PERSUASION

1. Persuasion as the essence of rhetoric

Since Isocrates and Aristotle, argumentative rhetorical speech is commonly defined by its function, which is persuasion:

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. (Rhet, I, 2, 1355b26, RR, p. 105).

According to Crassus as portrayed by Cicero, persuasion is the “first duty” of the orator (Cicero, De Or., I, XXXI; p. 40). Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, in their definition of argumentation, focus on how to “induce or increase the mind’s adherence to the theses presented for its assent” ([1958]/1969, p. 4; italics in the original) before elaborating on the notion of “adherence of the mind” by means of an opposition between persuading and convincing speech, S. Assent; Persuading and convincing.

According to these standard definitions, argumentative rhetoric is fundamentally concerned with the discourse structured by the illocutionary (overtly expressed in the discourse) intention to persuade, that is to communicate, explain, legitimize, and make the listeners share the speaker’s point of view and the words that express it. Persuasion, as a perlocutory state achieved through discourse, results from the realization of these intentions.

The rhetorical tradition binds the discourse of persuasion to the production of a plausible representation in the minds of the audience. This rhetorical representation of reality is considered to be antagonistic to truth by essentialist philosophers such as Plato, see Probable.

2. A rhetoric without persuasion: The ars bene dicendi

Chapter 15 of Book II of Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory is devoted to questioning the definition of rhetoric in relation to persuasion, “The most common definition therefore is that [rhetoric] is the power of persuading” (IO, II, 15, 3), a definition attributed to Isocrates. Quintilian rejects all definitions that associate rhetoric to persuasion:
— As the power to persuade:

But money, likewise, has the power of persuasion, as do interest, and the authority and dignity of a speaker, and even his very look, unaccompanied by language, when either the remembrance of the services of any individual, or a pitiable appearance, or beauty of person, draws forth an opinion. (Id., 6)

— Or as an instrument of persuasion, even with the restriction “power of persuading by speaking”:

Not only the orator, but also others, such as harlots, flatterers, and seducers, persuade or lead to that which they wish, by speaking. (Ibid.)

Finally, Quintilian takes up the definition of rhetoric attributed to the Stoics and Chrysippus, “rhetoricen esse bene dicendi scientiam” (id., p. 841), that is to say, “ rhetoric is the art to speak well and say the Good”:

The definition that [rhetoric] is the science of speaking well […] embraces all the virtues of [rhetoric] at once and includes also the character of the true orator, as he cannot speak well unless he be a good man. (Id., 34)

Its purpose is, “to think and speak rightly” (id., 36).

The rhetoric of persuasive communication and the rhetoric that focuses on the quality of expression have been contrasted as primary vs. secondary rhetoric (Kennedy 1999), or extrinsic vs. intrinsic rhetoric (Kienpointner 2003). We can also speak of an introverted rhetoric, which focuses on the quality of an expression based on intellectual rigor and depth of feeling. Extroverted, communicative rhetoric strives for eloquence, while introverted rhetoric requires an alternative concept of style.

Note that this distinction does not correspond to the distinction advanced in the 1960s, between restricted rhetoric and general rhetoric. Nor does it correspond to the distinction between the rhetoric of arguments and the rhetoric of figures. see rhetoric.

Introverted rhetoric is a rhetoric whose communicative and interactional dimensions, and thus its persuasiveness, are weakened, but which nevertheless remains an argumentative rhetoric. La Bruyère expresses  the concept of such a rhetoric, which has renounced eloquence and persuasion, as follows:

We must only endeavor to think and speak justly ourselves, without aiming to bring others over to our Taste and Sentiments; that would be too great an enterprise. (La Bruyère, [Of Works of Genius], [1688])2

3. From persuasion to action

In an essential but often neglected addition to the basic definition of argumentation, the Treatise on Argumentation extends the scope of persuasion through argumentation to action. Indeed, argumentation would produce the “disposition to act”:

The goal of argumentation, as we have said before, is to create or increase the adherence of minds to the theses presented for their assent. An efficacious argument is one which succeeds in increasing this intensity of adherence among those who hear it in such a way as to set in motion the intended action (a positive action or an abstention from action) or at least in creating in the hearers a willingness to act which will appear at the right moment. (Perelman, Olbrechts-Tyteca, [1958], p. 45)

This vision is restated a little later:

Argumentation alone […] allows us to understand our decisions. (Id, p. 37)

The end point of the argumentative process, then, is not persuasion seen as a mere mental state, an “adherence of the mind”. The ultimate criterion of complete persuasion is an action accomplished in the sense suggested by the discourse, and emotion plays an essential role where in this enactment. Adherence beyond a certain degree would trigger action. This is a crucial point where argument, emotions, and values are combined to give an answer to the philosophical problem of action.

