his book develops an account of legal reasoning based on underlying narrative patterns, and compares other such approaches in legal philosophy, psychology and history. Download full ToC and Preface from http://www.legaltheory.demon.co.uk/books_lfnc.html.

A systematic rhetorical analysis may reveal elements of multimodal argumentative discourse that would otherwise remain hidden. In this article, we present simultaneously the basics of the method we have developed to integrate theories about different modalities in one parallel processing framework for rhetorical analysis and the results of its application to an intriguing ad.

Argumentation textbooks typically dismiss the anecdote as an inferior type of evidence. We argue that it deserves more serious attention because it serves three important purposes: Anecdotes function as synecdoches capable of revealing insights unobtainable through statistical norms. Their narrative form lends vivacity and presence to an argument. They often enact or portray the arguer’s character. Anecdotes, then, coordinate evidentiary, representational, narrative and ethotic elements of argumentation and are not always trivial.