Uses of Rhetorical Reasoning Theories in Business Communication Researches

Corporations need business communication when dealing with their main stakeholders (e.g., consumers, inner members, investors, societies, government). To consumers, corporations need to sell their products and gain a higher level of trust and loyalty from consumers (Choi, 2013; Jaganathan, Mayr, & Nagaratnam, 2014; Kang, 2014; Kim & Benbasat, 2006; Kisicek, 2018). For example, they need to persuade inner members of the necessity of structural reform of the organization such as downsizing and relieve the dissatisfaction of members for smoother structural reform (Hossfeld, 2018). Corporations also need to get support from investors in two different scenarios; 1) When corporations need to keep and sustain their business, as they need to show how their business is healthy, they need to maintain their trust and loyalty (Al-Hindawi & Naji, 2018), and 2) When corporations need to start their new a project or business, they need to show how their plan is plausible and possible and how they can guarantee profits for investors (Spinuzzi et al., 2014; van Werven, Bouwmeester, & Cornelissen, 2019). Society and governments can implement and abolish laws and policies that can decide the rise and fall of a specific market (Schmidt, 1986). Corporations can support pro-corporation governmental officials, social groups, and opinion leaders to influence laws and policies for them.

Choi (2013), Jaganathan et al. (2014), Kang (2014), Kim and Benbasat (2006, 2009) and Kisicek (2018) focus on consumers. They use printed and textual advertisements because it is easy to find logical relationships among the parts of advertisements. The goods are varied from cars to hairsprays. When advertising their products, advertisers need to consider the differences among the diverse backgrounds of customers. Jaganathan et al. (2014) investigate the differences of emphasis to English and German customers even though corporations run the same automobile advertisements. The focus of Kim and Benbasat (2006) differs from that of others. Their study focuses on Internet stores, which need to seek safety and security in the transaction process. Unlike offline stores, customers cannot see the appearance of goods and the flow of money. Online stores thus need to show policies that will guarantee safe transactions and gain the trust of customers. As the trust of customers in Internet stores is relatively low, these stores need to communicate in a logical and clear manner about how their policies can provide safe and secure transactions. Kim and Benbasat (2009) also focus on the trust from consumers in online stores. But the factors differ from those of the previous paper. This paper picks up high and low prices of products as the factor and stores themselves and the third parties as the interesting groups. Based on this, the paper tries to compare the persuasive power between claim-only arguments and claims with supporting arguments. Hossfeld (2018) focuses on organizational communication. Manuals and rules cannot cover every situation in a certain organization. As uncertainties exist, people communicate and persuade each other to seek the best way to solve the problems. When changes such as downsizing, which aims to reduce their budget by eliminating employees, the uncertainties become bigger. Germany, unlike the United States, pursues more stability in the job market than flexibility, and the efforts of persuading members to accept downsizing should be more serious (p. 13).

Al-Hindawi and Naji (2018) focus on investors, especially in the case of banks. Annual reports are not only for investors, but also for analysts, workers, shareholders, and other parties (p. 212). By publishing annual reports, the bank shows the stability and potential of the firm in order to gain trust and supports. Management earning forecasts also play a similar role to that of annual reports. Hursti (2011) selects the German engineering group Siemens and the Swiss-Swedish engineering group ABB to show what kinds of forecasts from corporations can and cannot gain trust from investors.

Spinuzzi et al. (2014) and van Werven et al. (2019) focus on investors of start-up companies. Spinuzzi et al. (2014) use the case of Gyeonggi-UT Innovation Program in Korea, the training and competing program for business people to build up their pitch. Their study explores how the preparation of teams has been better following the progress of the program. van Werven et al. (2019) also examine a similar context, the educational environment for start-up businesses, but they use the case of Amsterdam-based business incubator. Schmidt (1986) deals with society and government using the case of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Although this paper basically deals with the issues of religion, philosophy, and ethics, allowing or banning IVF has a massive impact on related medical industries. As churches were against IVF, they campaigned to ban IVF. But from the point of view of medical industries, they wanted to pass the policy. These examples show that business communication is not limited only to the business sector. Business communication also needs to consider government regulations and the social atmosphere.

This paper aims to review how theories have been applied in the field of business communication. As the aim of this paper is not to review what the rhetorical reasoning models are, the basic explanation of reasoning models mentioned in the body was omitted.

Perelman’s reasoning schemes are used in Choi (2013). Choi (2013) uses the ‘quasi-logical reasoning,’ ‘reasoning based on already associated,’ ‘reasoning making new association,’ and the ‘technique of dissociation’ (Park, 2012) suggested by Perelman (1982) and analyzes the reasoning structures of advertisements. Choi (2013) suggests that the ‘quasi-logical reasoning’ represents enthymeme. Unlike pure logic, this is more flexible in terms of logical structure; some premises can be omitted for the sake of customer persuasion. As reasoning in advertisements demands probabilistic reasoning rather than absolute correctness, some level of overemphasis can be allowed.

