Chapter 12

Appealing Rhetorics: Ideology and Argumentation

Chris Sinha

One has no need of lies in human intercourse if one has a sufficient amount of
truth! With it one can deceive and seduce in any direction one wants.
- Friedrich Nietzsche.*

Introduction

The topic which I address in this paper is the nature of persuasive dis-
course in the political domain. My remarks to this topic are far from
constituting a well-worked out theory, and should be seen rather as a
preliminary investigation into the potential fruitfulness of employing a
certain way of understanding the nature of ideology together with a
certain way of understanding the nature of communicative acts. In other
words, I shall try to place social theory in relation to linguistic pragmatics
through the examination of how a social category - ideology - achieves
its realization and effect in particular forms of discourse.
I begin by quoting from Charles Willard's chapter some points which
seem to me to summarize the kind of considerations which can usefully
orient us in making a first approach to the way in which ideologies func-
tion in persuasive political discourse. "The evolution of a discourse", writes
Willard, "is the transformation of an audience, for when we speak of "a
discourse", we think not only of text-milieus or positions but of people ...
Persuasive potential, Aristotle said, is in the audience. Enthymemes are
possible only if the interlocutor is willing and able to supply premises.
Persuasion is thus intrinsically co-operative. The expansion of a discourse,
therefore, presupposes a readiness and cooperativeness in an audience
inside a community" (p. 167). Ideological persuasion, on this account, can
loosely be defined as a discursive form which seeks to secure the consent
of an audience to a proposition, or set of propositions, whose premises
or presupposed grounds are supplied, not by the speaker, but by the the
audience themselves. The purpose of this paper is to explore this loose
definition, and to attempt to clarify it further with the aid of theories
both of ideology and of communicative action.

Ideology and ideological persuasion

The concept of ideology has a long history in social and political thought,
which I can do little more than indicate here (cf. Larrain, 1979). The

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180 Chris Sinha

term was first employed by Destutt de Tracy, who like other Enlighten-
ment philosophers, and following Sir Francis Bacon (1960) [1620], took the
principal goal of philosophy (ideologic) to be the search for infallible
methods for distinguishing between scientific truth - the fruit of reason
and observation - and error and prejudice - attributed to the influence of
the passions, and the weight of tradition (especially religion). Ideologic,
in de Tracy's conception, was to be the science of a human intelligence
liberated from false ideas and prejudices. It was, apparently, Napoleon -
reacting against the "ideologists" who criticised his combination of raisott
d'etat and despotism - who was responsible for reversing de Tracy's usage;
thereafter, ideology came to be understood as synonymous with "false
ideas", and as standing in opposition to "science".
This opposition was preserved in Marxist theories of ideology, receiving
its most influential recent expression in the work of Althusser and his
followers (Althusser, 1971; Althusser, 1977; Althusser and Balibar, 1970),
to which I shall return below. In Marx and Engels's theory of ideology,
the concept of ideology as "false consciousness" is understood in terms of
the generation of error, not through "human weakness" or "tradition" in
general, but by virtue of the class position of the conscious or reflecting
subject: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas,
i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same
time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of mater-
ial production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means
of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of
those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it" (Marx
and Engels, 1970: 64.). In the Marx-Engels theory of ideology, the concept
of ideology as "error" - the opposite of science - is joined to the tradition
of political thought inaugurated by Machiavelli, who emphasised that the
exercise of political power depends upon the mastery of techniques by
which consent can be secured without the employment of coercion; the
ruler, or aspirant ruler, must employ all means (including deceit) in order
to appear to embody Christian virtues, while remaining aware of that
'higher' understanding of virtue which consists in furthering the interests
of party and state.
The Italian Marxist Gramsci developed the Marx-Engels theory of "false
consciousness" - in which the role of those "subjected" to ideology remains
essentially passive - into a new conception of ideology in which "hegemon-
ic" domination is contrasted with "coercive" domination, through a reading
of Machiavelli as the ideologist par excellence of the construction of
popular will through political agitation and ideological persuasion:
"Throughout [The Prince], Machiavelli discusses what the Prince must be
like if he is to lead a people to found a new state; the argument is devel-

