argumentation and critiques Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca“Who’s Missing? Challenging Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca’s Concept of Universal Audience,” Ken Corbit, The University of Alabama
Argumentation is discursive technique, utilized to develop or strengthen a current adherence of the mind, in order create agreement with a presented thesis (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969). Thus, the rhetor attempts to create connection with the audience to gain agreement, but due to the symbolic nature of communication, the rhetor must utilize effective audience analysis. This analysis of the audience allows the rhetor to adjust presentation of the thesis stylistically based on the analysis. According to Perelman (1963) this leads to techniques that allow the rhetor and audience to work in a symbiotic relationship. In order to explain the audience Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969) distinguish two categories: the particular audience and the universal audience. Their emphasis in separation is based on whether the group is subject to persuasion or conviction. Perelman’s theory states that the universal audience is subject to conviction due to its objectivity, character, and intellect, while the particular audience is subject to persuasion. In this paper I develop three points of disagreement with Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s concept of “universal audience”: (1) attempts at definition of “universal audience” are inconsistent, (2) the universal audience is a fanciful idealization that never actually exits, (3) identification of objects of agreement for the universal audience is simply an elaborate form of petitio principii. This paper proposes the need for “deep understanding” of audiences in the rhetorical process and suggests that an elaboration of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tytecas particular-audience theory is a useful starting point for such a project.