Diagramming the Enthymematic Structure of Counterarguments. An Introduction to IAMT Diagrams

In this work, we examine the issues encountered by different approaches to argumentation diagramming in dealing with a simple pattern of concession and counterargument in monological discourse, focusing, in particular, on the complementary strengths and weaknesses of Inference Anchoring Theory (IAT), an approach oriented towards discourse annotation, and of the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT), which focuses on the in-depth reconstruction of enthymemes and argument schemes. We then propose a new combined framework, called IAMT, for diagramming enthymemes representing at once the inferential steps realized and their relation to the discourse structure. We show how the IAMT diagram allows to fully represent the reconstructed inferential structures both of the counterargument and of its target and their logical interaction, while anchoring them to the sequential dispositio of the concession and counterargument pattern.