“No se trata de convencer, sino de convivir”. La era post-persuasión

Abstract

This article provides a critical analysis of the form in which argumentative rhetoric has usually been defined in its relation with persuasion, since its Greek origins to the neorhetoricians, from Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation (1958). The study bases his arguments on the “Question-Réponses” model and it questions the equivalence between argumentative discourse=opinion discourse vs. truth discourse that rhetoric underwent from Socrates and Aristotle to Perelman. In contrast to this predominance of the persuasive, the proposal is to understand argumentation from a dialogical perspective which considers the variety of situation during the confrontation of conclusions. The redefinition of argumentation implies that each of the opposing discourses is tackled as an analysis of its antagonist, like antagonistic twins. Thus, argumentation constitutes a space for the development of discourses in which there are a multitude of contradictory responses of a controversial question, which allows for the understanding of argumentation as a method of the management of opinion and representation differences instead of a “worker” at the service of persuasion or consensus. The conclusion of this work maintains that argumentative rhetoric is not necessarily defined in relation to persuasion, which rather constitutes the language function which exceeds rhetoric or argumentative studies and is tackled as the object of study of other scientific disciplines. With the theory of interactions, the study proposes thinking in co-construction of conclusions instead of persuasion in the effective encounter with the other and allows for the understanding one of the principal function of the argumentation: to offer words in the conflicts, enabling the expression and the reinforcement of differences.