Argumentative dialogue

Whereas formal arguments are static, such as one might find in a textbook or research article, argumentative dialogue is dynamic. It serves as a published record of justification for an assertion. Arguments can also be interactive, in which the proposer and the interlocutor have a more symmetrical relationship. The premises are discussed, as well the validity of the intermediate inferences. For example, consider the following exchange, illustrated by the No true Scotsman fallacy:

In this dialogue, the proposer first offers a premise, the premise is challenged by the interlocutor, and finally the proposer offers a modification of the premise. This exchange could be part of a larger discussion, for example a murder trial, in which the defendant is a Scotsman, and it had been established earlier that the murderer was eating sugared porridge when he or she committed the murder.

In argumentative dialogue, the rules of interaction may be negotiated by the parties to the dialogue, although in many cases the rules are already determined by social mores. In the most symmetrical case, argumentative dialogue can be regarded as a process of discovery more than one of justification of a conclusion. Ideally, the goal of argumentative dialogue is for participants to arrive jointly at a conclusion by mutually accepted inferences. In some cases however, the validity of the conclusion is secondary. For example; emotional outlet, scoring points with an audience, wearing down an opponent or lowering the sale price of an item may instead be the actual goals of the dialogue. Walton distinguishes several types of argumentative dialogue which illustrate these various goals:

Van Eemeren and Grootendorst identify various stages of argumentative dialogue. These stages can be regarded as an argument protocol. In a somewhat loose interpretation, the stages are as follows:

Van Eemeren and Grootendorst provide a detailed list of rules that must be applied at each stage of the protocol. Moreover, in the account of argumentation given by these authors, there are specified roles of protagonist and antagonist in the protocol which are determined by the conditions which set up the need for argument.

Many cases of argument are highly unsymmetrical, although in some sense they are dialogues. A particularly important case of this is political argument.

Much of the recent work on argument theory has considered argumentation as an integral part of language and perhaps the most important function of language (Grice, Searle, Austin, Popper). This tendency has moved argumentation theory away from the realm of pure formal logic.

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