Arguing and Thinking: A Rhetorical Approach to Social Psychology

Arguing and Thinking is an entertaining and scholarly exposition of ideas of rhetoric - from Classical times to the nineteenth century - viewed as social psychological theories. It is self-confessedly unorthodox. Social psychologists may probe experimentally the foundations of 'attitude-change' or 'persuasive communication', but in so doing, Michael Billig claims in his Introduction, 'they are continuing to think about the same sort of issues as those which filled the contents of Aristotle's Rhetoric, or Cicero's Orator, or Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory'. He is especially concerned to point out the relations between thinking and arguing, and suggests that the ability to contradict is one of the most important mental faculties. The argumentative aspects of attitudes, commonsense, roles and cognitive processes are discussed as the author himself takes issue with some familiar psychological theories.