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Appealing Rhetorics 181

oped with rigorous logic, and with scientific detachment. In the conclusion,
Machiavelli merges with the people, becomes the people; not, however,
some "generic" people, but the people whom he, Machiavelli, has convinced
by the preceding argument - the people whose consciousness and whose
expression he becomes and feels himself to be, with whom he feels iden-
tified. The entire "logical" argument now appears as nothing other than
auto-reflection on the part of the people - an inner reasoning worked out
in the popular consciousness, whose conclusion is a cry of passionate
urgency" (Gramsci, 1971 [1929-1935]: 126-127).
A further key concept in Gramsci's conception of political and ideologi-
cal struggle is his distinction, drawn from military history and the theory
of warfare, between the "war of movement" (or "manoeuvre") and the "war
of position". In reflecting on the failures of the post-(First World) War
working class insurrections in Western Europe, Gramsci wrote that "in
wars among the more industrially advanced States, the war of manoeuve
must be considered as reduced to more of a tactical than a strategic
function ... The same reduction must take place in the art and science
of politics, at least in the case of the most advanced States, where "civil
society" has become a very complex structure and one which is resistant
to the catastrophic "incursions" of the immediate economic element (crises,
depressions, etc.). The superstructures of civil society are like the trench-
systems of modern warfare ... Hence it is a question of studying "in depth"
which elements of civil society correspond to the defensive systems in a
war of position" (p. 235). Gramsci considered ideological struggle - in its
widest sense, ranging from propaganda to political interventions in issues
of science, culture and education - to constitute an aspect of the "war of
position". In the next section, I shall adopt Gramsci's metaphor in discus-
sing the way in which "moves" in ideological discourses function to "posi-
tion" speakers, opponents and audiences.
Before doing so, however, I wish to complete this brief discussion of
the nature of ideology by referring once again to the work of Althusser.
Any discussion of his theories in the context of a short article is of
necessity incomplete and perhaps superficial, but several issues are worthy
of note. The first of these concerns the relation between "ideology" and
"science", and the paradox generated by the claim by any partisan group -
such as Marxist theorists "representing" the working class - that their
own world view is "scientific", while that of their opponents is "ideologi-
cal". The obvious reaction of a sceptic to such a claim is to turn its
premises on the speaker: what (non-ideological) grounds can be given to
substantiate it, given that the claim is clearly rooted in a particular
ideological interest? And what, indeed, could constitute any possible
grounds for distinguishing between (social) science and ideology, given
that all social thought is 'relative' to particular social formations and
circumstances? This paradox was central to Mannheim's project of the
construction of a sociology of knowledge, in which, recognizing the force

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182 Chris Sinha

of the Marx-Engels critique of "ideology" masquerading as "truth", he

attempted to develop and justify an interpretive methodology which would,
on the one hand, capture the relations between "world views" and social
structures, and yet, on the other hand, would not be tied to specific class
interests and historic projects (Mannheim, 1972).
It is widely considered that Mannheim's sociology of knowledge, what-
ever his intentions, remains pinned on the relativist horn of this central
dilemma of the social sciences. Yet the classic Marxist solution to the
problem - which asserts, essentially, that because the historic nature and
mission of the proletariat is that of the "universal class", the truth of
Marxism is a universal, and not a partisan, one (Avineri, 1970) - not only
presents itself as transparently self-serving, but also invokes a "historidst"
logic, in the pejorative sense of that word: "history" is viewed as both
the subject and guarantor of its own process. Given the anti-historicist,
anti-Hegelian thrust of Althusser's Marxism, it is not surprising that he
rejected such a "solution" to the problem of ideology.
Althusser's own attempt at a solution recognises that "ideology" is a
universal phenomenon of social life and social structure, and not one
which is limited to capitalism or class society - a position which recalls
Mannheim's approach, though it is rooted in a very different theoretical
tradition.2 Indeed, Althusser becomes locked in the end in the self-same
problem as that which beset Mannheim: given that he wishes to preserve
both a concept of (non-ideological) scientific "theoretical practice", and a
conception of ideology as an inevitable and universal "structural effect" of
social relations, he is forced to elaborate extraordinarily abstract criteria
for "science", thereby blunting the force of the Marxist conception of
social theory as essentially practical-critical and partisan.
Of more immediate relevance to our current concerns is the specific
theory of ideology developed by Althusser. There are three key aspects of
the theory. The first is essentially sociological, consisting in the proposi-
tion that ideologies, rather than being considered as free-floating "ideas",
should rather be conceptualised in terms of their realization in specific
institutions which together constitute the "Ideological State Apparatuses".
Althusser examines specifically the institutions of church, family, and
education system. It is through these institutions that ideology, as both
an effect of social structure and a component aspect of the reproduction
of the structure, functions to secure hegemony. This conception is clearly
related to Gramsci's stress upon the distinction between state and civil
society, which Althusser reworks in terms of a theory in which the econo-
mic "base" - class structure - is determinant of political and ideological
formations only indirectly or "in the last instance".
The second aspect of Althusser's theory of ideology is epistemological,
in which he attempts to specify the sense in which ideologies may be said
to be instances of "false consciousness" or (self) deception. Here he sug-
gests that ideology is, on the one hand, a "structure" which derives from

