Theory Of Legitimation And Theory Of Argumentation

THEORY OF LEGITIMATION AND THEORY OF ARGUMENTATION: A COMPARATIVE APPROACH

Natalia Fernández Díaz*

In the course of this overview I wish to bring a clear vision to bear on several aspects and ways of legitimation, and the relationships between the theory of legitimation and main theories of the argumentation. Our first step will be to discern different notions of legitimation in order to put the legitimation in the framework of the power relationships. If this point is clear, then we can analyse the necessary connection that must be between legitimation mechanisms and the argumentation.

The start point will be the fact that new theories of argumentation tries to focus on a part of argumentation traditionally forgotten by logicians and philosophers: the procedures and means of evidence to get adherence and support.

Deliberation and

argumentation are opposed to necessity and evidence, given that deliberation is not necessary in the cases in which the solution is mandatory and, besides, one never exposes an argument against evidence. The domain of the argumentation is the domain of the probability and the likeliness. The idea of evidence as a characteristic of the reasoning is fundamental to understand and analyze theories of argumentation. It admits the use of the reason to have influence on others and to give a sense to our actions (Perelman and Olbrechts, 1989). The evidence appears as a sign of truth. The goal of this theory is to discover the technical moves and strategies that allow to provoke or to amplify the degree of adherence of people to the evidences submitted to consent. The theory of argumentation restricted to a simple study of the influence on persons by means of a

discourse should be a part of the Psychology. We have to bring our work one step further. We must sometimes admit that argumentation is something inherent to the use of language, following the most recent theories contributed by Ducrot and Anscombre, whose principle has to do with the Pragmatics and that sustains that language contains an ideological charge that makes the communication possible. That means that some propositions have a pragmatic value independently of the informative content. In this sense, the theory of the argumentation should be understood as a pragmatic semantics or a semantics which integrates pragmatic elements. This is particularly clear in the case of the rational explanations, moral evaluations or even statements from authorities, because the argument is powerful as long as there is a system of beliefs, values and norms supporting it and therefore performing beyond the limits of the content (Anscombre & Ducrot, 1994). The argumentation exists because the words are connected with each other, and because this connectiveness is not a mere representation of what is said but it yields to the inherent semantics of the words.

SOME NOTIONS OF LEGITIMATION The legitimation is a process by which some consensual values are used as main resources. Actually, legitimation has also a strategic function, which is very closed to coercion, because it establishes the right to be obeyed (legitimacy) (Chilton and Schäffner, 1997). Reasons for being obeyed have to be communicated linguistically, wether by overt statements or by implication. It seems very clear that legitimation is closely conected to the notion of power. Group power may specifically be based on organization of planning, action and communication. This assigns coherence and coordination in action, transmits and vehiculize common goals, norms and values, and allows ideologies to be shared through the group (Van Dijk, 1987). In this sense, and as

we mentioned some lines above, power may be enacted through argumentative discourse forms such as scholarly reports, assessments, discussions, that show which actions have or may have negative consequences, experts (power based on knowledge, institutional position, status, privileged access to information, etc). Legitimation, in the domain of discourse, is to use some strategies within the framework of some accepted norms (argumentation) or to reproduce general social values .The theory of the argumentation, then, supposes the existence of a necessity of adapting the discourse to which will be the final interpreter of it (Mortara Garavelli, 1988). For this, it might be very clear that between the one who intends to communicate something and the one who must decode it, there is a link of

knowledge, interests and values in common.

This urge for

communication is based on a desire of persuading, offering for it reasonings that seem to be engaged to the truth. And the truth is constructed through mechanisms of rationalization. Rationalization is one of the most important characteristics of the argumentation (Foucault, 1971; Martín Rojo & Callejo, 1996), and it implies the use of strategies that we shall see in the next paragraphs, like denial, mitigation, generalization, etc... It allows the creation of self-knowledge, defining and establishing what is normality and what is deviation.

