Argumentation

What is Argumentation?

Argumentation uses language to justify or refute a standpoint, with the aim of securing agreement in views. The study of argumentation typically centers on one of two objects: either interactions in which two or more people conduct or have arguments such as discussions or debates; or texts such as speeches or editorials in which a person makes an argument (O'Keefe, 1977). An adequate theoretical approach to argumentation should have something to say about both the process of argumentation and the arguments produced in that process. Consider the following passage, adapted from a syndicated newspaper story (Associated Press, 1993):

• (1)
  A recent study found that women are more likely than men to be murdered at work. 40% of the women who died on the job in 1993 were murdered. 15% of the men who died on the job during the same period were murdered.

The first sentence is a claim made by the writer, and the other two sentences state evidence offered as reason to accept this claim as true. This claim-plus-support arrangement is what is most commonly referred to as an argument.

But arguments do not only occur as monologic packages; an argument may also be built in the interaction between someone who puts forward a standpoint and someone who challenges it, as in the following exchange between a young female patient and a middle-aged male therapist (from Bleiberg and Churchill, 1977; see also Jacobs, 1986). (In transcriptions of conversation, square brackets are commonly used to indicate points at which one person's speech overlaps another's, as when the doctor begins talking before the patient ends. A period in parentheses indicates a short pause.)

• (2)
  1 Pt: I don't want them to have anything to do with my life, except (.) [security(?)

  • 2
    Dr: [You live at home?
  • 3
    Pt: Yes.
  • 4
    [Page 209]Dr: They pay your bills?
  • 5
    Pt: Yeah.
  • 6
    Dr: How could they not have anything to do with your life?

In turn 1 the patient's statement that she does not want her parents (‘them’) to have anything to do with her life seems to commit her to the standpoint that it is possible for her parents to have nothing to do with her life. The therapist calls out and challenges this standpoint by asking a series of questions whose answers can be seen to support a contradictory position: it is not possible for the patient's parents not to have anything to do with her life.

Examples (1) and (2) illustrate features central to the concept of argumentation. First, a characteristic inferential structure can be extracted from both cases: propositions put forward as claims and other propositions (reasons) put forward as justification and/or refutation of those claims. Second, the arguments in both examples are about an issue which has two sides and which provides for two opposing communicator roles: a protagonist who puts forward a claim and an antagonist who doubts that claim, contradicts it, or otherwise withholds assent. For the newspaper story, the antagonist is a skeptical audience projected or imagined as needing proof to be convinced of the claim; for the therapy session, the antagonist is the therapist who challenges the patient's position and puts forward a contradictory standpoint. Third, these examples point to the way in which arguments are embedded in acts and activities. In the newspaper story, the writer does not openly make the claim or the argument for the claim that women are more likely than men to be murdered at work; the writer reports what claim and supporting argument are made by ‘a recent study’, thereby avoiding any personal responsibility for the truth of what is argued. In the therapy session, the argument for the therapist's standpoint is secured through questions that elicit concessions by the patient that commit her to an inconsistent position, forcing her to back down from her initial standpoint. The argument emerges from this collaborative activity. Moreover, the patient's initial standpoint occurs in the act of expressing a wish, and it is the therapist who seems to pin on the patient the further claim that such a wish is a realistic possibility.

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