The Language of Argumentation

Bringing together scholars from a broad range of theoretical perspectives, The Language of Argumentation offers a unique overview of research at the crossroads of linguistics and theories of argumentation.

In addition to theoretical and methodological reflections by leading scholars in their fields, the book contains studies of the relationship between language and argumentation from two different viewpoints. While some chapters take a specific argumentative move as their point of departure and investigate the ways in which it is linguistically manifested in discourse, other chapters start off from a linguistic construction, trying to determine its argumentative function and rhetorical potential. 

The Language of Argumentation documents the currently prominent research on stylistic aspects of argumentation and illustrates how the study of argumentation benefits from insights from linguistic models, ranging from theoretical pragmatics, politeness theory and metaphor studies to models of discourse coherence and construction grammar.

• Argumentative Style
• Language Use
• Strategic Maneuvering
• Pragma-Dialectical Argumentation Theory
• Rhetorical Stylistics
• Presentational Device
• Linguistic Construction
• Argumentative Style Used in Defending a Standpoint
• Analyzing Rhetorical Style
• Argumentative Language and the Evolution of Human Communication
• Technical Terminology in Relation to Argument
• Strategic Maneuvers with Implicatures
• linguistic Arguments and the Rule of Law
• Discourse Structure and Argumentation Structure
• Pragma-dialectical Insights and Politeness Considerations
• Attribute Framing
• Strategic Use of Metaphors in Argumentation
• Figurative Analogy
• Strategic Maneuvering with the Expression ‘Not for Nothing’
• Ad Populum Arguments

• Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Leiden, The Netherlands

  Ronny Boogaart, Henrike Jansen, Maarten van Leeuwen

Dr. Ronny Boogaart is Assistant Professor at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). He (co-)authored various invited contributions to linguistic handbooks on tense, aspect and modality, but is also occupied with popularizing linguistics: in 2016 he was awarded for writing the best popular book on linguistics of the year. His current research focuses on the strategic use of constructions in argumentation.

Dr. Henrike Jansen is Associate Professor at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). She is also editor of the Dutch academic journal Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing and board member of the European Conference on Argumentation. Her research concentrates on the formulation aspects of argumentation and on argumentation in populist discourse.

Dr. Maarten van Leeuwen is Assistant Professor at the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL). His research focuses on stylistic choices and their argumentative-rhetorical consequences, mainly inthe domain of politics.    

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