Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca

These two rhetoricians bring up some really interesting points about effective rhetoric. The rational versus the reasonable argument or demonstration versus argumentation. If you want to fully persuade someone to belive something, it has to be personal. If you are more geared towards a demonstrative focus in your presentation, it is easy for your audience to put up a wall between themselves and you as the speaker. It is imperitive to know your audience prior to the speaking engagement. You have to be willing to get down on the ground with your audience. There is no way that a speaker can be effective without leveling the playing field a little. As the book says, "Argumentation is personal because it begins with premises that the audience accepts" (87). Once the audience has accepted who you are, what you do and the beginning of your argument, they will be more willing to continue with you down your persuasive path. The book also says that the argumentation is constituted "before the universal audience only when the speaker chooses arguments and appeals that merit consideration beyond the particular audience" (89). A lot of this can be controlled by the speaker who gets to consider his viewpoint and his goals. Then he can go over the wording of his speech and put words in that will relate to the audience in the way he desires, basically, he can manipulate the audience with his words. After all, according to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, truth and validity in argumentation are not absolute and the argumentation must take into consideration varying viewpoints. Through the research of P and O-T, anyone can convince anyone of anything as long as they understand the audience's believes, expectations and malleability.