From classical rhetoric to digital argumentative text, from the educational field

Abstract

This literature review article analyzes the historical development of argumentative texts, from classical rhetoric to contemporary digital environments, with the aim of explaining their theoretical transformations and assessing their implications for current educational practices. It begins with a conception of writing centered on argumentative discourse as a persuasive text type. The article examines argumentative texts based on their characteristics and structure; it identifies their antecedents in classical Greece, and then analyzes the transformations of argumentation throughout different historical periods, as well as its social function, which is reconfigured according to historical contexts. In the 20th century, its revaluation through New Rhetoric is highlighted. Finally, the text examines the challenges of argumentation in the 21st century, marked by multimodality, brevity, and the impact of digital technologies and artificial intelligence, especially in the educational field, where the need for critical and conscious pedagogical mediation is emphasized. The following theoretical methods were used for the literature review: historical-logical, analytical and synthetic, and inductive-deductive. The results obtained contribute to a new understanding of argumentative texts in contemporary times, recognizing the challenges involved in their production in educational contexts and the role of the teacher as a mediator in the development of these discursive practices, so that argumentative texts fulfill their intended social, critical, and contextualized function.