The New Rhetoric of Perelman

Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's New Rhetoric recovers argumentation as the rational technique of securing an audience's adherence to claims that cannot be formally demonstrated.

Definition

The new rhetoric is Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's theory of argumentation, which studies the discursive techniques by which speakers gain or increase an audience's adherence to theses presented for assent.

Scope

This topic covers the theory of argumentation set out in Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's 1958 Traité de l'argumentation, translated as The New Rhetoric. It treats their central concept of the audience, including the universal audience; the starting points of argument; and their typology of argumentative techniques such as quasi-logical arguments, arguments based on the structure of reality, and arguments establishing that structure.

Core questions

• How can reasoning be rational when its premises are not self-evident?
• What is the role of the audience in defining valid argument?
• What distinguishes argumentation from formal demonstration?
• How is the universal audience constructed?

Key concepts

• universal audience
• adherence of minds
• quasi-logical arguments
• arguments based on the structure of reality
• presence and starting points

Key theories

Argumentation and the universal audience

Perelman holds that argumentation aims at the adherence of minds and that its rationality is measured against a universal audience—an idealized construction of all reasonable persons the rhetor imagines persuading.

History

Trained as a logician, Perelman set out to find a logic of value judgments and concluded that no formal logic governs them. With Olbrechts-Tyteca he turned to classical rhetoric and dialectic, producing the 1958 treatise that revived argumentation as a field. The work, translated into English in 1969, became foundational to informal logic, argumentation theory, and rhetoric, influencing later writing pedagogy and reasoning studies.

Debates

Coherence of the universal audience

Critics question whether the universal audience is a genuine standard of rationality or a rhetor's projection that varies by culture and era, raising the problem of how it constrains argument.

Key figures

• Chaim Perelman
• Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca
• James Crosswhite

Seminal works

• perelman1969
• perelman1982

Frequently asked questions

Why is it called the 'new' rhetoric?

Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca presented their work as reviving and modernizing the classical and dialectical study of argument that formal logic had displaced, hence a new rhetoric of reasoning about values and probable matters.