To arrive at guidance for learners of L2 English concerning how to deliver or engage in an argument, of a good–natured kind mostly intended to resolve a dispute, in the absence of adequate empirical data we can also take some guidance, with caution, from the dialogues van Eemeren, et al. provide in their (2002) textbook, which exemplify their argument analyses.

The following notes derive from van Eemeren, et al. (2002); all examples in quotes are from that book.

While materials writers might have hoped to have found this sort of thing in a functional dictionary of English, it seems there is little systematic work on this area, whether empirical or drawing on experience and intuition. Thus although this line of work tends to the normative and ideal (and thus we may question whether all, most, or only a few expert users of the language actually utilize some, all, or only a few of these phrases in their arguments), as critical language teachers interested in discussion, critical dialogue, and forms of persuasive and probing discussion, we do need better places to start from than what we currently have. This work provides such starting points.