ABSTRACT
Critical inquiry begins by recognizing argument. Many people are unacquainted with argument as the logical means of persuasion. The purpose of argument, persuasion, is not a commodity that exists in isolation. One seeks to persuade within a context. This context can be described by the following elements: speaker, audience, point of contention, argument, and common body of knowledge. Perhaps the most difficult of these five elements to understand is the common body of knowledge. This is because this element consists of a collection of facts and shared assumptions about what counts as a proper way to relate facts to each other and to commonly held social norms. An important area of inquiry concerns the internal structure of the argument itself. One aspect of this structure is the interdependence between the point of contention and the premises.
