Computational Models of Rhetorical Argument

Abstract

Theories of rhetoric offer rich characterisations of communication that in many cases might usefully be exploited in a computational system. Reviews of contributing theories, including those in rhetoric, computational linguistics and knowledge representation together lay a foundation for exploring different approaches to building computational models of rhetoric that remain true to the spirit of the original, but extend them to be formalisable in software. The exercise is shown both to have significant advantages in various areas of artificial intelligence, and also to have benefit for the study of rhetoric.