4. Persuasion, identification, self-conviction?

Burke emphasized that persuasion requires identification:

When you are with Athenians, it is easy to praise Athenians, but not when you are with the Lacedaemonians.
Here is perhaps the simplest case of persuasion. You persuade a man only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his. (1950, p. 55).

According to the rhetorical doxa, the prerequisite for a successful persuasive performance is based on agreements between the speaker and the audience, see conditions of discussion. This negotiation of agreements could take place through a preliminary argumentative dialog, which would run the risk of an infinite regression. The speaker therefore chooses not to explicitly agree with his audience, but to adapt to it. For this reason, he makes a preliminary study of the audience, in order to adapt, or mimic it correctly. This is exactly what what the theory of the ethos of the audience foresees, see Ethos, §5: by ethotic suggestion, the speaker presents himself or herself as “one of us, the people”. Second, by logical proofs, the speaker gives prominence to the values and judgments accepted by his or her audience (ex concessis). Third, by appealing to a pathemic communion with the audience, empathy is demonstrated.

For the audience to identify with the speaker, the speaker must first identify with the audience. At the end of this process of accomodation, one might ask who exactly is being persuaded by whom? The extroverted rhetoric of persuasion is threatened by the solipsism of identification. It expresses only group introversion. The notion of “community” (Fr. communion)proposed by the Treatise, may characterize the culmination of this process.

Note: This rhetorical concept of identification is completely alien to the concept of identification defined in the framework of polyphony theory.

5. Who studies persuasion?

The characteristic difference of rhetorical argumentation cannot be defined in terms of persuasion, for the simple reason that persuasion is an object claimed by many other disciplines, including the science and philosophy of cognition; neuropsychology as well as “neurolinguistic programming”.

A year before the Treatise on Argumentation, Vance Packard published The Hidden Persuaders (1957), in which he developed a critique of rational persuasion as socially ineffective. This critique was first elaborated in the twenties by Walter Lippman (1922) and later by Edward L. Bernays (1928). In the wake of these books, but using very different methods, neuromarketing began to focus on the issue of persuasion. To take a less controversial discipline, the analysis of persuasion also belongs to social psychology. This discipline counts among its fundamental objects the theoretical and experimental study of social influences: persuasion, conviction, suggestion, grip/influence, incitement… the formation and manifestation of attitudes, representations, and correlative transformations in the way individuals or groups behave. The whole movement of the world, the material events, including scientific discoveries and technical innovations, together with the correlative flows of language, produce and correct the representations, thoughts, words and actions of individuals and groups. The great classical studies of the social psychology of persuasion published in the last century barely mention rhetoric or argumentation. For example, neither the word rhetoric nor the words argument or argumentation appear in a collection of texts on the psychology of persuasion, entitled Persuasion (Yzerbit and Corneille 1994). The problem of persuasion can legitimately be raised in relation to discourse, but the study of the process of persuasion, even in term of its linguistic aspects, can under no circumstances be carried out solely framework of rhetorical studies (Chabrol and Radu, 2008).

6. Persuasion as a general function of language

Just as rhetorical argumentation cannot be characterized by its persuasive function, it cannot be defined as the study of persuasive language genres, insofar as the persuasive function is not tied to a genre but is coextensive with language use, see schematization.

From the general point of view of language functions, persuasion can be seen as representative of the function of action on the recipient (call function; German Appell Funktion, Bühler [1933], or conative function, Jakobson [1960]). More specifically, Benveniste contrasts history (narrative) with discourse, and considers the intention to influence to be a characteristic of the latter category, discourse:

By contrast, we have in advance situated the plane of discourse. Discourse is to be understood in its broadest extension: every utterance supposes a speaker and a listener, and in the first the intention of influencing the other in some way. It is first of all the diversity of the oral discourses of every nature and of every level … but it is also the mass of the writings that reproduce the oral discourses or borrow their turns and ends. (Benveniste [1959], p. 242, my emphasis)

Nietzsche, in his lectures on rhetoric, generalizes rhetorical force to make it “the essence of language”:

There is obviously no unrhetorical “naturalness” of language of which one could appeal; language itself is the result of purely rhetorical arts. The power to discover and to make operative that which works and impresses, with respect to each thing, a power which Aristotle calls rhetoric, is at the same time the essence of language; the latter is based just as little as rhetoric is upon that which is true, upon the essence of things. Language does not desire to instruct, but to convey to others a subjective impulse and its acceptance. (In S. L. Gilman & al. C. 1989, p. 21)

This tendency to extend rhetoric as persuasion to any kind of talk is, moreover, compatible with all classical definitions of rhetoric as a technique capable of developing the natural capacities of individuals.

