That’s No Argument! The Ultimate Criticism?

Argumentation has a broad, multidisciplinary scope. Being a point of overlap of diverse spheres of knowledge and sciences makes the study of argumentation so complex an enterprise, which still seeks to determine in precise terms what its object is and how it should be addressed. This paper is meant to offer a concise overview of argumentation and its various approaches. Focus is laid on the fundamental concepts that bear some relevance to the study of argumentation. Further, attempt is made to draw a sketch of its history and an outline of its modern theoretical distinctions. L'argumentation a une portée large et multidisciplinaire. Le fait d'être un point de chevauchement de différentes sphères de connaissance et des multiple sciences rend l'étude de l'argumentation une entreprise si complexe, qui cherche encore à déterminer en termes précis ce que porte son objet et comment il devrait être abordée. Cet article vise à offrir un aperçu concis de l'argumentation et de ses différentes approches. L'accent est mis sur les concepts fondamentaux qui portent un certain intérêt pour l'étude de l'argumentation. En outre, une tentative est faite pour dessiner une esquisse de son histoire et un aperçu de ses distinctions théoriques modernes.

Argumentation, 1994

The goal of this book is to explore a variety of perspectives and situations in which teachers and learners can find arguments," Trapp and Schuetz write of this Festschrifi for Wayne Brockriede, an intrepid teacher and inspiring scholar. Perspectives displays argument inquiries from social science, pragma-dialectics, symbolic interactionism, advocacy practice, informal logic, critical theory, postmodern critique, narratology, and value analysis. Thus, the editors craft a successful introduction to the varied study of argumentation which, together with an extensive bibliography, becomes an excellent place to begin to ask Brockriede's keynote question: "Where is argument?" Interestingly, the least likely place to find argument is in debates among the twenty-six authors who present research programs for the volume. Like the characters from a Kurosawa film or Pirandello play, each agenda speaks from a more or tess singular point of view. The result gives rise to a curiously disquieting feeling that Perspectives offers not mere 'snapshots' of common phenomena, as the editors would have it, but sealed positions that silently refuse to engage one another. This review unseals perspectives by opening a discussion on what surely must become competing points of view. HUMANISM, MODERNISM, AND POST-MODERNISM The latent controversy can be nowhere better engaged than in review of the differences among the opening three essays that introduce the book. Wayne Brockriede looks for argument in the common characteristics of communication that bear the traditional and well-known stamp of civic humanism: mutual recognition by interlocutors of uncertainty, competition, inference, justification, and shared orientation. However, the essay strains against and finally releases inquiry from the grounds of tradition by echoing David Berlo's soporific: "meanings are not in words, but in people" (p. 4). Likewise, arguments are to be found not in the traditional forms and functions of communicative reasoning, but 'in people'. Arguments are what 'real people' do when arguing. No more. No less. Joseph Wenzel's 'Three Perspectives on Argument' extends Brockriede's perspectivism, but adds a modernist flair. He delineates rhetoric, dialectic, and logic as process, procedure, and product, and so defines argument by virtue of distinctive materials and goals. This is a very important essay that is state-of-the art for argumentation studies, and thus influences Habermas's important project on argumentation. 1 Note, however, that Wenzel's modernist viewpoint con

Journal of Language and Education, 2021

The Language of Argumentation by Ronny Boogaart, Henrike Jansen, & Maarten van Leeuwen (Eds). Switzerland: Springer Nature Switzerland AG. 2021 aims to provide important theoretical insights to the international community of argumentation theorists by informing them of recent developments in the field. Some aspects of argumentative texts may emerge as a result of the argumentation process. This book covers different types of argumentative procedures and enthymematic argumentation, argumentation structures, argumentation schemes, and fallacies. Specifically, contributions are solicited from authors trained in informal or formal logic, modern or classical rhetoric, and discourse analysis or speech communication.

Argumentation

Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric

The pragma-dialectical approach In A Systematic Theory of Argumentation, two of the leading figures in argumentation theory, Frans H. van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst, 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. In this approach, pragmatic and dialectical insights are combined by conceiving a critical discussion as a methodological exchange of speech acts between two parties.

2021

major branches of critical discourse analysis (CDA). In its own (programmatic) view, it embraces at least three interconnected aspects: 1. 'Text or discourse immanent critique' aims at discovering internal or discourse-internal structures. 2. The 'socio-diagnostic critique' is concerned with the demystifying exposure of the possibly persuasive or 'manipulative' character of discursive practices. 3. Prognostic critique contributes to the transformation and improvement of communication. (Wodak 2006: 65) CDA, in Wodak's view, is not concerned with evaluating what is 'right' or 'wrong'. CDA [...] should try to make choices at each point in the research itself, and should make these choices transparent. 2 It should also justify theoretically why certain interpretations of discursive events seem more valid than others. 1 First version of this chapter was published in Igor Ž. Žagar, 'Topoi in Critical Discourse Analysis,' Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 6, no. 1 (2010): 3-27. 2 All emphases (italics) in the chapter are mine (IŽŽ). Topoi in critical discourse analysis 1 four critical essays on argumentation One of the methodical ways for critical discourse analysts to minimize the risk of being biased is to follow the principle of triangulation. Thus one of the most salient distinguishing features of the DHA is its endeavour to work with different approaches, multimethodically and on the basis of a variety of empirical data as well as background information. (Wodak ibid.) One of the approaches DHA is using in its principle of triangulation is argumentation theory, more specifically the theory of topoi. In this article, I will be concerned with the following questions: how and in what way are topoi and, consequentially, argumentation theory, used in DHA as one of the most influential schools of CDA? Other approaches (e.g.

One of the most important contributions to Argumentation Theory in the past few decades has been the Pragma-Dialectic approach led by van Eemeren and Grootendorst of the Amsterdam School. This programme presents a systematic theory intended to provide an analytical framework through which one can reconstruct and normatively investigate ordinary argumentative communication. The emphasis is very strongly on a "critical-rational" approach which relies on a language-based analysis: "Argumentative discourse should be studied as a specimen of normal verbal communication and interaction, and it should, at the same time, be measured against a certain standard of reasonableness" (van Eemeren and Grootendorst. 1992, p. 5).

Following and extending Searle's speech act theory, both Pragma-Dialectics and the Linguistic Normative Model of Argumentation characterize argumentation as an illocutionary act. In these models, the successful performance of an illocutionary act of arguing depends on the securing of uptake, an illocutionary effect that, according to the Searlean account, characterizes the successful performance of any illocutionary act. However, in my view, there is another kind of illocutionary effect involved in the successful performance of an illocutionary act of arguing, which affects both the speaker's and the hearer's set of rights, obligations, and entitlements. In order to give an account of this second type of effect, I will argue that it is necessary to distinguish two levels in the analysis of the illocutionary act of arguing. The first one is related to the illocutionary effect of securing of uptake and thus to the speech act performed by the speaker, while the second one allows us to account for the changes produced by the performance of the illocutionary act of arguing in the deontic modal competence of both the speaker and the hearer.