NEGOTIATING A CHANGE IN THE ARGUMENTATION COURSE: TEACHING COOPERATIVE ARGUMENT.

• Author: Williams, David E.

While less common than was once the case, the argumentation or argumentation and debate course in American colleges and universities is often taught as a scaled-down version of a tutorial in intercollegiate debate. Although textbooks that de-emphasize traditional debate formats have increased in popularity, many instructors still provide students with basic instruction in policy or value debate, where they are introduced to a version of the National Debate Tournament (NDT), Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA), or parliamentary debate format. Students are then encouraged to compete with each other in debate rounds where a win-loss decision is announced and a grade is issued.

This approach to the course seems sensible enough. Intercollegiate debate has a long history of providing valuable experience to student competitors (e.g., Colbert & Biggers, 1985; Colbert, 1987; Matlon & Keele, 1984), and non-forensics students would seemingly benefit from this instruction as well. But the argumentation course would be bolstered by a dual focus on possibilities for argumentation that will deemphasize the competitive component of the course without seeking to eliminate that component entirely. The competitive element of debate instruction should be balanced with recognition of the need to foster competencies in cooperation, compromise and consensus building that may not be adequately addressed by the traditional debate formats. We will suggest that by including a unit on negotiation, argumentation instructors can provide their students with instruction and activities of clear potential benefit for public-sphere deliberation and professional development.

While many of the research, argument construction, and refutation skills used in negotiation have analogues to those required for debate, a negotiation unit emphasizes for students how argumentation is potentially consistent with cooperation and outcomes of mutual benefit. As Gerald I. Nierenberg (1995) states in the introduction to his book, The Art of Negotiating:

A competitive spirit is necessary but does not have to be divisive. In fact quite the opposite will happen... instead of creating a rift, each negotiator's competence will enhance the other's, and result in the achievement of a common goal. Competition then becomes a cooperative effort. (viii)

This cooperative perspective requires a set of argumentation skills that is not typically emphasized in the traditional argumentation course.

The move toward viewing argument as a cooperative enterprise is anything but new and is consistent with more recent challenges to the competitive focus of debate education. Gordon Mitchell (1998) recently criticized the "purely preparatory pedagogy" of current intercollegiate debate practice. His essay suggested that a focus on learning the intricacies of academic debate as a means for preparing students for future activities can be limiting. His call was to move beyond tournament competition and use argumentation in the public sphere (e.g., public debates, debate outreach, and public advocacy). Mitchell noted that "approaches that are purely oriented toward preparation place students and teachers squarely in the proverbial pedagogical bullpen, a peripheral space marked off from the field of social action" (43). Mitchell's concern was with the practice of intercollegiate debate tournaments, but his concern is also applicable to the argumentation course. An exclusive focus on in-class debates can limit studen ts' perception of the versatility of skills they are developing. While the negotiation process might be viewed by some as still competitive, it offers an account of argumentative practice with a more cooperative framework and purpose, where a mutually satisfactory outcome is more likely. If instruction in argumentation is to include a public-sphere component, then the development of cooperative argumentation skills will enhance the ability of participants in public fora to take seriously a variety of perspectives in exchanges with auditors.

Although the negotiation exercise by itself does not necessarily take argumentation instruction out of the classroom, it does move the focus beyond formal debate and competition. What follows is a review of the literature dealing with competitive and cooperative approaches to argumentation. The defense of cooperative argumentation serves as the theoretical foundation for incorporating negotiation into the course design. The essay then reviews some primary concepts concerning the role of argumentation in negotiation and explains how to conduct the negotiation unit.

COOPERATIVE ARGUMENTATION

Deborah Tannen (1998) is one of many scholars who has argued that U.S. public culture has become increasingly strident and adversarial. From this perspective, public argument today is singularly mean-spirited, nasty, and unpleasant, with partisan advocates defending their own positions and denouncing those of their opponents with the zeal of what Hoffer (1942/1963) once called the "true believer." While "meaningful incivility" and the passionate defense of dearly held positions are not without defenders (e.g., Darsey, 1997), the prevailing tendency is to denounce the competitive spirit of vituperative partisan disputes. The complaints about partisanship in the gun control debate following the Littleton, Colorado, tragedy are only one manifestation of this tendency.

