Reflections on Theoretical Issues in Argumentation Theory (Argumentation Library Book 28)

This volume presents a selection of papers reflecting key theoretical issues in argumentation theory. Its six sections are devoted to specific themes, including the analysis and evaluation of argumentation, argument schemes and the contextual embedding of argumentation. The section on general perspectives on argumentation discusses the trends of empiricalization, contextualization and formalization, offers descriptions of the analytical and evaluative tools of informal logic, and highlights selected principles that argumentation theorists do and do not agree upon. In turn, the section on linguistic approaches to argumentation focuses on the problem of distinguishing between explanation and argument, while also elaborating on the role of verbal indicators of argument schemes. All essays included in this volume point out notable recent developments in the study of argumentation. Human Language Technology (HLT) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems have typically focused on the “factual” aspect of content analysis. Other aspects, including pragmatics, opinion, and style, have received much less attention. However, to achieve an adequate understanding of a text, these aspects cannot be ignored. The chapters in this book address the aspect of subjective opinion, which includes identifying different points of view, identifying different emotive dimensions, and classifying text by opinion. Various conceptual models and computational methods are presented. The models explored in this book include the following: distinguishing attitudes from simple factual assertions; distinguishing between the author’s reports from reports of other people’s opinions; and distinguishing between explicitly and implicitly stated attitudes. In addition, many applications are described that promise to benefit from the ability to understand attitudes and affect, including indexing and retrieval of documents by opinion; automatic question answering about opinions; analysis of sentiment in the media and in discussion groups about consumer products, political issues, etc. ; brand and reputation management; discovering and predicting consumer and voting trends; analyzing client discourse in therapy and counseling; determining relations between scientific texts by finding reasons for citations; generating more appropriate texts and making agents more believable; and creating writers’ aids. The studies reported here are carried out on different languages such as English, French, Japanese, and Portuguese. Difficult challenges remain, however. It can be argued that analyzing attitude and affect in text is an “NLP”-complete problem. Bingo! Promising developments in argumentation theory.- What is informal logic?.- Towards a foundation for argumentation theory.- The agentive approach to argumentation: A proposal.- Conductive argumentation, degrees of confidence, and the communication of uncertainty.- The linked-convergent distinction.- Identifying the warrant of an argument.- Where is visual argument?.- Missed opportunities in argument evaluation.- Ubiquity, ambiguity and meta-rationality: Searching for the fallacy of composition.- Don't feed the trolls: Straw men and iron men.- Story credibility in narrative arguments. Addresses attitude, affect, and subjective opinion. This book presents various conceptual models and computational methods, including distinguishing attitudes from simple factual assertions, distinguishing between the author's reports from reports of other people's opinions, and distinguishing between explicitly and implicitly stated attitudes