Linguistic argumentation as a shortcut for the empirical study of argumentative strategies

Résumé En

Research in argumentation has acknowledged the important role of discourse in the study of argumentative strategies and maneuvering. This acknowledgement is not recent; however, more recent is the inclusion, within the objects of research on argumentation, of the relationship between institutional contexts and argumentative discourse, via conventionalized institutional practices. The very recent interest for the empirical observation of argumentation through institutional practices was underlined by van Eemeren (2010).This new interest for an empirical approach to the relationship between institutional contexts and argumentative strategies, via communicative practices linked to institutional preconditions, opens a wide and important field of research, which includes, among other, relationships between institutional contexts, institutionalized purposes, conventionalized communicative practices, communicative activities, and argumentative strategies.As van Eemeren pointed out, the empirical study of that field is possible because its ‘ingredients’ are observable through discourse. Since discourse gives empirical hints to grasp the different facets of this field, there must be a way of describing meaning which allows to account for the dynamics of this field: a sort of shortcut to the description of argumentative strategies, as they are partially in-formed by the institutions. Obviously, such a shortcut would live aside an enormous part of the field in question. Nevertheless, as I show in this paper, for one who is interested in a better description of the semantics of natural languages, it offers interesting and rich perspectives. I also show that this ‘shortcut’ is not a completely new idea in semantics. Finally, I defend the idea that this shortcut is also useful for the one who is engaged in the complete study of the field. I insist on the techniques such a semantic framework provides for ‘extracting’ ideological and cultural preconditions from discourses, which inform the observer on the institutional conventionalized practices.