Argumentation Theory After the New Rhetoric

Abstract

In Argumentation Theory after the New Rhetoric, Frans H. van Eemeren characterizes the New Rhetoric developed by Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca as neo-classical contribution to the study of argumentation because of its basis in classical rhetoric and its impact on modern argumentation theory. First, he compares the New Rhetoric with Toulmin’s neo-classical contribution to the study of argumentation. Second, he sketches the impact of the New Rhetoric on the dominant approaches to argumentation: the formal dialectical approach, informal logic, radical argumentativism, modern rhetorical approaches, and the pragma-dialectical approach. He pays due attention to the modern separation between dialectic and rhetoric and to a recent attempt to bridge the gap with the help of the notion of strategic manoeuvring. Third, he discusses some problem areas that are affected by insights from the New Rhetoric, such as the study of argument schemes, and, to a lesser extent, the fallacies. Fourth, he elucidates influences from the New Rhetoric that have shaped certain problem areas: those of rationality, reasonableness and value judgements, the universal audience, dissociation, presence, and argumentation in the field of law.