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Appealing Rhetorics 183

the basic conditions of social existence within a particular social forma-

tion, and which is in this sense objective and independent of individual
subjectivities; and on the other hand, an "imaginary" relationship between
subjects and their real conditions of social existence, such that it arises
"spontaneously" and assumes the form of something "natural". This formu-
lation clearly derives in part from Marx's comment on the "illusory" and
"deceptive" nature of the commodity-form: "Whence, then, arises the
enigmatic character of the product of labour, as soon as it assumes the
form of a commodity? Clearly, it arises from this form itself... The mys-
terious character of the commodity form consists therefore simply in the
fact that the commodity reflects the social characteristics of men's own
labour as objective characteristics of the products of labour themselves,
as the socio-natural properties of these things ... It is nothing but the
definite social relation between men themselves which assumes here, for
them, the fantastic form of a relation between things" (Marx, 1976 [1867]:
164-5).
Thirdly, Althusser's formulation of ideology as consisting in an "imagi-
nary" relationship between a subject and their "real" conditions of exis-
tence is also partly derived from Lacan's interpretation of Freudian psych-
oanalysis (Lacan, 1966). In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, the pre-Oedipal
(narcissistic) subject is considered as being constituted in an imaginary,
specular relationship to his/her own body, involving fantasies of control
and wholeness engendered during the "mirror-stage". The specularity of
this relationship is such that the infant's own desire to "be" the imagin-
ary, mirrored Other is simultaneously constructed as the desire for the
desire of the Other. The breaking of the hold of the "Imaginary" is
achieved, in the resolution of the Oedipus complex, not through its subor-
dination to the "real", but through the entry of the child into the Sym-
bolic Order, constituted in language and symbolized by the phallus as
representative of the law of the Father, which prescribes and proscribes
the Objects of desire and hence constitutes the Subject as gendered in
and through language.
Yet, in Lacan's theory, the realm of the Imaginary and the specularity
of desire and identification are not so much abolished as confined by the
Symbolic Order; adult, gendered subjectivity is conceived as existing in a
field of continuous tension between the Imaginary and the Symbolic Or-
ders, and in this respect we are condemned to a ruptured Being: like
Plato's cave-dwellers, we live a shadow existence in which Imaginary
identifications and specular desires flicker beneath the illusory (Imaginary)
unity of the Self imposed and maintained by language and the Symbolic
Order.
Similarly, for Althusser "ideology is a representation of the imaginary
relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence" (Althusser,
1971:153), it is the imaginary Subject which holds its subjects in an
imaginary relationship with the world and with ideology itself. The ideolo-

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184 Chris Sinha

gical subject is an "effect" of ideology, which holds the subject locked in

its embrace through a mechanism of what Althusser calls "interpellation".3
Now, my purpose here is not to evaluate Althusser's theory as a whole,
nor any of the other approaches I have discussed. Rather, I wish to bor-
row a number of ideas from the various theorists I have discussed in order
to see if they might help us better to understand the nature of ideological
discourse. These ideas might be listed as a set of provisional theses, as
follows:

