On the rhetoricity of psycholinguistic experiments

Experiments have to be objective and intersubjectively controllable, and the experimental report must not make use of rhetorical tools that aim merely at persuading the reader but it has to allow the reader a direct access to the experimental evidence. At the same time, however, the reliability of psycholinguistic experiments does not seem to stem from an impersonal and straightforward linkage between “empirical facts” and hypotheses. Rather, it depends crucially on the peculiarities and the plausibility of the argumentation put forward in the experimental report, on its persuasiveness and its convincing force. The present paper aims at resolving this problem that I call the rhetorical paradox of psycholinguistic experiments