ISSA Proceedings 2002 – William Wilberforce And The Abortion Controversy

• by: Jeanne E. Clark - Willamette University

In 1990, as she “decodes” abortion rhetoric, Celeste Condit (44-49) notes two primary pro-life argument strategies focused on history. The first develops a history of abortion framed to show it as “An Almost Absolute Value in History.” Condit dissects this carefully framed history. Established as authoritative for its religious (basically Catholic) audience, it is necessarily selective. A focus on the sanctity of life gives this history its argumentative strength. The second strategy presents the strand of evil in history as pro-life writers develop “analogies between slavery, the holocaust, and abortion” (49). Ronald Reagan’s essay, “Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation,” a text that still appears on pro-life web sites, provides the typical comparisons of slavery and abortion. Condit (50) notes Reagan, like many rhetors, shapes history to suit his needs, focusing on a shaped sense of the meaning of events rather than a precise historical record. The linkage across time for Reagan and others exploring these analogies is “villainy.” The audience is expected to join in the struggle against the newest evil attacking the sanctity of life. Condit concludes the unified history has enough value appeal to be broadly persuasive, but also enough “evident partisanship” to limit “its legitimacy” (52). In the 1990s a new historical analogy gains a central place in pro-life argument. The subject of this analogy is less well known that the earlier comparisons, but also better suited to the multi-faceted needs of contemporary pro-life discourse.

William Wilberforce, the “conscience of the nation” who spearheaded the long fight to abolish the profitable and socially acceptable slave trade in Great Britain, has become a source of inspiration and argument for a new generation and a new cause.
When William Wilberforce entered Parliament in 1780, slavery seemed an inextricable part of the British economy. Slaves were viewed as necessary in some of the colonies, The slave trade itself was profitable for the merchant marine, and the ships involved in the slave trade provided a training and recruiting ground for the British Navy. Religion and religious appeals were of relatively little importance in that pre-Victorian society, but all of these things would change as the influence of the Wesleys took hold in the country and Wilberforce and the Clapham group promoted a transformation of “manners” and values in the social and political realm. Wilberforce had been a close friend of Pitt, was seen as one of the wittiest and most eloquent members of Parliament, and was understood to be at the center of power, when he determined to devote his life to the abolition of slavery and the transformation of manners of his time. He saw these two things as the causes God had set for him. The life events, political strategies, legislative efforts, personal manner, and writings of this man provide a rich source of argument for contemporary Christian pro-life activists whether they are seeking to motivate their adherents or to explain their cause to those outside the group. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – World Environment Day 2000: Arguing For Environmental Action

• by: Catherine Ann Collins - Willamette University

World Environment Day, established in 1972, is “one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates world wide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action … [it] is also a multi-media event which inspires thousands of journalists to write and report enthusiastically and critically on the environment” (UNEP Web page). World Environment Day is celebrated on June 5 (more than 100 countries observe the event annually) with a different country selected to host the ceremonies each year. Australia was selected as the host country and Adelaide as the primary site for the 2000 celebrations. I attended the event and took field notes on the activities, arguments advanced, and value appeals invoked in the public rhetoric. I collected available print materials and media coverage on site and later through a Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe review of General News. This essay explores the strategic events and discourse of World Environment Day 2000 including the media’s response, offers a descriptive analysis of the argumentative strategies employed in the activities, and compares the observed events with the media’s coverage of the celebration.
To understand the format and goals for the event, some additional background information is appropriate. The host site organizes public events that focus largely on spectacle as a way of generating public attention to the environment – parades, concerts, rallies, school competitions, clean-up activities, etc. World Environment Day celebrations also have a political component, the official events – symposia, treaty signings, and information campaigns. The political activities reinforce environmental agreements as well as provide a forum where delegates and international guests can exchange strategies for environmental action or garnering desirable media coverage.