WAYS OF LEGITIMATION Theo van Leeuwen explains very conciously and systematically the ways in which the legatimation takes place. He comments two of them. They have to do with the definition of argumentation as a serie of strategies and moves to persuasively communicate something. But specially it conceives a social practice as something to be transformed by means of recontextualization (representations of a given practice). The first of these two ways to legitimate is through substitutions. In a wide sense,

representations are always substitutions. There are then linguistic tools to substitute places, actors or times. These tools involve interpretation; they are not simple transpositions. For that reason we can talk about recontextualization.

We guess they can be employed at a semantic level (like the use of neologisms, archaisms, etc...) that can stamp to the text an aspect of authority; or they could be employed at the rhetoric level like deictic strategies or anaphoras used to mitigate or to emphasize some subjects of the text. Maybe deictics and anaphoras are the clearest example of variable lexical and syntactic expressions, which we identify with style. And stylistic variation in discourse is usually a function of contextual properties such as (in)formality of the social situation, social dimensions (power, status, position, gender) of the participants in a communicative act (Van Dijk, 1987). Anaphoras and deictics produces an stylistic effect on semantic moves which often implies indirectness and vagueness. An example of the use of anaphora could be the use of some lexical options in the news of some newspapers to define a sexual assilant. They vary from "the aggressor" to "the defendant" or "the condemned man". Whereas the first implies a judgement by which we can discern that for the narrator the alleged assilant is clearly the assilant, the lattest reproduce the point of view of the justice, following the several steps of a trial: a "defendant" is someone who was charged of being the responsible of a crime; a "condemned person" is someone that, in the eyes of the penal system, is a criminal and therefore deserves a punishment. The use of such anaphoras reveals the degree of adhesion to the accepted norms and to the representatives of those norms (Martín Rojo & Callejo Gallego, 1996). We should mention that this deictic aspect has to do with the theory of the poliphony of enuntiation, created by Ducrot, according to which the text is penetrated by different voices. Every voice reflects its own power and the place it occupies in the social hierarchy (Ducrot, 1986). In a certain way, it has to do with what

Foucault calls "multiple relationships of power that are inserted in the social body" and, in addition, in the text (process of production, process of interpretation). Discourses must be discourses of truth, so that we are subjugated to the production of the truth by power and we can exerce power only through the production of truth (Foucault, 1984).

The second way of legimating is through addition. The addition, in argumentative terms, could be realized through repetition of some elements or through accumulation (for instance, evocation of details). Again, we can find additions in the lexical field, like the use of pleonasms. I choose a new example from the newspapers. In the stories dealing with sexual assault it is very common to use pleonasms to define some crimes: "deshonest abuse" (it gives the impression that there are abuses that are somehow honest), "indecent assault" (id), "unfair humiliation" (id), etc...Additions at the rhetoric level include the use of synechdoches, metonymies and other moves which imply an identification or conceptualization of something through anything else (Lakkof & Johnson, 1995). It also means the partialization of the concept. These moves confer a paradigmatic distance to the expressed idea (Le Guern, 1990). This relationship between the two elements implied in synechdoques and metonimias are usually extralinguistic. Therefore, the association comes from ideological uses and social values. In this sense we have to mention the use of connectives. Some authors like Perelman or Auerbach give several suggestions to deal with them. The connectives, in the field we are dealing with now, serve to link structures that, connected to each other, allow to reach a conclusion or to make a decision, so that power is legitimated. Argumentation, in the end, works through evidences and those evidences legitimate some decisions, explanations or conclusions (Mortara Garavelli, 1988).

As we can see, lexicalization means semantic options whose framework is a

process to give the world and our immediate or mediate reality new meanings (Fairclough, 1992; Hodge & Kress, 1979). Addition and substitution create a manipulation in the form, because they change and transform the syntactic function or the sense of some words.

TYPES OF LEGITIMATION AND THE ARGUMENTATION

A) AUTHORIZATION: This is a way of legitimation that gives priority to authorities. Such a priority is based on tradition, specific knowledge, custom, law or individuals (i.e.elite members, representatives of relevant institutions).

It is a main characteristic of the authorization that it operates in a framework that gives preferential access to discourses to elite sources, institutions and other actors that have well organized discourses, and are able to manufacture credibility through strategies that normally are argumentative or, at least, persuasive (Van Dijk, 1992, Text, Talk, Elites and racism).

