Citations of:
A Systematic Theory of Argumentation: The Pragma-Dialectical Approach
Cambridge University Press (2003)
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J. Anthony Blair is a prominent international figure in argumentation studies. He is among the originators of informal logic, an author of textbooks on the informal logic approach to argument analysis and evaluation and on critical thinking, and a founder and editor of the journal Informal Logic. Blair is widely recognized among the leaders in the field for contributing formative ideas to the argumentation literature of the last few decades. This selection of key works provides insights into the history of (...) No categories |
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Topical Themes in Argumentation Theory brings together twenty exploratory studies on important subjects of research in contemporary argumentation theory. The essays are based on papers that were presented at the 7th Conference of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation in Amsterdam in June 2010. They give an impression of the nature and the variety of the kind of research that has recently been carried out in the study of argumentation. The volume starts with three essays that provide stimulating (...) No categories |
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The aim of this paper is to indicate the systematic place of arguments based on the concept of analogy within the theoretical framework of the Periodic Table of Arguments, a new method for describing and classifying arguments that integrates traditional dialectical accounts of arguments and fallacies and rhetorical accounts of the means of persuasion into a comprehensive framework. The paper begins with an inventory of existing approaches to arguments based on analogy, similarity and adjacent concepts. Then, the theoretical framework of (...) No categories |
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Rhetorical analyses typically characterize structural, topical, and stylistic features of written or spoken argumentative text, and may also consider the context of interaction as well as the epistemic and social standing of participants as these relate to the goals of gaining, sustaining, and strengthening an audience’s adherence to a thesis or a course of action. Such considerations, broadly conceived, are taken to constitute rhetorical insights, insofar as they bear on effecting audience persuasion or, for that matter, fail to do so. (...) |
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The appeal to expert opinion is an argument form that uses the verdict of an expert to support a position or hypothesis. A previous scheme-based treatment of the argument form is formalized within a Bayesian network that is able to capture the critical aspects of the argument form, including the central considerations of the expert's expertise and trustworthiness. We propose this as an appropriate normative framework for the argument form, enabling the development and testing of quantitative predictions as to how (...) |
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What is informal logic, is it ``logic" at all? Main contemporary approaches are briefly presented and critically commented. If the notion of consequence is at the heart of logic, does it make sense to speak about ``informal" consequence? A valid inference is truth preserving, if the premises are true, so is the conclusion. According to Prawitz two further conditions must also be satisfied in the case of classical logical consequence: (i) it is because of the logical form of the sentences (...) |
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This paper endorses a view of argumentation and arguments that relates both to a special type of speech action, namely, the performance of speech acts of arguing. Its aim is to advance an analysis of those acts that takes into account two kinds of norms related to their correct performance, namely, felicity conditions and objective requirements related to the “correspondence with the facts.” It assumes that the requirement that certain objective conditions be satisfied is among the set of felicity conditions (...) |
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Drawing on insights from contemporary studies on conceptual metaphor and multimodal metaphor, the present study proposes a tentative analysis of multimodal metaphorical argument from the perspective of the extended theory of pragma-dialectics. A case, Liqun Commercial, is presented as an illustration. This commercial proves to use a conceptual metaphor, life is a journey, that underlies a multimodal metaphorical argument. The conceptual metaphor is highly acceptable in the cultural context of the Chinese target audience. Due to the restrictions imposed by the (...) No categories |
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A persuasion dialogue is a dialogue in which a conflict between agents with respect to their points of view arises at the beginning of the talk and the agents have the shared, global goal of resolving the conflict and at least one agent has the persuasive aim to convince the other party to accept an opposing point of view. I argue that the persuasive force of argument may have not only extreme values but also intermediate strength. That is, I wish (...) |
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In this brief commentary of Kamila Debowska-Kozlowska’s insightful analysis of persuasive outcomes (Processing topics from the Beneficial Cognitive Model in partially and over-successful persuasion dialogues. Argumentation, 2014), I articulate some suggestions for future development of her ideas. My main claim is that, while instances of partially and over-successful persuasion are indeed worthy of further theoretical inquiry, the topical analysis proposed by Debowska-Kozlowska may benefit from integration with other approaches. |
