LA FONCTION SOCIALE DE LA DISSERTATION ENVISAGÉE À TRAVERS LA RHÉTORIQUE PERELMANIENNE : SOUS LE DÉLIBÉRATIF, L’ÉPIDICTIQUE
UNDER THE DELIBERATIVE, THE EPIDEICTIC: THE SOCIAL FUNCTION OF DISSERTATION CONSIDERED THROUGH PERELMAN’S RHETORIC

Summary/Abstract: The traditional French dissertation is considered here as an illustration of a discourse challenged by the New Rhetoric. Dissertation’s anti-rhetorical discourse is the outcome of a long tradition summarized by Perelman’s formula: L’honnête homme du XXe siècle. This “Honest Man” is supposed to speak in the name of Logic and Reason. But in Perelman’s terms those discourses can’t be considered logical demonstrations. They can only deemed to be rhetorical argumentations. In other words, dissertation should be, at the same time, a counter-example and an ordinary example of Perelman’s system. It would be a theoretical problem if Perelman’s model of argumentation could not describe the specificities of an exercise which for decades was the first contact with practical argumentation at school. We would like to show that Perelman’s sensitivity to historical relativity enables the system to cope with this challenge: dissertation is not a bad rhetoric but a rhetoric determined by a specific socio-historical situation. Dissertation will be considered here as a mixed genre: beyond its deliberative character, it recalls common values at the beginning of the 20th century in France. It also provides a model of what “good argumentation” should be. This is consistent with Perelman’s conceptions: epideictic (understood in a much broader sense than the Aristotelian genre) should be considered as the foundation of deliberative and forensic discourses. Our proposition is also consistent with the Universal Audience’s definition as a necessarily imperfect representation of the Ideal Audience. In contrast, a social group normally needs a common representation of the Universal Audience, a common representation of what is true and reasonable. Of course, those representations and their rhetorical codifications are doomed to crisis. But it should be possible to analyze those crises in rhetorical terms.

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