Argumentative ecology.

• Author: Klumpp, James F.
• Position: Report

This project is an adventure in meta-thinking: that is, I want to consider the potential for modifying how those who study argument think about what they think about. The project began in my pondering the assumptions of recent work in which colleagues and I critiqued various aspects of democratic argument (Hollihan, Klumpp & Riley, 1999; Klumpp, 2006a; Klumpp, in press; Klumpp, Riley & Hollihan, 1995, 2000). Looking back on this work, I discerned a way of proceeding to critique that deserved elaboration. To respond to that realization, I want to begin at a rather traditional starting place for thinking about argument to ultimately arrive at a place where argument is framed differently, to journey away from how we make arguments toward the context of argument, and then explore a perspective for critique that sets context into the center of our interest. An argumentative ecology is my assertion of the central role of argumentative community in our thinking about argument.

Why start with a traditional interest in the theory of individual argument? For most of its history argumentation theory has been dominated by what Daniel O'Keefe (1977) labeled argument (1): making an argument by reasoning from the accepted to a novel claim. Rhetorical approaches to argument differed from traditional logical approaches because the former concentrated on whether arguments did convince or persuade others to agree with their claim. Those of us engaged in critical argumentation have focused more broadly. We have sketched argumentative praxis, and then passed judgment on that praxis from a perspective that has stretched away from this dominant argumentative theory in some way. In doing so, we have often borrowed the notion of the public sphere from Jurgen Habermas (1962/1989). Habermas began in a historical examination of the public sphere and then took his project from that orientation away from its historical-critical roots and back into a normative theory for argument (1981/1884, 1987). I want to travel his journey in the opposite direction, beginning an exploration in the theory of "making an argument" and then stretching out from that theory to outline an expanded perimeter as a standpoint for critical work.

The key to doing so is a notion I will call "argumentative ecology." I am, of course, drawing analogically on the scientific study of biologic communities. The ecological metaphor is characterized by several moves that produce its understanding. First, ecology does not generalize from individual organism to species or genus, but to the more limited circumference of interlocking organic behavior. Second, ecology shifts the focus of study from the individual organism, species, or genus, to the interlocking behaviors and conditions of a sited community. A satisfactory account of a particular ecology incorporates many organisms that co-orient with each other in the site under study. Third, and following from the other two principles, examination of individual organisms is secondary, and framed by the attention to the adaptive interactions that define the community. These interactions map development within the ecology. "Argumentative ecology" refers to both a mode of study and the artifact for that study. An argumentative ecology is an interaction of arguers and arguments sited in and producing a community of coordinated, reasoned action. Etymologically, "ecology" is the study of a "home." Argumentative ecologies are homes for argument. As a mode of study, argumentative ecology promotes study of argument as interconnected and evolving patterns of reason giving and coordination that structure human understanding and action. The study entails both the substance and the structure of arguing in particular human communities.

Others have used the term "ecology" as a hook to discuss language and even argument. The movement known as "ecolinguistics" or "the ecology of language" emphasizes the interlocking causality of language speakers and their ecological community. (1) Two projects result: one concerned with the ways in which physical and social environment shape the history of languages on the earth, the other concerned with how the characteristics of human languages influence human treatment of the physical environment. The former project is motivated by an attempt to maintain the diversity of languages in the world; the latter by the effort to redress the adverse human affect on the environment. My argument for the fruitfulness of treating ecologies of argument may analogically exploit some of ecolinguistics' use of the ecology metaphor, but I am less concerned with the characteristics of what de Saussure called langue, the primary concern of these two projects. Arguments are linguistic acts and so the concerns of ecolinguistics are certainly relevant to argumentative ecology, but my focus is on arguments as a locus of substance and human volition. So the characteristics of langue are to be treated as relevant elements of context in understanding ecologies of argument, not as a central concern.

Andrew Leslie and Stephen O'Leary (1991) also used my key term in their essay "Rhizomic Rhetoric: Toward an Ecology of Institutional Argument." Parsing this title will reveal the interest of their work to me and my departures from it. The destination proclaimed in this title is not the ecological perspective, but powerful, established, human institutions as generators of argument. Leslie and O'Leary stress the dependence of the power of rhetorical argument on its siting in institutional contexts. Their use of "ecology" declares the enabling importance of contextual imperative. Individual arguments should be viewed within their institutional environment. I endorse this insight, but rather than focusing on structured institutions as context, I want to more fully explore the broader sweep of the metaphor of ecology. In doing so, I will not restrict context to institutions. Rather I will shift focus to the metaphor itself and explain how we might fruitfully use ecology to understand argument. I will treat the power of institutions as only a particular characteristic of ecological interaction. Leslie and O'Leary wish to emphasize the power of institutions, I wish to emphasize the power of the metaphor. (2)

So, my emphasis on the complexity of argumentative praxis is a wrinkle if not a departure from previous uses of ecology in studying discourse. I share an emphasis on the synthetic properties of discourse rather than the analytic understandings that have dominated argumentation theory. I do so, however, not to refute other inquiries but to develop an ecology from which I can better anchor critique. In developing my perspective I will begin in traditional views of argument, identifying the paths that I believe lead to the place of community in argument, then I will lay out some of the characteristics of argumentative ecology, and finally move into two specific arguments framed in the perspective.

RHETORICAL ARGUMENT IS FRAMED IN COMMUNITIES

This claim is implicit in much of our thinking about argument. While our major theorists have developed theoretical apparatus to explain how an arguer "makes an effective argument," their theories also project a social context central to the arguer's invention. Arguing is acknowledged by all theorists of "making an argument" to be combining the known with legitimate procedure, to enhance the power of ah assertion. The known may be drawn from experience, past or present, or from the otherwise accepted. Theorists differ most on their assumptions about the procedural authorizations of argument. Some believe they are innate, some that they are merely conventional, some that they are principles about the way the world works that are the essence of learning, and some that they are the product of experience. Most serious theorists do not, in fact, come down on only one explanation for making an argument, but believe that the praxis of arguing is a mix of these various sources of the known and procedure. My task today is not to settle these disputes that mark differences in logical and argumentation theory, but to focus on the implications of those that are socially situated for our understanding of argument. Our major theorists have a large theoretical apparatus pointing to social siting.

Aristotle differentiates rhetorical argument from demonstration. His argumentation theory in Rhetorica (350 B.C.E.) rests on his observations of humans living in the polis. The arguer for Aristotle is a calculating strategist who understands his/her audience through understanding his/her culture. This understanding of the audience's knowledge is the basis of the enthymeme, the rhetorical proof. The topics are a special characteristic of Aristotle's approach to argument, empirically identifying the things about which those in the polis argue and some of the authorizations providing force to such arguments. Aristotle's theory of genres--deliberative, forensic, and epideictic--is, in many senses, our first democratic theory of argument.

Like Aristotle, Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca (1958/1969) develop their theory empirically from their systematic observation of arguers, albeit two millennia later. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's theory is still a theory of an individual arguer addressing "hearers"; thus argument is adapted to audiences rather than being situated in communities. Nevertheless when they develop their elaborate theory of what they call "the starting points of argument" the socially authorized character of the arguer's wise selections are evident. They group the starting points into two sets: the real (facts, truths, and presumptions) and the preferable (values and hierarchies). The speaker attributes the former to the universal audience; thus they do not see social knowledge operating in the way that Thomas Farrell (1976) does in relation to the real. They do, however, see the preferable as...