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This paper describes the development of pragma-dialectics as a theory of argumentative discourse. First the development of the pragma-dialectical model of a critical discussion is explained, with the rules that are to be complied with in order to avoid fallacies from occurring. Then the integration is discussed of rhetorical insight in the dialectical framework. In this endeavour, the concept of strategic manoeuvring is explained that allows for a more refined and more profoundly justified analysis of argumentative discourse and a better (...) |
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In trying to control various aspects concerning utterance production in multi-party human–computer dialogue, argumentative considerations play an important part, particularly in choosing appropriate lexical units so that we fine-tune the degree of persuasion that each utterance has. A preliminary step in this endeavor is the ability to place an ordering relation between semantic forms (that are due to be realized as utterances, by the machine), concerning their persuasion strength, with respect to certain (explicit or implicit) conclusions. Thus, in this article, (...) |
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Although he does not provide a general analysis of argumentation, Aristotle is a highly influential source of modern argumentation theory. In his treatises the Topics, the Sophistical Refutations and the Rhetoric, Aristotle presents complementary aspects of a theory of sound arguments that are seen as the most effective means of persuasion. Aristotle’s central notion of a deductive argument (sullogismos) does not include references to an addressee, the situative context or non-verbal aspects of communication, and thus differs from some modern views (...) |
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The present study examined how the pre-war debate of the US decision to invade Iraq (in March 2003) was discursively constructed in the US/British mainstream newspaper opinion/editorial (op/ed) argumentation. Drawing on theoretical insights from critical discourse analysis and argumentation theory, I problematised the fallacious discussion used in the pro-war op/eds to build up a ‘moral/legal case’ for war on Iraq based on adversarial (rather than dialogical) argumentation. The proponents of war deployed ‘instrumental rationality’ (ends-justify-means reasoning), ‘ethical necessity’ (Bush’s ‘Preemption Doctrine’) (...) |
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Some disagreements seem to be persistent: they are, pretty much, immune to persuasive argumentation. If that is the case, how can they be overcome? Can argumentation help us? I propose that to overcome persistent disagreements through argumentation, we need a dynamic and pluralistic version of argumentation. Therefore, I propose that argumentation, more than a tool that uses persuasion to change the mind of the counterpart, is a toolbox that contains persuasion, deliberation, negotiation, and other dialogical strategies that can be used (...) |
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My project is a systematic inquiry into the problem of relevance, which has been identified as an enduring difficulty in, for example, informal logic and information science where it plays a fundamental role in argument and information searches, respectively. My first task involves determining exactly what the problem of relevance is. To achieve that, I collected problem statements from the literature but I also analysed literature on relevance to discover further problems. The key problem that I investigate concerns the question, (...) |
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Douglas Walton’s multitudinous contributions to the study of argumentation seldom, if ever, directly engage with argumentation in mathematics. Nonetheless, several of the innovations with which he is most closely associated lend themselves to improving our understanding of mathematical arguments. I concentrate on two such innovations: dialogue types (§1) and argumentation schemes (§2). I argue that both devices are much more applicable to mathematical reasoning than may be commonly supposed. |
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This paper offers a review of the argumentation-theoretical literature on metaphor in argumentative discourse. Two methodologies are combined: the pragma-dialectical theory is used to study the argumentative functions attributed to metaphor, and distinctions made in metaphor theory and the three-dimensional model of metaphor are used to compare the conceptions of metaphor taken as starting point in the reviewed literature. An overview is provided of all types of metaphors distinguished and their possible argumentative functions. The study reveals that not all possible (...) No categories |
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Despite being very common in both public and private argumentation, accusations of selective application of general premises, also known as “whataboutisms”, have been mostly overlooked in argumentation studies, where they are, at most, taken as accusations of inconsistency. Here I will defend an account according to which allegations of this sort can express the suspicion that the argumentation put forward by one party does not reflect his or her actual standpoint and reasons. Distinguishing this kind of argumentative moves is important (...) |
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This essay addresses the collapse/incoherence problem for normative frameworks that contain both fundamental values and rules for promoting those values. The problem is that in some cases, we would bring about more of the fundamental value by violating the framework’s rules than by following them. In such cases, if the framework requires us to follow the rules anyway, then it appears to be incoherent; but if it allows us to make exceptions to the rules, then the framework “collapses” into one (...) |
