Abstract
I started developing the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation, together with Rob Grootendorst, at the University of Amsterdam in the 1970s. Our primary interest was to provide adequate tools for enhancing the quality of the way in which people justify their views and analyse and critically review the justifications of views they encounter in communicating with others. Because of the importance of such justifications for what people believe, associate themselves with and do, we considered argumentation of great intellectual, social and practical significance. A systematic reflection on the tools enabling an adequate production, analysis and evaluation of argumentation seemed therefore crucial to us.
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Notes
- 1.
The choice of argumentation as our topic of research was in fact motivated by our wish to be engaged in an academic enterprise that would exceed the (then) narrow disciplinary limits of linguistics (van Eemeren) and speech communication (Grootendorst) and our joint interest in stimulating broad and active reason-based participation in the various argumentative practices that are important to an open and democratic society.
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A difference of opinion exists when someone’s standpoint is not shared by someone else and argumentation is called for to resolve the difference of opinion in a reasonable way. A difference of opinion does not necessarily involve two opposing standpoints: a standpoint being confronted with doubt is enough.
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The process-product feature is in our view a fundamental characteristic of argumentation (van Eemeren et al. 2014, pp. 3, 4). The procedural approach that unites the process and the product dimensions is formal in the sense of treating argumentation as being subjected to regulation or regimentation (according to van Eemeren et al. 2014, p. 303, this means “formal in sense 3”).
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In a keynote in the United States I explained in 1987 that reconciling descriptive and normative concerns is, in my view, the main challenge of argumentation theory (van Eemeren 1987). In the research program that needs to be carried out to achieve this aim I distinguished five components: philosophical, theoretical, analytical, empirical and practical research. Pragma-dialectical researchers concentrate in their research as a rule on specific components.
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A critical discussion reflects the Socratic dialectical ideal of testing rationally any form of conviction, not only descriptive statements but also value judgments and practical standpoints about actions.
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The fact that the rules for critical discussion are instrumental in distinguishing such counterproductive argumentative moves demonstrates their “problem-validity” as a code of conduct for argumentative discourse (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1994). To serve as tools for resolving differences of opinion on the merits in argumentative practice, the rules also need to be intersubjectively accepted, so that they possess “conventional validity” (van Eemeren, Garssen and Meuffels 2009).
- 9.
We had both read more broadly, but my background was in the first place in linguistics and philosophy of language and Rob’s in speech communication. I taught pragmatics and sociolinguistics at the time, Rob specialized in academic writing and critical reading. Together we had also developed an interest in logic.
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Van Eemeren and Houtlosser (2007), who introduced the normative concept of a dialectical profile, defined it as an overview of the sequential patterns of moves (dialectical routes) that discussants at a certain stage or sub-stage of a critical discussion are entitled (or obliged) to make to resolve a difference of opinion on the merits. In qualitative empirical research a dialectical profile can be a heuristic design for capturing the argumentative moves that are analytically relevant—i.e., potentially relevant to resolving the difference of opinion—at a particular point in a particular stage of a discussion and then identifying the expressions indicative of these moves.
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In a number of cases a replication study was carried out—sometimes to support interpretations, sometimes to exclude alternative explanations and in doing so guaranteeing the internal validity, sometimes to optimize the external validity.
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The inclusion of an account of the strategic design in the theorizing should also be helpful in developing more sophisticated methods for improving the oral and written production of argumentative discourse.
- 15.
The rapprochement between dialectical and rhetorical approaches to argumentation is also stimulated, albeit not always in the same way, by communication scholars such as Wenzel (1990) and informal logicians such as Tindale (2004). It is supported by the policies of the International Society for the Study of Argumentation (ISSA), the journals Argumentation, Informal Logic, Argumentation and Advocacy, and by the organization of certain joint conferences.
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The three hypotheses are closely connected with the theoretical views on the relationship between argumentation and effectiveness in the sense of convincingness that I expounded with Grootendorst in Speech Acts in Argumentative Discussions (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984).
- 17.
This type of effectiveness research constitutes a critically inspired pragma-dialectical complement to the prevailing (non-dialectical) persuasion research. The pragma-dialectical preference for the label “effectiveness research” rather than “persuasiveness research” is in in the first place motivated by the fact that, unlike the term persuasiveness, the term effectiveness is not exclusively connected with the argumentation stage but pertains also to argumentative moves made in other discussion stages, such as proposing starting points in the opening stage and stating the outcome of the discussion in the concluding stage.
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Both in the original test and in the replication carried out to be better able to generalize the results, straightforward abusive attacks are consistently rejected as unreasonable discussion moves and legitimate personal attacks are invariably considered reasonable. The “disguised” abusive attacks presented as responses to a wrong use of authority however are judged as substantially less unreasonable than the overtly fallacious direct attacks.
- 20.
I use the term institutional here in a broad sense, so that it not only refers to established organizations of the law, administration and schools, let alone just to prisons, mental clinics and the army, but to all socially and culturally established macro-contexts in which formally or informally conventionalized communicative practices have developed, including those in the interpersonal sphere. Like Searle (1995), I envision institutions as systems for dealing with rights and duties characterized by socially constructed rules and their associated sanctions (van Eemeren 2010, p. 129).
- 21.
In pragma-dialectics, communicative activity types are defined as communicative practices whose conventionalization serves the specific communicative needs instigated by the institutional exigencies of a certain domain (van Eemeren 2010, pp. 139–145). The pragma-dialectical approach connects with “rational choice institutionalism” as practiced in New Institutionalism. According to Hall and Taylor, rational choice institutionalism in the political domain draws our attention to “the role that strategic interaction between actors plays in the determination of political outcomes” (1996, p. 951).
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Fairclough characterizes a ‘genre’ of communicative activity broadly as “a socially ratified way of using language in connection with a particular type of social activity” (1995, p. 14).
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Only when a communicative activity type is inherently, essentially or predominantly argumentative or when argumentation incidentally plays an important part in it, an argumentative characterization of the communicative activity type will be worthwhile.
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Using the model of a critical discussion as the analytical point of reference in all cases not only ensures a consistent and coherent appreciation of the argumentative dimension, but also creates unity in the comparison between communicative activity types. In this way diversity is not the relativistic point of departure, but the reality-based outcome of a systematic comparison of the various manifestations of argumentative reality.
- 25.
Pragma-dialectics distinguishes between “primary” institutional preconditions, which are, as a rule, official, usually formal, and often procedural, and “secondary” institutional preconditions, which are, as a rule, unofficial, usually informal, and often substantial (van Eemeren and Garssen 2010, 2011).
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In speaking of stereotypical argumentative patterns I refer to patterns that are characteristic of the communicative activity type in which they occur. They are characteristic because they are instrumental in realizing the institutional point of the communicative activity type. It stands to reason that in practice these instrumental argumentative patterns will indeed be found in specimens of this communicative activity type, but being stereotypical does not mean that they necessarily occur frequently in this communicative activity type, let alone that they will always be present. If one finds the term stereotypical too strongly connected with absolute or relative frequency, it can be replaced by the term characteristic or some other term that does not carry this quantitative meaning.
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van Eemeren, F.H. (2015). From Ideal Model of Critical Discussion to Situated Argumentative Discourse: The Step-by-Step Development of the Pragma-Dialectical Theory of Argumentation. In: Reasonableness and Effectiveness in Argumentative Discourse. Argumentation Library, vol 27. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20955-5_7
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