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Controversy as News Discourse pp 1–23Cite as

Introduction: Where Is Controversy?

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Part of the book series: Argumentation Library ((ARGA,volume 19))

Abstract

A prominent, traditional approach to controversy emphasizes problem solving, seeking to develop general methods for its ethical and effective resolution, or particular therapeutic interventions designed for particular cases. The investigator seeks to intervene in a controversy and to resolve it by prescribing best practices for participants. In this, the work must locate the controversy somewhere, and a traditional location is in a decision making dialogue among interlocutors. This location has become well established through long-standing standards and practices of many institutions including training in academic literacy. However, there are many other locations beyond this traditional one. News texts and the reading situation are locations of public controversy, and journalists and news readers are among the participants. News discourse contributes to our experience of public controversy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This term, “the discourse arts,” serves the important purpose here and throughout this book of providing a compact way of referring to the panoply of modern fields that in various ways trade on the traditions of rhetoric and dialectic. It is not meant to indicate or presume the existence of anything like a coherent, universal, institutionalized field of study or research program; in fact, it is the lack of such coherence that makes a term like this necessary. The balkanization of the discourse arts in modern research universities is well documented and generally accepted, though there is much dispute about how this state of affairs should be valued or addressed (Eemeren et al. 1996, p. 191; Liu and Young 1998, pp. 483–486). Use of this term here provides an economical way to refer to the many fields and sub-fields that share common traditions and perspectives relevant to the problem of controversy addressed in this book, and through this, it necessarily glosses many important differences and conflicts.

  2. 2.

    Bonner calls the argument, or “proof,” “the most fundamental part of a forensic speech” (Bonner 1977, p. 295).

  3. 3.

    Some more modern approaches have recognized and explicitly theorized narrative as part of argumentation (Fisher 1987; Kaufer and Butler 1996, 2000).

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  1. Department of English, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, V5A 1S6, Burnaby, Canada

    Peter A. Cramer

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Cramer, P.A. (2011). Introduction: Where Is Controversy?. In: Controversy as News Discourse. Argumentation Library, vol 19. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1288-1_1

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