Argument Criticism and Appraisal in the Readers"™ Comments. The Case of "Los niños que van más a la guardería sacan luego mejores notas".

Abstract

I will analyze the argumentative exchange resulting from on line readers"™ comments to an article by Olga R. San Martín, "Los niños que van más a la guardería sacan luego mejores notas" [Kindergarten children get better grades], appeared in the newspaper El Mundo on June 11, 2015. This exchange is similar in some respects to deliberation, and can be described as an external dialectical criticism of a practical argument. I will show that, along the dialogue, participants not only offer and criticize arguments, but reinterpret them, in an exercise of joint construction. This dynamic and cooperative view of arguments changes the notion of relevance, since reinterpretation is a move done by the participants to ensure the mutual adjustment of their arguments.