THEORY OF LEGITIMATION AND THEORY OF ARGUMENTATION: A

COMPARATIVE APPROACH

Natalia Fernández Díaz*

In the course of this overview I wish to bring a clear vision to bear on several

aspects and ways of legitimation, and the relationships between the theory of legitimation

and main theories of the argumentation. Our first step will be to discern different notions

of legitimation in order to put the legitimation in the framework of the power

relationships. If this point is clear, then we can analyse the necessary connection that must

be between legitimation mechanisms and the argumentation.

The start point will be the fact that new theories of argumentation tries to focus on

a part of argumentation traditionally forgotten by logicians and philosophers: the

procedures and means of evidence to get adherence and support. Deliberation and

argumentation are opposed to necessity and evidence, given that deliberation is not

necessary in the cases in which the solution is mandatory and, besides, one never exposes

an argument against evidence. The domain of the argumentation is the domain of the

probability and the likeliness. The idea of evidence as a characteristic of the reasoning is

fundamental to understand and analyze theories of argumentation. It admits the use of the

reason to have influence on others and to give a sense to our actions (Perelman and

Olbrechts, 1989). The evidence appears as a sign of truth. The goal of this theory is to

discover the technical moves and strategies that allow to provoke or to amplify the degree

of adherence of people to the evidences submitted to consent. The theory of

argumentation restricted to a simple study of the influence on persons by means of a

discourse should be a part of the Psychology. We have to bring our work one step further.

We must sometimes admit that argumentation is something inherent to the use of

language, following the most recent theories contributed by Ducrot and Anscombre,

whose principle has to do with the Pragmatics and that sustains that language contains an

ideological charge that makes the communication possible. That means that some

propositions have a pragmatic value independently of the informative content. In this

sense, the theory of the argumentation should be understood as a pragmatic semantics or a

semantics which integrates pragmatic elements. This is particularly clear in the case of the

rational explanations, moral evaluations or even statements from authorities, because the

argument is powerful as long as there is a system of beliefs, values and norms supporting

it and therefore performing beyond the limits of the content (Anscombre & Ducrot, 1994).

The argumentation exists because the words are connected with each other, and because

this connectiveness is not a mere representation of what is said but it yields to the inherent

semantics of the words.

SOME NOTIONS OF LEGITIMATION

The legitimation is a process by which some consensual values are used as main

resources. Actually, legitimation has also a strategic function, which is very closed to

coercion, because it establishes the right to be obeyed (legitimacy) (Chilton and

Schäffner, 1997). Reasons for being obeyed have to be communicated linguistically,

wether by overt statements or by implication. It seems very clear that legitimation is

closely conected to the notion of power. Group power may specifically be based on

organization of planning, action and communication. This assigns coherence and

coordination in action, transmits and vehiculize common goals, norms and values, and

allows ideologies to be shared through the group (Van Dijk, 1987). In this sense, and as

we mentioned some lines above, power may be enacted through argumentative discourse

forms such as scholarly reports, assessments, discussions, that show which actions have

or may have negative consequences, experts (power based on knowledge, institutional

position, status, privileged access to information, etc). Legitimation, in the domain of

discourse, is to use some strategies within the framework of some accepted norms

(argumentation) or to reproduce general social values .The theory of the argumentation,

then, supposes the existence of a necessity of adapting the discourse to which will be the

final interpreter of it (Mortara Garavelli, 1988). For this, it might be very clear that

between the one who intends to communicate something and the one who must decode it,

there is a link of knowledge, interests and values in common. This urge for

communication is based on a desire of persuading, offering for it reasonings that seem to

be engaged to the truth. And the truth is constructed through mechanisms of

rationalization. Rationalization is one of the most important characteristics of the

argumentation (Foucault, 1971; Martín Rojo & Callejo, 1996), and it implies the use of

strategies that we shall see in the next paragraphs, like denial, mitigation, generalization,

etc... It allows the creation of self-knowledge, defining and establishing what is normality

and what is deviation.