7. Persuasion and the “colonization of minds”

The concept of rhetorical persuasion is based on the key idea that persuasion is intrinsically good, even if men and women have an unfortunate tendency to misuse the best. The orator is placed in the exalted position of being a “good man, who speaks well” striving to universalize his visions and aspirations, an aristocrat of speech, while his audience is placed in the lower, insubstantial position of the undecided, because of their poor reasoning and decision-making abilities, see enthymeme; metaphor. The audience is seen as barely capable of making an independent decision, in need of guidance and easy prey for manipulators.

On the political and religious level, persuasion is the strictly correct term to use for propaganda. Propagandists and converts also present themselves as good people, eager to persuade; would-be and actual dictators and fundamentalists also have their place among the deeply convinced, see dissensus. In the early 1950, Domenach defined propaganda as the activities systematically organized “to create, change or confirm opinions” ([1950], p. 8), while Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca focus on “the adherence of minds”; and adherence is also the first step to membership.

Nevertheless, a key difference between argumentation and propaganda is the means they use: argumentation uses “discursive techniques” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca [1958], p. 5), that is an overt, technique, while propaganda combines well with violence, and uses all the available means, both overt and covert, to achieve its goal, using not only discourse, but also images and all spectacular manifestations that require ritual collective action.

To persuade is to convert or, in the words of Margaret Mead, to “colonize minds” (Dascal 2009), to save the audience from some evil and to direct them to some good, of which they were previously neither persuaded nor convinced.

8. Arguing in an exchange structure

The theory of rhetorical persuasion is discussed in the context of an interaction without exchange (an addressed monologue, i.e., a one-way interaction), which gives the audience a largely passive role.
Pragma-dialectics does not assume an opinion to be conveyed to an audience, but rather from a difference of opinion between two individuals, giving each opinion an equal value and chance to prevail. This theory “takes as its object the resolution of divergences of opinion by means of argumentative discourse” (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1992, 18). Rule 1 opens up the space for debate and controversy:

Freedom – The parties must not obstruct the free expression of points of view or their questioning. (van Eemeren, Grootendorst, Snoeck Henkemans 2002, p. 182-183),

The debate achieves its rational goal if it can effectively eliminate either the doubt or the “inconclusively defended point of view”:

Closing – If a point of view has not been conclusively defended, the advancing party must withdraw it. If a point of view has been conclusively defended, the other party must withdraw the doubts it has expressed with respect to that point of view.” (ibid.)

This leads to a consensus either on the opinion, or on its “withdrawal” (from the current interaction, from the other’s mind, etc.).
Interactional and cooperative approaches to argumentation assume  that the point of view that one partner brings to the discussion and presents to the other participants,  who argue their own point of view can be profoundly transformed by the encounter. Consensus can be achieved by merging primitive views or by co-constructing a third opinion, with participants behaving like Hegelian evolutionary dialecticians who progress by synthesizing actual positions, rather than like Aristotelian dialecticians, who progress by eliminating the competing position, see rhetoric; dialectic.

9. Externalized persuasion

To persuade, that is, to change the minds of the audience, is to change the language of the audience. The experience of persuasion marks a turning point in the discourse of the persuadee. The new discourse produced by a persuaded audience is characterized by its argumentative co-orientation with the persuader’s discourse. The persuadees ratify the persuader’s interventions; they adopt the speaker’s presuppositions, repeat his or her arguments, adopt his or her personal style, and, in the case of “deep persuasion”, his tone of voice.

In other words persuasion can be externalized and analyzed on the basis of linguistic evidence obtained by comparing the discourses of the persuader and the persuaded.

1 Cited after Quintilien, I. O. = Institution oratoire, Trans. by J. Cousin. Paris: Les Belles Lettres,
2 Jean de La Bruyère, The Characters, or Manners of the Age. London: D. Browne, etc. p. 7. [Des ouvrages de l’esprit. In Les Caractères ou les mœurs de ce siècle, 1688] https://books.google.fr/books?id=6y9QiTEK1JAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=La+Bruyere+Characters&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=think&f=false (03-19-2017)