This paper shows how both discourse pragmatics and information packaging can contribute to creating a discourse that is logically structured and hence successfully argumentative and persuasive. The following foray into studies on argumentation is thus organized into the two areas of discourse and grammar, to show how these two language levels can function jointly when a speaker/writer advances a particular claim. In addition to critically summarising relevant studies, it offers an application of the discussion based on text analysis, using useful examples from two texts illustrating the two foci of the paper: a nearly complete multi-party news report and a political speech by a sole orator. Both show how argumentation operates at the macro level of discourse beyond the sentence and the micro-level of grammar within the sentence. Canonical definitions of argumentation take into account its association with the domain of reasonableness and logical discourse construction with the purpose of defending or arguing a particular point, and often associate it with persuasion. The present paper reviews some of the main interpretations of and approaches to argumentation, while for a very thorough survey, it refers to Van Eemeren et al. (1996) and the more recent summary of studies on argumentation in relation to discourse analysis by van Rees (2007). Current interpretations of argumentation focus on its dialectic nature, thus greatly reducing the old distinction between rhetoric as the art of persuasion, and dialectic, as the domain of reasonableness and rationality. In addition to attention to the structural and semantic features of argumentative texts, Polanyi’s (1988) ‘competence’ model captures their interactive constraints. Polanyi’s model differs from Cohen’s due to the greater role that pragmatic interpretation strategies play in her model. Toulmin offers another important model (1958, 1970, see also Toulmin et al. 1979), focusing on the functional rather than the formal relationships between parts of an argument. The model, she believes, is still valid, especially its emphasis on the social context in which the argumentation takes place (Simosi 2003, 201). A step forward along the lines of a jointly rhetorical and dialectic approach to argumentation is due to Govier (1983) and Johnson and Blair (1983). These scholars are the proponents of an ‘informal logic’ that offers a broader approach to argumentative discourse than formal logic does, and thus develop criteria and procedures to analyse everyday argumentation (van Eemeren et al. 1997, 217). However, it is the ‘pragma-dialectic’ theory by van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1984, 1992; van Eemeren et al. 1993) that brings a truly new dimension to the study of argumentation. They introduce the idea of ‘informal’ logic according to which, in everyday life, ‘invalid’ arguments can be found to be quite reasonable as bases for practical decisions” (Simosi 2003, 185). Van Eemeren and Grootendorst (1992, 2004) contemplate an ideal model of critical discussion, regarding argumentation as regulated by a number of principles that guide recipients’ comprehension. The 2012 special issue of Argumentation, based on the Paris 2010 international symposium on Persuasion and Argumentation, is a more recent attempt to take stock of the differing positions on the topic. The papers gathered in the issue address the question of whether persuasion is the aim of argumentation, or whether they should be considered rigorously different domains. Having summarised some of the main trends in argumentation studies, the following sections discuss how argumentation is approached in the domain of discourse, first, and grammar, later. Németh and Bibok (2010)’s view is that grammar and pragmatics are “two separate components of the theory of language modelling grammatical and pragmatic competence” (2010, 521), yet in ‘intense’ interaction. The following section surveys some recent applications of a theory of argumentation in various contexts of discourse. In the work reviewed in this section, argumentation is seen in combination with numerous other aspects of language in use. A case in point is issue 39(8) of Journal of Pragmatics (2007) that aims to encourage the dialogue between discourse analysis and argumentation theory. The interest of DA scholars in argumentation continues to the present day. There are many studies in this domain, including Yu’s (2011) multimodal analysis of the frustration interlocutors suffer in arguments, Smith and Bekerman’s (2011) investigation of the role of silence in an Arab-Israeli group encounter and Flores-Ferrán and Lovejoy’s (2015) examination of the argumentative strategies used by L2 Spanish learners. Other outstanding examples are Richardson (2001) on argument in letters to the editor and Santibáñez (2010) on conceptual metaphors used in Chilean parliamentary discourse to cite a few. As can be seen from the studies reviewed so far, the scholarly work that combines argumentation theory and discourse analysis focuses on various types of discourse and various contexts of language use. Although many theoretical and methodological questions may still remain open, the cross-disciplinarity of the studies in this domain seems to grant to possibility of investigating rhetorical and rational discourse construction in various contexts. The following section proposes a similar approach by combining argumentation with grammar. Information packaging (Chafe 1976) refers to the way different elements of information are presented in sentences. This also contributes to advancing a claim and hence indirectly persuading the hearer by making some aspects of the information more salient than others This paper limits its illustration of information packaging to word order in English, although cross-linguistically morphology and prosody also play an important role in the expression of old and new information. Turning to a consideration of the role of information structure in argumentation, Krifka (2008) makes an important distinction between the semantic and the pragmatic functions of focus in the sense of Stalnaker (1974). As can be seen from the above discussion and the examples provided, a speaker tries to the best of his ability to produce an utterance that in its organisation is ‘congruent with his knowledge of the listener’s mental world’ (Clark and Haviland, 1977, 5) and in accordance with what he believes the hearer thinks or knows (Prince, 1986, 208). This final section wants to emphasize that a link can be established between the way speakers organise information and their intentionality, hence the way they construct an argument. A few examples of studies can shed light on the research on this aspect of argumentation. From a computational linguistics approach Asher and Lascarides (1994) focus on the flow of inference that is established between communicative intentions, discourse structure and the specific discourse domain during discourse processing. Büring (2007) also discusses information structure as an aspect of syntactic representation and refers to the pragmatic analysis of focus via pragmatic reasoning, citing the work of Beaver and Clark (2003, 13) who have highlighted how some focus phenomena are semantic, while others are pragmatic. Finally, Edberg and Zacharski (2007), while they do not relate information packaging to reasoning, do approach information structure from a pragmatic perspective and investigate the relationship between pragmatics and syntax, reference and social variables. This article finally does not aim to take a particular stand vis-à-vis the debate on the relation between grammar and discourse pragmatics; however, it was useful to mention the various scholarly perspectives on their interrelationship to justify the combined reflection on how grammar and discourse relate to argumentation.