Argumentation is often understood as a coherent set of Western theories, birthed in Athens and developing throughout the Roman period, the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment and Renaissance, and into the present century. Ideas have been nuanced, developed, and revised, but still the outline of argumentation theory has been recognizable for centuries, or so it has seemed to Western scholars. The 2019 Alta Conference on Argumentation (co-sponsored by the National Communication Association and the American Forensic Association) aimed to question the generality of these intellectual traditions.
This resulting collection of essays deals with the possibility of having local theories of argument – local to a particular time, a particular kind of issue, a particular place, or a particular culture. Many of the papers argue for reconsidering basic ideas about arguing to represent the uniqueness of some moment or location of discourse. Other scholars are more comfortable with the Western traditions, and find them congenial to the analysis of arguments that originate in discernibly distinct circumstances.
The papers represent different methodologies, cover the experiences of different nations at different times, examine varying sorts of argumentative events (speeches, court decisions, food choices, and sound), explore particular personal identities and the issues highlighted by them, and have different overall orientations to doing argumentation scholarship. Considered together, the essays do not generate one simple conclusion, but they stimulate reflection about the particularity or generality of the experience of arguing, and therefore the scope of our theories.
I. The Project of Local Theories of Argument
Chapter 1: Do We Need Local Theories of Argument? Dale Hample
Chapter 2: (Counter) Mapping the Place and Time of Local Argument, Ronald Walter Greene
Chapter 3: Georhetoric: Toward an Anthropology of Argument, G. Thomas Goodnight and David B. Hingstman
II. Bodies and Identities
Chapter 4: A Nasty and Persistent Feminist Theory of Argumentative Anger, Catherine Helen Palczewski and Alexandria Chase
Chapter 5: Educating and Inspiring Future Women Scientists: Making Arguments about Significance and Contribution in Biography Collections for Young People, Emma Frances Bloomfield and Sara C. VanderHaagen
Chapter 6: Beyond Participation, Toward Disparticipation: Contesting White Feminism at the 2017 Women’s March , Matthew Salzano
Chapter 7: The Best a <man> Can Be? Understanding Localized Arguments about Portrayals in Gillette’s "We Believe" Advertisement, Erika M. Thomas
Chapter 8: Representing or Hispandering?: Beto O’Rourke, Political Identity, and Identification, Ann E. Burnette and Wayne L. Kraemer
Chapter 9: Developmental Changes and Practices that Facilitate Argumentation: A Brief Review of a Research Program, Susan L. Kline
Chapter 10: Activating Memory: Digital Dialogue with Holographic Holocaust Survivors, Linda Diane Horwitz and Daniel C. Brouwer
Chapter 11: The Argumentative Dimensions of Non-Suicidal Self-Injury (NSSI) in People with Autism-Spectrum, Matthew Gerber
Chapter 12: Where All Arguments are Local: Affective Arguments in Virginia’s Moral Debates about Blackface, Michael Janas
Chapter 13: American Patriotism’s Invisible Racial Warrant: Repositioning Colin Kaepernick as a Black Critical Patriot, Ashley Danielle Garcia
Chapter 14: Rhetorical Logics of Racist Accusation and Defense, Ronald E. Lee and Adam M. Blood
Chapter 15: "The Definition of Racism" – A Critique of Racial Deduction, Alex McVey
Chapter 16: Assemblage Argumentation at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice: Temporary Monumentality and the Localization of Racial (In)Justice, Nicholas S. Paliewicz and Marouf Hasian, Jr.
