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.

Pragma-dialectics and Beyond

Pragma-dialectics is dynamic, context-sensitive, and multi-agent; it promises theories of fallacy and argumentative structure. But pragma-dialectic theory and practice are not yet fully in harmony. Key definitions of the theory fall short of explicating the analyses that pragma-dialecticians actually do. Many discussions involve more than two participants with different and mutually incompatible standpoints. Success in such a discussion may be more than success against each opponent. Pragma-dialectics does well at analyzing arguments advanced by one party, directed at another party; it does much less well at analyzing arguments directed at several opponents at once or at convincing an audience. I suggest a strategy of construing fallacies as defeasible arguments relying on reasonable default principles but applying them in circumstances in which they are undercut or overridden.     

青少年的分离-个体化与其互联网娱乐偏好和病理互联网使用的关系

采用问卷法,以332名中学生为被试,探讨了青少年的分离-个体化、假想观众、互联网娱乐偏好和病理性互联网使用之间的关系。研究发现：（1）青少年互联网娱乐偏好和病理性互联网使用水平存在显著的性别差异,男生比女生更喜欢网上娱乐且有更高的病理性互联网使用水平;（2）分离-个体化中的分离焦虑和预期拒绝对青少年病理性互联网使用有直接的正向预测作用;（3）青少年的互联网娱乐偏好对其病理性互联网使用有正向的预测作用;（4）假想观众观念对于病理性互联网使用有直接的预测作用;（5）分离-个体化中的吞噬焦虑通过对互联网娱乐的偏好间接正向预测病理互联 网使用水平;（6）分离-个体化中的分离焦虑和自我卷入通过假想观众观念间接地正向预测青少年的病理互联网水平     

Generalized others and imaginary audiences: A neo-Meadian approach to adolescent egocentrism

Piaget’s conception of adolescent egocentrism, as interpreted and extended by Elkind (1967) is discussed, and research that has related Elkind’s egocentric ideations of personal fable and imaginary audience to age and intellectual development is considered. Alternative theories of adolescent egocentrism and its decentration are examined, and a neo-Meadian framework is discussed that understands the imaginary audience ideation of adolescents as a possibly functional, highly variable response to the complex task of coordinating individual and social perspectives as part of the adolescent’s search for identity.