Media Argumentation: Dialect, Persuasion and Rhetoric

Media argumentation is a powerful force in our lives. From political speeches to television commercials to war propaganda, it can effectively mobilize political action, influence the public, and market products. This book presents a new and systematic way of thinking about the influence of mass media in our lives, showing the intersection of media sources with argumentation theory, informal logic, computational theory, and theories of persuasion. Using a variety of case studies that represent arguments that typically occur in the mass media, Douglas Walton demonstrates how tools recently developed in argumentation theory can be usefully applied to the identification, analysis, and evaluation of media arguments. He draws upon the most recent developments in artificial intelligence, including dialogical theories of argument, which he developed, as well as speech act theory. Each chapter presents solutions to problems central to understanding, analyzing, and criticizing media argumentation.

• Displays the key structural components of mass media argumentation and reveals what makes mass media arguments distinct and different • Analysis of the cognitive structure of the speech act of persuasion presents a new cognitive approach on central matters of methodology • Clearly written text that presents a wide variety of case studies of media argumentation that can be used as examples and assignments

1. Logic, dialectic and rhetoric; 2. The speech act of persuasion; 3. Propaganda; 4. Appeals to fear and pity; 5. Ad hominem arguments in political discourse; 6. Arguments based on popular opinion; 7. Fallacies and bias in public opinion polling; 8. Persuasive definitions and public policy arguments; 9. The structure of media argumentation.