The Toulmin Model Today: Introduction to the Special Issue on Contemporary Work using Stephen Edelston Toulmin’s Layout of Arguments

In 1958, Stephen Edelston Toulmin’s The Uses of Argument saw the light of day. This book has never been out of print; an updated second edition appeared in 2003. It has influenced, and continues to influence, researchers in speech communication and philosophy, and also in artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology and application domains such as law and medicine. In The Uses of Argument Toulmin emphasized a number of points that are by now familiar, but still deserve attention: