Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca (1899–1987) was a Belgian academic, sociologist and longtime co-worker of the philosopher Chaïm Perelman. She volunteered in 1948 to support his workAlan G. Gross, Ray D. Dearin: Chaim Perelman. SUNY Press, 2003, p. 6. and developed several aspects of the New Rhetoric independently in later years.
Life and work Olbrechts-Tyteca was born into an important family of Brussels in 1899 and studied several humanities and social scientific methods at the University of Brussels without seeking a career.Alan G. Gross, Ray D. Dearin: Chaim Perelman. SUNY Press, 2003, p. 6. She married the statistician Raymond Olbrechts, eleven years older than herself, and lived an academical and social quiet life until she met Perelman in 1948.
Olbrechts-Tyteca and Perelman worked together between 1948 and 1984. During this time they worked out an influential contribution to argumentation theory. Their opus magnum Traité de l'argumentation : La nouvelle rhétorique led – together with Toulmin's The Uses of Argument published the same year – to the end of argumentative logicism.Harald Wohlrapp: Argumentative Geltung in Wohlrapp (Ed.): Wege der Argumentationsforschung, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1995; p. 282. The concrete contribution of Olbrechts-Tyteca to this and the other joined works is disputed among scholars but prevailing opinion is that she contributed to the vast illustrative part, while Perelman outlined the abstract-theoretical aspects.David A. Frank; Michelle Bolduc: Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's New Rhetoric in Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 96 No. 2, 2010, pp. 141–142. The Belgian academic established herself as an independent scholar with a work on rhetoric and humor, Le Comique du Discours, in 1974.David A. Frank; Michelle Bolduc: Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's New Rhetoric in Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 96 No. 2, 2010, p. 160.
Work with Chaïm Perelman: Rhétorique et philosophie. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1952. with Chaïm Perelman: Traité de l'argumentation : La nouvelle rhétorique. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris, 1958. English: The new rhetoric: A treatise on argumentation. (J. Wilkinson and P. Weaver, Trans.). Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Le Comique du Discours, Brussels Press, 1974.
Literature Barbara Warnick: Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's Contribution to The New Rhetoric in: Molly Meijer Wertheimer (Ed.): Listening to Their Voices: The Rhetorical Activities of Historical Woman. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1997; pp. 69–85. Noemi Mattis-Perelman: Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca: A Personal Recollection. Letter to Ray D. Dearin, August, 11. 1994. See. Gross/Dearin: Chaim Perelman, 2003; p. 153. David A. Frank; Michelle Bolduc: Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca's New Rhetoric in Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 96 No. 2, 2010, pp. 141 – 163.
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