Language and Argument: a Review of the Field

Abstract

This paper has a dual purpose: it both seeks to introduce the other works in this issue by illustrating how they are related to the field of argumentation as a whole, and to make clear the tremendous range of research currently being carried out by argumentation theorists which is concerned with the interaction and inter-reliance of language and argument. After a brief introduction to the development of the field of argumentation, as many as eight language-based approaches to the study of argument are identified, taking as their perspective: rhetoric, argument structure, argument as act, discourse analysis, corpus methods, emotive argument, and narrative argument. The conclusion makes it clear that these branches of study are all themselves interconnected and that it is the fusion of methodologies and theory from linguistics and the philosophical study of argument which lends this area of research its dynamism.