Douglas Walton, informal logic, and the uses of the New Dialectic for the rhetoric of inquiry

The works of Douglas Walton have not yet been integrated into rhetorical studies. Too often, his contribution is viewed as limited to his work on fallacies. A fuller understanding of the depth of Walton's work (achieved through close reading of all his monographs, with careful attention to the evolution of his thought and interaction with his intellectual sources) will yield new insights for rhetorical criticism. Specifically, a refined understanding of his "New Dialectic" enables new forms of rhetorical criticism of interdisciplinary academic debate. This new rhetorical criticism is exemplified here in analyses of the Black Athena debates, the Walzer-Neel exchange in Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and the debates over the origins for the term "rhetoric" between Schiappa, O'Sullivan, and Poulakos.