Stasis Salience and the Enthymemic Thesis

• 作者: Randy Allen Harris Yan Jiang Ying Yuan
• 来源期刊: 语言与符号学研究
• 学科: 文学
• 年，卷（期）: 2017,（3）
• 页码范围: 103-124
• 页数: 22页
• 分类号: H05

摘要

The argumentative stasis theory and enthymeme principles richly complement each other but they have rarely been investigated jointly. We correct this oversight first with a principled re-analysis of the stasis tradition, resulting in a double-layer stasis system: Cicero’s later system(in De Oratore and Topica) with 'action' stasis’ subclassification, modified by Kenneth Burke’s dramatic pentad of act, scene, agent, agency, purpose(in A Grammar of Motives). Then inspired by Ronald Langacker’s salience theory in cognitive linguistics, we secure two stasis deployment strategies: selection(profile against base) and prominence(trajector against landmark). Stasis theory thus solidified, we examine how it interacts with the two central aspects of the enthymemic thesis: incompleteness and probability and how the enthymemic thesis helps explain the force of stasis theory. This inquiry contributes to rhetorical theory and criticism; argumentation studies; and linguistics, by showing the reach of salience theory.