Chapter 8
Argumentation and the “interaction of minds” in text
The case of discourse on art
Whereas current theories stress argumentation’s interactional character and function, this chapter emphasizes its
cognitive motivation and textual realization. Text itself will be understood as the record of a course of verbally mediated
and interactionally negotiated cognitive explication, focused on some individual entity and progressively elaborated through
the intertwining of two orders of speech act – one pragmatically endowing propositions with illocutionary force
and cognitive intent, the other positing certain logico-rhetorical relations between them and thereby
binding them into discursive coherence. The chapter will concentrate on discourse on visual art, as text typically aiming to
explicate individual artworks or collections of such. Examples in English, Italian and French dating from the seventeenth
century to the present will show how the same cognitive and communicative strategies are played out in different languages and
periods.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Pragmatic implementation and assertive illocutionary force
- 3.Textual ‘warp’ and state predication
- 4.Textual ‘weft’ and propositional coordination
- 4.1Argumentational coordination
- 4.2Referential and situational coordination
- 5.A sample analysis
- 6.Conclusion
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Notes
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References
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Examples extracted from