Argumentation Theory: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective

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.

FRANS H. VAN EEMEREN is President of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA) and the International Learned Institute of Argumentation Studies (ILIAS), Emeritus Professor of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric at the University of Amsterdam, Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association (U.S.) and Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Lugano (Switzerland). He is a former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Amsterdam and Guest Professor at Leiden University, Jiangsu University, Sun-yat Sen University and Zhejiang University. Van Eemeren is a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion. He is the founder of the Pragma-Dialectical theory of argumentation and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Argumentation, the Journal of Argumentation in Context and the accompanying book series Library of Argumentation and Argumentation in Context. The monographs he (co)authored include Speech Acts in Argumentative Discussions (1984), Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies (1992), Reconstructing Argumentative Discourse (1993), A Systematic Theory of Argumentation (2004), Argumentative Indicators in Discourse (2007), Fallacies and Judgments of Reasonableness (2009), Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Discourse (2010), Handbook of Argumentation Theory (2014), Reasonableness and Effectiveness in Argumentative Discourse (2015) and Prototypical Argumentative Patterns in Discourse (2017).