Chapter 17: Disrupting Local Logic: Dress Code Protests and Perelman’s Universal Audience in the Viral Age, Meredith Neville-Shepard
Chapter 18: Pleasantries or Putdowns?: Unpacking a Dichotomy in Identity Arguments, Nathaniel H. Stoltz
III. Contemporary United States
Chapter 19: Evolving Deliberative Norms in American Political Debates: A Comparison of the Carter-Reagan Debate in 1980 and the First Obama-Romney Debate in 2012, Robert C. Rowland
Chapter 20: A Jeremiadic Eulogy: George W. Bush’s Defense of the Forum, Daniel M. Chick
Chapter 21: Local Symbols as Grounds for Policy Change in Mass Shooting Eulogies, Justin Ward Kirk
Chapter 22: Apologia, Argument, and Philosophical Pairs in American Political Discourse, Aaron Dicker and Christopher Wernecke
Chapter 23: Reluctant Witness: Christine Blasey Ford Testifies before the Universal Audience During the Kavanaugh Hearings, Denise Oles-Acevedo
Chapter 24: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Supreme Court: Satirizing Political Ethos and Gendered Pathos in the Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation Hearings, Joan Faber McAlister
Chapter 25: Reporting from Trump Country: Local Presumption and White Trauma Narratives, Ryan Neville-Shepard
Chapter 26: Are Aggressive Argument Strategies in Political Debates Localized Phenomena or Symptoms of Something More Troubling in Contemporary Political Culture? Edward A. Hinck and Shelly S. Hinck
Chapter 27: Local-Chronological Eras of Presidential Debates: Forms, Functions, and Analysis, Sara A. Mehltretter Drury and Dale A. Herbeck
Chapter 28: Military Heretics: Major Danny Sjursen and Arguments that Challenge Orthodoxy, Derek T. Buescher and Kent A. Ono
Chapter 29: Surviving R. Kelly: Presenting Testimony as Evidence, Dakota Sandras
Chapter 30: The Elision of Definition in the Debate on Born-Alive Abortions, Aya Hussein Farhat and Jeremy R. Grossman
Chapter 31: Locating Utopia in Populism: Considering Progressive Populism, Utopian Rhetoric, and the Populist Argumentative Frame, Daniel P. Overton
Chapter 32: Arguing with Family Members about the 2016 Presidential Election, Amy Johnson and Eryn Bostwick
Chapter 33: (In)civility and the Modern Presidency: Presidential Constructions of a Complex Idea, Dakota Park-Ozee and Kevin Coe
Chapter 34: Anti-Establishment Micropolitics in the Response Closure of Political Campaign Debates, Robert J. Green
Chapter 35: Generating Local Theories of Argument: Romantic Populist Improvisation and Sprezzatura in Donald Trump’s MAGA Rallies, David A. Frank and William Keith
IV. Historical United States
Chapter 36: Implicit Theories of Argument in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, David Zarefsky
Chapter 37: Locating Argument’s Location: The Stasis of Jurisdiction and the Establishment of the First Meridian of the United States, Zornitsa Keremidchieva
Chapter 38: President Calvin Coolidge’s Local Argumentation: Resolving Questions of Race, Ben Voth and Matthew Lucci
V. China
Chapter 39: Local Argument Spheres in China: A Case Study of the Debate Show Qipashuo, Junyi Lv
Chapter 40: Implying with Analogy and Quoting Authoritative Works: The Argumentation in Yen T’ieh Lun, Hongxian Dai, Hailong Wang, Xiaolu He, and Tao Chen
Chapter 41: Chinese Argumentation in War Rhetoric: A Case Study of Soong Meiling’s Speech at the U.S. Congress on February 18th, 1943, Li Xi
Chapter 42: A Comparative Study of Mediated Public Arguments on Trump’s Trade War in the United States and China, Thomas A. Hollihan, Shuang Liang, Yudan Zou, and Hoan Nguyen
VI. Japan
Chapter 43: Toward Local Theories of Japanese Argumentation: Contexts and Strategies, Takeshi Suzuki
Chapter 44: Shinzo Abe's Not So Beautiful Lies, or How He Stopped Worrying about Embarrassing Himself in Public, Satoru Aonuma
Chapter 45: Proving Sontaku (Surmising of Wishes) at the Japanese National Diet: Attempts to Prove What No One Can Prove, Kaori Miyawaki
Chapter 46: A Critical Analysis of Meta-Arguments in the National Diet of Japan: The Case of a Debate over Security Legislation in 2015, Junya Morooka
Chapter 47: How Japan Neglects Workers of Foreign Nationalities: An Analysis of Immigration Control Controversies in the National Diet, Noriaki Tajima
Chapter 48: Argumentation in Epideictic Oratory at the Annual State Ritual of March 11 Disasters, Hiroko Okuda
