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)

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)

A pervasive aspect of human communication and sociality is argumentation: the practice of making and criticizing reasons in the context of doubt and disagreement. Argumentation underpins and shapes the decision-making, problem-solving, and conflict management which are fundamental to human relationships. However, argumentation is predominantly conceptualized as two parties arguing pro and con positions with each other in one place. This dyadic bias undermines the capacity to engage argumentation in complex communication in contemporary, digital society. This book offers an ambitious alternative (...) course of inquiry for the analysis, evaluation, and design of argumentation as polylogue: various actors arguing over many positions across multiple places. Taking up key aspects of the twentieth-century revival of argumentation as a communicative, situated practice, the polylogue framework engages a wider range of discourses, messages, interactions, technologies, and institutions necessary for adequately engaging the contemporary entanglement of argumentation and complex communication in human activities. (shrink)

A macroscope is proposed and tested here for the discovery of the unique argumentative footprint that characterizes how a collective manages differences and pursues disagreement through argument in a polylogue. The macroscope addresses broader analytic problems posed by various conceptualizations of large-scale argument, such as fields, spheres, communities, and institutions. The design incorporates a two-tier methodology for detecting argument patterns of the arguments performed in arguing by an interactive collective that produces views, or topographies, of the ways that issues are (...) generated in the making and defending of standpoints. The design premises for the macroscope build on insights about argument patterns from pragma-dialectical theory by incorporating research and theory on disagreement management and the Argumentum Model of Topics. The design reconceptualizes prototypical and stereotypical argument patterns for characterizing large-scale argumentation. A prototype of the macroscope is tested on data drawn from six threads about oil-drilling and fracking from the subreddit Changemyview. The implementation suggests the efficacy of the macroscope’s design and potential for identifying what communities make controversial and how the disagreement space in a polylogue is managed through stereotypical argument patterns in terms of claims/premises, inferential relations, and presentational devices. (shrink)

A specific issue for argumentation theory is whether information and communication technologies play any role in governing argument — that is, as parties engage in practical activities across space and time via ICTs, does technology matter for the interplay of argumentative content and process in managing disagreement? The case made here is that technologies do matter because they are not merely conduits of communication but have a role in the pragmatics of communication and argumentation. In particular, ICTs should be recognized (...) as communication-information services that are delegated degrees of responsibility for managing disagreements arising from practical activities. These services are organized around practical theories for designing disagreement space. However, recognizing this relationship between argument and technology requires accounting for procedures, techniques, or rules and speech acts that are not argumentative propositions in any strict sense but that are consequential for what becomes argumentation in any setting. An account about designing disagreement space, grounded in Jackson and Jacobs’s theory of Disagreement Management, is put forward to address these issues while more generally contributing to understanding argument in context. (shrink)

This article critically examines Porter and Kramer’s shared value concept to identify its boundaries and limits as a framework for understanding the role of philanthropy and CSR relative to the role of business in society. Cases of implementation and alternative perspectives on innovation reveal that, despite its appeal and uptake in corporate and philanthropic circles, shared value merely advances the conventional rhetoric that what is good for business is good for society. The shared value approach narrows what counts as social (...) value and avoids the friction between business and society. The consequence is that the approach is problematic as a framework for addressing sustainability and development, and an insufficient basis for decision-making about philanthropy and CSR. (shrink)

This study investigates how dispute-mediators handle impasse in the re-negotiation of divorce decrees by divorced couples. Three sources of impasse and three strategies for handling impasse are identified based on analysis of mediation transcripts. The concern here lies not so much in the disputant's arguments but in the discussion procedures dispute-mediators use to craft the disputant's argumentation into a tool to solve conflict. Their moves are understood here as a practice of reconstructing argumentative discourse that is neither naïve nor critical (...) but reconstruction as design. Mediator's reconstruction reveals a type of communication work in contemporary societies involved in the crafting of forums and formats that mediate argumentative communication. This work is often invisible and strategic which makes its interpretation, judgment, and development a challenge for pragma-dialectical theory. How reconstruction as design can be understood is discussed by building on prior pragma-dialectical theory and research. (shrink)

It is argued here that large-scale organization and networked computing enable new divisions of communicative work aimed at shaping the content, direction, and outcomes of societal conversations. The challenge for argumentation theory and practice lies in attending to these new divisions of communicative work in constituting contemporary argumentative realities. Goffman’s conceptualization of participation frameworks and production formats are applied to articulate the communicative work of organizations afforded by networked computing that invents and innovates argument in all of its senses—as product, (...) process, and procedure. Communicative work, however, may be scaffolding argumentative contexts and practices that are quite different than what has constituted past argumentative realities. The computerization of argument happens as organizations invent and innovate argument practice relative to the demands and opportunities of interorganizational communication. The cases and examples examined here suggest that argument practice is evolving around the logic of conversation and the principle of personalization. The analysis challenges argumentation theory to seriously engage with the construction of communicative contexts and the realization of ideas about disagreement management in organizational practice and information infrastructures. Directions for integrating insights from a design perspective on argument with insights from organizational and information systems theory are proposed for coming to terms with an era of large-scale organization and computerization, in particular the evolution of argument practice, the inscription of argument in the built environment, and the absorption of socio-cultural argument practices by organizations and computation. (shrink)

Every 4 years, for the past three decades, the world of argumentation research has gathered in Amsterdam at the International Society for the Study of Argumentation conferences to explore advances in understanding argumentation and how argumentation advances our understanding of the human condition. While comprehensive proceedings of selected papers are produced to document what has transpired in the world of argumentation over the preceding 4 years, there remains the important matter of taking the intellectual pulse of the world’s argumentation scholars, (...) to detect the beating heart of the community of scholars and the health and wellness of argumentation scholarship. One of the great services Frans van Eemeren, and his colleagues, have provided this community is a diagnosis that helps identify the assets upon which the health and wellness of the community can further build. This service has come in the form of several edited volumes, the most recent of which, Topical Themes in Argumen .. (shrink)