Argumentation, disputation, debate, forensic, and dialectic all mean the act or art of argument or an exercise of one’s powers of argument.
In contrast with argument, dispute, controversy (see ARGUMENT 2) they stress formality and a more or less didactic intention.
Argumentation is the designation given to a form of discourse the aim of which is to prove or disprove propositions or to an oral or written exercise having such proof or disproof for its end.
- a course in exposition and argumentation
- the next theme will be an argumentation
Disputation and debate both imply the handling of a proposition with the intent to sustain one’s position not only by advancing arguments in its support but by attacking the position of one’s opponent and by defending one’s own from his attacks.
Disputation, however, is more often applied to a formal exercise common in medieval universities and still found in some modern universities in which a thesis is tested by the ability of its proponent or defender to sustain it in the face of severe critical attack; debate, to a two-sided contest between persons or teams which is governed by strict rules of procedure and in which the victory goes to the person or team regarded by the appointed judges as manifesting the greater ability.
Forensic in its academic use is applied to an argumentative exercise intended to convince its readers or hearers; the word suggests emphasis on the qualities of successful legal argument such as the ability to marshal evidence, to make telling points, to persuade as well as to convince.
Dialectic is a term more common among philosophers than in general or academic use. It is usually applied to a method of reasoning especially by weighing and resolving contradictory or juxtaposed arguments, the aim of which is to reach the truth by the correct application of the rules of logic, but is sometimes applied to argument or argumentation that merely observes what its writer believes to be the laws of reasoning.
- Newman’s masterly English, and his competent, if not supreme, dialectic
—Saintsbury