Introduction: John Dewey and the public sphere.

• Author: Asen, Robert

Assessments of John Dewey's influence in the communication discipline have paralleled, in some respects, assessments of the vitality of the public sphere--one can tell a story of rise and fall. During the formative years of the discipline, Dewey's scholarship exerted a strong influence. In his history of the speech discipline, Herman Cohen concludes that "the dominant influence of John Dewey, and particularly of his How We Think of 1910, became evident very early and continued throughout the 20s, 30s and 40s" (1994, p. 320). In particular, his writings on reflective thinking informed emerging inquiries into processes of group discussion. Argument scholars were among those interested in group discussion, explains William Keith, in part because of a growing dissatisfaction with the practice of collegiate debate, which some viewed as overly competitive, lacking principle, and disconnected from practices of citizenship. Regarding discussion as a cooperative problem-solving activity that enabled a civic pedagogy, some argument scholars embraced Dewey as a theorist of democracy and social agency who "made communication practices, rather than institutional settings, definitive" (2002). Yet Dewey's widespread influence produced, in the view of Cohen, an "almost slavish adherence" (p. 321) to his concept of reflective thinking in the early years of the field.

In the ensuing decades, perceptions of diminished interest in his scholarship prompted a series of articles urging scholars to (re)turn to Dewey. Contributors to a 1968 special issue of Western Speech exploring "The Influence of John Dewey Upon Speech" wondered why no one cited Dewey. Most incredulous was Don Burks, whose claim that "perhaps no philosopher since Aristotle has more to offer the rhetorician than John Dewey" (1968, p. 126) accentuated the strange dearth of references to Dewey in communication publications. In a more restrained tone, Gladys Borchers noted that while Dewey's concerns resonated with those of the discipline's founders, "it is obvious that in attempting to determine the influence of John Dewey on speech education, it is difficult to find a direct relationship" (1968, p. 129). Fifteen years later, in an article exploring the contributions of Dewey's view of communication to a rhetorical cultivation of character and practical wisdom, Christopher Lyle Johnstone, quoting Burks' reference to Aristotle, reiterated that "Dewey's work remains largely unexamined by contemporary theorists and philosophers of rhetoric" (1983, pp. 185-186).

As an alternative to a typos of "unjustified neglect,"...