The argumentation model of Toulmin is used in Al-Hindawi and Naji (2018), Jaganathan et al. (2014), Hossfeld (2018), Kang (2014), Kim and Benbasat (2006, 2009), Kišiček (2018), Schmidt (1986), and Spinuzzi et al. (2014). Most of them use only claim, data, and warrant and sometimes add backing. It is interesting to see that none of them used all the six elements (Claim, Data, Warrant, Backing, Rebuttal, and Qualifier) of Toulmin’s argument model in an explicit manner. The reasons can be explained as follows.

First, it seems that the researchers were unknowingly influenced by the enthymeme of Aristotle, as their background is theoretical. Toulmin’s argument model can actually cover reasoning schemes suggested by Aristotle, that is, both inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning (Kang, 2014). Second, the researchers wanted to focus on the explicit parts of reasoning. Backing, Rebuttal, and Qualifiers are neither explicit nor basic parts of Toulmin’s argument model from their point of view. Only Jaganathan et al. (2014) mention that backing, rebuttal, and qualifiers are not the ones for the demonstrator, the company in business communication. Rather, as these elements are basically for their opponents and from the advertising industry, according to them, it is unethical to use these strategies (p. 154). But even in an exceptional case such as Hursti (2011) trying to use all the elements of Toulmin, it is quite difficult to reflect on these equally as in the case of unwarranted claims by Siemens (p. 401).

Kišiček (2018) is the perfect example for using only the three basic elements as mentioned above. The starting point of the paper is not reasoning. Instead, the paper introduces simulataneously the basic elements of persuasion such as ethos, pathos, and logos and also incorporates Toulmin’s model explaining logos in persuasion. Toulmin’s argument model is used to analyze the logical structure of an automobile advertisement (p. 347).

Schmidt (1986) uses claim, data, warrant, backing and omits rebuttals and qualifiers because of the simplicity of the analysis. In the paper, claim and data are explicit, and warrant and backing are implicit. Although warrant and backing are also sometimes explicit, it still depends on the domain and the requirement of certainty. Using the four of the six elements of Toulmin’s model, the paper tries to find that both philosophy and theology meaningfully contribute to business ethics.

Kim and Benbasat (2006) also use the same four elements of Toulmin. Their paper sees backing as an element that supports both data and claim while Toulmin originally explains that backing supports warrant and gives grounds on why we can accept warrant as legitimate. As we see in their paper, Toulmin’s model can be modified depending on the characteristics of the research object. It shows the flexibility and possibility of expanding the application of Toulmin’s Model.

Kim and Benbasat (2009) does not use warrant compared to their previous research, but it make two pairs of comparison in two contrasting situations. The first comparison is between the third party and the store. The second comparison is between claim, data, and backing and claim-only. Combining the previous 4 elements to form 4 pairs, the paper applies the pairs in situations of high and low price product.

Spinuzzi et al. (2014) uses not only claim and data, but also rebuttal and qualifiers to explain the logical elements of pitching decks. It explains rebuttal as a tool for mitigation from possible comments of judges and qualifiers as a tool for making limitations how much boundaries their arguments can apply (p. 16). Using rebuttals and qualifiers are important because arguments made by the recognition of possible rebuttals and own limitations have a higher plausibility than arguments without any consideration of these elements. Omitting ‘warrant’ and ‘backing’ makes additional limitations of the research although the authors do not mention this as its own limitation.

In terms of using Toulmin’s Argument Model holistically, Hursti (2011) cannot be excluded. Starting by introducing all 6 elements of Toulmin’s Model, the paper compares two randomly selected management earnings forecasts from the groups mentioned in the ‘II. Domain’ section for analyzing their plausibility (p. 399). Although some of six elements such as warrant and backing are not clearly shown in the results section, the paper tried to make the link between all the elements of Toulmin’s Model in the interpretation of the results.

van Werven et al. (2019) mentions Perelman, Toulmin, and van Eemeren at the same time and analyzes the structure of argumentation at the micro level. When their paper mentions Toulmin, it emphasizes ‘arguments’ and ‘grounds.’ The paper tries to figure out which kinds of arguments were made by new ventures and what kinds of data supported their arguments. In its mention of van Eemeren, it shows the two kinds of argumentation: explicit and implicit. It tries to use these criteria to compare pre-launch entrepreneurs and post-launch entrepreneurs.