In 1999 we invited a small number of colleagues to take part in a colloquium - voted to the analysis of argumentative discourse from two kinds of perspective: a dialectical and a rhetorical perspective. Our intention was to start a thorough disc- sion on the commonalities and differences between the two approaches. In this way we hoped to promote the development of analytic tools for dealing with argum- tation in which, in some way or other, the merits...