Special Section on Argumentation and Paradoxes

Introduction The essays in this issue are dedicated to the memory of the outstanding latinist and functional linguist Machtelt Bolkestein (†21.10.2001)

The papers in this collection were first presented as contributions to the round table ‘Paradoxes in Latin Language and Literature’ at the 11th International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics (Amsterdam, Friday June 29, 2001). This Colloquium was organized by Machtelt Bolkestein, whose premature death came as a shock for all participants and for the international community of latinists and functional linguists in general. The round table on paradoxes was organized by Anna Orlandini (Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, France) and Manfred Kienpointner (Universitaet Innsbruck, Austria). The participants were (in alphabetical order): Alessandra Bertocchi (Università di Bologna, Italy), Alessandro Garcea (Università di Torino, Italy), Benjamín García Hernández (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid, Spain), Oswald Panagl (Universitaet Salzburg, Austria), Shi Xu (University of Ulster at Jordanstown). The study of paradoxes is situated at the crossroads of logic, rhetoric, linguistics and literary criticism. That is why, for centuries, paradoxes have attracted the interest of many ancient and modern philosophers, rhetoricians, linguists, literary critics and argumentation theorists. Nowadays, paradoxes have even made their way into the internet (cf. e.g. Slater’s (2001) article on ‘Logical Paradoxes’ in ‘The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy’: http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/p/par-log.htm). Paradoxes have been defined in many different ways, either as (seemingly) contradictory utterances, as dubious or even hopeless cases in forensic argumentation, as figures of speech (‘oxymoron’) or simply as utterances running counter to generally accepted points of view (= ‘endoxa’) (cf. Plett, 2001 for a recent overview). For a long time, paradoxes have mainly been studied by philosophers, especially logicians (cf. the summaries in Sinowjew and Wessel, 1975; Quine, 1976; Seebohm, 1984; Slater, 2001). However, in the last few decades an increasing number of studies within various disciplines have shown that there is more to say about paradoxical utterances in natural language than classifying them as anomalies of thought or simple fallacies of reasoning. This is why a closer look at the different uses and types of paradoxes in everyday communication, political discourse and literary texts can be stimulating for argumentation theory. Argumentation 17: 43–45, 2003.  2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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MANFRED KIENPOINTNER

Recent approaches within linguistics, communication studies, rhetoric and literary criticism have highlighted the important communicative and poetic functions fulfilled by paradoxical expressions, both in everyday communication and in literary texts (cf. Watzlawick et al., 1967; Kienpointner, 1991; Landheer, 1996; Riffaterre, 1996; Tut¸escu, 1996; Carel and Ducrot, 1999). Most of these studies have been dedicated to the description of paradoxical utterances in modern languages like English, French or German. Trying to broaden the linguistic scope of studies on paradoxes, the round table at the 11th International Colloquium on Latin Linguistics brought together a group of scholars focussing on the description of paradoxes in Latin texts, which are described from a variety of perspectives, among them structural semantics, rhetoric and argumentation theory. The Latin authors who were dealt with include Boethius, Cicero, Gellius and Plautus. But also one more general contribution was presented by Shi Xu, who dealt with paradoxes of opinions and social and cultural identities. This collection of papers is opened with the contribution ‘Persuasive Paradoxes in Cicero’s Speeches’ by Manfred Kienpointner, who, after a short general overview about various kinds of paradoxes, describes Cicero’s use of paradoxes as efficient means of persuasion in his political speeches. Different types of persuasive paradoxes are distinguished and their often quite dubious character as unfair and potentially fallacious strategies of rhetorical argumentation is critically analysed. In the next paper, Anna Orlandini develops a threefold typology of ‘Logical, semantic and cultural paradoxes’ and applies this typology to the analysis of argumentative texts discussed by Cicero, Gellius and Quintilian. Integrating insights of ancient rhetoric on the enthymeme and Anscombre and Ducrot’s theory of ‘argumentation within language’, Orlandini distinguishes between plausible and flawed or fallacious applications of paradoxical formulations within argumentative discourse. Alessandro Garcea specifically focuses on ‘Paradoxes in Aulus Gellius’, that is, in Gellius’ work ‘Noctes atticae’, which contains a discussion of almost all the ancient paradoxes. However, discussing several varieties of paradoxes like those of Diodorus Chronus, Eubulides of Milet, Protagoras and Euathlus, Garcea makes quite clear that Gellius’ work shows a shift of interest from a more theoretical analysis of paradoxes to a more ethical and critical analysis of paradoxes as potential flaws and deceptive strategies of argumentation. Whereas the first three papers mainly deal with paradoxes within political or philosophical discourse, Benjamín García Hernández (‘Paradoxes of the Double in Comedies and Semantic Contradiction’) analyses paradoxes in literary discourse, namely, in Latin comedies involving a double (and also in similar comedies by Molière and Shakespeare). After summarizing the system of antonymic semantic relations underlying ordinary communication, García Hernández shows how these semantic relations are

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violated in Latin comedies due to the fact that the existence of a perfect double is possible in the ancient mythological universe of discourse. This leads to comic sequences of paradoxical arguments. Alessandra Bertocchi, too, deals with various types of antonymic semantic relations but on the more abstract level of the language system. Using Anscombre and Ducrot’s theory of ‘argumentation within language’, she deals with lexical items like semivivus (‘half-dead’) or expressions like neque vivus neque mortuus (‘neither alive nor dead’), which seem to violate the law of the excluded middle and thus are paradoxical. Bertocchi analyses such expressions as instances of ‘argumentative attenuation’.

REFERENCES Carel, M. and O. Ducrot: 1999, ‘Le problème du paradoxe dans une sémantique argumentative’, Langue française 123, 6–26. Kienpointner, M.: 1991, ‘Uses and Functions of Paradoxes in Natural Language’, ISSA Newsletter 7, 2–16. Landheer, R.: 1996, ‘Le paradoxe: un mécanisme de bascule’, in R. Landheer and P. J. Smith (éds.), Le paradoxe en linguistique et en littérature, Genève, Droz, pp. 76–91. Plett, H. F.: 2001, ‘Paradox’, in Th. O. Sloane (ed.), Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 551–552. Quine, W. V. O.: 1976, The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays, Harvard University Press, Cambridge/Mass. Riffaterre, M.: 1996: ‘Paradoxe et présupposition’, in R. Landheer and P. J. Smith (éds.), Le paradoxe en linguistique et en littérature, Genève, Droz, pp. 149–171. Seebohm, Th. M., 1984: Philosophie der Logik, Alber, München. Sinowjew, A. and H. Wessel: 1975, Logische Sprachregeln, Fink, München. Slater, B. H.: 2001, ‘Logical Paradoxes’, in The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/p/par-log.htm). Tut¸escu, M.: 1996, ‘Paradoxe, univers de croyance et pertinence argumentative’, in R. Landheer and P. J. Smith (éds.), Le paradoxe en linguistique et en littérature, Droz, Genève, pp. 60–75. Watzlawick, P., J. H. Beavin and D. D. Jackson: 1967, Pragmatics of Human Communication, A Study of Interactional Patterns, Pathologies, and Paradoxes, Norton, New York.

Manfred Kienpointner Institut für Sprachen und Literaturen Abteilung Sprachwissenschaft Universität Innsbruck Innrain 52 A-6020 Innsbruck E-mail: [email protected]