(a) Ideological persuasion is part of a "war of position" in which the

objective is to position both the audience and any explicit or implicit
opponent in some relationship to the proposals or propositions expounded
by the speaker.
(b) Ideological persuasion is a process by which subjects are led to
subject themselves to ideologies by virtue of the fact that they are al-
ready subject to ideology: it is a process of production and reproduction
of "imaginary" and "specular" relationships, between speaker and audi-
ence, and between subjects and their "real conditions of existence".
(c) Ideological persuasion is not just about persuading, or convincing; it
is also (and more fundamentally) about creating and sustaining a readi-
ness to be persuaded. In this sense ideological persuasion involves mak-
ing use of presupposed grounds or premises which are supplied by the
audience, and merely "evoked" by the speaker. The grounds are "put
into" the audience by virtue of the audience's prior subjection to ideolo-
gy: ideology is always-already there, it is appealed to, not created, by
the speaker.
(d) The effectiveness of ideological persuasion depends upon identifica-
tion, in two senses. First, identification by the speaker of the ideologi-
cal grounds to which he or she is able to appeal, and, second, identifi-
cation by the audience with the grounds appealed to by the speaker in
constructing his or her discourse. The speaker, in Gramsci's terms,
"merges" with (is identified with) by the audience, so that "the entire
argument appears as auto-reflection in the popular consciousness".
(e) The means by which the necessary identification is achieved is
"interpellative", involving both appealing to the audience, and through
that appeal positioning them so that they may be subject to the rhetor-
ical force of the argument as developed by the speaker.

Appellatives and performatives

It is clear from the foregoing that a key concept in the analysis of ideo-
logical discourse is that of presupposition, which we can, for current
purposes, loosely gloss as the "common ideological ground" to which speak-
ers appeal in "positioning" the audience in relation to the development of

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Appealing Rhetorics 185

their argumentation. Presupposition is a topic which has attracted a great

deal of attention over the years in logic, speech act theory, and linguistics
(Frege, 1892; Strawson, 1964; Fillmore, 1971), and this is not the place to
attempt even a modest summary of the multifarious issues involved. Here
I shall concentrate on a restricted set of issues relating to the status of
presupposition in speech act theory.
A general distinction which is commonly found in speech act theory is
that between the illocutionary, (Austin, 1962) or "informative" (Sperber
and Wilson, 1986), force, goal or intent of a speech act; and the conditions
which have to be met in order for the speech act to be "felicitous"
(Searle, 1969). On a relatively narrow definition of presupposition - though
still one which extends beyond a strict logico-linguistic definition in terms
of truth conditions on statements - that which is presupposed in the
performance of a speech act can be captured in terms of what Searle
(1969) calls the "essential" felicity conditions, pertaining to the
performative logic of the apt. As Bruner (1986: 85) puts it, "you do not
request something when you already possess it, nor warn against
nonexistent dangers". A looser definition of presupposition is offered by
Fillmore (1971: 276), who suggests that the "presuppositional aspects of a
speech communication situation" may be identified as "those conditions
which must be satisfied in order for a particular illucutionary act to be
effectively performed in saying particular sentences". Such conditions
involve not only the performative logic of the speech act considered as a
means for "getting things done" in language, but also the prior social
relations (in terms, that is, of power and ideology) which authorise or
empower the speaker to perform the illocutionary act.
This aspect of presupposition, involving the status of the speaker as
one invested with (or denied) communicative authority, is of course par-
ticularly clearly exemplified by the special class of verbs to which Austin
(1962) drew attention: that is, performatives. The class of performatives
includes such verbs as: promise, deny, accuse, condemn, forgive, confess,
agree, invite. The utterance of sentences containing such verbs has the
illocutionary force of constituting specific relations of obligation, evalua-
tion and accountability between speakers and hearers; and presupposes
that speakers are institutionally or situationally authorised to perform
such socially constitutive acts.
The distinction between the "performative" (illocutionary) and the "pre-
suppositional" aspects of such utterances is more complicated, however,
than might be suggested by the analysis of the utterance into "that which
it performs/constitutes" and "those conditions necessary for its perform-
ance". In many cases the speaker does not so much presuppose the author-
ity to utter, as appropriate it for the occasion, in such a way as to sug-
gest or imply both the correctness of the evaluative stance expressed by
the utterance, and the unchallengeable authority of the judgement or
"sentence" which is thereby pronounced. Take that classic of radical jour-

