(1964) ‘The Use of Argument’, refers to a model for analysing chains of arguments
and helps to reconstruct and “fill in” argumentations. A central concept is
the warrant, which, according to Toulmin (1958) and Mason and Mitroff (1981),
is the “because” part of an argument. A warrant says that B follows from A
because of a (generally) accepted principle. For example, “the organization’s
performance will not improve next year” follows from “the performance of this
organization has not improved during the past 5 years” because of the principle
that past performance is the best predictor of future performance. The “because”
part of such an argument is often left implicit, with the consequence that warrants
must be inferred by the person performing the analysis.