The argument of form: narration as proof, scenography and setting of topical forms

Resumen

This paper deals with the way that different levels of discourse are ar­ticulated in argumentation, here considered to be a practice that is closely related 102 to rhetoric. We will be concerned with the analysis of a case that includes two read­ers’ comments published in an online newspaper, which discusses a news article that presents computer software capable of automatically writing stories -more specifi­cally fables- by using a series of preset parameters. By combining notions drawn from argumentation theory, text linguistics and enunciation theory, we analyze the way in which the first comment responds to the piece of news through an operation of imita­tion of the computer’s original story as reproduced in the newspaper; while the sec­ond comment, which also assumes a narrative form, not as a response to the news but to rebut the first commentary, acquires different genre-related characteristics that work in a coherent fashion with the argumentation displayed at the level of the topi­cal forms. The case allows us to take note of the links that exist between the textual configuration (narrative in this case) that the argument can assume, the contents and topoi realized at the level of the phrases or statements, and the global argumentative act understood as a ‘move’ within a certain discursive interaction.