Advocacy and Opposition: An Introduction to Argumentation

Advocacy and Opposition offers a comprehensive and practical approach to argumentation and critical thinking for the beginning student who needs to construct and present arguments on questions of fact, value, and policy. This text provides a theoretical view of the nature of argument in our society, a discussion of arguing as a form of communication, and a focus on how arguments are created using the Toulmin model of argument. By blending traditional and contemporary views on the nature of argument (including multicultural perspectives on the purpose and process of argument, ethics, and values), Advocacy and Opposition makes students more aware of both the development of theory and practice as well as competing views, providing a well-rounded approach to their study of argumentation.

New to the 5th Edition:

• Addresses cultural differences that exist regarding the nature of argumentation, its purpose and processes, in building toward a definition of argumentation in a revised Chapter 1.
• Explains how cultural differences relate to differing ethical sensibilities, builds overriding ethical principles with an eye toward finding areas of commonality to bridge these differences, and provides a brief discussion of pragma-dialectics.
• Reflects significant changes in Internet research (Chapter 6), directing students to a wide variety of electronic resources to enable them to extend their research base.
• Examines the differences in values that exist between cultures as both of locus of potential value conflict and an impetus for possible value change, providing key information that will benefit today's students.
• Relates the examples of type of evidence and the discussion of tests of evidence to a single topic (rather than several different topics) in order to more clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of research strategies.
• Streamlines Appendix A (debate) and Appendix B (brief writing) to reflect current practice and provide more useful guidance.