A detailed analysis of the concept of social power reveals that it is a kind of power enacted by social groups and institutions. Power of individuals is a simple reflect derived from the membership of socially dominant groups or social position or status. This social power is basically connected to the notion of control: the one who has power, can control others´ mind and, at the same time, is grounded in values socially accepted and firmly rooted (Van Dijk, 1992b, Disc, power and access). The succesful control is carried out

through institutionalization, rationalization and reproduction. But, above all, powerful individuals and groups are more represented in the public discourses and have a special acces to them (Van Dijk, 1992b; Galtung and Ruge, 1965; Gans, 1979). This possibility of access means also to be able to organize agenda´s and to choose topics. This is the real link between authorization and the argumentative structures and other properties of the discourse that sustain it. That can be translated into an ability to set constraints on the most important communicative events.

It depends on elites and other powerful representatives then to manufacture some concepts and visions of the reality, and to create consent. They can define what is normality and what is deviation (Martín Rojo & Callejo, 1996; Foucault, 1971).

Because these sources, institutions and voices are legitimized by time and experience, they don´t need to rationalize their arguments. As a matter of fact, they use their own position as argument. That is what is the argumentative field is called "argumentation of authority" which consists in using judgements, opinions, statements or acts of somebody (group, individual) as the means of proving a thesis. Nevertheless, and as many theoreticians like Pareto remark, this argument is a fallacy, because not always the evoked arguments are infalible. Of course, these arguments can work as long as a large majority gives its consent. Some rhetoric moves of communion, like quotes or allusions, or the use of refrains, cliches and associations can be succesful thanks to the social conviction supported by the tradition. All these manouvers are used as instruments and guarantees of opinions.

Arguments given by authorities can create models of attitudes or attributes. The models are the

equivalent of the illustrations and examples in the practical action:

they are evoked to establish or planify a general rule of behaving. In this way, from an accepted model comes up a new model which will again be accepted by consent (Perelman & Olbrechts, 1989; Mortara Garavelli, 1988).

B) RATIONALIZATION: The arguments that cannot be fixed by authority, necessarily have to have some rationalizing strategies to be reliable. It belongs to the field of the instrumental legitimation and serves to a specific goal, that must be socially presented as positive and beneficial.

We agree with Luisa Martín Rojo when she claims that rationalization is an instance, a discourse activity (Martín Rojo & Callejo Gallego, 1996). It intends to achieve some social goals by means of argumentative moral justifications. The rationalization presents the utility of something and the result this process produces. Maybe we have to clariry that, if for linguists is important to address questions in the pragmatic explanation, for ethnomethodologists will be important to address questions in ordinary reasoning. As Garfinkel says, rationalization is necessary since explanations are required (Garkinkel, 1984, studies in ethnomethodology, cambridge, polity press). In this context, discourse is part of a frame that is presupposed, and has been agreed upon, and provides the context in which actions and utterances are to be taken (Goffman, 1961, Encounters: two studies in the sociology of interaction, indianapolis, bob-merrill). Rationalization, according to Garfinkel, is the attempt to make something (a value, an experience, a feeling, an opinion, an attitude, etc...) acceptable. In this sense, rationalization contrasts with spontaneity, as Habermas described regarding the rationalization implicit in dramatic action. This rationalization can adopt several forms, amongst them the inhibition, the justification, the self-exoneration, the self-positive presentation (as member of a dominant group), self-

justification and explanation. The essence of the argument could be to deny or to reaffirm something.

