The conception of audience in Perelman and Isocrates: Locating the ideal in the real

The author compares two theoretical models which develop constructs of an ideal audience. Chaim Perelman's universal audience serves a methodological function within the New Rhetoric which provides for the examination of philosophical arguments on values. Implicit within the work of Isocrates is a competing image which asserts that the ideal audience is empowered by the conditions of argument to engage the advocate in discursive praxis to construct and embody a consensus on contingency-driven value debates. The author concludes that the concept of an ideal audience will be most valuable where interest in adherence to theses is less central than attendance to relationships born in and borne by discourse. Such a view has purchase within a constitutive view of rhetorical relations which asserts that the most useful role for argument is as an invitation to engagement. The situation of argumentation within a deontological ethics requires the partnership and participation of individuals in a mutually constructed discursive praxis.David Douglas Dunlap is a Doctoral Candidate in Speech Communication at Pennsylvania State University     

The Notion of Pseudo-Argument in Perelman’s Thought

According to Perelman (Rhétoriques, Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1989: 80), a pseudo-argument is an argument that is supposed to be convincing from a given audience viewpoint, while it is not from another audience viewpoint. Such a claim raises the traditional problem of the boundaries between the well known “convince versus persuade” dichotomy. This paper aims at investigating it from a contemporary rhetorical and argumentative perspective which will take into account the fictional dimension of persuasion. In this perspective, it will be claimed that the notion of an “as if” argument better fits to some rhetorical phenomena.

Intersex(es) and Informed Consent: How Physicians' Rhetoric Constrains Choice

When a child is born with ambiguousgenitalia it is declared a psychosocialemergency, and the policy first proposed byJohn Money (Johns Hopkins University) andadapted by the American Academy of Pediatrics(and more broadly accepted in Canada, the U.K.,and Europe) requires determination ofunderlying condition(s), selection of gender,surgical intervention, and a commitment by allparties to accept the ``real sex' of thepatient, all no later than 18–24 months,preferably earlier. Ethicists have recentlyquestioned this protocol on several grounds:lack of medical necessity, violation ofinformed consent, uncertainty of standards ofsuccess, among others. This suggests that thefaults in the protocol can be addressed andimproved. Through a rhetorical approachinformed by Perelman/Olbrechts-Tyteca, thedisciplinary pathologization and reconstructionof the body are explored as incidents ofconstraining rhetoric that enact theirpersuasion upon the body of intersexedchildren. This essay shows that thepresumptions, judgments, values, andpresuppositions brought by the physician to theidentification, diagnosis, and curativeprocedures create a network of constraints thatexclude alternative possibilities. The resultis a situation wherein parents, physicians, andintersexed patients have ``no choice' but toaccept the medical treatment guidelines.