The didactic meaning of S. Toulmin's "legal analogy": a cinematic application

Abstract

In this paper it is argued that the "legal" or "jurisprudential" analogy used by S. Toulmin in The Uses of Argument has an eminently didactic or illustrative character and that it can be used in order to facilitate the grasp of his argumentation "theory" in an alternative way to the usual one. In this regard, it is proposed that a suitable way to exploit the intuitions that led the author to present the analogy, and to make an extended use of it, is to employ the film 12 Angry Men as a resource to introduce his contributions to a non-expert audience. This proposal is defended by alluding to a particular example (on the Toulminian conception of the role of modal qualifiers) as an ilustration of the potential usefulness of such didactic resource.