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A Normative Pragmatic Theory of Exhorting

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Abstract

We submit a normative pragmatic theory of exhorting—an account of conceptually necessary and potentially efficacious components of a coherent strategy for securing a sympathetic hearing for efforts to urge and inspire addressees to act on high-minded principles. Based on a Gricean analysis of utterance-meaning, we argue that the concept of exhorting comprises making statements openly urging addressees to perform some high-minded, principled course of action; openly intending to inspire addressees to act on the principles; and intending that addressees’ recognition of the intentions to urge and inspire creates reasons for addressees to grant a sympathetic hearing to what the speaker has to say. We show that the theory accounts for the design of Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union address. By doing so we add to the inventory of reasons why social actors make arguments, continue a line of research showing the relationship of arguing to master speech acts, and show that making arguments can be an effective strategy for inspiring principled action.

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Notes

  1. We use the phrase “making arguments” and related terms such as “argumentation” in the sense of O’Keefe’s (1982) “argument1-making”.

  2. Researchers who approach argumentation from a pragma-dialectical perspective have also described their theorizing as normative pragmatic and also make use of speech act theory in developing pragma-dialectical theory (e.g., van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984, 2004; van Eemeren et al. 1993). Whereas pragma-dialectical theory is based on integrating Grice’s maxims with Searle’s conditions for the performance of speech acts (e.g., Andone 2013; Houtlosser 1998; Snoeck Henkemans 2014), normative pragmatic theory is based on Grice’s analysis of utterance-meaning (1957, 1969) as amended and explained by Strawson (1964) and Stampe (1967). Normative pragmatic theory explains why a speaker can reasonably expect her utterance to secure her intended response from addressees without recourse to a notion of rules applied to a communicative interaction (Kauffeld 1987, 2009b; Strawson 1964). Instead, a normative pragmatic account explains or makes intelligible how social actors themselves design messages that regulate the activity (e.g., Jacobs 1989, 2000, 2006).

  3. See Kauffeld (1987, 2001, 2009a, b) for more detail on Grice’s analysis.

  4. We maintain that exhortations must urge and inspire principled action, a position compatible with the fact that news sources have described as exhortation some of U.S. President Donald Trump’s calls to deplorable action (Hoefler 2016; Sweeny 2017). We believe utterances such as a call to “get ‘em” (protestors) at one of his March 2016 presidential campaign rallies are more accurately described as “inciting violence” than “exhorting violence,” as indicated by both public outrage at Trump’s calls to violent action and questions about whether Trump “incited” violence. Nonetheless, even if one wants to describe calls to deplorable action as exhortation, we submit that such exhortations may not be practically efficacious because they are easy to dismiss with impunity as immoral, unethical, wrong, not the right thing to do, and so on (see also Cooper and Zeleny 2011). As arguments can be weak or poor, so can exhortations.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Communication Studies Department, Edgewood College, Madison, WI, USA

    Fred J. Kauffeld

  2. Communication Studies Department, University of Kansas, 1440 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 102, Lawrence, KS, 66045, USA

    Beth Innocenti

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  1. Fred J. Kauffeld
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  2. Beth Innocenti
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Correspondence to Beth Innocenti.

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Fred Kauffeld: Deceased

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Kauffeld, F.J., Innocenti, B. A Normative Pragmatic Theory of Exhorting. Argumentation 32, 463–483 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-018-9465-y

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