The experiential rationalization implies the creation of a situation model; when we represent an episode, event or scene we form a mental model of them (Van Dijk, 1987; Teun y Kintsch, 1983, strategies of discouse comprehension, ny, academic press). So we can assign similar structures to a singular given event. This structure is hierarchically formed and consists of categories. The categorial analysis recalls the semantic analysis of sentences. Since the schemas derived from such categories is the basis for some attitudes, we can assume that the experiential rationalization involves values and sometimes moral implications. For instance, in a story in which one tells his/her experiences with a ethnic minority group member, it is important to see how personal experience is used to confirm and establish general values and norms. The experience is in this case a guarantee of reliability and truthfulness. And truthfulness is, according to Habermas, a claim of validity linked to representative speech acts, a claim which says that, with the intentions I show, I mean exactly what I say. A speaker is truthful "when he/she neither deceives him/herself nor others in self-expressive speech acts I state nothing about my own internal episodes, I do no make any claim, I just express something which is subjective" (Habermas, 1989, teoría de la accion comunativa: estudios y complementos, madrid, catedra). So, truthfulness depends also on the degree of involvement of the participants of a given communicative act.

On the other hand, explanations based on experience originate episodes, characterized as coherent sequences of sentences of a discourse. This coherence has sometimes to be with the models employed to construct explanations and justifications. In a context of studies about racism, Teun van Dijk

illustrates how explanations and

justifications are part of the accepted goals in the in-group (Van Dijk, 1987). Although justifications and explanations have a self-presentational function, they may also be interpreted as forms of in-group defense, as legitimation for the adequacy or effectiveness of specific courses of discriminatory action. In fact, an explanation such as "all the foreigners are noisy" envolves a complex argumentation. The assertion that their behaviour is normal is again a move that is intended to eliminate the possible inference that someone thinks being noisy is deviant in general. Explanations could be interpreted, as we see, in terms of cultural differences.

It is absolutely necessary to accept the importance of the argumentation to put the rationalization in the right place. As a matter of fact we can add that argumentations used after making a decision can usually be included in a technical framework. In the same way, the scientific rationalization don´t need to include values to be conffirmed. They are created in the terms of a specialized terminology and are constructed with likely premises (for instance, entimemas or apodeictics) in order to achieve a goal or to prove something. Such arguments give a cognitive basis about comprehension, representation, evocation. It has also to do with the social hierarchy that seems to be reproduced in the rethoric hierarchy, in terms of credibility and reliability (van Dijk, 1990, La noticia como discurso). Behind rational scientific justifications are several believes that evoke the positivist paradigm, the monolitic truth and the background of looking for a general and social improving (that is: scientific reasonings affect to everyone and tend to be presented as positive for the whole society). Of course, this generalistic vision succeed thanks to a construction of a "us" described rather as homogeneous and with common interests (Fowler, 1991). Indeed, scientific rationalization is possible as long as a solid identity group exists. That explains that no values are to be included in these kind of argumentations. To be taken into consideration they need to have a certain prestige.

People admit the prestige and the authority of some scientific representatives in some specific domains. The effects of expertise and in general of credibility are crucially mediated through such script-base expectations. Besides, rational scientific explanations relies on common sense in which opinions are contrasted with truth, because the truth (facts, theories) offers a normative function in comparison with other fields of the subjectivity (opinions) (Olbrechts-Perelman, 1989).

3) MORAL EVALUATION: There are arguments destinated to lay the foundations of the structure of the reality: the arguments that take in consideration singular cases, the arguments based on the analogy that intend to organize some elements of the thoughts according to schemas admited in other fields of the reality. The moral evaluations encompass abstractions which tend to be general: through the example one reaches a conclusion applicable to a large majority of cases. A process of argumentation is involved in this. The abstraction has also different levels, from a basic affective level to very complex levels (Hayakawa, s.i. language in thought and
Actually, we can affirm that the argumentation about values needs a distinction between abstract values and concret values. The west morality is inspired in general and abstract conceptions from which come valid rules for everybody. But, nevertheless, they need circumstances by which one can conceive them in relation to concrete values and behaviors. Notions like solidarity, discipline or loyalty belong to this category. Moral evaluations, like scientific rationalization, expect from others a conffirmation of its principles and grounds.

