A Pragmatic Theory of Fallacy

Studies in Rhetoric and Communication

by Douglas N. Walton

Walton (philosophy, U. of Winnipeg) uses case studies illustrating familiar arguments and tricky deceptions in everyday conversation where the charge of fallaciousness is at issue. The numerous case studies show many practical aspects of how to use textual evidence to identify and analyze fallacies and to evaluate arguments as fallacious. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

324 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1995

About the author

Douglas Neil Walton (PhD University of Toronto, 1972) is a Canadian academic and author, well known for his many widely published books and papers on argumentation, logical fallacies and informal logic. He is presently Distinguished Research Fellow of the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation, and Rhetoric (CRRAR) at the University of Windsor, Canada, and before that (2008-2014), he held the Assumption Chair of Argumentation Studies at the University of Windsor. Walton’s work has been used to better prepare legal arguments and to help develop artificial intelligence. His books have been translated worldwide, and he attracts students from many countries to study with him. A special issue of the journal Informal Logic surveyed Walton’s contributions to informal logic and argumentation theory up to 2006 (Informal Logic, 27(3), 2007). A festschrift honoring his contributions, Dialectics, Dialogue and Argumentation: An Examination of Douglas Walton’s Theories of Reasoning and Argument, ed. C. Reed and C. W. Tindale, London: College Publications, 2010, shows how his theories are increasingly finding applications in computer science. A list of titles of many of Walton’s books is given below. Links to preprints of many of his published papers can be found on the website

http://www.dougwalton.ca