This volume focuses on dialogue and argumentation in contexts which are marked by truculence and discord. The contributors include well known argumentation scholars who discuss the issues this raises from the point of view of a variety of disciplines and points of view. The authors seek to address theoretically challenging issues in a way that is relevant to both the theory and the practice of argument. The collection brings together selected essays from the 2006 11th Wake Forest University Biennial Argumentation (...) Conference held at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida and the 2012 14th Wake Forest University Biennial Argumentation Conference held at Casa Artom in Venice, Italy. (shrink)

In this article I scrutinise a crucial tension in understanding the debate over shale gas production in Europe. On the one hand, analyses predominantly grasp the debate in terms of pro-and-con dialectics, as if the pro-shale gas camp faced the anti-shale gas camp in a dyadic clash of opposing voices. On the other hand, it is commonly recognised that this debate is driven by multi-party and multi-position argumentative dynamics. In this broader context, I focus on one pivotal contribution to the (...) debate – Gazprom’s press release from October 2013 outlining Russia’s energy giant’s strategy of dealing with unconventional gas production. I employ concepts and methods of argumentative discourse analysis to contend that an arguer to a multi-party debate – argumentative polylogue – faces a number of constraints and opportunities that cannot be adequately grasped in terms of dyadic pro-and-con dialectics. The analysis reveals how Gazprom needs to simultaneously design its discourse to address a number of other parties who might also disagree among themselves: from Greenpeace to European Union governments to shale gas companies. I show why and how a stakeholder analysis used in organisational communication might lead to a better understanding of this form of multi-party public argumentation. (shrink)

Dialectical fallacies are typically defined as breaches of the rules of a regulated discussion between two participants. What if discussions become more complex and involve multiple parties with distinct positions to argue for? Are there distinct argumentation norms of polylogues? If so, can their violations be conceptualized as polylogical fallacies? I will argue for such an approach and analyze two candidates for argumentative breaches of multi-party rationality: false dilemma and collateral straw man.

In this paper, we closely examine the various ways in which a multi-party argumentative discussion—argumentative polylogue—can be analyzed in a dialectical framework. Our chief concern is that while multi-party and multi-position discussions are characteristic of a large class of argumentative activities, dialectical approaches would analyze and evaluate them in terms of dyadic exchanges between two parties: pro and con. Using as an example an academic committee arguing about the researcher of the year as well as other cases from argumentation literature, (...) we scrutinize the advantages and pitfalls of applying a dialectical framework to polylogue analysis and evaluation. We recognize two basic dialectical methods: interpreting polylogues as exchanges between two main camps and splitting polylogues into a multitude of dual encounters. On the basis of this critical inquiry, we lay out an argument expressing the need for an improved polylogical model and propose its basic elements. (shrink)

Most dialectical models view argumentation as a process of critically testing a standpoint. Further, they assume that what we critically test can be analytically reduced to individual and bi-polar standpoints. I argue that these two assumptions lead to the dominant view of dialectics as a bi-partisan argumentative discussion in which the yes-side argues against the doubter or the no-side. I scrutinise this binary orientation in understanding argumentation by drawing on the main tenets of normative pragmatic and pragma-dialectical theories of argumentation. (...) I develop my argument by showing how argumentative practice challenges these assumptions. I then lay out theoretical reasons for this challenge. This paves the way for an enhanced conceptualisation of dialectical models and their standards of rationality in terms of multi-party discussions, or argumentative polylogues. (shrink)

Most dialectical models view argumentation as a process of critically testing a standpoint. Further, they assume that what we critically test can be analytically reduced to individual and bi-polar standpoints. I argue that these two assumptions lead to the dominant view of dialectics as a bi-partisan argumentative discussion in which the yes-side argues against the doubter or the no-side. I scrutinise this binary orientation in understanding argumentation by drawing on the main tenets of normative pragmatic and pragma-dialectical theories of argumentation. (...) I develop my argument by showing how argumentative practice challenges these assumptions. I then lay out theoretical reasons for this challenge. This paves the way for an enhanced conceptualisation of dialectical models and their standards of rationality in terms of multi-party discussions, or argumentative polylogues. (shrink)