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186 Chris Sinha

nalism, an article headed simply 'J'Accuser.4 Here, the author does not
"pronounce" as one invested with authority by the "Ideological State
Apparatus", as would be the case with a judge or a priest. Rather, he
appeals in his accusation to a "higher" court of social morality, which, he
implies, both vindicates his accusation and empowers his utterance of it.
In this respect, I want to suggest, every "performative" act involves,
simultaneously, an appeal to some "high ground" - that is to say, some
presumed moral vantage point or Archimedean fulcrum - which lends
authority to the act and vindicates the "sentence pronounced". It is from
"out of' this high ground that the speaker "judiciously" adopts and expres-
ses a stance (blame or praise, condemnation or commendation).
The analysis I offer here ties in with the "Organon-theory" of language
proposed by Buhler (1965; 1934) in his Sprachtheorie (see Innis, 1982).
Buhler proposed that language conceived as a vehicle for communication
could be characterised in terms of three fundamental "functional" concepts:
representation, expression and appeal. Every utterance in language partakes
of all of these aspects, which are in turn fundamentally related to the
three basic components of the communicative situation: "The sign ... func-
tions not only with respect to the referred-to objects and states of affairs
... but also with respect to the speaking subject as well as the recipient
of the uttered message" (Galan, 1985). Buhler conceived the appellative
function or aspect of the linguistic sign to be audience-related; he noted
that the formal structures instantiating it were to be found in vocatives
and imperatives, but also that "In order to discover what the old masters
of linguistic research knew about the "appeal" factor, one consults not
descriptive grammar but what they called rhetoric": the systematization of
the "skillfully used techniques utilized by the most successful joiners of
men (preachers, rhetoricians, poets)" (Innis, 1982:160-1). Thus, one might
say that the representational, expressive, and appellative aspects of the
utterance correspond, respectively, to the formal divisions of the verbal
system into the third, the first and the second person declensions of the
Indo-European languages.5 At the same time, according to Buhler, all three
of these aspects are to be found in all utterances, even if in abbreviated
or vestigial form.
Taking Buhler's theory as our guide, it is clear that "pure" performatives
(e.g."7 accuse you"), and "pure" presuppositionals (e.g. "you take sugar,
don'tyouT) differentially co-ordinate the representational, expressive and
appellative aspects of the utterance. The "pure" performative raises the
expressive aspect to the highest level of dominance, in which it compre-
hends the representational aspect precisely inasmuch as the speaker is
pronouncing on behalf of (i.e., as a representative of) a community orient-
ed by given norms and institutions authorising the utterance of the sen-
tence. The appellative aspect of the utterance of the performative consists
in the constituting of the audience in relation to precisely these norms
and insitutions: that is to say, in subjecting the audience (and the speak-

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Appealing Rhetorics 187

er) to that which (by compulsion or by consent) they are already subject
to. In "pure" presuppositionals, on the contrary, it is the appellative aspect
which is raised to the highest level of dominance, in the sense that it
comprehends the representational aspect by reducing it to that stock of
"common knowledge", or belief, which requires merely to be pointed to,
rather than depicted or propositionalized. The expressive aspect of the
utterance of the presuppositional consists then in "joining" or "fusing" the
subjectivity of the audience with the subjectivity of the speaker, in such
a way that the utterance is expressive of the heightened consciousness of
the participants in the speech event that all, as it were, are in possession
of what each already "knew".
I want to suggest that both the persuasive and the adversarial functions
of ideological discourse can be clarified by regarding such discourse as
involving a dialectical interplay of illocution and presupposition, realized
at the level of utterances in terms of the dynamic dominance relations
between performative and appellative aspects of the utterance. On this
account, the "specular" nature of ideological discourse as understood by
Althusser is itself mirrored in the structure of the speech act. Ideology is
the "always-already there" presuppositional background to which the speak-
er appeals; the speaker's license to speak is granted in and through the
appeal implicit in the performative act, which structures the audience's
receptiveness to the speech act in such a way that assent is gained "from
within" the audience itself. At the same time, the act of uttering is ren-
dered authoritative, in that the speaking subject is understood both as
the privileged author of the ideological text, and as the expressive vehicle
of the text that, through him or her, speaks its "truth". Thus, "ideology"
creates a self-referential textual world, a discourse whose alpha and omega
is ideology itself. In Gramsci's words, "the entire 'logical' argument now
appears as nothing other than auto-reflection on the part of the people".

