Two authorities 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 major contribution to the study of argumentation will be of particular value to professionals and graduate students in speech communication, informal logic, rhetoric, critical thinking, linguistics, and philosophy.

This volume gives a theoretical account of the problem of analyzing and evaluating argumentative discourse. After placing argumentation in a communicative perspective, and then discussing the fallacies that occur when certain rules of communication are violated, the authors offer an alternative to both the linguistically-inspired descriptive and logically-inspired normative approaches to argumentation.
The authors characterize argumentation as a complex speech act in a critical discussion aimed at resolving a difference of opinion. The various stages of a critical discussion are...

Reconstructing Argumentative Discourse analyzes argumentation in ordinary disputes. The analysis begins with an ideal model: a theoretical structure of discourse that might be used to resolve a dispute about the merits of two opposing cases. The ideal model does not describe actual argumentative practice. Argumentative discourse does not always seek genuine resolution and, when it does, the participants may not perform as ideal arguers.

A central challenge for argumentation theory is to give an account of argumentation occurring under less-than-ideal conditions and...