Biography:Rob Grootendorst

Short description: Dutch communication and argumentation theory scholar

Rob Grootendorst (11 February 1944 in Schiedam – 23 February 2000 in Amsterdam) was a Dutch communication and argumentation theory scholar. He was professor for Dutch speech communication at the University of Amsterdam. His contributions to the argumentation field include the co-foundation of the pragma-dialectic school in argumentation theory.

He also wrote several books on the life and works of the Dutch writer and politician Theo Thijssen.

Biography

Grootendorst was a teacher at an elementary school in the 1960s. He studied Dutch studies at the University of Amsterdam since 1980, and became a Ph.D. in 1982 in Speech Communication. The dissertation was jointly written with Frans H. van Eemeren. They jointly founded the International Society for the Study of Argumentation in 1986.

Selected works

• Argumentation, Communication, and Fallacies: A Pragma-Dialectical Perspective (Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1992), with van Eemeren
• Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory: A Handbook of Historical Backgrounds and Contemporary Developments (Mahwah: Erlbaum, 1996), with van Eemeren

References

• Hans V. Hansen (2000) Rob Grootendorst. In Memoriam. 1944-2000, Informal Logic, vol 20, No 2. pp. 203–204
• In memoriam Rob Grootendorst (in Dutch), Theo Thijssen museum