Dialectical profiles and indicators of argumentative moves

The study of argumentation is prospering. After its brilliant start in Antiquity, highlighted in the classical works of Aristotle, after an alternation of ups and downs during the following millennia, in the post-Renaissance period its gradual decline set in. Revitalization took place only after Toulmin and Perelman published in the same year (1958) their landmark works The Uses of Argument and La nouvelle rhétorique (co-authored by Olbrechts-Tyteca and translated into English in 1969). The model of argumentation presented by Toulmin and Perelman’s inventory of argumentation techniques inspired a great many scholars in various ways to take up the study of argumentation in a serious manner. Nowadays there are well-established (formal as well as informal) logical approaches to argumentation, but also social and socio-psychological, linguistic, juridical and other approaches. In most of these approaches traces can be found of the influence of the classical and neo-classical argumentation theories just mentioned.