WAYS OF LEGITIMATION

Theo van Leeuwen explains very conciously and systematically the ways in which

the legatimation takes place. He comments two of them. They have to do with the

definition of argumentation as a serie of strategies and moves to persuasively

communicate something. But specially it conceives a social practice as something to be

transformed by means of recontextualization (representations of a given practice). The

first of these two ways to legitimate is through substitutions. In a wide sense,

representations are always substitutions. There are then linguistic tools to substitute

places, actors or times. These tools involve interpretation; they are not simple

transpositions. For that reason we can talk about recontextualization.

We guess they can be employed at a semantic level (like the use of neologisms,

archaisms, etc...) that can stamp to the text an aspect of authority; or they could be

employed at the rhetoric level like deictic strategies or anaphoras used to mitigate or to

emphasize some subjects of the text. Maybe deictics and anaphoras are the clearest

example of variable lexical and syntactic expressions, which we identify with style. And

stylistic variation in discourse is usually a function of contextual properties such as

(in)formality of the social situation, social dimensions (power, status, position, gender) of

the participants in a communicative act (Van Dijk, 1987). Anaphoras and deictics

produces an stylistic effect on semantic moves which often implies indirectness and

vagueness. An example of the use of anaphora could be the use of some lexical options in

the news of some newspapers to define a sexual assilant. They vary from "the aggressor"

to "the defendant" or "the condemned man". Whereas the first implies a judgement by

which we can discern that for the narrator the alleged assilant is clearly the assilant, the

lattest reproduce the point of view of the justice, following the several steps of a trial: a

"defendant" is someone who was charged of being the responsible of a crime; a

"condemned person" is someone that, in the eyes of the penal system, is a criminal and

therefore deserves a punishment. The use of such anaphoras reveals the degree of

adhesion to the accepted norms and to the representatives of those norms (Martín Rojo &

Callejo Gallego, 1996). We should mention that this deictic aspect has to do with the

theory of the poliphony of enuntiation, created by Ducrot, according to which the text is

penetrated by different voices. Every voice reflects its own power and the place it

occupies in the social hierarchy (Ducrot, 1986). In a certain way, it has to do with what

Foucault calls "multiple relationships of power that are inserted in the social body" and, in

addition, in the text (process of production, process of interpretation). Discourses must be

discourses of truth, so that we are subjugated to the production of the truth by power and

we can exerce power only through the production of truth (Foucault, 1984).

The second way of legimating is through addition. The addition, in argumentative

terms, could be realized through repetition of some elements or through accumulation (for

instance, evocation of details). Again, we can find additions in the lexical field, like the

use of pleonasms. I choose a new example from the newspapers. In the stories dealing

with sexual assault it is very common to use pleonasms to define some crimes: "deshonest

abuse" (it gives the impression that there are abuses that are somehow honest), "indecent

assault" (id), "unfair humiliation" (id), etc...Additions at the rhetoric level include the use

of synechdoches, metonymies and other moves which imply an identification or

conceptualization of something through anything else (Lakkof & Johnson, 1995). It also

means the partialization of the concept. These moves confer a paradigmatic distance to

the expressed idea (Le Guern, 1990). This relationship between the two elements implied

in synechdoques and metonimias are usually extralinguistic. Therefore, the association

comes from ideological uses and social values. In this sense we have to mention the use

of connectives. Some authors like Perelman or Auerbach give several suggestions to deal

with them. The connectives, in the field we are dealing with now, serve to link structures

that, connected to each other, allow to reach a conclusion or to make a decision, so that

power is legitimated. Argumentation, in the end, works through evidences and those

evidences legitimate some decisions, explanations or conclusions (Mortara Garavelli,

1988).

As we can see, lexicalization means semantic options whose framework is a

process to give the world and our immediate or mediate reality new meanings

(Fairclough, 1992; Hodge & Kress, 1979). Addition and substitution create a

manipulation in the form, because they change and transform the syntactic function or the

sense of some words.

TYPES OF LEGITIMATION AND THE ARGUMENTATION

A) AUTHORIZATION:

This is a way of legitimation that gives priority to authorities. Such a priority is

based on tradition, specific knowledge, custom, law or individuals (i.e.elite members,

representatives of relevant institutions).

It is a main characteristic of the authorization that it operates in a framework that

gives preferential access to discourses to elite sources, institutions and other actors that

have well organized discourses, and are able to manufacture credibility through strategies

that normally are argumentative or, at least, persuasive (Van Dijk, 1992, Text, Talk, Elites

and racism).

