Although political argumentation is not institutionalized in a formal sense, it does have recurrent patterns and characteristics. Its constraints include the absence of time limits, the lack of a clear terminus, heterogeneous audiences, and the assumption that access is open to all. These constraints make creative strategic maneuvering both possible and necessary. Among the common types of strategic maneuvering are changing the subject, modifying the relevant audience, appealing to liberal and conservative presumptions, reframing the argument, using condensation symbols, employing the (...) locus of the irreparable, and argumentative use of figures and tropes. It is difficult to evaluate strategic maneuvering in political argumentation, however, because the activity types dictate wide latitude for the arguers, so there are few cases of unquestionable derailment. (shrink)

Argumentation is the offspring of logic, dialectic, and rhetoric. Differences among them are matters more of degree than of kind, but each reflects basic underlying assumptions. This essay explicates five key assumptions of rhetorical approaches to argumentation: audience assent is the ultimate measure of an argument’s success or failure; argumentation takes place within a context of uncertainty, both about the subject of the dispute and about the process for conducting the dispute; arguers function as restrained partisans and accept risks that (...) follow from such a status; despite its seemingly adversarial nature, argumentation is fundamentally cooperative, pursuing the shared goal of making the best decision; and argumentation is grounded in the situational context of particular cases. (shrink)

This book uses different perspectives on argumentation to show how we create arguments, test them, attack and defend them, and deploy them effectively to justify beliefs and influence others. David Zarefsky uses a range of contemporary examples to show how arguments work and how they can be put together, beginning with simple individual arguments, and proceeding to the construction and analysis of complex cases incorporating different structures. Special attention is given to evaluating evidence and reasoning, the building blocks of argumentation. (...) Zarefsky provides clear guidelines and tests for different kinds of arguments, as well as exercises that show student readers how to apply theories to arguments in everyday and public life. His comprehensive and integrated approach toward argumentation theory and practice will help readers to become more adept at critically examining everyday arguments as well as constructing arguments that will convince others. (shrink)

A strong argument culture is characterized by at least five productive tensions, between: commitment and contingency, partisanship and restraint, personal conviction and sensitivity to the audience, reasonableness and subjectivity, and decision and non-closure. Differences in how communities manage these tensions explain why there are multiple argument cultures and, hence, why we need to understand arguing both within and among different cultures. The paper elaborates these five productive tensions, offers some examples of argument cultures that negotiate them in various ways, and (...) considers what it means to argue across cultures in a world that is both increasingly diverse and increasingly atomized. (shrink)

Although political argumentation is not institutionalized in a formal sense, it does have recurrent patterns and characteristics. Its constraints include the absence of time limits, the lack of a clear terminus, heterogeneous audiences, and the assumption that access is open to all. These constraints make creative strategic maneuvering both possible and necessary. Among the common types of strategic maneuvering are changing the subject, modifying the relevant audience, appealing to liberal and conservative presumptions, reframing the argument, using condensation symbols, employing the (...) locus of the irreparable, and argumentative use of figures and tropes. It is difficult to evaluate strategic maneuvering in political argumentation, however, because the activity types dictate wide latitude for the arguers, so there are few cases of unquestionable derailment. (shrink)

Lincoln's First Inaugural Address was not designed to coax the seceded states back into the Union, because he never conceded that they had left. Rather, he sought to define the situation so that, if war broke out, the seceders would be cast as the aggressors and the federal government as acting in self-defense. To this end, he presented a principled case against the legitimacy or even possibility of secession while applying the arguments to the exigence at hand. He identifies the (...) cause of the trouble as “unwarranted apprehension” among the southern states, announces his policy as a minimalist assertion of national sovereignty, and urges that disaffected southerners not act in haste to threaten that sovereignty further. Not only does he explicitly call for slowing down the push to war but the speech itself enacts a slowing of time. In sum, the First Inaugural illustrates both Lincoln's philosophical grounding and his rhetorical dexterity. (shrink)

Persuasive definitions – those that convey an attitude in the act of naming – are frequently employed in discourse and are a form of strategic maneuvering. The dynamics of persuasive definition are explored through brief case studies and an extended analysis of the use of the “war” metaphor in responding to terrorism after September 11, 2001. Examining persuasive definitions enables us to notice similarities and differences between strategic maneuvering in dialectical and in rhetorical argument, as well as differences between the (...) role of strategic maneuvering in normatively ideal argument and in actually existing argument. This will avoid the double standard of comparing ideal dialectic with actual rhetoric, or vice versa. The results of the analysis suggest possibilities for a rapprochement between dialectical and rhetorical approaches to argumentation. (shrink)

This article reviews Frans H. van Eemeren’s Argumentation Theory: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective.