| Summary: | How can we use Toulmin’s model in the analysis of specific case studies? It seems that it has been almost exclusively used for either discussions in logical reasoning, or for theoretical discussions about probability. In this article, I want to show that Toulmin’s model can be very useful for Discourse Analysis since it allows the analyst to extract mostly implicit warrants and backings. In my view, the notion of backing is related, on the one hand, to its technical argumentative side, and on the other hand, to the psycho-cognitive foundation of any reasoning, linked both to cognitive dispositions and to cultural factors. The Toulminian analysis thus proves to be very interesting when discussing deep-level arguments in a text. The article is divided into two sections. The first one is devoted to a comparative analysis of three Declarations: the 1776 American Declaration of Independence, the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I assume that the declarations constitute the linguistic expression of the deep-level or “backing” of society’s discourses. They show which warrants the argumentation is based on, in other words, on the basis of which values the society is going to argue. In the specific context of democracies concerned with human rights, it is interesting to make the justifications of such political regimes explicit in order to better our understanding of the rhetorical paradigm of contemporary discourses. Through the Toulminian analysis of the preamble of these declarations—which play the role of justification in the classical syllogistic reasoning, I show that whereas they seem equivalent in terms of backings, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights actually exhibits another backing: the specific event of the genocide and the horrors of World War II. This has serious consequences on the type of rights that will be proclaimed and on the idealistic dimension of human rights. In one case, it will be the Enlightenment ideals and hopes, in the other, the negative hope that the tragedy of World War II can never be reproduced. I argue that this point can explain most of the political discourse phenomena of contemporary democracies—especially France. The particular context of the French situation is due to the fact that it is influenced both by the traditional Enlightenment conception of human rights and by the World War II paradigm. The influence of World War II and Jewish genocide on current argumentation is very clear, especially if we examine “paradigmatic” analogies, which block the argumentation at its earliest stage. It is sufficient to say about someone that he is like Hitler to exclude him from the argumentation community. Political correctness might, in some sense, derive from that phenomenon. This is what I ultimately discuss, putting forward hypotheses to be confirmed by further research.
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