Chaim Perelman

Chapter 9: The Figures as Argument

CHAPTER 9 The Figures as Argument T he conviction of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca that style plays a supporting rather than a leading role in argument leads to their decision to treat the figures,1 not in one place, but only as they become a factor in particular arguments. While correct conceptually, this decision is indefensible as an expository strategy because, as a consequence of its execution , their view of the figures recedes too far into the background of their text. Our goal in this chapter is to make this view visible and, in order to demonstrate its scope, to apply it to argument in public address, in philosophy and in science. Before we do so, however, we need to define the figures in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s terms, to indicate their range, and to outline the taxonomy that will form the organizational backbone of this chapter. The object of their study is generally the figures as classically construed; for the two, figures consist of tropes and schemes. The line between them is clear in principle: tropes focus on meaning, schemes on form. “She wallows in her misery,” is a trope because it applies to a human being a predicate ordinarily applied to pigs. An advertisement for plastic surgeons reads, “Your body is our business.” This expression is a scheme in which the two nouns are linked by alliteration, suggesting a conceptual relationship between them, one that reinforces the trope that extends the meaning of “commercial enterprise.” The line between meaning and form, however, is not always clear. Take an antithesis like “You should eat to live, not live to eat.” The heart of this figure may be in the form—in this case the reversal of predicate and infinitive—but, clearly, not just any reversal will do; meaning has to be part of the definition of antithesis. This blurs the dividing line between schemes and tropes, tacitly accepted by Perelman and his co-author. 116 chaim perelman For them, the figures have a discernible structure. While this may be syntactic , semantic, or pragmatic, we always have the sense that an idea is being expressed in a way that so varies from the literal that it draws attention to itself (168). For example, alliteration (as in “Your body is our business”) is a scheme with a discernible syntactic structure; metonymy (as in “All hands on deck”) is a trope with a discernible semantic structure. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca also include allusion and quotation among the figures. Their discernible structure is, rather, pragmatic: They add to the meaning of texts by linking them with companion texts of considerable cultural significance . Lincoln’s many allusions to and quotations from the Bible make this sacred text a close companion to his thought and expression. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s criteria do not always permit us to identify figures in actual texts. This is because whether something is a figure depends also on its context, and on the state of the language. Is it metaphorical to speak of the leg of a chair? Not now, but presumably before 1680, the time of the first recorded use of this expression in English. (This is not to say that such dead metaphors cannot be revived; as we shall see, the Belgians make much of this revival as a rhetorical device.) Just as state of the language matters , so does context. Is it really ever metaphoric to say that men have veins through which blood flows? No? Just observe Bacon in “Of Truth” : What is Truth? said jesting Pilate and would not wait for an answer. Certainly there be [those] that delight in giddiness, and count it as a bondage to fix a belief, affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. (4) In this passage, Bacon is using blood metaphorically to compare contemporary skeptics unfavorably with their ancient counterparts. Context is especially crucial because Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s chief concern is the use of figures in the conduct of arguments: A figure is argumentative “if it brings about a change in perspective, and its use seems normal in relation to this new situation” (169). But this effect can be determined only in context: “The moment a figure is detached from its context and...