3.2.4 The Refutation of Truth Claims

Pondering on Problems of Argumentation

“…If you are arguing to characterize something in a certain way and your opponent defines a key word differently, you will have to spend more time on your counterdefinition than you would if you were unchallenged. (p. 307) Based on these considerations and on related research (Ibsch, 1997;Smith, 1964;Verlinden, 2005), it is possible to identify the following particular functions of refutations: -to show why the adversaries' opinions are wrong and/or their arguments invalid -to establish the audience's understanding and acceptance of the righteousness of the speaker's position/cause -to demonstrate why the speaker feels his/her side of the argument is the better one, even when s/he doesn't necessarily think that the other side is entirely wrong -to involve the audience by appealing to their shared community doxa, relevant experiences and basic feelings so as to bring about a change of mind -to strike the right rhetorical chords in order to invite positive reactions and further support from the audience and the public at large…”

“…This is why the present study proposes an analysis of refutations in connection with related definitions. In contemporary rhetorical scholarship, several functions of refutation in argumentation have been discussed by , Bailey (1990), Fahnestock and Secor (1990) and Ibsch (1997), among others. In a review of the rhetorical tradition of argumentation, Kastely (1997) proposes a re-consideration of persuasion as a kind of refutation in an ongoing dialogue between a rhetor and the audience, or between an author and the readers.…”

Identity, trauma and exile: Caryl Phillips on surviving

“…A small canon of writing has emerged with novels focusing on postmodern questions such as the story and rewriting of history, memory, truth, trauma and identity, all of which are centred round the holocaust. 4,5 One such novel invites a postcolonial reading of the shoah, by mixing the narrative of a female survivor of the death camps with other histories of exile and racism in the history of Europe. It sits uneasily with the paradigm of postcolonialism in literature as 'the empire writes back', where the stories of the past are used in a strategy of appropriation and subversion.…”