Theoretical Choices, Methodological Cuts and Transitions between Paradigms: Moot Issues of Interdisciplinary Dialogue

Abstract

This article is an attempt to reflect upon the problem of choosing a theoretical approach. From another side, it touches upon the question of conducting scientific enquiry- in the face of the actual inter-disciplinary turn taken in some fields of research. The starting point of these reflections in this particular field will be the concept of interdisciplinarity as understood in France and the claims of the New Rhetorics which can themselves be understood as being interdisciplinary. Moreover, the New Rhetoric can be used to describe a dialogue between different disciplines. In reference to the concept of predicate, which has different meanings in the fields of French and Polish linguistic research, the present article will touch upon fundamental dilemmas, misunderstandings and difficulties in scientific debate and the problems which stem from the differences between the French and Polish academic traditions. In this context, the New Rhetoric could play the role of a platform for dialogue between researchers representing different scientific traditions, because on the one hand, the New Rhetoric takes into account the relation between the researcher’s formation and his prior representations concerning the matter. On the other hand, the New Rhetoric introduces the term 'plasticity of notions' based on which argumentation can be founded or based. In conducting research founded on interdisciplinary dialogue it is important to adopt “a view from afar” (Levi-Strauss 1983); or, in other words, to maintain a certain distance from one's discipline, tradition and a way of querying, so that our scientific works would become comprehensible for scholars representing different disciplines and above all, to enable a dialogue within the framework of those disciplines.

Keywords

• interdisciplinary approach
• new rhetoric
• argumentation
• predicate