The most used resource in moral argumentation is the evaluation. And a common

form of evalution is the comparison. The comparison implies an interaction between two terms of the comparison. The concept used as pattern can carry weight with the value of the concepts belonging to the same serie and with wich it is compared. This phenomenon is to be observd from the perception. The repetition of the compared notions open a new level of adaptation. It happens the same in the domain of the argumentation in which two terms already said constitute the basis that influence on new evalutions. The distance between the two elementes which integrate a comparison has to do with a measure. Sometimes there is an implicit hierarchy. The comparison, in this sense, can be constructed as a move of the expression or as a semantic move. Comparisons are specially relevant to emphasize or to mitigate. The arguments by means of comparison are based on relatioships of equelity or of difference. There are two categories: of identity and of analogy, depending on the evaluation and on the valuation of the objects through their comparison. It is not strange that the quantitative comparison comprises a judgement, and therefore some values. Some of the comparisons are described as specific semantic moves that link propositions, for instance, the use of subsequent mitigations or contrasts to illustrate a reality or a experience (Van Dijk, 1987).

D) MYTHOPOESIS: The mythopoesis has to do with the role of stories in the field of the argumentation. Because narrative structures are only an overall schema or form of a story, they also need an overall content to fill the terminal nodes of the story schema. Cognitively, stories may be treated as partial expressions of situation models, that is, of episodic representations of personal experiences. The production and understanding of stories is monitored by a strategic application of story schema rules and categories on the memory representation. Reasons, introductions or summaries provide the motivation and relevance of the story that is to follow and that usually reveals how some general

questions or statements on a specific topic or subject can be illustrated or backed up. Sometimes such introductory or bridging story fragments also express a clear evaluation, so as to make the story more effective and therefore interesting (Van Dijk, 1987). Evaluations, explications and conclusions are the categories or dimensions in which the opinions or attitudes, and the norms and values that support them, become most clearly visible.

The goal of some stories has a closed relationship with the models. The model is an example and an illustration in a practical action: it is a whole that encompass attitudes about which one can establish a general norm of behaving. The exemplum was traditionally an instrument to educate in a moral sense. The symbols and allegories uses an inductive procedure to reach conclusions whose validity is only particular, singular or exceptional. The morality in the stories is formed by an act and its agent. Around the person there are lots of phenomena to which he/she gives coherence and meaning. But there are also values, norms and ideologies. Stories offer topics based on consent, on ideas socially established and accepted. The moral representation presupposes the existence a signification and a value, because between the symbol and what it represents, there is relationship of participation and of transference. In the stories with a moral component symbols become realities capable of producing love or abomination, that wouldn´t be possible without the link of participation. When somebody is used as a symbol, his/her acts will be more representative and relevant than those of people who is not considered a symbol. The allegory is the "inversio" (exchange). It consist in pointing out through words an underlying meaning. The allegoresis as interpretation originated the representations with allegoric intention and the attribution of allegoric values to texts and mithological or historical episodes, tales or narrations. Allegory and symbol are opposed. The symbol reveals a reality but the allegory is an arbitrary and conventional

conceptualization. Besides, this latter is more systematic than the former, and can be applied to a vast segment of a text.

In moralistic and moralizing stories it exist an encarnation of the good and of the evil. The good is recompensated and the evil is punished. Good and evil are implicitly defined, according to a serie of social norms and values, that at the same time create specific expectations and that originate patterned behaviors from our unwritten but ever present cultural files of "what is good or not", and what can of compensations can one expect from it. The argumentation, as in previous examples, doesn´t depend on the argumentations itself (nobody tries to persuade that good is better that evil, or that good people get more positive compensations than people who are bad), this is already the start point, this is a field about which it exist a previous and a general consent. The behavior is submitted to the approval or disapproval of others (Eakins & Eakins, 1978).

FINAL WORDS As we saw, there are not only important points of contact between theories of argumentation and theories of legitimation, but they have also in common a lot of tools, strategies and goals. Sometimes, they superimpose each other and argumentative mechanisms serves to solidify and reproduce legitimation and legitimacy. Our work had a general character and many aspects remain out of our analysis. In any case, we hope that some of the ideas contained in this paper will contribute as platform of reflecting for future studies in this field.

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*Ph.D in Linguistics, MA in German Language, MA in Philosophy of Science and MA in Human Sexuality. Translator and Professor.