This article offers a multidisciplinary analysis of the structure of persuasive arguments. Following an introduction, the article contains five main parts, each of which is discussed extensively: (1) descriptions of ideas from the fields of law, communication theory, and argumentation theory that analyze the nature of persuasion and the structure of persuasive messages; (2) discussion of the work of the informal logician, Stephen Toulmin, and his model for persuasive arguments; (3) exploration of ideas about argumentation and argument structure in the literature of cognitive psychology and computer science; (4) discussion of "rebuttals" as potent argumentative devices; and (5) the proposal of a new model for persuasive arguments which simultaneously builds on and modifies Toulmin's model. An appendix presents a full-text argument. Contains 79 notes and seven figures. (CR)