A detailed analysis of the concept of social power reveals that it is a kind of power

enacted by social groups and institutions. Power of individuals is a simple reflect derived

from the membership of socially dominant groups or social position or status. This social

power is basically connected to the notion of control: the one who has power, can control

others´ mind and, at the same time, is grounded in values socially accepted and firmly

rooted (Van Dijk, 1992b, Disc, power and access). The succesful control is carried out

through institutionalization, rationalization and reproduction. But, above all, powerful

individuals and groups are more represented in the public discourses and have a special

acces to them (Van Dijk, 1992b; Galtung and Ruge, 1965; Gans, 1979). This possibility

of access means also to be able to organize agenda´s and to choose topics. This is the real

link between authorization and the argumentative structures and other properties of the

discourse that sustain it. That can be translated into an ability to set constraints on the

most important communicative events.

It depends on elites and other powerful representatives then to manufacture some

concepts and visions of the reality, and to create consent. They can define what is

normality and what is deviation (Martín Rojo & Callejo, 1996; Foucault, 1971).

Because these sources, institutions and voices are legitimized by time and

experience, they don´t need to rationalize their arguments. As a matter of fact, they use

their own position as argument. That is what is the argumentative field is called

"argumentation of authority" which consists in using judgements, opinions, statements or

acts of somebody (group, individual) as the means of proving a thesis. Nevertheless, and

as many theoreticians like Pareto remark, this argument is a fallacy, because not always

the evoked arguments are infalible. Of course, these arguments can work as long as a

large majority gives its consent. Some rhetoric moves of communion, like quotes or

allusions, or the use of refrains, cliches and associations can be succesful thanks to the

social conviction supported by the tradition. All these manouvers are used as instruments

and guarantees of opinions.

Arguments given by authorities can create models of attitudes or attributes. The

models are the equivalent of the illustrations and examples in the practical action:

they are evoked to establish or planify a general rule of behaving. In this way, from an

accepted model comes up a new model which will again be accepted by consent

(Perelman & Olbrechts, 1989; Mortara Garavelli, 1988).

B) RATIONALIZATION:

The arguments that cannot be fixed by authority, necessarily have to have some

rationalizing strategies to be reliable. It belongs to the field of the instrumental

legitimation and serves to a specific goal, that must be socially presented as positive and

beneficial.

We agree with Luisa Martín Rojo when she claims that rationalization is an

instance, a discourse activity (Martín Rojo & Callejo Gallego, 1996). It intends to achieve

some social goals by means of argumentative moral justifications. The rationalization

presents the utility of something and the result this process produces. Maybe we have to

clariry that, if for linguists is important to address questions in the pragmatic explanation,

for ethnomethodologists will be important to address questions in ordinary reasoning. As

Garfinkel says, rationalization is necessary since explanations are required (Garkinkel,

1984, studies in ethnomethodology, cambridge, polity press). In this context, discourse is

part of a frame that is presupposed, and has been agreed upon, and provides the context in

which actions and utterances are to be taken (Goffman, 1961, Encounters: two studies in

the sociology of interaction, indianapolis, bob-merrill). Rationalization, according to

Garfinkel, is the attempt to make something (a value, an experience, a feeling, an opinion,

an attitude, etc...) acceptable. In this sense, rationalization contrasts with spontaneity, as

Habermas described regarding the rationalization implicit in dramatic action. This

rationalization can adopt several forms, amongst them the inhibition, the justification, the

self-exoneration, the self-positive presentation (as member of a dominant group), self-

justification and explanation. The essence of the argument could be to deny or to reaffirm

something.

