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Notes
To save space I will be using dates preceded by an asterisk (*) to refer to the relevant publications listed at the end of this review. This review refers throughout to the international publications in English only. The Amsterdam School, however, has a considerable output in Dutch as well, which often precedes what eventually appeared in English. On Dutch publications see below notes 4 and 5.
By the way, the author’s version of this history is the subject of Chapter 7 in the book under review. I understand van Eemeren will soon publish a new book, titled The making of pragma-dialectics, which will contain a fuller account of his almost 40 years-old research program.
One common misunderstanding of standard pragma-dialectics consists in saying that no human being argues according to this model. Of course, they don’t. That’s why it is a model. That’s the way all models work.That’s why they are called models in the first place. Yet even such a sagacious theorist as John Woods (2006) has misunderstood standard pragma-dialectics in precisely this way.
I should perhaps also mention, as part of the empirical research done within pragma-dialectics, the sporadic contributions to the long history of argumentation studies (see Chapter 32 of the book under review as well as Chapter 3 of *2010). By the way, giving an account of that history has always been an integral part of the pragma-dialectical research program, as witnessed by another string of books (starting with *1978 and *1981 still in Dutch, continuing with *1996 already in English, and culminating in *2014).
I may be guilty of some distortion of the general picture of the history of pragma-dialectics in that certain things were published in English later than in Dutch. The author tells me in correspondence that “we (viz. he and Rob Grootendorst) not only started out with two Handbook publications in Dutch (*1978 and *1981), but also paid a lot more attention to the application of argumentation theory, and did so much earlier. In fact, from the early 1980's onwards Rob Grootendorst and I have published different kinds of textbooks in Dutch. The *1989 paper is based on these efforts.”
I became aware of the need for such a collection of papers immediately after the seminar at the University of Guadalajara mentioned above. So I translated a selection of ten papers that is now available as an Amazon Kindle together with a Festschrift by Spanish-speaking researchers (Leal 2015), a fact that may be of interest to some readers of this journal. Chapter 7 of the book under review was originally written for that other book at my request.
References
Eemeren, Frans H. van. *2010. Strategic maneuvering in argumentative discourse: Extending the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. Amsterdam-Filadelfia: John Benjamins.
Eemeren, Frans H., and Grootendorst, Rob. *1984. Speech acts in argumentative discussions: A theoretical model for the analysis of discussions directed towards solving conflicts of opinion. Berlín: de Gruyter.
Eemeren, Frans H. van, and Grootendorst, Rob. *1989. Writing argumentative texts. From analysis to presentation: A pragma-dialectical approach. In: B. E. Gronbeck (Ed.), Spheres of argument: Proceedings of the 6th SCA/AFA conference on argumentation (pp. 324–330). Annandale (VA): Speech Communication Association.
Eemeren, Frans H. van, and Grootendorst, Rob. *1992. Argumentation, communication, and fallacies: A pragma-dialectical perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Eemeren, Frans H. van, Grootendorst, Rob, and A. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans. *2002. Argumentation: Analysis, evaluation, presentation. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Eemeren, Frans H. van, and Grootendorst, Rob. *2004. A systematic theory of argumentation: The pragma-dialectical approach. Nueva York: Cambridge University Press.
Eemeren, Frans H. van, Peter Houtlosser, and A. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans. *2007. Argumentative indicators in discourse. A pragma-dialectical study. Dordrecht: Springer.
Eemeren, Frans H. van, Grootendorst, Rob, Jackson, Sally, and Jacobs, Scott. *1993. Reconstructing argumentative discourse. Tuscaloosa (AL): University of Alabama Press.
Eemeren, Frans H. van, Garssen, Bart J., van Haaften, Ton, Krabbe, Erik C. W., Snoeck Henkemans, A. Francisca, and Wagemans, Jean H. M. *2014. Handbook of argumentation theory: An overview of classical and neo-classical perspectives on argumentation and modern theoretical approaches to argumentative discourse. Dordrecht: Springer.
Eemeren, Frans H. van, Grootendorst, Rob, and Kruiger, Tjark. *1978, *1981. Argumentatietheorie [Theory of argumentation]. First and second editions. Utrecht: Het Spectrum.
Eemeren, Frans H. van, Garssen, Bart J., and Meuffels, Bert. *2009. Fallacies and judgments of reasonableness: Empirical research concerning the pragma-dialectical discussion rules. Dordrecht: Springer.
Eemeren, Frans H. van, Grootendorst, Rob, Snoeck Henkemans, A. Francisca, J.A. Blair, R.H. Johnson, E.C.W. Krabbe, C. Plantin, D.N. Walton, C.A. Willard, J. Woods, John, and D. Zarefsky, David. *1996. Fundamentals of argumentation theory: Handbook of historical backgrounds and contemporary developments. Mahwah (NJ): Lawrence Erlbaum.
Gilbert, Michael. 2014. Arguing with people. Calgary: Broadview Press.
Leal, Fernando, editor (2015). Argumentación y pragma-dialéctica: Estudios en honor a Frans van Eemeren. Guadalajara (MX): University Press.
Woods, John. 2006. Pragma-dialectics: A retrospective. In Considering pragma-dialectics: A Festschrift for Frans H. van Eemeren on the occasion of his 60th birthday, ed. P. Houtlosser, and A. van Rees, 301–312. New York: Routledge.
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Leal, F. Review of: Frans H. van Eemeren (2015): Reasonableness and Effectiveness in Argumentative Discourse: Fifty Contributions to the Development of Pragma-Dialectics, Cham (CH), Springer (= Argumentation Library, 27), 880 pp.. Argumentation 30, 527–532 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-016-9393-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-016-9393-7