Anyone Who Has a View: Theoretical Contributions to the Study of Argumentation

by Frans H. van Eemeren (Editor)

This volume contains a selection of papers from the International Conference on Argumentation (Amsterdam, 2002) by prominent international scholars of argumentation theory. It provides an insightful cross-section of the current state of affairs in argumentation research. It will be of interest to all those working in the field of argumentation theory and to all scholars who are interested in recent developments in this field.

354 pages, Paperback

First published October 31, 2003

About the author

Frans Hendrik van Eemeren is a Dutch scholar, professor in the Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric at the University of Amsterdam. He is noted for his Pragma-dialectics theory, an argumentation theory which he developed with Rob Grootendorst from the early 1980s onwards. He has published numerous books and papers, including Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Discourse.

Frans H. van Eemeren together with Rob Grootendorst, developed pragma-dialectics, or pragma-dialectical theory, at the University of Amsterdam. It is an argumentation theory that is used to analyze and evaluate argumentation in actual practice. Unlike strictly logical approaches (which focus on the study of argument as product), or purely communication approaches (which emphasize argument as a process), pragma-dialectics was developed to study the entirety of an argumentation as a discourse activity. Thus, the pragma-dialectical theory views argumentation as a complex speech act that occurs as part of natural language activities and has specific communicative goals.