사회과학에서의 수사학 교육

Abstract

This paper discusses an education of rhetoric in the study of social sciences. Social sciences such as sociology, economics, law, and political science deal with the topics of humanities and they research methodology is basically based on the empirical traditions of natural positivism. Rhetoric is an way of scientific persuasion by means of argumentation in public places. Today social scientists have recently begun to attend to the rhetorical inquiry because of its useful subject statements and argumentation theory. In the fields of social sciences usually scholars have a hard time on choosing research problems due to the lack of rhetorical argumentation. Rhetoric of inquiry is especially valuable for human sciences. Although social sciences have less concerns on rhetoric of inquiry, they would benefit more from increased rhetorical argumentation in selecting research subjects and getting scientific findings. Fundamentally social sciences and rhetoric are not different each other both in constructing basic concepts and building theory. Social sciences now regard human acts and products as objects for explanation, prediction, and practice for the human developments. Comparing to research methods of social sciences, rhetoric of inquiry seems to be not in favor of following the quantitative empirical positivism. However many rhetorical good traditions of argumentation methods may help social scientists to make more impressive ways of speaking and writing their research papers based on the dry numerical data. Rhetoric of inquiry emphasizes the interaction of style and substance. Finally social sciences are failing to suggest an effective way of social integration because of the poor evidence of arguments on their research topics. Rhetoric is a practical inquiry on the existing problematic social arguments. It tries to give an agreeable solutions for helping people to make right judgements. Social sciences may improve their practical power by adapting persuasive social practices. The final point of this paper is that the education of rhetorical disciplines is very important for the academic development of social sciences.