Arguments on legal evidence rely on generalizations, that link a certain circumstance to a certain hypothesis and warrants the claim that the circumstance makes the hypothesis more probable. Some generalizations are acceptable and others are unacceptable. A generalization can be unacceptable on at least four different grounds. A false generalization is unacceptable because membership in the reference class does not increase the probability of the hypothesis. A non-robust generalization is unacceptable because it uses a reference class that is too heterogeneous. A biastriggering generalization is unacceptable because decision makers are inclined to overestimate the evidentiary value of membership in the reference class. A discriminating generalization is unacceptable because it puts members in the reference class in an unfair disadvantage. Research funded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet).

In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important organizational change, argumentation typically involves multiple audiences, rather than a single and homogenous group, let alone an individual interlocutor. In such cases, an exhaustive and precise characterization of the audience structure is crucial both for the arguer, who needs to design an effective argumentative strategy, and for the external analyst, who aims at reconstructing such a strategic discourse. While the peculiar relevance of multiple audience is often emphasized in the argumentation literature and in rhetorical studies, proposals for modelling multi-audience argumentative situations remain scarce and unsystematic. To address this gap, we propose an analytical framework which integrates three conceptual constructs: (1) Rigotti and Rocci’s notion of communicative activity type, understood as the implementation of an interaction scheme into a piece of institutional reality, named interaction field; (2) the stakeholder concept, originally developed in strategic management and public relations studies to refer to any actor who affects and/or is affected by the organizational actions and who, accordingly, carries an interest in them; (3) the concept of participant role as it emerges from Goffman’s theory of conversation analysis and related linguistic and media studies. From this integration, we derive the notion of text stakeholder for referring to any organizational actor whose interest (stake) becomes an argumentative issue which the organizational text must account for in order to effectively achieve its communicative aim. The text stakeholder notion enables a more comprehensive reconstruction and characterization of multiple audience by eliciting the relevant participants staged in a text and identifying, for each of them, the interactional role they have, the peculiar interest they bear and the related argumentative issue they create. Considering as an illustrative case the defense document issued by a corporation against a hostile takeover attempt made by another corporation, we show how this framework can support the analysis of strategic maneuvering by better defining the audience demand and, so, better explaining how real arguers design and adapt their topical and presentational choices.

The aim of this paper is to describe the way in which argumentative patterns come into being in plenary debate over legislative issues in the European Parliament. What kind of argumentative patterns are to be expected within this macro context? It is shown that the argumentative patterns that come into being in legislative debate in the European Parliament depend for the most part on the problem-solving argumentation that is put forward in the opening speech by the rapporteur of the parliamentary committee report. This argumentation can be pragmatic problem-solving argumentation or complex problem-solving argumentation. The most important prototypical argumentative patterns are investigated in the argumentation put forward by the Members of parliament. This investigation is based on an inventory of the arguments that can in principle be used to support or attack the initial problem-solving argumentation put forward by the rapporteur.

The practice of justifying scientific explanations generates argumentative patterns in which several types of arguments may play a role. This paper is aimed at identifying these patterns on the basis of an exploration of the institutional conventions regarding the nature, the shape and the quality of scientific explanations as reflected in the writings of influential philosophers of science. First, a basic pattern for justifying scientific explanations is described. Then, two types of extensions of this pattern are presented. These extensions are derived from philosophical accounts of requirements for the quality of explanations and the choice of the best explanation from a number of candidate explanations respectively. The description of the second extension will make clear how pragmatic argumentation plays a role in argumentative patterns within the scientific domain.

This paper serves as an introduction to the special issue on argumentative patterns in discourse, more in particular on argumentative patterns with pragmatic argumentation as a main argument that are prototypical of argumentative discourse in certain communicative activity types in the political, the legal, the medical, and the academic domain. It situates the studies of argumentative patterns reported in these papers in the pragma-dialectical research program. In order to be able to do so, it is first explained in which consecutive stages the pragma-dialectical theorizing has developed, what the study of argumentative patterns involves, and why the identification of argumentative patterns represents a vital stage in the development of pragma-dialectics. The description of the theoretical innovations that are introduced and the exposition of their relationship with the standard and extended pragma-dialectical theory create a conceptual and terminological framework for understanding the background and the rationale of the current research projects.

In this paper, close attention is paid to the argumentative patterns resulting from combining pragmatic argumentation in which a recommendation is made with arguments in which the majority is invoked. I focus on such argumentative patterns as employed by European parliamentary committees of inquiry conducting inquiries into the activity of the Equitable Life Assurance Society. By incorporating legal and political insights about the activity of these parliamentary committees of inquiry into a pragma-dialectical argumentative approach, an analysis will be given of the selected argumentative pattern. This analysis will reveal which standpoints are supported by which arguments and how these arguments relate to each other to increase the acceptability of the recommendation made. In addition, the analysis will explain the arguer’s argumentative choices in the pattern employed.

In this paper, an argumentative pattern that is prototypical for the communicative practice of over-the-counter medicine advertisements will be discussed. First, a basic argumentative pattern for this type of advertisement will be identified. In addition, an overview of various types of extensions of this basic pattern will be presented. Finally, it will be made clear how combinations of the basic pattern and specific extensions can be analysed as the result of strategic choices made by the advertisers concerning the type of arguments that are advanced, the argumentation structure and the presentation of their arguments.

In this contribution the prototypical argumentative patterns are discussed in which pragmatic argumentation is used in the context of legal justification in hard cases. First, the function and implementation of pragmatic argumentation in prototypical argumentative patterns in legal justification are addressed. The dialectical function of the different parts of the complex argumentation are explained by characterizing them as argumentative moves that are put forward in reaction to certain forms of critique. Then, on the basis of an exemplary case, the famous Holy Trinity case, the way in which the U.S. Supreme Court uses pragmatic argumentation in this case is discussed by showing how the court instantiates general prototypical argumentative patterns in light of the institutional preconditions of the justification in the context of the specific case.