Rhetoric and Argumentation

Abstract

This chapter explains that argumentation theory is a hybrid discipline because it requires a multidisciplinary, if not interdisciplinary, approach that combines descriptive and normative insights. The chapter points out that modern argumentation theorists give substance to the discipline by relying either on a dialectical perspective, concentrating on the reasonableness of argumentation, or on a rhetorical perspective, concentrating on its effectiveness. Both the dialectical and the rhetorical perspective are interpreted in ways related to how they were viewed by Aristotle, but in modern argumentation theory the relationship between rhetoric and dialectic, captured in Aristotle’s term antistrophos, is lost. The chapter argues that this relationship, which is to be considered crucial to a full-fledged argumentation theory, has been recovered in extended pragma-dialectics with the help of the theoretical notion of strategic maneuvering.