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A “new rhetoric” for a “new dialectic”: Prolegomena to a responsible public argument

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Abstract

This essay offers, as a counterpart to pragma-dialectical argument, a “new rhetoric” produced in the situated discourse of a public forum when a community addresses matters of common urgency and undertakes informed action. Such a rhetoric takes the principles of discourse ethics as its informing dialectic by identifying an interlocutor as one who is obligatedboth to argue effectively,and also to hold open, even reinforce, norms of communicative reason. Implications concerning the study of fallacies and theethos obligations of communicative reasoning are discussed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Communication Studies, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, USA

    G. Thomas Goodnight

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  1. G. Thomas Goodnight
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Thomas Goodnight is a Professor of Communication Studies at Northwestern University. This manuscript was revised from a lecture delivered at the University of Amsterdam, November 1991.

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Goodnight, G.T. A “new rhetoric” for a “new dialectic”: Prolegomena to a responsible public argument. Argumentation 7, 329–342 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00710816

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