Argument mining, or argumentation mining, is a research area within the
natural-language processing
Natural language processing (NLP) is an interdisciplinary subfield of linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human language, in particular how to program computers to pro ...
field. The goal of argument mining is the automatic extraction and identification of argumentative structures from
natural language
In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages ...
text with the aid of computer programs.
[ Such argumentative structures include the premise, conclusions, the ]argument scheme
In argumentation theory, an argumentation scheme or argument scheme is a template that represents a common type of argument used in ordinary conversation. Many different argumentation schemes have been identified. Each one has a name (for example, ...
and the relationship between the main and subsidiary argument, or the main and counter-argument within discourse.[ The Argument Mining workshop series is the main research forum for argument mining related research.][
]
Applications
Argument mining has been applied in many different genres including the qualitative assessment of social media
Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks. While challenges to the definition of ''social me ...
content (e.g. Twitter, Facebook), where it provides a powerful tool for policy-makers and researchers in social and political sciences.[ Other domains include legal documents, product reviews, scientific articles, online debates, newspaper articles and dialogical domains. Transfer learning approaches have been successfully used to combine the different domains into a domain agnostic argumentation model.
Argument mining has been used to provide students individual writing support by accessing and visualizing the argumentation discourse in their texts. The application of argument mining in a user-centered learning tool helped students to improve their argumentation skills significantly compared to traditional argumentation learning applications.]
Challenges
Given the wide variety of text genres and the different research perspectives and approaches, it has been difficult to reach a common and objective evaluation scheme.[ Many annotated data sets have been proposed, with some gaining popularity, but a consensual data set is yet to be found.
Annotating argumentative structures is a highly demanding task. There have been successful attempts to delegate such annotation tasks to the crowd but the process still requires a lot of effort and carries significant cost. Initial attempts to bypass this hurdle were made using the weak supervision approach.][
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See also
* Argument technology
Argument technology is a sub-field of artificial intelligence that focuses on applying computational techniques to the creation, identification, analysis, navigation, evaluation and visualisation of arguments and debates. In the 1980s and 1990s, p ...
* Argumentation theory
Argumentation theory, or argumentation, is the interdisciplinary study of how conclusions can be supported or undermined by premises through logical reasoning. With historical origins in logic, dialectic, and rhetoric, argumentation theory, inclu ...
References
Argument technology
Computational linguistics
Data mining
Information retrieval
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