In this book two of the leading figures in argumentation theory present a view of argumentation as a means of resolving differences of opinion by testing the acceptability of the disputed positions. Their model of a 'critical discussion' serves as a theoretical tool for analyzing, evaluating and producing argumentative discourse. This is a major contribution to the study of argumentation and will be of particular value to professionals and graduate students in speech communication, informal logic, rhetoric, critical thinking, linguistics, and philosophy.
Argumentation theory is a distinctly multidisciplinary field of inquiry. It draws its data, assumptions, and methods from disciplines as disparate as formal logic and discourse analysis, linguistics and forensic science, philosophy and psychology, political science and education, sociology and law, and rhetoric and artificial intelligence. This presents the growing group of interested scholars and students with a problem of access, since it is even for those active in the field not common to have acquired a familiarity with relevant aspects of each discipline that enters into this multidisciplinary matrix. This book offers its readers a unique comprehensive survey of the various theoretical contributions which have been made to the study of argumentation. It discusses the historical works that provide the background to the field and all major approaches and trends in contemporary research. Argument has been the subject of systematic inquiry for twenty-five hundred years. It has been graced with theories, such as formal logic or the legal theory of evidence, that have acquired a more or less settled provenance with regard to specific issues. But there has been nothing to date that qualifies as a unified general theory of argumentation, in all its richness and complexity. This being so, the argumentation theorist must have access to materials and methods that lie beyond his or her "home" subject. It is precisely on this account that this volume is offered to all the constituent research communities and their students. Apart from the historical sections, each chapter provides an economical introduction to the problems and methods that characterize a given part of the contemporary research program. Because the chapters are self-contained, they can be consulted in the order of a reader's interests or research requirements. But there is value in reading the work in its entirety. Jointly authored by the very people whose research has done much to define the current state of argumentation theory and to point the way toward more general and unified future treatments, this book is an impressively authoritative contribution to the field.
In this book two of the leading figures in argumentation theory present a view of argumentation as a means of resolving differences of opinion by testing the acceptability of the disputed positions. Their model of a 'critical discussion' serves as a theoretical tool for analyzing, evaluating and producing argumentative discourse. This is a major contribution to the study of argumentation and will be of particular value to professionals and graduate students in speech communication, informal logic, rhetoric, critical thinking, linguistics, and philosophy.
This book provides a new, linguistic approach to Argumentation Theory. Its main goal is to integrate the logical, dialectical and rhetorical dimensions of argumentation in a model providing a unitary treatment of its justificatory and persuasive powers. This model takes as its basis Speech Acts Theory in order to characterize argumentation as a second-order speech act complex. The result is a systematic and comprehensive theory of the interpretation, analysis and evaluation of arguments. This theory sheds light on the many faces of argumentative communication: verbal and non-verbal, monological and dialogical, literal and non-literal, ordinary and specialized. The book takes into consideration the major current comprehensive accounts of good argumentation (Perelman’s New Rhetoric, Pragma-dialectics, the ARG model, the Epistemic Approach) and shows that these accounts have fundamental weaknesses rooted in their instrumentalist conception of argumentation as an activity oriented to a goal external to itself. Furthermore, the author addresses some challenging meta-theoretical questions such as the justification problem for Argumentation Theory models and the relationship between reasoning and arguing.
The present volume assembles a relevant set of studies of argument by analogy, which address this topic in a systematic fashion, either from an essentially theoretical perspective or from the perspective of it being applied to different fields like politics, linguistics, literature, law, medicine, science in general and philosophy. All result from original research conducted by their authors for this publication. Thus, broadly speaking, this is an exception which we find worthy of occupying a special place in the sphere of the bibliography on the argument by analogy. In effect, most of the contexts of the publications on this topic focus on specific areas, for example everyday discourse, science or law theory, while underestimating or sometimes even ignoring other interdisciplinary scopes, as is the case of literature, medicine or philosophy. The idiosyncrasy of this volume is that the reader and the researcher may follow the development of different theoretical outlooks on argument by analogy, while measuring the scope of its (greater or lesser) application to the aforementioned areas as a whole.
The book offers a compact but comprehensive introductory overview of the crucial components of argumentation theory. In presenting this overview, argumentation is consistently approached from a pragma-dialectical perspective by viewing it pragmatically as a goal-directed communicative activity and dialectically as part of a regulated critical exchange aimed at resolving a difference of opinion. As a result, the book also systematically explains how the constitutive parts of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, which are discussed in a number of separate publications, hang together. The following crucial topics are discussed: (1) argumentation theory as a discipline; (2) the meta-theoretical principles of pragma-dialectics; (3) the model of a critical discussion aimed at resolving a difference of opinion; (4) fallacies as violations of a code of conduct for reasonable argumentative discourse; (5) descriptive research of argumentative reality; (6) analysis as theoretically-motivated reconstruction; (7) strategic manoeuvring aimed at combining achieving effectiveness with maintaining reasonableness; (8) the conventionalization of argumentative practices; (9) prototypical argumentative patterns; (10) pragma-dialectics amidst other approaches. Argumentation Theory: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective is clearly written and makes argumentation theory understandable to all scholars and advanced students interested in argumentation research.
For this volume the editors commissioned the top theorists in argumentation and human communication to submit essays in their areas of specialization. Because there are sixteen essays contributed by twenty-one specialists, many points of view are represented in this volume; all of the essayists, however, look upon argumentation as a process of human communication, not a species of formal logic. These essayists see the function of argument as a method of attaining social knowledge. The editors have assembled this volume to make available the latest advances in argumentation; for scholars it serves as a "state of the discipline" report. The editors have divided the book into four sections: "Conceptual Foundations," "Reasoning and Reasonableness," "Methodological Issues," and "Uses of Argument." Those contributing under the heading "Conceptual Foundations" are: Daniel J. O'Keefe, Charles Arthur Willard, Ray D. Dearin, and Henry W. Johnstone, Jr. Contributors to the "Reasoning and Reasonableness" section are: Ray E. McKerrow, Thomas B. Farrell, Barbara J. O'Keefe, Pamela J. Benoit, Malcolm O. Sillars, and Patricia Ganer. Under "Methodological Issues" the contributors are: Scott Jacobs, Sally Jackson, V. William Balthrop, and Dale Hample. Contributors to "Uses of Argument" are: Ch. Perelman, E. Culpepper Clark, Robert P. Newman, Walter R. Fisher, Richard A. Filloy, and Richard D. Rieke. Reference list prepared by Glenda Rhodes and Jack Rhodes.