Some strategies of appeal

In this section I shall attempt to indicate some of the ways in which the
appeal function operates in concrete ideological discourse. I stress again
that all I am attempting is a preliminary sketch of a research programme
whose full implementation would require detailed analyses of specific texts.
Here I shall restrict myself to a more-or-less intuitive categorization of
some types of strategy which, amongst others, are available to speakers
engaging in political-ideological discourse.
We may begin by noting that a great many speech acts performed by
politicians take the form of performatives. Expressions such as "My party
will...", "This government commits itself to ...", and so forth, are common
fare in electioneering, debate, and the writing of manifestos. The force of
such performatives derives, as we have seen, not merely from the institu-

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188 Chris Sinha

tional position of the speaker or writer as a representative of party or

government, but also from the appeal that they make to a world of com-
mon values. The political message is "got across" by calling to mind, for
the audience, those values and aspirations to which, it is presumed, they
subscribe; and by indicating that the speaker both shares those values and
aspirations, and is authorised and qualified to implement policies which
reflect them.
At the same time, since politics is an arena of dispute and contestation,
such clear-cut performatives are embedded within forms of discourse
designed to demonstrate or imply that one's political antagonist does not
share these values. Certain forms of political rhetoric "manage" this argu-
mentation by directly contrasting the values of the speaker with the
(imputed) values of the opponent: "We stand for X; they stand for Y". The
effectiveness of such argumentation forms depends on the ability of the
speaker subtly to gauge the extent to which the audicnce is already com-
mitted to a partisan viewpoint: and they are frequent on occasions denoted
by such expressions as "rallying the faithful" and "playing to the gallery".
Many linguistic devices may be employed in this discourse form, amongst
the most common of which is the deliberate choice of lexical items whose
connotative (appellative) "aura" can be played on to the benefit of the
speaker and the detriment of the opponent. Lexical choice is a crucial
domain of ideological contestation, as both speakers and audiences are
well aware. Examples such as the opposition "freedom fighter-terrorist"
represent just an extreme aspect6 of a domain of contested meaning whose
parameters themselves shift according to audience and context. A politician
may, for example, choose to refer to the interests and values of "our
people" (the constituency) in the context of a party rally, while referring
in a TV debate to "the people we represent", or even more universally
"all the people of this country".
The issue of lexical choice illustrates a fundamental aspect of ideological
discourse, namely the role of appellatives in the struggle to define the
universe of discourse, and to capture for one's own side the discursive
(and thus morally legitimating) "high ground". This is accomplished, not
only by direct appeals to the ideological values held by the speaker and
presumed to be held by the audience (e.g. "The wishes of the islanders are
paramount", "there can be no surrender to terrorism", etc.), but also by
the more subtle means of inviting one's opponent to commit a performative
act with the force of endorsing or repudiating a proposition discursively
selected so as to render it "unchallengeable": i.e. a proposition with which
all "right-thinking" people are morally obliged to concur (given the presup-
positions appealed to).
Such "invitations" may frequently take a form such as: "Surely the Rt.
Hon. gentleman would condemn violence on picket lines", or, more directly,
"Will the Prime Minister not agree that the government's policies are
divisive and destructive". This form of political address, a kind of second-

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Appealing Rhetorics 189

person performative, in contrast to the expressive nature of the first-

person performatives committing the speaker to a point of view, is in its
linguistic form closest to an appellative or "pure presuppositional". In
effect, the speakers is saying "We all view this case from such and such
an ideological perspective, don't weT The doubt cast by the implicit "tag"
question serves both to activate the appeal, and to exclude the opponent
from the ideological community whose values it calls to mind.
A final issue concerning the role of appeal in political discourse con-
cerns the nature of the legitimating norms to which the speaker appeals
in "positioning" the audience and justifying his or her arguments. Such
norms appear to fall into categories which are themselves describable (1)
with reference to those performative speech acts associated with specific
propositional or intentional attitudes: in particular, with the acts
performed by uttering the verbs believe, desire, intend; and (2) with
reference to the class of verbs denoting the linguistic expression of prop-
ositions, such as declare, state; and (3) with the pragmatic conditions on
the utterance of declarative verbs, particularly the conditions pertaining
to the speaker's authorisation to speak. Various types of "orienting norms"
may be expressed as:

(1) Appeals to the Higher Good. These forms of rhetoric are oriented to
the ethical beliefs of a particular community or group; they are exemp-
lified by such sentences as "We hold these truths to be self-evident",
"All right-thinking people agree that...", and so forth.
(2) Appeals to the General Will. These forms of rhetoric are oriented to
the desires (or aspirations) of a community or group; they are exempli-
fied by such sentences as "This government has a mandate to ...", "What
the people of this country want...", and so forth.
(3) Appeals to the Founding Intent. These forms of rhetoric are oriented
to the intentions of some community or its representatives. They place
the speaker and the audience in relation to the values expressed by the
parties to an "original contract", which may itself (as in a constitution)
be seen as a canonical text, or may rather be conceived as an "act of
covenant" founding a national or other entity. They are exemplified by
such sentences as "Our party, in keeping with [the constitution, the
traditional goals of our movement]...", and so forth.
(4) Appeals to the Founding Text. These forms of rhetoric are similar
to (3) above, but are oriented rather to the text than to the spirit of
the law (agreement, constitution, covenant etc.) appealed to7 They are
thus oriented to the semantic content of codified statements and decla-
rations, rather than to the intentions of specific historical agents, or
to the beliefs of actual or imagined communities, except insofar as they
represent these latter.
(5) Appeals to Rights. These forms of rhetoric appeal to the agreed or
disputed rights of ruler and subject, government and citizen, enforcer

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190 Chris Sinha

and transgressor of law, and so forth. They may include reference, not
merely to the exercise and distribution of rights, but also to their
limitation, scope and legitimacy (e.g. in arguments concerning human
rights, freedom of the press etc. vs. national security and defence of
the "rule of law"). They are thus oriented to the determination of the
subjects of the declarative sentences which codify specific rights and
obligations, and may in this respect be seen as a subset of (4) above.
(6) Appeals to Revelation. These forms of rhetoric constitute a kind of
"eschatological move" in discourse strategy, in which the "right" appealed
to is granted neither by recognised authority, nor by text, but by divine
or historical dispensation. Such appeals are familiar in utterances such
as "I have a dream", and in references to "Jerusalem", the "city on the
hill" and so forth; generally speaking, such appeals invoke a state of
affairs (e.g. "after the revolution") in which injustices are dissolved in
the institution of a new and emancipatory order. Obviously, the relation-
ship between (1) and (6) is a close one; equally obviously, appeals to
revelation are frequently bolstered by appeals to founding texts (the
Bible, the Koran, the Communist Manifesto) which are themselves be-
lieved to embody divinely or historically revealed truth.

Conclusion: argumentation and appellation

In stressing the importance of "appeal" in argumentative discourse, and in

particular in employing Buhler's tripartite theory of the components of
the speech-act, I am not unaware that Buhler's Organon-theory was,
almost from the moment he published it, criticised as being incomplete. In
particular, Jakobson (1960) elaborated it into his famous six-function
theory of language and of the speech situation; while Popper (1976: 79)
maintained that it was necessary "to add to Buhler's three functions what
I have called the argumentative function ... the basis of all critical
thought". Critical-rational argumentation, in Popperian thought, can be
conceived as a dialogical elaboration of the representational function.
Following Buhler himself, many philosophers and epistemologists (including,
for example, Piaget: see Miller, 1987) have viewed representation (and be
extension, argumentation) as both a later evolutionary-developmental
acquisition than either expression or appeal, and as the crucial vehicle
for rational and 'de-centered' thinking.
The primacy of representation, and the relegation of appellative aspects
of language and discourse to a domain of "rhetoric", separate from and
inimical to rational discourse and inquiry, is a hallmark of the Western
tradition in which reason is opposed to the passions, and in which empir-
ical truth is cast in terms of procedures of inquiry which are held to be
separate from procedures of persuasion. That this separation was, in the
minds of the architects of the scientific revolution, considered to be a

