Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca

In Chapter four of "Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric," we are given an overview of the major works of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, which introduce the idea that they beleived that there was a need for a new rhetoric. They felt that traditional rhetoric emphasized the matters of style at the expense of rationality. With their new approach, they hoped to be able to create a theory of argument in which values, such as facts and policies, could be assessed rationally.
Their theory was one based in argumentation, but it also had focus in the audience and ways in which to form and focus your argument based on your audience.
In the work, they discussed atarting points for the argument. Depending on the content of the speech and the audience, different strting points could be used to apply to those situations. For example, the authors state that starting points can be with reality, which include facts, truths, and presumtions. Starting points can also begin with the preferable, which inslude values, hiearchy, and the losi of the preferable.
Throughout the work, they juxtapose the idea of argumentation and demonstration. This idea follows throughout the work as they show the difference by giving exmples that demonstration is scientific and stringent, while argumentation can be adaptive and can be made to work, using different formulas, in every situation. Their idea of presence plays upon this earlier theory very heavily. They discuss the power of making present thinsg that are not, which make a powerful impact in the speech and on the audience. They say that sometimes that which is not present, but emphasized is more effective than that which actually is present.
The authors also go on to discuss the different techniques of presentation and argument. The techniques of argument include the techniques of liason which are quasi-logical arguments, arguments based on the structure of reality, and arguments that establish the structure of reality.
Their last major points deal with techniques of dissociation and the interaction of arguments.
Their approach on rhetoric in the matter of rationality rather than style is interesting, and in the way it is diagramed by the authors seems plausible and useful in constructing an argument. They discuss the importnat aspects of a speech such as the audience, when attempting to persuade, but they also gave less obvious ways of persuading that very audience by appealing directly to them and their beleifs.