Three types of American newspaper implicit critical discussion can be identified. The first type of American newspaper implicit critical discussion, the most similar to the critical discussion occurring within the framework of direct dialogue, is manifest in letters to the editor whose authors respond directly either to an editorial or to another letter to the editor. The discussion is focused on one specific topic, and the parties of the dialogue advocate opposite positions on the issue. Obviously, both parties in the discussion are rather concerned to defeat the actual active opponent but the main goal, however, of either party still remains to achieve persuasion of the passive reader. The second type of American print media implicit critical discussion is manifest in the Pro/Con section of the newspaper or magazine. Again, the discussion focuses on one particular topic. The arguers do not respond directly to an opposing discourse because neither party is familiar with a particular discourse their discourse will be juxtaposed with. The third type of American newspaper implicit critical discussion can be found in various viewpoint and editorial articles that focus on a more general topic. The parties don't know their concrete newspaper opponents and one will find few rebuttals of specific arguments contained in the opposing discourse.

A complex logico-semantic and pragma-stylistic analysis was applied to the implicit critical discussion of the first type, found in two letters to the editor published in the local American newspaper Tribune-Star (Terre Haute, Indiana) on December 16, 1993 and December 26, 1993. The author of the first letter Street department not keeping up with job criticizes the work of the local street department and the author of the second letter Street employees work hard under tough conditions tries to defend the street department.

In seeking persuasion, every arguer develops a communicative strategy of persuasion. The key element of a communicative strategy is to choose targets of appeal and prioritize them. While there is a wide variety of targets of appeal, it is possible to identify three major ones: people's reason, emotions, and sense of the aesthetic.

Karyn and Donald Rybacki mention three types of fallacies in their book Advocacy and Opposition: fallacies in reasoning, fallacies of appeal, and fallacies in language. The first category of fallacies pertains to various logical errors such as hasty generalization, circular reasoning, avoiding the issue, etc. These fallacies, therefore, will be a subject of logico-semantic analysis in the present paper. Fallacies of appeal are based on appeals an arguer decides to make such as appeals to ignorance, to the people, to emotion, authority, tradition, and humor (Rybacki, Rybacki 1995, 143). The authors do not include in their analysis of appeals, a very important appeal - aesthetic appeal and the fallacy of aesthetic appeal if such an appeal is misused.

Fallacies in language are fallacies that interfere with understanding of what an arguer means by this or that phrase, by this or that term. As a result, the recipient of the message may have to struggle with ambiguity, equivocation, unclear jargon terms, etc. Both fallacies of appeal and fallacies in language have their origin in the process of communication argumentation is part of, in certain communicative intentions. Therefore, they will be a subject of the pragma-stylistic analysis in this paper.

The discourses under investigation contain fallacies, many of which are intentional fallacies. The reason lies in the fact that in order to maximize the persuasive effect of the messages, these arguers often tend to adopt a communicative strategy to rely primarily on emotional and aesthetic appeals, not rational appeal, in their persuasion. What happens then is that logical neatness and impeccability of argumentation of the discourse is sacrificed to emotionality of the message and its attractiveness to the reader. As a result, such an argumentative discourse may contain an abundance of fallacies in reasoning which in fact are fallacies of appeal.

An example of fallacy in reasoning which is a product of a fallacy of appeal committed in the first discourse is hasty generalization in the sentence Behind in one, behind in all which postulates that since the street department is behind on street markings the street department must be behind in all aspects of their work. In turn, it leads to the conclusion that the street department isn't doing the job. While it may be true that the street department is behind on street markings such a general conclusion is unwarranted. The reason for this fallacy is the author's desire to use aesthetic appeal by way of a concise, aesthetically attractive phrase. By doing that the arguer commits a fallacy of aesthetic appeal by abusing it.

The interdependence of the logical and linguistic aspects is also seen in the following example. The author of the first discourse commits an unintentional fallacy in language in this extract: Street department is not keeping up with job: Take a drive down some of the alleys and streets and look at the trash and filth. Take a drive down Wabash Avenue and vicinity on Sunday morning. Some people just don't care. They live that way. The author expresses his thought in an unclear way. He leaves the warrant Since the street department doesn't take care of the trash and filth out in the street and the backing It is the street department's job to take care of the trash and filth out in the street, not the people's job unexpressed. Thus instead of putting the blame on the street department he seems to blame the people for the current conditions. No wonder that the author of the second discourse takes this illocutionary act complex as that of explaining, not argumentation, and attacks the argument in a seemingly successful manner. The latter arguer makes the people believe that the first author explained the situation well enough himself by saying: I must agree with you that some areas in the city are filthy and trash filled. Let me quote you, "Some people just don't care! They live that way!" Well, I don't see where it is the street department's job to clean up private property. Maybe you would like them to clean these people's homes and do their laundry also. In his passage he skillfully uses the opportunity of presenting this explanation of the fact that some areas of the city are trash filled and filthy. He starts the passage with a commissive speech act of agreeing with the opponent and ends it with an ironic remark. The pragma-stylistic analysis of the discourse is a tool of identifying such argumentative discourse features.