Please note that this Seminar starts at 14:00. 

In this talk I discuss the central role of linguistic analysis in every stage of the assessment of argumentation. I describe the importance of maintaining a three-way division, which separates the process of Identification, allowing us to say that an argument is present and isolate its claim and support, from that of Classification, in which we highlight the argument type and its function, and the Evaluation, wherein an acceptability judgement is made.

I use examples to illustrate how such an analysis can be made and to show how a thorough examination of the language used is essential at each step. Whilst the aim is not to suggest that more philosophical reasoning-based approaches to arguments are irrelevant or mistaken, I argue that they are also reliant on a deep consideration of the linguistic content and that, therefore, that process of consideration should be both explicit and systematic. 

The full ICE analysis which I suggest builds on the foundations of the Informal Argument Pragmatics, Informal Argument Semantics, and Comprehensive Assessment Procedure for Natural Argumentation set out in the book ‘Evaluating the Language of Argument’ (Hinton 2021). To this is added the recently developed argument function analysis (Hinton et al. Forthcoming).