|
ARGUMENTATIVE MODELS
IN THE EDUCATIONAL DISCOURSE
(Abstract)
The
investigation whose results we present to the reader deals with the application
of logic (as a methodologic instrument) to analyze a
form of educational discourse: i.e. the argumentative intervention. For this
reason, this study takes into account a special meaning of the term
"education", a meaning that refers to a praxiologic
interpretation of this concept, an interpretation connected to the concept of
educative intervention. Educative intervention refers to any human
manifestation with a signal function, which received by an individual is liable
to produce modifications in the field of human personality. Education is
formed, in concrete, of diversified assemblies of educative interventions.
Taking into account this meaning of the term "education", we join in
the modem perspectives of the pedagogic research about the taxonomy of
education targets (Bloom, Landsheere) that emphasizes
action, change and effect in structurizing
any educative activity.
In
the proposed connotation, the concept of educative intervention - as an
operational meaning of the term "education" - suggests the diversity
of these interventions that have their origin in all the categories of signs
with signal function which act on the receiver. But the major and most
significant educative interventions for the destiny of human being are mainly
produced by using linguistic signs structured and ordered in different types of
discourse that cover the intension of the concept educational language. Even if
the educational discourse takes different forms (argumentation, explanation,
demonstration, description, and so on) we restrained our research to that form
which seemed to be the most profitable for our exigency concerning the educative
intervention, i.e. the argumentative discourse.
We
suggest a semio-logic model of the argumentative
discourse presented - as an explicative and predictive discourse - in three
aspects concerning syntax, semantics and pragmatics of such a discourse. From a
syntactic point of view we are concerned with delimiting the inner logic of the
argumentative discourse stressed upon the analysis of discursive strategies of
a speaker subject arranged by specific connectors called logic-discursive
operators that correspond to the order and aims of the discourse. At the same
time the "discursive logic" will successfully streak on the metadiscursive rules and operations for which the
developing discourse has already become "logical object".
The
logic-discursive operations permit a speaker to ask a receiver a coherent
representation of argumentation. This "coherent representation" was
called discursive schematizing and denotes the semantic dimension of
argumentative discourse. The success of the argumentative discursive
intervention is influenced by the realization of a discursive coherence
following three basic conditions: the receptability
of the discourse, the verisimilitude of discursive schematizing and the
acceptability of the representations on that theme. From a pragmatic point of
view we must emphasize that the argumentative discourse is a discourse of
performance with a certain persuasive strength capable of placing it in the
field of the educative interventions. Our analyses set up the rules of performative order and the logic structures where the opinable modalities manifest themselves as "pragmatic
effects" of an argumentative intervention.
In
discursive practice, the argumentative discourse is included in the so-called
models of argumentation, so we try to classify them using the criterion of
three-fold model of the interpretation of argumentative discourse.
Thus,
we identify syntactic, semantic and pragmatic models of argumentation. For each
type we analyze an argumentative model, i.e. the model of rhetoric syllogism
(as syntactic model), the model of formalized language (as semantic model) and
the model of cognitive intervention (as pragmatic model), trying to determine
their impact on educative acts and educational discourse.
Starting
from the elaboration of the model of rhetoric syllogism (Toulmin,
Brandt, Apothéloz) this investigation tries a
semiotic interpretation of the model that relates the sign-sentence (datum),
significance-sentence (conclusion), substratum-sentence (foundation) and
rule-sentence (the justifying). Determining the links between the
"argumentative function" (C and R) and their arguments (x and y)
using the formula revaluating the operation of affirmation and denial, we can
obtain sixteen argumentative forms which are structured in well-determined
logical structures.
On
the basis of these structures we can determine immediate and mediate formulae
of argumentation and, thus, the delimitation of certain classes of
argumentation (real and not real, maintainings and
rejections, counter-maintainings and counterrejections) is realized. The model revaluation in
didactic argumentation tries to determine the way in which the formal rules
adjacent to the model of rhetoric syllogism at different levels of intellectuals,
especially at school level, are being aware of.
Relying
on the establishment of the correspondence relations between certain constructs
(valid rational schemes) and certain discursive realities (argumentative
sequences of natural speech), the model of formalized language is more like
semantics. This model, illustrated at his best by Oswald Ducrot,
was reconsidered in the field of the virtues of the formalized language, i.e.
to ensure a keen impact on certain categories of audience, of the delimitation of
the argumentative values of formalizing and determining the frame where the
formalized method manifests itself as a basic educative method.The
analysis of the model leads to the formalized methodology applied to discursive
segments of Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation and Montaigne's
Essays.
From
the category of pragmatic models, our analysis stressed the model of cognitive
intervention. The clear intention of the authors (Albert Morf
and Jean-Blaise Grize) is
to create a theoretic specific and autonomous model of cognitive intervention
where the concrete situations of cognitive intervention could be "immerged"
and where specific particularities of such interventions could be brought out.
The constructive effort is a part of the cognitive intervention model and it
hints at the displaying of the logic connections manifested between the four
parameters (Ro, Ri, Rt,
Rf) within each type of cognitive intervention. There
are connections materialized in conditional forms (sufficient, necessary) with
pragmatic effects on the regulation of the efficiency mechanism of cognitive
interventions The extension of the investigation beyond the frames analyzed by
the model authors permitted the delimitation of a special meaning of the
concept of "didactic explanation" related to what is usually
understood as scientific explanation. The features presentation of the didactic
intervention as cognitive intervention (the delimitation of logic relations
between didactic intervention parameters, the integrality of this type of
intervention, the aspiration to cognitive domains and the attachment to human
cognitive stability) and the invitation in the analytic context of a
"non-orthodox" form of didactic intervention are new elements used
for determining the role of the cognitive intervention model on the didactic
act.
The
construction of a semio-logic model of the
argumentative discourse, the semiotic tripartition of
the argumentation models, the logic-semiotic redimensioning
of rhetoric syllogism, the analysis of the formalized methodology as a model of
argumentation, the logical interpretation of cognitive interventions and the
delimiting of the impact of argumentation models concerning educational plan
are showing, in our opinion, the modest contributions that the logic-methodologic investigation came up against the critical
spirit of the reader.
Back
|