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Article published In:
Journal of Argumentation in Context
Vol. 11:2 (2022) ► pp.200–242

Argument Continuities in theory and practice

Evidence from Canada

| University of Saskatchewan
Argumentation on some public policy issues is conjugated with disagreement and power differentials. Institutionally dominant arguers control the argumentation context through imposing authority rules which sometimes incentivize them to respond to opposing arguers in a fallacious way
– with “the repeating tokens of the same counterarguments” and without considering the merits of opposing arguments. As produced in accordance with authority rules, such fallacies are embedded in the dominant argumentative discourse and easily pass unnoticed. To detect them, I introduce Argument Continuity (AC) – a new category of argumentative discourse analysis. AC is a set of the same arguments and counterarguments repeatedly produced/reproduced by the dominant arguer through an adversarial reasoning process to disconfirm opposing arguments and dismiss them. ACs are distinguished from other fallacies by their continuous nature and recursive way of production. ACs have their own life cycle – a chain of reasoning dynamics developing in a path-dependent fashion and increasing the cost of adopting a certain argument over time. I test the life cycle of ACs in a single case study – in consultations held by the Crown with Indigenous peoples of Canada over a controversial resource development project. Although ACs are not specific to the Crown-Indigenous relationships, they reveal how dominant arguers treat disagreement from epistemically diverse arguers. Based on observed evidence, I develop three theoretical propositions of ACs, which can serve as guidelines for researching the disconfirming mode of reasoning in other contexts of communication permeated by beliefs clash and power asymmetries.
Keywords: Argument Continuity, motivated reasoning, Indigenous consultations
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Paper purpose and outline
  • 2.Argument continuities in theory
    • Proposition 1. ACs are produced by the arguers involved in the motivated criticism
    • Proposition 2. ACs are indicative of the adaptive nature of motivated criticism
    • Proposition 3. Although ACs are not directly specific to the agency of more powerful actors, they reveal how power produces the bolstering effect in reasoning
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Case selection
    • 3.2Method
    • 3.3Sequential analysis
  • 4.Argument continuities in practice: The case of the Crown’s reasoning for TM
    • 4.1The consent-seeking nature of resource development consultations
    • 4.2The institutional context of the Crown’s argumentative discourse in the TM consultations
    • 4.3Argument continuities in TM argumentative discourse
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 6 October 2022
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jaic.21009.pim
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