Christian Kock

University of Copenhagen · Department of Communication

Aristotle taught us that rhetoric is centered around deliberation, and he emphasized that we may only deliberate about things that we can in fact undertake (Rhetoric, 1357a, and elsewhere, mainly in the ethical works). Rhetorical argumentation is, in its essence, the bedrock of such deliberation: It provides the reasons for and against various choi...

Aristotle taught us that rhetoric is centered around deliberation, and he emphasized that we may only deliberate about things that we can in fact undertake (Rhetoric, 1357a, and elsewhere, mainly in the ethical works). Rhetorical argumentation is, in its essence, the bedrock of such deliberation: It provides the reasons for and against various choi...

Denne artikel har som sit mål at fremlægge og diskutere nogle væsentlige områder hvor der er fælles orientering og interesser mellem retorik og kognitiv-funktionel lingvistik. Vi hævder at denne fælles orientering på den ene side kan kaste nyt lys over spørgsmålet om retorikkens normative fundering og på den anden side kan berige den funktionelle l...

Oversat og med introduktion af Christian Kock

Avskedsföreläsning i receptionen den 6 december 2018

In this concluding chapter we reflect on the two interconnected questions set forth from the beginning: Is it possible to point to a common denominator that justifies our referring to their subject matter as different versions of populist rhetoric, and to say something collectively about the relation between the categories “populism” and “rhetoric”...

Dansk oversættelse af Émil Zolas “J’accuse…!”. Oversat og med introduktion af Christian Kock

Indledning og oversættelse ved Christian Kock

Rhetorical research in the three Scandinavian countries has made contributions to the study of political communication, representing approaches that are not often found in research coming from the social sciences or from more systemic, theory-based orientations. Rhetoric, both as an ancient tradition and as a modern discipline, tends to emphasise c...

This introduction presents the set of six articles, written by rhetorical scholars, which constitute the bulk of the present special issue of Argumentation. In the introduction, the issue editor seeks to identify defining features of a rhetorical approach to argumentation. Taking this approach means dealing with argumentation in the “realm of rheto...

Afskedsforelæsning ved reception den 6. december 2018

This introduction presents the set of six articles, written by rhetorical scholars, which constitute the bulk of the present special issue of Argumentation. In the introduction, the issue editor seeks to identify defining features of a rhetorical approach to argumentation. Taking this approach means dealing with argumentation in the “realm of rheto...

This paper investigates musical semiotics (how listeners experience meanings in music). It discusses what bearing listeners’ experience of meanings may have for their aesthetic experience of music. The study is rhetorical because its focus is effect, not meanings in themselves. It employs “aesthetic protocol analysis,” a design where informants wri...

Politisk kommunikation er et imponerende og ambitiøst forsøg på at overskue en række forskningsfelter, der er vokset eksponentielt de sidste årtier. Man kan ud fra forordet slutte sig til, at den især er tænkt som lærebog på universitetsniveau, men også undervisere på flere fakulteter vil kunne lære meget af den.

This article argues for the relevance of a rhetorical approach to the study of citizenship, proposing the concept of rhetorical citizenship as a term for a fourth dimension of citizenship and as a scholarly approach to the topic in addition to the dimensions of status, rights, and identity commonly recognized in the literature. We show how this vie...

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This article argues for a definition of rhetorical argumentation based on the theme of the argumentation, that is, the issue in dispute, rather than its aim (e.g., to “win”) or its means (e.g., emotional appeals). It claims that the principal thinkers in the rhetorical tradition, from Aristotle onward, saw rhetoric as practical reasoning, that is,...

”Det vi kan opnå med argumenter i politisk debat, er alene at kaste lodder i en vægtskål, sådan at vor sag – i hvert fald hos nogle af dem vi taler til – virker mere tungtvejende end modpartens.” Retorisk praksis handler om retorik som praktisk udøvelse af sproget. Fordi retorikken handler om frembringelse – ikke kun beskrivelse – af tekster til br...

Citizenship has long been a keyword among educators, philosophers, and political theorists. Using the phrase "rhetorical citizenship" as a unifying perspective, this book aims to develop an understanding of citizenship as a discursive phenomenon in the sense that important civic functions take place in deliberation among citizens, and that discours...

