The Study of Argumentation as Normative Pragmatics

Abstract

Apart from a shared interest in the study of argumentation, in their academic work students of argumentation with a rhetorical outlook and students of argumentation with a dialectical outlook have not much in common. Although Aristotle, who may be regarded as the intellectual father of both rhetoric and dialectic as a fully-fledged academic discipline, considered rhetoric to be the ‘counterpart’ (antistrophos) of dialectic, so that the distinction reflects primarily a division of labour among students of argumentation, the two intellectual enterprises have over time and by irregular stages grown apart.