Christopher Tindale: Exploring the Cultural Foundations of Rhetoric and Reason

Abstract

The interview conducted with Christopher Tindale by Ruth Amossy in this special issue on “Challenging Rhetoric” proposes a survey of Tindale’s innovative work. Developing from Informal Logic to a theory of Rhetorical Argumentation, it eventually leads to an anthropological approach that challenges the Western rhetorical tradition. It assumes that ways of reasoning are culture-dependent and that arguments as reason-giving can take many forms beyond the ones described in the Western tradition. It thus tackles the question of cross-cultural communication in its argumentative dimension. In this framework it presents an “encounter rhetoric” exploring the encounter between people from very different cultures and looking at how a mutual cognitive environment is able, over time, to emerge and allow for argumentation.