How do social actors get addressees to stop retreating to metadiscussions that derail ground-level discussions, and why do they expect the strategies to work? The question is of both theoretical and practical interest, especially with regard to ground-level discussions of systemic sexism and racism derailed by qualifying “not all men” and “not all white people” perform the sexist or racist actions that are the topic of discussion. I use a normative pragmatic approach to analyze two exemplary messages designed to halt (...) retreats to metadiscussions about using “not all men” and “not all white people” qualifiers in discussions of systemic sexism and racism. I find that social actors use strategies that may at first glance appear to be out of bounds in an ideal critical discussion—e.g., demanding, shouting, cussing, sarcasm, name-calling—to cultivate a context where using not-all qualifiers becomes increasingly costly. The strategies are designed to get addressees to recognize that using not-all qualifiers is not an epistemic correction of a hasty generalization or ethical intervention to halt promulgation of stereotypes about men and white people. Instead, the strategies display that using not-all qualifiers is a fallible sign of willful hermeneutical ignorance, willful ignorance, and an attempt to reassert a measure of social dominance. These findings affirm the need to investigate the various strategies and normative materials social actors actually bring to bear to regulate disagreement. (shrink)

When discussing dialogue, argumentation researchers rarely draw the distinction between the story world and interactional world. While mediators often help to shape the interactions among agonists in the emerging flow of spoken discourse, writers of postulated dialogues narrate them, constructing a story world that depicts the agonists, depicts their utterances and their circumstances. In this paper, I ask where the agonists of the dialogue model of argument interact, and I show that they often interact in the story world of postulated (...) dialogues. Postulated dialogues are story problem conversations. Common in textbooks, exams, and standardized tests, story problems create hypothetical situations to illustrate formal relationships among variables, and are designed to be read in a theoretical attitude that treats the characters, objects, and circumstances that they depict as given. When argumentation researchers examine postulated dialogues, they tend to adopt a theoretical attitude, limiting their analysis to the conversation between the agonists depicted in the story world. Reading this way makes it easier to overlook the interactional world where the writing and reading of the texts takes place, obscuring the fact that they are narrated dialogues, often written by researchers. Reading this way also makes it easier to confirm the traditional participation framework of the dialogue model of argument. (shrink)

This paper offers a new way to make sense of disagreement expansion from a polylogical perspective by incorporating various places in addition to players and positions into the analysis. The concepts build on prior implicit ideas about disagreement space by suggesting how to more fully account for argumentative context, and its construction, in large-scale complex controversies. As a basis for our polylogical analysis, we use a New York Times news story reporting on an oil train explosion—a significant point in the (...) broader controversy over producing oil and gas via hydraulic fracturing. (shrink)

According to a frequent objection coming from the tradition of political realism, deliberative democracy is impotent in the face of actors who, wielding power and money, refuse to engage in deliberation, or seek to distort deliberative processes. With the aim of disproving this objection, in this essay I proceed in three steps: first of all, I show that the realpolitik objection is based on a dyadic, two-person theoretical model of argumentative speech acts. To this model, considered limited and unsatisfactory by (...) many sociolinguists, I counter a more complex and articulated framework. Second, I aim to demonstrate that this latter framework is capable of accounting for a temporally and spatially enlarged democratic deliberation which can be rejected or distorted barely, if at all, by agents relying on positions of power. In the third section, I highlight the many and important differences in grounding, nature and finalities between the model of enlarged democratic deliberation and forms of power politics based on strategic calculations and tactical alliances. Finally, I focus on the application of the model to societies characterized by structural injustices and distortions, with the aim of showing how it can help marginalized and victimized groups have their requests heard and discussed in the public sphere and in deliberative settings. (shrink)