Abstract

After C. L. Hamblin's groundbreaking work Fallacies, re-interpreting what used to be known as "mistakes in reasoning" or "bad arguments" since Aristotle, the study of fallacies started to bloom, coming up with ever new perspectives and conceptualizations of what should count as a mistake in reasoning and argumentation, and why a certain kind of reasoning should at all be considered a mistake. This paper will be concerned with two questions. First, an epistemological one: do we commit fallacies, or do we use them? Secondly, a methodological one: when we detect a fallacy, on what conceptual grounds do we differentiate between committed and used fallacies? Aren't we forced to commit "fallacies" whenever we talk about other people, their views, or their work? Examples from Critical Discourse Analysis will be used to extensively illustrate this point.