The purpose of this paper is to defend and justify the hypothesis that Perelman’s New Rhetoric can enable the French school
of Discourse Analysis to readjust its theoretical positions concerning the ethics of discourse. While it is no longer necessary,
in the wake of linguists such as Benveniste and Kerbrat-Orecchioni, to point out the founding role of the inscription of subjectivity
in language, it is, paradoxically, still necessary to justify the legitimacy of choosing the axiological dimension of discourse
and its ethical issues as a scientific object. Indeed, very few linguists view Perelman’s New Rhetoric as a logic and a “pragmatics”
of values; most of them prefer to view it as a technical reservoir of types of arguments (Cf. concerning the critical enumeration
and classification of references to the NR, raised in approximately forty linguistic works, Koren
2002: 197–228). So far, the notions of “guarantee” and “commitment” are integrated in pragmatic linguistic theories; but these
notions have mostly to do with a “commitment” vis-à-vis a referential truth. Truth is still considered as the ultimate value,
as the normative reference to every questioning on discursive rectitude. We are thus left with an epistemological lacuna,
namely the integration of the responsibility for value judgments in linguistic theories, that could be partially answered
for by the New Rhetoric. An editorial from
Le Monde will be analyzed to illustrate this point of view.
Keywords Discourse ethics - Argumentation of values - Responsibility for the truth and for value judgments - French school of discourse analysis - Editorial and commitment
R. Koren is a member and one of the two coordinators in ADARR research group.