VII. Other Parts of the World
Chapter 49: Multiple Temporalities of the Idomeni Camp in Greece, Naoki Kambe
Chapter 50: "Democracy" and Putin’s "Nation:" Pathways for Definitional Argument, David Cratis Williams, Marilyn J. Young, and Michael K. Launer
VIII. New Media
Chapter 51: Is Cogent Argumentation Possible Through Social Media? Jeffrey P. Mehltretter Drury
Chapter 52: Digital Infrastructures of Affect and the Future of the Networked Public Sphere, Damien Smith Pfister
Chapter 53: Locating Judgment in Argument by Algorithm, Ron Von Burg and Marcus Paroske
Chapter 54: New Media and Old Coffee: How Local Styles of Town Hall Meetings Reconfigure a Dialectical Tradition, M. Kelly Carr and Jocelyn Evans
Chapter 55: Who’s Really the Victim? The "Hashtag Hijacking" of #HimToo as Localized Narrative Argument, Heidi Hamilton
Chapter 56: The Political Mind and Rhetorical Cognition: Arguing Tropes and Fractals on the 4th of July 2019, G. Thomas Goodnight and David B. Hingstman
Chapter 57: Memes as Quasi-Argument: An Insidious Threat to Public Debate, Mridula Mascarenhas
IX. Dinner
Chapter 58: Local Argument Through Presence in Holocaust Cookbooks, Talya Peri Slaw
Chapter 59: Dissociation, Multimodal Argument, Sean Brock, and the Local, Anna M. YoungX. Local Places
Chapter 60: Dissociating Means and Ends: Expanding Education Markets and Diminishing Democratic Deliberation, Robert Asen
Chapter 61: Modernizing Racism: The Localization of Settler-Colonial Logics in Utah House Bill 93, Kyle Cheesewright and Michael K. Middleton
Chapter 62: The Bensenville Pause: Argumentation, Sound Figuration, and Local Sound Cultures, Matthew Salzano and Justin Eckstein
XI. Pedagogy and the Modern University
Chapter 63: Civic Education through Rhetorical Principles, Joseph P. Zompetti and David Cratis Williams
Chapter 64: Featuring Performance in Intercollegiate Academic Debate Pedagogy and Practice, David Errera and John J. Rief
Chapter 65: Demonstrating Academic Relevance and Rigor: Linking the NCA Learning Outcomes in Communication to Debate Program Assessment through Portfolios, Brian Lain and Karen Anderson-Lain
Chapter 66: Developing the Whole Director: A Flexible Framework for Professional Development for Intercollegiate Debate, Travis Cram
Chapter 67: Assessing Tenure-Track Debate Program Directors: Augmenting Intercollegiate Debate Programs with Service Learning Opportunities in Local University Contexts, Michael Eisenstadt
Chapter 68: Assessing Argumentation Literacy, James Patrick Dimock, Adam Key, and Andrea R. Jaques
XII. Legal Issues
Chapter 69: The Counterside Problem: Blackmun’s Tie-Breaking in Roe v. Wade, Eric Morris
Chapter 70: Not Just Twitter: Censorship Threats to Local Communities in Cyberspace, Robert M. Overing and Michael S. Overing
Chapter 71: Originalist Judicial Style: Fake News, Reputation, and Libel Law, Timothy Barouch
XIII. Argumentation Theory
Chapter 72: The Received View of Argument and Justification, Scott Jacobs
Chapter 73: Communicative Competence and Local Theories of Argumentation: The Case of Academic Citational Practices, Menno H. Reijven and Rebecca M. Townsend
Chapter 74: General and Local Theories of Argument in Late Modernity, L. Paul Strait
Chapter 75: Does the Rhyme Chime? Evaluating the Persuasiveness of a Rhyming Weather Message, Austin MacDonald and Ioana A. Cionea
Chapter 76: A Temporally Local Theory of Polarizing Argumentative Style, Laura Alberti and L. Paul Strait
Chapter 77: Large and Small: Motivated Interpretations of Statistical Evidence, Jeffrey W. Jarman
Chapter 78: Local Theories of Argument and Immanent Obligations: Inciting an Askesis
William Ross Cooney
Biography
Dale Hample is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland, and Professor Emeritus of Communication at Western Illinois University. He has been a spotlight speaker at argumentation conferences in Canada, Chile, the Netherlands, and the United States. His previous books are Interpersonal Arguing (2018), Arguing: Exchanging Reasons Face to Face (2005), and Readings in Argumentation (1992; co-edited with William and Pamela Benoit). He is a past editor of Argumentation and Advocacy. For the past decade, his research has concentrated on studying orientations toward interpersonal arguing in more than a dozen nations across the world.
