Authors and Audiences

An argument is a social activity, the goal of which is interpersonal rational persuasion. More precisely, we'll say that an argument occurs when some person – the author of the argument – attempts to convince certain targeted individuals – the author's audience – to do or believe something by an appeal to reasons, or evidence. An argument is therefore an author's attempt at rational persuasion. Arguments admit of either oral or written expression, and the statement, or public presentation of an individual argument, is typically a fairly discrete communicative act, with fairly well-defined temporal or spatial boundaries. Argumentation, on the other hand, is the more amorphous social practice, governed by a multitude of standing norms, conventions, habits, and expectations, that arises from and surrounds the production, presentation, interpretation, criticism, clarification, and modification of individual arguments.

We'll use the term “author” loosely to refer to any person who, within a particular context, presents an argument for consideration. An author may but need not be the individual (perhaps no longer living or identifiable) originally responsible for the construction of the argument. What matters is that the author, in some sense, endorses the argument as being worthy of consideration as an instrument of rational persuasion on some particular occasion. An individual who merely reports upon the argument of another, or who refers to an argument to illustrate points in logical theory (a practice we will engage in repeatedly throughout this text), does not endorse the argument in this sense, and is therefore not its author.