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The article develops and justifies, on the basis of the epistemological argumentation theory, two central pieces of the theory of evaluative argumentation interpretation: 1. criteria for recognizing argument types and 2. rules for adding reasons to create ideal arguments. Ad 1: The criteria for identifying argument types are a selection of essential elements from the definitions of the respective argument types. Ad 2: After presenting the general principles for adding reasons (benevolence, authenticity, immanence, optimization), heuristics are proposed for finding missing (...) |
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Accounts of analogical inference are usually categorized into four broad groups: abductive, deductive, inductive and sui generis. The purpose of this paper is to defend a sui generis model of analogical inference. It focuses on the sui generis account, as developed by Juthe [2005, 2009, 2015, 2016] and Botting’s [2017] criticism of it. This paper uses the pragmadialectical theory of argumentation as the methodological framework for analyzing and reconstructing argumentation. The paper has two main points. First, that Juthe’s arguments against (...) |
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In recent discussions concerning the definition of argument, it has been maintained that the word ‘argument’ exhibits the process-product ambiguity, or an act/object ambi-guity. Drawing on literature on lexical ambiguity we argue that ‘argument’ is not ambiguous. The term ‘argument’ refers to an object, not to a speech act. We also examine some of the important implications of our argument by considering the question: what sort of abstract objects are arguments? |
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When interlocutors start to talk at cross purposes it becomes less likely that they will be able to resolve their differences of opinion. Still, a critic, in the confrontation stage of a discussion, should be given some room of manoeuvre for rephrasing and even for revising the arguer’s position. I will distinguish between licit and illicit applications of this form of strategic manoeuvring by stating three soundness conditions. |
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In this paper, I investígate a question in the Rhetoric surrounding the metaphorical sense of Aristotle’s topos: one can look to a location for “available means of persuasion,” evoking an image of seeing ; or topoi are viewed as “general lines of argument.” Are they places we go for arguments, or actual lines of arguments? The difference matters, given a propensity to view topoi as forerunners of argument schemes. |
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This article proposes a way of connecting two levels at which scholars have studied discursive practices from a normative perspective: on the one hand, local transactions-face-to-face arguments or dialogues-and broadly dispersed public debates on the other. To help focus my analysis, I select two representatives of work at these two levels: the pragmadialectical model of critical discussion and Habermas's discourse theory of politicallegal deliberation. The two models confront complementary challenges that arise from gaps between their prescriptions and contexts of actual (...) |
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A systematic rhetorical analysis may reveal elements of multimodal argumentative discourse that would otherwise remain hidden. In this article, we present simultaneously the basics of the method we have developed to integrate theories about different modalities in one parallel processing framework for rhetorical analysis and the results of its application to an intriguing ad. |
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The product/process distinction with regards to “argument” has a longstanding history and foundational role in argumentation theory. I shall argue that, regardless of one’s chosen ontology of arguments, arguments are not the product of some process of arguing. Hence, appeal to the distinction is distorting the very organizational foundations of argumentation theory and should be abandoned. |
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The principle of charity is used in philosophy of language and argumentation theory as an important principle of interpretation which credits speakers with “the best” plausible interpretation of their discourse. I contend that the argumentation account, while broadly advocated, misses the basic point of a dialectical conception which approaches argumentation as discussion between two parties who disagree over the issue discussed. Therefore, paradoxically, an analyst who is charitable to one discussion party easily becomes uncharitable to the other. To overcome this (...) |
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This paper deals with the argumentative biases Conspiracy Theories typically suffer from and pursues two goals: the identification of recurring argumentative and rhetorical features of conspiracy theories, which translates into an attempt to elaborate their argumentative profile ; the elaboration of a cognitively-grounded account of CTs in terms of their persuasiveness. To fulfil goal, I examine online instances of different cases of CTs. Building on the general rhetorical features of CTs identified by Byford, I elaborate a first argumentative profile surveying (...) |
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Within the epistemological approach to Argumentation Theory, there are two opposing views on what a theory of argumentation should look like. On the one hand, there are those interested in providing epistemological criteria for good argumentation. For these theorists, the main question is "should we accept this claim on the basis of those reasons?". On the other hand, there are those interested in “characterizing” what is good argumentation. For them, the main question is: "does this piece of argumentation count as (...) |