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Appealing Rhetorics 191

moral and political injunction, as well as a methodological one, is clearly

demonstrated by the stance adopted in the 17th century by the Royal
Society in favour of "plain English". Barber (1976:132) cites Bishop Thom-
as Sprat's History of the Royal Society of London (1667): "They have
therefore been most rigorous ... to reject all the amplifications, digres-
sions, and swellings of style: to return back to the primitive purity, and
shortness, when men deliver'd so many things, almost in an equal number
of words".
Rational argumentation, in this account, is to be distinguished from the
sophistries and sophistications (that is to say, corruptions) of rhetoric,
tainted as that is by its over-consciousness of the social positions and
interests ("idols", in Bacon's terms) of speaker and audience. Science, on
the contrary, speaks in a natural and unadorned voice which "names"
things without regard for rank and tradition, and without recourse to a
"sound and fury which signifieth nothing".
Although my concern here is not mainly with the representational as-
pects of language, it should be noted that it is clear to many contem-
porary language theorists that linguistic representation, and propositional
truth, cannot be evaluated independently of the presuppositional "back-
ground" against which statements are comprehended and evaluated (Searle,
1983; Sinha, 1988). To the same extent, it seems to me to be questionable
whether one can conceive of forms of argumentation which do not (im-
plicitly or explicitly) depend upon "appeal", even if only because a degree
of coincidence in interlocutors' presuppositions is a sine qua non for an
argument to get off the ground in the first place. Furthermore, a view of
argumentation which stresses its co-operative aspect at the expense of its
disputative and adversarial aspect risks confusing, as it were, the process
with the (hoped for) consensual product.
I have argued for a recognition of the importance of the appellative
aspects of discourse in relation to a mode of discourse - ideological dis-
course - for which its relevance is perhaps more self-evident than in the
case of "rational-scientific" discourse, and whose mechanisms (in particular,
the nature and functioning of ideology) it can, I have also argued, help
to illuminate. The point, however, is, I wish to suggest, more general.
That is, that steps in argumentation can and should be seen, not merely
as steps in "problem-solving", but also (and at the same time) as strategic
performative-appellative acts which can be conceived as tactical manoeu-
res in an overall discursive "war of position". A crucial function of (pre-
supposed) norms in argumentation, in this interpretation, lies in mapping
the terrain of this conflict and employing it to the speaker's advantage.
The speaker's advantage is secured, not so much through frontal attack
on the positions of the adversary, as by means of subtle enticements,
seductions, and invitations to entrapment.

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192 Chris Sinha

Notes

1. Friedrich Nietzsche, Gesammelte Werke, cited by K Buhler (Innis, 1982:161).

2. Mannheim's theory of ideology is rooted in the German idealist, neo-Kantian tradi-

tion of Geisteswissenschaft, with its emphasis on the distinction between social and
natural facts and its reliance upon the hermeneutic concept of Verstehen. Althusserian
Marxism, in contrast, is inspired by the 'scientistic' versions of structuralism which
dominated the French intellectual science in the early 1960's.

3. "Interpellation" is defined by the Shorter OED as: "1. The action of appealing to
or entreating;... 2. A summons, citation;... 3. The action of breaking in upon; inter-
ruption."

4. The article was a passionate indictment, at the height of the Dreyfus affair, of the
corrupt and arbitrary rule of the conservative and aristocratic classes in French soci-
ety.

5. I am indebted to John Shotter for his insights into the neglect of "second person"
aspects of mental and social life in contemporary psychology.

6. A topical example of the importance of lexical choice in ideological discourse is

provided the recent debate in Great Britain over the question of funding by local
government of educational and social projects intended to "promote positive images of
homosexuality". A strategic linguistic elision enabled conservative politicians to refer
to the issue as one of "promoting homosexuality" and rally support for legislation to
outlaw such funding.

7. The recent debate in the United States over the interpretation of the constitution
reflects precisely the distinction between "intent" and "letter" distinguishing (3) from
(4). Another topical example concerns the interpretation of the notion of an "Islamic
republic": i.e. whether this involves the guidance of the state by Islamic principles, or
the embodiment, in the state, of the Sharia - the law as codified in the Koran.

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