This critique of contemporary public culture is reminiscent of an earlier debate in communication studies over the Vietnam War-era "rhetoric of confrontation," when rhetoricians struggled to respond to rhetorical forms and argument strategies for which the rhetorical theory of the time seemed inadequate (e.g., Booth, 1974; Haiman, 1967; Windt, 1972). While sometimes sympathetic with the motives of those employing confrontational rhetoric, scholars like Scott and Smith (1969) admitted that "academic rhetorics have been for the most part instruments of established society, presupposing the 'goods' of order, civility, reason, decorum, and civil or theocratic law" (7). In other words, rhetoricians have been (and largely still are) likely to defend decorum and reasonable deliberation--what Matthew Arnold (1932) would have called "sweetness and light"--and to label confrontational tactics as irrational or worse. For example, Windt condemned the radicalism of the anti-war Yippies as no better than "those who conduc ted the [Vietnam] war" by using napalm against the civilian Vietnamese population (Windt, 1972, 14). Other exemplars of a disciplinary disdain for confrontational strategies include Rothwell's (1971) dislike of verbal obscenity in public discourse and Baskerville's (1963) description of the "far right" as "irresponsible" and the domain of "crackpots." (198-199)

A quick review of argumentation and debate textbooks in communication studies published over the past three decades initially suggests that textbook writers have shared the disciplinary preference for cooperative, reasoned deliberation over competitive, confrontational, winner-take-all argumentation. Ziegelmueller, Kay, and Dause (1990) maintain that adhering to certain "fundamental principles of argumentation" will lead to "enlightened understanding and decision-making" (12). Freeley (1990) describes debate as involving "reasoned arguments for and against a given proposition" and leading to "reasoned decisions" (3). While some textbook authors define debate primarily as "competitive advocacy" (Klopf & Cambra, 1979, 3; see Bartanen & Frank, 1991), other textbooks describe debate as also being a cooperative endeavor (e.g., Colburn, 1972; Patterson & Zarefsky, 1983; Thompson, 1971). For example, Patterson and Zarefsky maintain that argument inherently requires the "common goal of making the best decision," sin ce those who are certain they are right would never bother to enter into an argument in the first place (1983, 7; see Brockriede, 1975). Whether the emphasis of the argumentation and debate textbook is on cooperation or competition, a feature shared by almost all such texts is their focus on debate as helping interlocutors to "decide rationally," where to be "rational" means that we must reject "emotional decision[s]" and "personal opinion" in favor of "hard evidence" (Pfau, Thomas, & Ulrich, 1987, 3-4). [1]

While debate presumes some sort of meaningful disagreement, debaters follow an orderly procedure intended to produce an outcome consistent with well-known rules for adjudication. This procedure includes the directive that debaters not commit fallacies of language, evidence, and reasoning, especially the argumentum ad hominem, or attack on the person. In describing the benefits of debate, Freeley (1990) makes reference to the relatively civil examples of U.S. Senators and other government officials, rather than to more confrontational social movement activists. In short, argumentation and debate textbooks appear to suggest a distinct preference for decorousness, where emotion is divorced from reason; disagreement stops short of negative assessments of the character of the opponent; and competition does not become the ultimate goal of the debaters, who must cooperate if their debate is to be productive. The decline in sales of traditional argumentation and debate textbooks that concentrate solely on tournament debating may provide continuing evidence of a general disciplinary preference for reduced emphasis on competition.

Of course, not all scholars believe that the traditional argumentation and debate textbook or course should marginalize competition and valorize cooperation. Many students of argumentation during the twentieth century have defended the competitive character of intercollegiate and/or public debate against charges that competition is anti-educational and unproductive, maintaining instead that competition motivates some students to excel who otherwise would not and that competition can be...