The experiential rationalization implies the creation of a situation model; when we

represent an episode, event or scene we form a mental model of them (Van Dijk, 1987;

Teun y Kintsch, 1983, strategies of discouse comprehension, ny, academic press). So we

can assign similar structures to a singular given event. This structure is hierarchically

formed and consists of categories. The categorial analysis recalls the semantic analysis of

sentences. Since the schemas derived from such categories is the basis for some attitudes,

we can assume that the experiential rationalization involves values and sometimes moral

implications. For instance, in a story in which one tells his/her experiences with a ethnic

minority group member, it is important to see how personal experience is used to confirm

and establish general values and norms. The experience is in this case a guarantee of

reliability and truthfulness. And truthfulness is, according to Habermas, a claim of

validity linked to representative speech acts, a claim which says that, with the intentions I

show, I mean exactly what I say. A speaker is truthful "when he/she neither deceives

him/herself nor others in self-expressive speech acts I state nothing about my own internal

episodes, I do no make any claim, I just express something which is subjective"

(Habermas, 1989, teoría de la accion comunativa: estudios y complementos, madrid,

catedra). So, truthfulness depends also on the degree of involvement of the participants of

a given communicative act.

On the other hand, explanations based on experience originate episodes,

characterized as coherent sequences of sentences of a discourse. This coherence has

sometimes to be with the models employed to construct explanations and justifications. In

a context of studies about racism, Teun van Dijk illustrates how explanations and

justifications are part of the accepted goals in the in-group (Van Dijk, 1987). Although

justifications and explanations have a self-presentational function, they may also be

interpreted as forms of in-group defense, as legitimation for the adequacy or effectiveness

of specific courses of discriminatory action. In fact, an explanation such as "all the

foreigners are noisy" envolves a complex argumentation. The assertion that their

behaviour is normal is again a move that is intended to eliminate the possible inference

that someone thinks being noisy is deviant in general. Explanations could be interpreted,

as we see, in terms of cultural differences.

It is absolutely necessary to accept the importance of the argumentation to put the

rationalization in the right place. As a matter of fact we can add that argumentations used

after making a decision can usually be included in a technical framework. In the same

way, the scientific rationalization don´t need to include values to be conffirmed. They are

created in the terms of a specialized terminology and are constructed with likely premises

(for instance, entimemas or apodeictics) in order to achieve a goal or to prove something.

Such arguments give a cognitive basis about comprehension, representation, evocation. It

has also to do with the social hierarchy that seems to be reproduced in the rethoric

hierarchy, in terms of credibility and reliability (van Dijk, 1990, La noticia como

discurso). Behind rational scientific justifications are several believes that evoke the

positivist paradigm, the monolitic truth and the background of looking for a general and

social improving (that is: scientific reasonings affect to everyone and tend to be presented

as positive for the whole society). Of course, this generalistic vision succeed thanks to a

construction of a "us" described rather as homogeneous and with common interests

(Fowler, 1991). Indeed, scientific rationalization is possible as long as a solid identity

group exists. That explains that no values are to be included in these kind of

argumentations. To be taken into consideration they need to have a certain prestige.

People admit the prestige and the authority of some scientific representatives in some

specific domains. The effects of expertise and in general of credibility are crucially

mediated through such script-base expectations. Besides, rational scientific explanations

relies on common sense in which opinions are contrasted with truth, because the truth

(facts, theories) offers a normative function in comparison with other fields of the

subjectivity (opinions) (Olbrechts-Perelman, 1989).

3) MORAL EVALUATION:

There are arguments destinated to lay the foundations of the structure of the

reality: the arguments that take in consideration singular cases, the arguments based on

the analogy that intend to organize some elements of the thoughts according to schemas

admited in other fields of the reality. The moral evaluations encompass abstractions

which tend to be general: through the example one reaches a conclusion applicable to a

large majority of cases. A process of argumentation is involved in this. The abstraction

has also different levels, from a basic affective level to very complex levels (Hayakawa,

s.i. language in thought and<action, 1949, ny, harcourt, brace<and co).

Actually, we can affirm that the argumentation about values needs a distinction

between abstract values and concret values. The west morality is inspired in general and

abstract conceptions from which come valid rules for everybody. But, nevertheless, they

need circumstances by which one can conceive them in relation to concrete values and

behaviors. Notions like solidarity, discipline or loyalty belong to this category. Moral

evaluations, like scientific rationalization, expect from others a conffirmation of its

principles and grounds.

