Reasoning dialogues

When people argue with others in conversatio, they make a variety of conversational moves: They make claims, ask for justification of others' claims, attack claims, and attack claims' justifications. The arrangement of these moves gives argumentation its characteristic shape. This article illustrates a proposed format for conversations of this type, and it reviews some findings about the way people understand and evaluate these conversations. The findings suggest that judgments of the arguers' burden depend not only on the content ot their claims, but also on the coversation's structure. In addition, judgments of the strength of a justification - an arguer's evidence or explanation - are a function of argument's setting.