Revisioning Argumentation Education for the New Century: Millennial Challenges

Argumentation instructors are increasingly called upon to adapt their methods to public argument forums dominated by mass mediation, audience segmentation, and the accelerating information age. Meanwhile, universities seeking to equip students to participate successfully in such circumstances have turned to curricular reforms emphasizing critical thinking and skill-based (as opposed to content-based) instruction. Communication departments have rushed to meet this demand based on their traditional strengths in teaching public speaking, argumentation, debate/forensics, and small group decision-making. The simultaneous appearance of these trends is not coincidental; argumentation pedagogy serves a critical function both inside and outside the academy. Within educational institutions, argumentation classes serve as sites where critical thinking, oral communication, research skills, and dialogic reasoning develop. Outside the academic setting, individuals equipped with argumentation skills emerge as active contri butors within society's political, legal, educational, and business contexts. The contributions to this special issue offer a range of pedagogical options to accommodate the evolving communication environment, in each case offering positions that skillfully blend emerging argumentation theory with proposals for revised curricular practices. ARGUMENTATION INSTRUCTION: EXTERNAL PRESSURES / INTERNAL FERMENT While new forms of mass mediated communication have been influential in shaping our theories of public controversy, little of the work done in this area seems to have trickled into the basic argumentation course or the texts most commonly used to teach argument. This is a curiosity, given the dominance of mass mediated arguments as examples used to illustrate conventional argumentative categories. Debates formerly conducted in town halls and civic centers have been turned over to Oprah Winfrey's television studio, and it is by now a well rehearsed position that America's deliberative politics have been transformed into a kind of "talk show democracy" (cf. Thelen 1996). From a global perspective, the new media technologies portend for some observers a new epoch of identity politics. As Clifford Christians (1997) argues, "an identity politics borne along by interactive technologies is the opening shot in a revolution heard round the world" (201). The opportunities and constraints afforded by technological changes in the public arena have considerable implications for argumentation pedagogy. As Trend (1997) has argued, elaborating on a now familiar theme, Emergent forms of audio and visual communication helped create a myriad of new delivery contexts, each with its own reception characteristics. Such developments were accompanied by shifting approaches to commerce based on advertising and public relations, which further complicated the style and function of mass communication. Some analysts attribute to these changes a corresponding loss of agency within the population at large, as citizens began to see themselves less as participants in the ongoing drama of democracy than as observers of its effects. Others see media technologies as enhancements to democracy that provide more opportunities for viewers to exchange messages and engage in common decision making. Either way, within this technological transition the growth of electronic media produced the most profound consequences. (14-15) While similarly intrinsic connections have been observed by others, there remains a chasm between the typical undergraduate argumentation curriculum and the "profound consequences" of new technology highlighted by Trend. Changes in the modes by which arguments are typically transmitted and received are simultaneously energizing new scholarship on the socially constitutive nature of argumentation. As postmodern conditions yield increasingly fragmented and combative social exchanges, attacks on the nature of public argument and its instructional practices have mounted (cf. …