma coisa."

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Sep-Dec 2015

History

• Received
  13 Aug 2015
• Accepted
  29 Sept 2015