Speech Act Theory and the Study of Argumentation

:In this paper, the influence of speech act theory and Grice’s the- ory of conversational implicature on the study of argumentation is discussed. First, the role that pragmatic insights play in van Eemeren and Grootendorst’s pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation and Jackson and Jacobs’ conver- sational approach to argumentation is described. Next, a number of examples of recent work by argumentation scholars is presented in which insights from speech act theory play a prominent role.