In Context Giving Contextualization Its Rightful Place in the Study of Argumentation

Abstract

The need for argumentation, the requirements of argumentation, and the structure of argumentation are all adapted to a context in which doubts, opposition, objections, and counterclaims arise. In argumentative practice there are a great many of such contexts. In some of them argumentation is put forward to support a descriptive standpoint, in other contexts it may support an evaluative or a prescriptive standpoint. Some argumentation theorists concentrate in the first place, or even exclusively, on argumentation put forward in defence of descriptive claims about factual states of affairs, other argumentation theorists tend to focus on argumentation relating to evaluative judgments of the ethical quality of a disputed way of life or the esthetic quality of a work of art, and still others deal almost exclusively with argumentation in favour of prescriptive incitements to carry out some particular action or to refrain from doing so.