Abstract
This paper surveys the contributions to the study of argumentation in the two decades since the work of Toulmin and Perelman. Developments include Radical Argumentativism (Anscombre and Ducot), Communication and Rhetoric (American Speech Communication Theory), Informal Logic (Johnson and Blair), Formal Analyses of Fallacies (Woods and Walton), Formal Dialectics (Barth and Krabbe), and Pragma-Dialectics (van Eemeren and Grootendorst). From the survey it is concluded that argumentation theory has been considerably enriched. If the contributions can be made to converge, a sound basis will be created for developing educational methods for producing, interpreting and evaluating argumentative discourse. Thus, argumentation theory may be instrumental in improving the quality of democracy by furthering a reasonable management of differences of opinion.
Highlights
From the survey it is concluded that argumentation theory has been considerably enriched
In order to know which problems require particular attention in the improvement process, argumentation as it occurs in practice must subsequently be systematically analyzed from the perspective of a critical discussion, which involves a methodical reconstruction of argumentative discourse in the light of the modeled ideal
In characterizing some of the new approaches that have been developed I shall restrict myself to Radical Argumentativism, Communication and Rhetoric, Formal Dialectics, Pragma-DiaIectics, Informal Logic and the Formal Analysis of Fallacies
Summary
Speaking in Fulton, Missouri, from the same oaken lectern used by Winston Churchill almost fifty years ago to make his historic "Iron Curtain" speech, the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev announced on May the 6th 1992 "a new era of worldwide democracy.'" Whether Gorbachev's visionary statement about "democracy" will prove to be accurate is hard to say, but it is certainly true that in the last decade there has been a general turn towards democracy. In the midseventies transitions to democracy were inaugurated in Southern Europe, in the early eighties in Latin America, and in 1989-during the "Autumn of the People"-in Eastern Europe. A man is distributing leaflets in Red Square. He is stopped by a policeman, who confiscates the leaflets, only to discover that they are blank. It is often observed that in the communist world speech had become a ritual--or otherwise it was dangerous. In a period of major change and economic collapse, there are inevitably authoritarian temptations. Against this background, the question arises what kind of democracy will be the strongest and the most likely to last. In Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Joseph Schumpeter (1950), the most influential of modem theoreticians of democracy, defines democracy as "a political method, [...] a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political [...Jdecisions" (1943, p. 242). democracy can be seen as a Informal Logic Vol 17, No. (Spring 1995): 144-158
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