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El presente trabajo complemenJa las referencias a la lengua aut6ctona de los día guitas chilenos, en la encrucijada histórica de la conquista hispana en el siglo Xlll , cuya primera parte se publicó en WGOS N 2 l.En este número conJrastamos las hipó tesis de don Ricardo Latcham con la crftica de don Jorge /ribarren; se ofrece, aderruís, un suscinJo panorama de la situación lingüística en el noroeste argenJino, y las anota ciones espedficamenJe lingüísticas sobre el "cacán" de Antonio Tovar, (...) No categories |
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Garssen and van Laar in effect concede our main criticism of the pragma-dialectical approach. The criticism is that the conclusions of arguments can be ‘P-D reasonable’ yet patently unreasonable, epistemically speaking. The concession consists in the claim that the theory “remains restricted to the investigation of standpoints in the light of particular sets of starting points” which are “up to individual disputants to create” and the admission that all the relevant terms of normative appraisal have been redefined. We also discuss (...) |
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The article discusses topics in the context of contemporary legal argumentation. It starts with a sketch of the development of topics from ancient times until the present day. Here the author focuses on the theory of the German legal philosopher Theodor Viehweg, which was most influential to legal argumentation in the 20th century. Then a modern concept of topics is introduced and finally the author discusses the role of topics in contemporary legal argumentation. In this part the distinction between topoi (...) |
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In her 2007 paper, “Argument Has No Function” Jean Goodwin takes exception with what she calls the “explicit function claims”, arguing that not only are function-based accounts of argumentation insufficiently motivated, but they fail to ground claims to normativity. In this paper I stake out the beginnings of a functionalist answer to Goodwin. |
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In this paper I develop and defend a form of argumentative normativity that is not based on fundamental principles. I first argue that research agendas that aim to discover fundamental principles of ‘good’ argumentative discourse share one crucial weak spot, viz. circularity. I then argue that this weak spot can be avoided in a pancritical view of normativity. |
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This paper focuses on disagreement spaces fused with emotion. Following Gilbert’s emotional mode of argumentation (1997), further expansions of the mode are made here, specifically for the purposes of being able to classify different types of emotional arguments. First, general concerns with arguments that stray from the traditional approach are addressed. Then a classification system for different types of emotional arguments is developed. Some of the criteria that help determine emotional arguments include dialogue types, arguers involved, as well as the (...) |
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This paper is divided in five sections. Section 11.1 sketches the history of the distinction between speech act with negative content and negated speech act, and gives a general dynamic interpretation for negated speech act. “Downdate semantics” for AGM contraction is introduced in Section 11.2. Relying on semantically interpreted contraction, Section 11.3 develops the dynamic semantics for constative and directive speech acts, and their external negations. The expressive completeness for the formal variants of natural language utterances, none of which is (...) |
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Political debate is a distinctive domain in argumentation, characterized by these features: it is about proposals for action, not about propositions that may have a truth value; there may be good arguments on both sides; neither the proposal nor its rejection follows by necessity or inference; the pros and the cons generally cannot, being multidimensional and hence incommen- surable, be aggregated in an objective way; each audience member must subjectively compare and balance arguments on the two sides; eventual consensus between (...) |
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We shall investigate the similarities and dissimilarities between old and new dialectic. For the ‘old dialectic’, we base our survey mainly on Aristotle’s Topics and Sophistical Refutations, whereas for the ‘new dialectic’, we turn to contemporary views on dialogical interaction, such as can, for the greater part, be found in Walton’s The New Dialectic. Three issues are taken up: types of dialogue, fallacies, and strategies. Though one should not belittle the differences in scope and outlook that obtain between the old (...) |
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Recent work on conditional reasoning argues that denying the antecedent [DA] and affirming the consequent [AC] are defeasible but cogent patterns of argument, either because they are effective, rational, albeit heuristic applications of Bayesian probability, or because they are licensed by the principle of total evidence. Against this, we show that on any prevailing interpretation of indicative conditionals the premises of DA and AC arguments do not license their conclusions without additional assumptions. The cogency of DA and AC inferences rather (...) |
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In order to point out that arguments could be conveyed through multimodal discourse, the paper takes three different TV news items with the same topic as corpus to make analysis on the principles of relevance and cohesion, as well as the accountability of the rhetor/protagonist, and tries to find out how different modes in the same discourse function and interact with each other to convey specific arguments. |