PROLEPSIS

The speaker may choose to link his own  line of argument to a counter-discourse that he or she knows or anticipates and, in any case, rejects. The prolepsis steals the argument from the mouth of the (real or fictitious) opponent, “I know (perhaps better than you) what you are going to say”. The counter-discourse is resumed with an indeterminate degree of distortion, ranging from a literal quotation, together with its references,  to a sketchy evocation of a possible objection, which may be framed as a self-refuting scarecrow, see speech resumption At the very least, the quoted speech is extracted and readjusted in view of the new discursive environment, and its ethotic force is kept at bay. Through the magic of quotation, an intended refutation becomes a mere objection.

The degree to which the counter-discourse is rejected is itself variable. The counter-discourse can be radically rejected; it can be dismissed as absurd.

Do we want to ruin all small savers? No, on the contrary, and for many reasons…

It can also be maintained in full force, until further information becomes available. In this sense, the modal-rebuttal component of Toulmin’s layout of argument is a prolepsis.

The proleptic structure includes not only coordinated or subordinated pairs of statements but any discourse pattern whose configuration corresponds to the staging of two opposing (anti-oriented) discourses, the speaker taking responsibility for one of them; it represents the maximum development of monological argumentation, see connective; destruction; Concession; refutation.

Several rhetorical terms refer to the same structure:

— The anteoccupation refers to a refutative structure, composed of a prolepsis, which evokes the opponent’s position, followed by an hypobole, which refutes this position or expresses the position supported by the speaker (Molinié 1992, [Anteoccupation]). Lausberg ([1963], § 855) calls the same strategy preoccupation (Latin prefixes pre-, ante- “in advance”).

— The terms procatalepsis and the metathesis refer to a discursive configuration by which the speaker “reminds the listeners of past events, presents to them the facts to come, foresees objections” (Larousse, quoted in Dupriez 1984, p. 290.
Metathesis has another quite different meaning, “the interchanging of two sounds or letters of a word”).