Argument Pedagogy for Everyday Life

This article assists argumentation and debate instructors in developing courses that provide coverage of foundational concepts while reflecting their own interests. Courses in argumentation and debate also offer instructors an opportunity to teach through applied engagement with contemporary events. We encourage instructors to reflect on the various contexts of argumentation and debate as well as challenging questions concerning the role of technology in the classroom, the conflict between normative and descriptive examples of argumentation, how much to emphasize the role of argumentation and debate in societal change, and the connections between argumentation and deliberation

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis dissertation maps networks that have enabled corporations to emerge as the most forceful argumentative and rhetorical subjects in our current communicative moment. Corporations are constitutional subjects within the legal arena, citizen-subjects in local and global communities, and visual subjects within scopic regimes, but they are rarely recognized as outright subjects. To address this gap in research, this dissertation adopts a networked orientation that assumes subjectivity is an assemblage rather than a singular, rational, or essential achievement and argues that corporate subjects exceed the grasp of humanism. To support this argument, I use Latour’s Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to map networks that give corporations subjective force in legal, communal, and visual assemblages. In Chapter 1, I discuss the theoretical problematic of the corporate personhood thesis since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) and engage with academic conversations about the philosophical subject as understood by continental philosophers and rhetorical critics, and provide a literature of moral reproaches of corporate rhetoric. I also discuss the uses of ANT as a methodology, posit three research questions, and preview main points. Chapter 2 develops a networked orientation to rhetoric and discusses how Latour and Deleuze challenge traditional approaches to the subject, the text, and the audience. Chapter 3 discusses the rhetorical force of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. (1886), which protected corporations with equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment, and argues that the ideograph equality must be expanded to include corporate subjects. Chapter 4 traces the communal networks of Rio Tinto Kennecott in Salt Lake City, Utah at places of corporate community such as the Natural History Museum of Utah, the Rio Tinto Stadium, and Daybreak and argues that Rio Tinto is an example of how corporations can become citizen-subjects in local communities. Chapter 5 analyzes logos as visual condensations of the corporate subject and maps the rhetorical forces of bp’s logo before and after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. Chapter 6 concludes this research with a discussion of implications for rhetoric, argumentation, and social change. The findings of this dissertation reveal that corporations are schizophrenic subjects that exceed humanism and surpass what Foucault calls “the age of man.â€

The Radical Potential of Public Hearings: A Rhetorical Assessment of Resistance and Indecorous Voice in Public Participation Processes

Little scholarship in environmental communication has considered the intersections between public participation and social movement. We fill this gap by discussing how public participation process can become sites of radical politics when publics employ disruptive or improper tactics, known as indecorous voice. Indecorum can be used to sustain protest matters beyond official forums, engage multiple audiences, and forge new identities among publics. We demonstrate the utility of indecorum through two case studies: Love Canal, NY where residents combat exposure to toxic chemicals, and Salt Lake City, UT, where publics challenge industrial expansion in a fight for clean air.</p