The most used resource in moral argumentation is the evaluation. And a common

form of evalution is the comparison. The comparison implies an interaction between two

terms of the comparison. The concept used as pattern can carry weight with the value of

the concepts belonging to the same serie and with wich it is compared. This phenomenon

is to be observd from the perception. The repetition of the compared notions open a new

level of adaptation. It happens the same in the domain of the argumentation in which two

terms already said constitute the basis that influence on new evalutions. The distance

between the two elementes which integrate a comparison has to do with a measure.

Sometimes there is an implicit hierarchy. The comparison, in this sense, can be

constructed as a move of the expression or as a semantic move. Comparisons are specially

relevant to emphasize or to mitigate. The arguments by means of comparison are based on

relatioships of equelity or of difference. There are two categories: of identity and of

analogy, depending on the evaluation and on the valuation of the objects through their

comparison. It is not strange that the quantitative comparison comprises a judgement, and

therefore some values. Some of the comparisons are described as specific semantic moves

that link propositions, for instance, the use of subsequent mitigations or contrasts to

illustrate a reality or a experience (Van Dijk, 1987).

D) MYTHOPOESIS:

The mythopoesis has to do with the role of stories in the field of the

argumentation. Because narrative structures are only an overall schema or form of a story,

they also need an overall content to fill the terminal nodes of the story schema.

Cognitively, stories may be treated as partial expressions of situation models, that is, of

episodic representations of personal experiences. The production and understanding of

stories is monitored by a strategic application of story schema rules and categories on the

memory representation. Reasons, introductions or summaries provide the motivation and

relevance of the story that is to follow and that usually reveals how some general

questions or statements on a specific topic or subject can be illustrated or backed up.

Sometimes such introductory or bridging story fragments also express a clear evaluation,

so as to make the story more effective and therefore interesting (Van Dijk, 1987).

Evaluations, explications and conclusions are the categories or dimensions in which the

opinions or attitudes, and the norms and values that support them, become most clearly

visible.

The goal of some stories has a closed relationship with the models. The model is

an example and an illustration in a practical action: it is a whole that encompass attitudes

about which one can establish a general norm of behaving. The exemplum was

traditionally an instrument to educate in a moral sense. The symbols and allegories uses

an inductive procedure to reach conclusions whose validity is only particular, singular or

exceptional. The morality in the stories is formed by an act and its agent. Around the

person there are lots of phenomena to which he/she gives coherence and meaning. But

there are also values, norms and ideologies. Stories offer topics based on consent, on ideas

socially established and accepted. The moral representation presupposes the existence a

signification and a value, because between the symbol and what it represents, there is

relationship of participation and of transference. In the stories with a moral component

symbols become realities capable of producing love or abomination, that wouldn´t be

possible without the link of participation. When somebody is used as a symbol, his/her

acts will be more representative and relevant than those of people who is not considered a

symbol. The allegory is the "inversio" (exchange). It consist in pointing out through

words an underlying meaning. The allegoresis as interpretation originated the

representations with allegoric intention and the attribution of allegoric values to texts and

mithological or historical episodes, tales or narrations. Allegory and symbol are opposed.

The symbol reveals a reality but the allegory is an arbitrary and conventional

conceptualization. Besides, this latter is more systematic than the former, and can be

applied to a vast segment of a text.

In moralistic and moralizing stories it exist an encarnation of the good and of the

evil. The good is recompensated and the evil is punished. Good and evil are implicitly

defined, according to a serie of social norms and values, that at the same time create

specific expectations and that originate patterned behaviors from our unwritten but ever

present cultural files of "what is good or not", and what can of compensations can one

expect from it. The argumentation, as in previous examples, doesn´t depend on the

argumentations itself (nobody tries to persuade that good is better that evil, or that good

people get more positive compensations than people who are bad), this is already the start

point, this is a field about which it exist a previous and a general consent. The behavior is

submitted to the approval or disapproval of others (Eakins & Eakins, 1978).

FINAL WORDS

As we saw, there are not only important points of contact between theories of

argumentation and theories of legitimation, but they have also in common a lot of tools,

strategies and goals. Sometimes, they superimpose each other and argumentative

mechanisms serves to solidify and reproduce legitimation and legitimacy. Our work had a

general character and many aspects remain out of our analysis. In any case, we hope that

some of the ideas contained in this paper will contribute as platform of reflecting for

future studies in this field.

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