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Poetics Today 23.3 (2002) 557-563
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Book Review

Topoï, discours, arguments

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Ekkehard Eggs, ed., Topoï, discours, arguments. Stuttgart: Steiner, 2002. 111 pp.

This relatively short collection of five essays in French is edited by Ekkehard Eggs, a well-known specialist in argumentation theory. All the contributions to this volume were presented at a colloquium on topoi—their theory, history, and applications—that was held in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Hanover, Germany, in November 2000. The essays are: Ruth Amossy, "Des topoï aux stéréotypes: le doxique entre logos et pathos" [The topoi based on stereotypes: The doxic between logic and pathos]; Sylvie Bruxelles, "Topoï lexicaux et analyse interactionnelle: une mise en perspective sur des données recueillies en situation institutionnelle" [Lexical topoi and interactional analysis: A perspective on data gathered in an institutional situation]; Marc Dominicy, "Les ‘topoï' du genre épidictique: du modèle au critère, et vice-versa" [Epideictic "topoi": From the model to the criterion and vice versa]; Ekkehard Eggs, "Du refoulement des topoï dialectiques dans la logique et dans la rhétorique" [On the repression of the dialectical topoi in logic and in rhetoric]; Christian Plantin, "Les topoï comme discours pivots" [Topoi as pivots in discourse].

As the title shows, all the essays deal with the topos from "formal" text-linguistic and argumentative points of view. This distinguishes them from "substantial" literary approaches such as that of E. R. Curtius (1949–1954), which dominated research for many years. The main approaches to argumentation are represented here: Chaïm Perelman and the "new rhetoric"; Oswald Ducrot and Jean-Claude Anscombre's "argumentation dans la langue" (ADL), a linguistic approach to argumentation, as well as theories located more clearly within the Aristotelian tradition, like those of Eggs and Dominicy.

The notion of topos (plural topoi), also known as topic, commonplace, or locus, is an ancient one, going back to Aristotle. Although there have been [End Page 557] widely differing views of topoi down the centuries, one can distinguish two basic conceptions: first, that they are general themes, subjects, or ideas used in arguments, and second, that they are sources, principles, or basic forms of argument. The latter interpretation has dominated the modern philosophical and logical discussion of the topoi, initiated by W. M. A. Grimaldi and W. S. de Pater. Grimaldi (1972: 130) thus sees Aristotle's topoi koinoi (the common topoi, which apply to all the domains of knowledge) as "logical modes of inference" and the eíde (topoi specific to a domain of knowledge) as expressing "specific characteristics relative to the subject-matter" (ibid.: 128). Perelman (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1971) also emphasizes the argumentative nature of the topoi but restricts them to what are referred to elsewhere in the literature as preferential topoi, namely, topoi used for the purpose of evaluation in ethical and aesthetic arguments, such as "that which is more lasting or durable is more desirable than that which is less so."

Certainly, all the contributions share the inferential and argumentative interpretation of the topos, but one can detect important differences in approach and justification. Two main tendencies are manifested here: on the one hand, an approach which is mainly based on text linguistics and conversation/discourse analysis, and on the other hand, a more logical-inferential approach. Since in my opinion the logical-inferential approach forms the basis for and complements the other approach, I will start my discussion with the essay by Eggs, which reconstructs the history of the logical aspect of the notion of topos from Aristotle onward.

Eggs (and with him Dominicy in this volume) draws a fundamental distinction between two types of topoi. Common topoi are rules of inference, logical-rational guarantees that legitimize the inferring of conclusions on the basis of a configuration of given premises (68), while specific topoi are generic models of reality. In other words, these latter, specific topoi are endoxa, general opinions or beliefs that collectively form the doxa, the set of opinions of a community or society. The common topoi, on the other hand, represent a different form of knowledge...

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