Rhetoric and the Manipulation of Values

Abstract

When we try to embrace the group of rhetorical figures in order to understand them in a coherent way, we confront the disparity of the inventories handed down to us by tradition, and we generally come to typologies that add to the confusion without managing to obtain a satisfactory joint view. Therefore, it is at once necessary to give up accounting exhaustively for the inventories of figures and choose a point of view that surpasses the mere rhetorical perspective. It is for this reason that we suggest adopting a point of view of the “manipulation of values” in discourse and place ourselves in the most general perspective of enunciative praxis.

This double determination permits us to point out a “rhetorical dimension of discourse” and characterize the operations as carrying the value of discursive configurations. The rhetorical operations can then be ordered in a sequence in which each phase is characterized by at least two basic categories that can in turn be analyzed in subcategories. The sequence has the form of a “proof” (in production) and of a “problem solution” (in interpretation): (1) confrontation-problematization (Displacement vs Conflict), (2) control-mediation (Assumption vs Configuration), and (3) resolution- interpretation (Similarity vs Connection).

The rhetorical figures analyzed appear in this perspective as fixed products of praxis and others are also possible to take into account that don’t have a name. The model thus obtained is a model of rhetorical syntax of discourse and not a typology of the inventories of traditional rhetoric.