INTERPRETATION
The concept of interpretation refers to:
— The general process of understanding complex texts, see interpretation, exegesis, hermeneutics.
— In rhetorical argumentation, the word interpretation may refer to:
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- A particular kind of stasis.
- A figure of repetition.
- An argument scheme, see motives and reasons
1. Stasis of interpretation
In the theory of stasis, the stasis of interpretation corresponds to a special case of contradiction between the parties, the « legal question ». In court, or, more generally, whenever a debate is based on a written text, and especially a normative rule, an “interpretation issue ” arises when the two parties base their conclusions on different readings of the text. For example, one party, may base its argument on the letter of the law, while the other argues from its spirit.
2. A figure of repetition
As a figure of discourse, interpretation consists in duplicating a first term in the form of an immediately following second term, quasi-synonymous and more easily understood than the first. In the sequence “Term1, Term2”, T2 interprets T1, i.e., explains; clarifies the meaning of T1. T2 may be a common language equivalent of a technical term T1:
We found marasmius oreades, I mean, Scotch bonnets.
The interpretation applied to a word or an entire phrase may retain its argumentative orientation:
The President announced policy of controlling spending, a “sober state” policy.
The interpretation made by an opponent may reverse the argumentative orientation of T1:
The President announced a policy of controlling spending, that is, a policy of austerity.
This change is marked by the introduction of a reformulating connective (one could say an interpretive connective): in other words, i.e., that is to say, which means that…
3. Refutation by interpretation
The Treatise on Argumentation classifies the interpretatio as a “figure of choice”, and offers an example borrowed from Marcus Annaeus Seneca, (known as the Seneca the Elder, or the Rhetorician -54, +39). Seneca the Elder is the author of the Controversies, a collection of more or less imaginary legal cases, treated by various rhetors of his time, in a kind of oratorical contest.
Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca’s example is taken from the first case of the collection ([1958] p. 233), where the question proposed to a score of expert orators is the ingenious story of a son who has fed his uncle in spite his father’s prohibition. The wheel of fortune having turned, it is now the father who is in trouble, and the son now feeds his father in spite of his uncle’s prohibition. Thus, the unhappy son is banished twice, for the same reason, first by his father, and then by his uncle.
In the following passage, the author reports the words of the lawyers who addressed the father on behalf of the son. The first lawyer, Fuscus Arellius, speaks first, then Cestius:
Arellius Fuscus, in concluding, sug,gested, as a question: ‘I thought that, in spite of your prohibition, you wanted your brother to be fed: you had that air in pronouncing your defense, or so I thought.’ Cestius was bolder: he did not just say ‘I thought you wanted it’, but ‘You wanted it and you still want it today’, and with this figure, he showed all the motives which compelled [the father to want it so] [and concluded:] ‘Why are you driving me away? No doubt you are indignant that I have taken your place’.
Seneca the Elder, or the Rhetorician (54 BC – 39 AD),
[Controversies and Suasories], (written at the end of his life).[1]
The interventions of the two lawyers are aligned. Fuscus Arellius argues that the father may have given his command reluctantly. Cestius then « goes further », attributing to the father an intention contrary to his words, “You wanted it and you still want it today”. Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca see here an « argumentative figure or a stylistic figure depending on the effect it has on the audience » ([1958], p. 172), see figure.
The lawyer’s words are clearly argumentative. First, they introduce a typical stasic situation, a question about the qualification of the act under investigation: “You wanted me to disobey you. So, don’t punish me, but congratulate me on having fulfilled your secret wish!”. Second, it implements the « private will vs. public will » scheme, substituting the private, sincere, will, for the publicly affirmed will, made under social pressure, see motives.
4. Refutation through interpretation vs. performative analysis
The discussion of this example involves the analysis of the command as a performative act. Interpretation is an instrument of refutation and defense that, interestingly enough, opposes an accusation based on a performative analysis of such a speech act. Austin illustrates his discovery of performativity with an example borrowed from Euripides’ Hippolytus of (I, 612). According to Austin, a command, is valid as soon as it is uttered, regardless of what the speaker actually thinks:
Surely the words must be spoken ‘seriously’ and so as to be taken ‘seriously’? […]. But we are apt to have a feeling that their being serious consists in their being uttered as (merely) the outward and visible sign, for convenience or other record or for information, of an inward and spiritual act: from which it is but a short step to go on to believe or to assume without realizing that for many purposes the outward utterance is a description, true or false, of the occurrence of the inward performance. The classic expression of this idea is to be found in the Hippolytus (1. 612), where Hippolytus says, “my tongue swore to, but my heart (or mind or other backstage artiste) did not”. Thus “I promise to…” obliges me — puts on record my spiritual assumption of a spiritual shackle.
It is gratifying to observe in this very example how excess of profundity, or rather solemnity, at once paves the way for immorality. (Austin, 1962, pp. 9-10)
Like the son and the father in Seneca’s example, Hippolytus and the nurse, are engaged in highly argumentative interactions. In such situations, semantics, pragmatics, and morality can be discussed and argued. The son acknowledges the facts (he fed his uncle) and pleads not guilty to the charge of disobedience, claiming that the verbal command, what the father said, did not express the true will of the father. This is a typical example of the contradiction Austin describes between what language actually does and what goes on in the mind of the speaker. It should first be noted that Austin’s binary distinction knows only the verbal aspects of language, and excludes all paraverbal (mimic) possible modalizations of the command.
There remains the question of the validity of the father’s prohibition. For the father and for Austin, the prohibition is valid because the father uttered the relevant formula, and the son is guilty of the double Austinian sin of analytic fallacy and moral perversity. But the analysis offered by the Austinian father is rather questionable; what the father really said is problematic and must be subject to an interpretation that takes into account the pragmatic environment of the speech act utterance.
The situation is analogous to that of ironic utterances. The addressee hears something contextually incongruous, said by someone who normally speaks seriously, and this forces him to engage in an interpretation of this puzzling utterance. Similarly, the father has uttered a prohibition that contradicts the natural (doxic) law of brotherly love, which the son finds inconsistent with his father’s true character; therefore, the son is forced to interpret the incongruity — perhaps the father’s verbal utterance was accompanied by a paralinguistic sign, indicating a different intention? The son concludes that the command was not given in the father’s true, natural voice but in his social voice. Consequently, as Fuscus Arelius argues, the son legitimately fed his uncle.
To decide that this latter interpretation is “the correct one” is to side with the son and against the father; to decide that the Austinian interpretation is the correct one is to side with the father against the son. In either case, to take a stand for an analysis is to side with one party or the other.
[1] Translated after the French edition used by Perelman, Sénèque le Rhéteur, Controverses et Suasoires. Trans. by H. Bornecque. T. 1. Paris: Garnier Frères, 1932, p. 23-24. https://archive.org/details/Controverseset Suasoires.