This article makes a theoretical reconstruction of a model for instrumental reason in language, using the notion of rhetoric. It takes persuasive language to be constitutive of instrumental reason, and analyses the possibility of pictorial representation of the operation of reason by sketching out the quasi-logical components of arguments made by actors in strategic discursive interaction, in cases collected from empirical contexts of the conflictive use of speech. The article closes with reflections on the consequences of its proposals for the theory of instrumental reason, and affirms that rhetoric is the place par excellence for political theory to operate the connection between molded intersubjective rationality and strategic action.
political rhetoric; instrumental reason; strategy of persuasion
