Now they declare, on the one hand, that it is very difficult to prove my guilt because of my cleverness, but at the same time, in maintaining that my actions themselves prove me to have done the deed, they assume me to be a fool – Antiphon, The First Tetralogy.
Abstract
Recent approaches to studying argumentation in institutions have pointed out the role of institutional rules in constraining argumentation that takes place in institutional contexts. However, few studies explain how these rules concretely affect actual argumentation. In particular, little work has been done as to the consequences of interactional asymmetry which often exists between participants in institutional contexts. While previous studies have suggested that this asymmetry exists as an aberration in the deliberative process, this paper argues that asymmetry is built into day-to-day institutional practices as a means of achieving institutional agendas. This article draws upon findings from workplace and discourse studies to explicate particular dimensions of asymmetry that commonly occur within institutional settings, and establishes a methodological framework to account for how this asymmetry can be operationalized for arguments that favor institutional interests regardless of the underlying strength of the arguments being made. Drawing on a controversial case of institutional argumentation during a hearing of the US House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in the mid-1950s, this article demonstrates how in using these advantages, HUAC is able to overcome legitimate witness counterarguments to its claims and achieve its institutional goals for the hearing. Though the testimony is admittedly 60-years old, HUAC is a useful case study: the asymmetry in the exchange is clear and we have a historical record to verify the factual accuracy of the claims being made. Additionally, we can see how the subsequent legal reforms that reduced conditions of asymmetry for witnesses were responsible for HUAC’s eventual demise as an institutional force. Though this paper analyzes one particular interaction, these findings are applicable to analysis of argumentation in many institutional settings.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Seeger was later convicted of ten counts of contempt of Congress and sentenced to 10 years in prison for his refusal to answer questions at this hearing.
Actors’ Equity was targeted by HUAC because it refused to cooperate with federal anticommunist investigations—unlike the Screen Actors Guild who worked with Committee members to purge all Communists from the union and enforce the blacklist (Baar 2008).
The Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution protects a witness at trial from being compelled to provide testimony that would incriminate her. Throughout the 1940 s and 1950 s, most witnesses who took the Fifth were branded as “Fifth-Amendment Communists” and subjected to blacklists and further investigations (O’Reilly 1983: 197).
References
Agar, Michael. 1985. Institutional discourse. Text-Interdisciplinary Journal for the Study of Discourse 5(3): 147–168.
Andrus, Jennifer. 2012. Language ideology, fractal recursivity, and discursive agency in the legal construction of linguistic evidence. Language in Society 41(5): 589–614.
Argumentation. 2008. 22:3 Special issue on strategic maneuvering in institutional contexts dedicated to Peter Houtlosser (1956–2008).
Baar, K.Kevyne. 2008. “What has my union done for me?” The Screen Actors Guild, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, and Actors’ Equity Association respond to McCarthy-Era blacklisting. Film History: An International Journal 20(4): 437–455.
Bourdieu, Pierre, and John B. Thompson. 1991. Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Drew, Paul, and John Heritage. 1992. Analyzing talk at work: An introduction. In Talk at work: Interaction in institutional settings, ed. Paul Drew, and John Heritage, 3–65. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Fairclough, Norman. 1992. Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Fairclough, Norman, and Isabela Fairclough. 2012. Political discourse analysis. New York: Routledge.
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Goodnight, Thomas. 2009. Strategic maneuvering in direct to consumer drug advertising: Argument, contestation, and institutions. In Examining argumentation in context, ed. Frans H. Eemeren. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Horne, G. 2005. Red Seas: Ferdinand Smith and radical black sailors in the United States and Jamaica. New York: New York University Press.
Markovà, Ivana, and Klaus Foppa. 1991. Asymmetries in dialogue. Savage, MD: Barnes & Noble Books.
O’Reilly, Kenneth. 1983. Hoover and the un-Americans: The FBI, HUAC, and the red menace. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Sarangi, Srikant, and Stefaan Slembrouck. 1996. Language, bureaucracy, and social control. London: Longman.
Schrecker, Ellen. 1998. Many are the crimes: McCarthyism in America. Boston: Little, Brown.
United States Cong. House. 1952. Communist infiltration of Hollywood motion-picture industry—part 7. Hearings before the Committee on Un-American Activities. 82nd Cong., 2nd sess. Washington: GPO.
van Eemeren, F.H., and Peter Houtlosser. 2009. Strategic maneuvering: Examining argumentation in context. In Examining argumentation in context: Fifteen studies on strategic maneuvering, ed. F.H. van Eemeren, 1–24. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Wenzel, J.W. 1990. Three perspectives on argument: Rhetoric, dialectic and logic. In Perspectives on argumentation: Essays in honor of Wayne Brockriede, ed. R. Trapp, and J. Schuetz, 9–26. Waveland: Prospect Heights, Il.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Barbara Johnstone, Tom Mitchell, D.J. Schuldt, Jenny Andrus, John Oddo, Ryan Skinnell, and the reviewers for their invaluable feedback and suggestions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Thompson, M.A. Institutional Argumentation and Institutional Rules: Effects of Interactive Asymmetry on Argumentation in Institutional Contexts. Argumentation 31, 1–21 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-016-9395-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-016-9395-5