In his December 1999 press release, Robert Hill, Australian Environment Minister, articulates an additional agenda for host countries, to garner favorable international attention for their environmental achievements and commitments: “World Environment Day is a cause for national activity and celebrations … to … show the world that Australia’s unique heritage is in good hands” (http://www.environment.gov.au/minister/env/99/mr18dec99.html).
The host country’s agenda and the U.N.’s goals for the commemoration rely on good media coverage of political and public events. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – “The Issue” In Argumentation Practice And Theory

• by: Robert T. Craig & Karen Tracy - University of Colorado at Boulder

1. Introduction
This paper compares metadiscursive uses of “the issue” in two settings (college classroom discussions and public participation in school board meetings), and reflects critically between these empirical cases and the concept of issue in argumentation theory. Our intent is to pursue this critique in both directions; that is, to critique the practical discourse in light of normative argumentation theory while also considering how argumentation theory might be informed by practical considerations. The ultimate goal of our research is a grounded practical theory, a conceptual reconstruction of argumentative discourse that is both rationally warranted and practically useful (Craig & Tracy, 1995).

Jean Goodwin’s (2002) work in the normative pragmatic theory of “Designing Issues” provides an especially useful starting point in argumentation theory. For Goodwin, “an issue is a more or less determinate object of contention that is, under the circumstances, worth arguing about.” For the purposes of argumentation theory, the existence of a determinate issue can often be taken for granted as one of the preconditions for arguments to be made. In reality, however, issues are not always well defined, nor do they “simply lie there” waiting to be argued about. “An issue arises when we make an issue of it” in practical discourse. Issues exist when arguers successfully design them so as to create the pragmatic conditions for argumentation to occur. “In order to make an issue of some matter, the arguer will have to (a) render it as determinate as required for the particular situation, and (b) show that, under the circumstances, it is worth arguing” (Goodwin, 2002).

To understand how issues are designed in practical discourse becomes, then, a task for argumentation theory. As Goodwin points out, the issue itself is at issue in many controversies, and discursive resources for framing and defining issues play important roles in argumentative practice. The task of a normative pragmatic theory is to explain how issues can be designed so as to induce interlocutors to address them. This requires more than a mere classification of issues, for example as provided by the traditional stasis theory of forensic rhetoric. Following Kauffeld (e.g., 1998), Goodwin shows that designing an issue requires the use of available discursive resources to create conditions in which interlocutors will be held responsible for addressing the issue, whether it be an accusation of wrongdoing or a claim about the likely consequences of a policy decision. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Menace Or Deterrent? The Post-Cold War Debate Concerning American Nuclear Alert Status

• by: David Cram Helwich - University of Pittsburgh

The end of the Cold War presented a powerful exigency for advocates and critics of American nuclear deterrence policies. The transformation of the Soviet Union from America’s archenemy to a Russian Federation occupying the role of sometimes strategic partner has altered the justificatory environment for public defenders of Cold War deterrence doctrines.  Anti-nuclear advocates from many backgrounds and theoretical perspectives have attempted to capitalize on the fading of the Soviet threat by advancing policy proposals that de-emphasize the role of nuclear weapons in security policy.  The successful negotiation of several arms control initiatives, most notably the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START), suggests that such proposals have had some effect on the trajectory of American strategic policy. However, a number of critics argue that such vertical disarmament initiatives, which drawdown the number of nuclear weapons, do little to decrease the threat of nuclear annihilation in a world that still has thousands of warheads. Defense analyst Bruce G. Blair and over advocates instead recommend the adoption of horizontal disarmament measures, such as taking nuclear weapons off high alert status, as a means of jump-starting the arms control process.

This essay is divided into two sections. The first discusses the major argument structures articulated by defense analysts and public officials in the ongoing de-alerting controversy. Particular attention is paid to the arguments of Blair, who is the most publicly visible de-alerting advocate, and Dr. Kathleen C. Bailey, who is a vocal critic of de-alerting initiatives. Both of these figures have been called to testify before congress, detailing their perspectives on the relative merits of various de-alerting proposals. The second section provides an assessment of the effectiveness of the campaign to remove American nuclear weapons from high-alert status, analyzing the debate it has unfolded from the perspective of several public sphere theories derived from the work of Jurgen Habermas.This analysis is a part of a larger project concerning the evolving nature of post-Cold War policy debates. The author argues, as an initial preliminary, that although horizontal disarmament measures, such as those articulated by Blair, have considerable merit as policy proposals, their deployment in public debates about nuclear weapons has been largely unsuccessful in altering American nuclear policy because they have yet to effectively challenge institutional justifications for Cold War era nuclear deterrence doctrines. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Public Sphere: The Problem Of Access And The Problem Of Quality