Citizenship has long been a central topic among educators, philosophers, and political theorists. Using the phrase "rhetorical citizenship" as a unifying perspective, Rhetorical Citizenship and Public Deliberation aims to develop an understanding of citizenship as a discursive phenomenon, arguing that discourse is not prefatory to real action but i...

Hvem vinder debatten? Den smarte brugtbilsælger, den arrogante type, den vrede og ophidsede demagog? "Nej," siger resultaterne og konklusionen på en undersøgelse af argumentation og dens effekt, "det er seriøsitet parret med engagement der frem for alt kendetegner den vindende debattør." Myten om at vælgere og andre modtagere af argumentation skull...

Leading contemporary argumentation theories such as those of Ralph Johnson, van Eemeren and Houtlosser, and Tindale, in their attempt to address rhetoric, tend to define rhetorical argumentation with reference to (a) the rhetorical arguer’s goal (to persuade effectively), and (b) the means he employs to do so. However, a central strand in the rheto...

Denne artikel slår til lyd for at vi har brug for adfærdsregler for offentlig debat. De skal ikke bestå i begrænsninger af ytringsfriheden og selvcensur, ikke i nedfældede bestemmelser eller organer til at håndhæve dem – men i skærpet refleksion, bevidsthed og diskussion om hvad der er rimelig adfærd i offentlig debat. Især blandt journalister, med...

”Retorisk poetik antager og argumenterer for at litteratur er til for at virke på læsere. Dermed menes andet og mere end at den er budskaber der overfører betydning. Litteratur er til for at gøre noget ved eller for læsere. Eller for at udtrykke det uden reference til nogen iboende formålsbestemmelse: Litteratur er først og fremmest afgrænset ved,...

Argumentation theory needs to develop a tightly reasoned normative code of reasonableness in argumentation so that reasonableness is severed from the goal of reaching "consensus," as in Habermas and others, or of "resolving the difference of opinion," as in Pragma-dialectics. On one hand, given degenerative trends in present-day public debate, ther...

Douglas Walton has done extensive and valuable work on the concepts of presumption and practical reasoning. However, Walton’s attempt to model practical reasoning as presumptive is misguided. The notions of “inference” and of the burden of proof shifting back and forth between proponent and respondent are misleading and lead to counterintuitive con...

Political debate is a distinctive domain in argumentation, characterized by these features: it is about proposals for action, not about propositions that may have a truth value; there may be good arguments on both sides; neither the proposal nor its rejection follows by necessity or inference; the pros and the cons generally cannot, being multidime...

The concept of warrant reflects Toulmin's general insights that validity in reasoning comes in many forms, and that reasoning in most fields cannot possess the necessity and certainty that attract many thinkers to the 'Rationalist' paradigm. However, there is a scarcity of concepts in one part of Toulmin's theory of argument. While the pedagogical...

In this paper, we contend that students’ problems with genre and task definition in the writing of academic papers may be helped if we adapt Toulmin’s argument model to explain what the genre requirements of the academic paper are, as opposed to everyday argumentation. The student should be encouraged to apply the model as an assessment criterion a...

In current argumentation theory, the focus is not often on deliberative argumentation as such. Many modern theorists tend to see argumentation as a homogeneous phenomenon. Even so, there has recently been a tendency to differentiate more, for example in the works of Douglas Walton, who has defined different types of argumentative dialogue. However,...

This article summarizes a study of 37 televised debates on political issues in Denmark, conducted live before representative audiences, with polls on the issues before and after each debate. These debates are of interest to research because they were authentic, and they supply data indicating persuasive effects. Various rhetorical features were obs...

Jakobson's main legacy to poetics is the notion of “the poetic function.” His seminal idea that language has several functions, and that one of them is the poetic function, is found throughout his work, from the long sketch on Khlebnikov's poetry (1919) to the “locus classicus” on the poetic function, the article “Linguistics and Poetics” (1960).

Assertives have a word-to-world 'direction-of-fit': their illocutionary point is that the word should fit the world. Directives and commissives have a world-to-word direction-of-fit: their illocutionary point is to make the world fit the word. Arguments in politics and practical argumentation generally are often about directives or commissives, and...