Filling in the Gaps: The Role of Audience Inference in Exigence and Ethos

I argue that the audience’s active role in argumentation can be understood in terms of inferential contributions to the argumentative situation. I discuss two aspects of the argumentative situation that I claim must be inferentially established by the audience: exigence and ethos. I also examine how certain features of argument context, such as the medium of argumentation, constrain the audience’s inferential contributions in ways that can either help or hinder constructive argumentation.status: publishe