• by: Peter Cramer - Carnegie Mellon University

The public sphere has been an important category in rhetoric and argumentation research as it describes a socio-discursive space that is both widely accessible to participants and one in which arguments invented and delivered by individual speaking agents can impact decisions which affect all (Habermas, 1989; Kaufer & Butler, 1996;  Kennedy, 1991; Murphy, 1983;  Katula, 1983). Still, the particular role and shape of the public sphere in theories of argumentation and rhetoric remains and important and open research question (van Eemeren, Grootendorst, et.al., 1996, 211). Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, the starting point for much of the work in this area, emphasizes the importance of both access and quality in an effort to delineate an authentic public sphere both theoretically and historically.

A number of commentators (Fraser, 1993; Negt & Kluge, 1993) have challenged  the Habermasian model delivered in Structural Transformation on grounds that it reinforces the exclusion of socially and politically marginalized parties. The project has been criticized  for its failure to articulate the conditions of “actually existing” conditions of democracy with their historic exclusions from public life (Fraser, 1993).  These arguments emphasize the problem of access, critiquing specific historical and political public spheres on the basis of their exclusions of traditionally marginalized identities. In this paper, I will argue that 1) Habermas’ conception of the public sphere is best understood as both a metonym for a set of qualities or critical criteria and as a material domain or social group, and that 2) this project, a prescriptive one, does not necessarily stand in contradiction to descriptive projects that aim to broaden access to historically specific “public” decision making forums by calling attention to exclusions. Following this distinction between  the public sphere as a place or a body and the public sphere as a set of conditions, I argue that while the problem of broadening access to specific decision making bodies is important, the problem of discursive quality is a distinct but complementary investigation. At stake is the relationship between the public abstraction and the empirical particularities of social groups. In investigations of the public sphere, what is the most fruitful way to characterize this relationship? Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2002 – Spectacle And Trauma: An Analysis Of The Media Coverage Of The Oklahoma City Bombing

• by: Kevin Cummings - Regis University

The headlines in the days and weeks following the Oklahoma City Bombing tell a tragic story of lost lives and harrowing escapes. Storytellers who told of the devastation painted a grim picture of the horror that occurred in the Alfred P. Murrah Building on April 19, 1995. The media translated the spectacle of trauma, individuals suffering from injury, and the loss of family and friends into best selling stories. The Oklahoma City Bombing coverage included dozens of narratives of the private pain and suffering that individuals experienced. Trauma was positioned at the center of the political experience of domestic terrorism. It is my belief that the media commodified the disaster as an event for public consumption and positioned the audience as a spectator or watcher. If my contention is correct then it poses a serious problem for the body politic because a spectator that merely watches is disengaged from active participation and does not have the same critical capacities as an involved citizen. In this essay I will advance the thesis that the use of trauma narratives and the spectacle of bodies in pain calls into being an audience that voyeuristically watches a disaster without becoming critically engaged.

It is too easy and perhaps arrogant to cry foul against the media for perverting and commodifying people’s suffering for profit. After all, they are providing coverage that public wants to watch, wants to listen to, and wants to read. In addition, there are plenty of alternative media sources for those who wish to critically engage the issues. I do not wish to focus my attention in this essay simply on criticizing the media. Instead I believe it is more fruitful to examine the arguments that become embedded in trauma narratives. Argumentation theorists such as Goodnight (1982, 215) and Zarefsky (1992, 411) have both brought into question the state of public deliberation. Their work has done much to highlight the problems that plague the public sphere. Trauma narratives run the risk of furthering damaging the spaces available for critical interrogation of public issues. However, there are plenty of examples of the productive use of spectacle and of trauma narratives that have been used to mobilize an engaged and critical citizenry. Some of the best examples come from the Civil Rights Movement. Images of the Freedom Riders, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Rosa Parks did not stifle public action but instead acted as public arguments for justice. The sharing of their trauma mobilized a nation to act. While the problems of racism persist in the United States, few would suggest that the work of these individuals was in vain. So that begs the question of how to determine whether or not a trauma narrative will aid or harm the public sphere. I believe the litmus test for answering this question hinges on the whether the trauma narrative calls into being a critical citizen or a spectator that is disengaged and watches the spectacle for entertainment. Read more