Rhetorical Argumentation and Schemes

Rhetorical approaches to argumentation foreground the audience and analyze the recurring argumentation schemes by which arguers move from premises to claims.

Definition

Rhetorical argumentation is the approach that analyzes argument in terms of its effect on and adaptation to audiences, including the systematic study of argumentation schemes and the critical questions that test them.

Scope

This topic covers the rhetorical strand of argumentation theory, which treats the audience as constitutive of argument and catalogs argumentation schemes—stereotypical patterns such as argument from expert opinion, analogy, cause, and consequence—together with their associated critical questions. It links Perelman's audience-centered theory, Tindale's rhetorical model, and Walton's scheme-based analysis.

Core questions

• How does attending to the audience reshape the analysis of argument?
• What recurring schemes structure everyday argumentation?
• How do critical questions help evaluate a defeasible argument?
• How does rhetoric relate to logic and dialectic in argument?

Key concepts

• argumentation scheme
• critical questions
• defeasible reasoning
• argument from expert opinion
• audience adherence

Key theories

Argumentation schemes

Walton, Reed, and Macagno catalog stereotypical reasoning patterns, each paired with critical questions whose answers can defeat the argument, providing tools for both analysis and artificial-intelligence applications.

The primacy of audience

Tindale, building on Perelman, argues that argumentation is fundamentally rhetorical because arguments are always addressed to and shaped by an audience whose adherence they seek.

History

The rhetorical perspective on argument traces to Perelman's audience-centered new rhetoric. Late twentieth-century theorists, dissatisfied with purely formal or dialectical accounts, developed the study of argumentation schemes, with Walton's collaborative 2008 compendium codifying dozens of patterns and their critical questions. Tindale articulated an explicitly rhetorical theory, and schemes became central to computational argumentation.

Debates

How many schemes, and how to classify them?

Theorists disagree on whether argumentation schemes form a closed, principled taxonomy or an open-ended list, and how schemes relate to traditional fallacies and to formal logical forms.

Key figures

• Douglas Walton
• Christopher Tindale
• Chris Reed
• Fabrizio Macagno

Seminal works

• walton2008
• perelman1969

Frequently asked questions

What are 'critical questions' in argumentation schemes?

Each scheme comes with a set of questions that probe its weak points. For an appeal to expert opinion, for instance, one asks whether the source is genuinely an expert and whether other experts agree; unsatisfactory answers undermine the argument.