You are on page 1of 5

Argument Reconstruction and Socio-Technical Facilitation of Large Scale Argumentation

Mark Aakhus
Department of Communication Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey 01.732.932.7500 ext. 8110

Miriam Greenfeld Benovitz


Department of Communication Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

aakhus@rutgers.edu ABSTRACT
This paper introduces argument reconstruction as an important aspect of the socio-technical support for large-scale argumentation in goal oriented discourse communities. Drawing from prior research on the pragmatics of argumentation, we distinguish ordinary, normative, and design as three forms of argument reconstruction to be investigated in discourse communities. We suggest understanding how argument reconstruction is embedded in both social and technical aspects of discourse communities will improve capacity to support large-scale argumentation for discourse communities. A variety of web-based technologies have emerged specifically to support forms of large-scale argumentation and thus facilitate sense-making, conflict-management, problem-solving, and decision-making for communities. Emerging attention to the prospects for large-scale argumentation support is not only a technical question but, as the developers of these applications recognize, a question about how to practice facilitation and mediation under the conditions of large scale argumentation [see 3, 4, 5]. The issues of scale are very important issues and may present problems extant argumentation theories cannot handle. However, since many of these theories are not about people and groups but about the discourse and communication processes in which people engage, it is quite possible that theories of argumentation provide reasonable starting points for understanding large scale argumentation and reinventing facilitation practice for goal oriented discourse communities. Indeed, the basic insights of the discourse process of argumentation might scale from dyadic to very large groups but the solutions for dealing with these processes may require new thinking. We suggest that a central problem for supporting large-scale argumentation is also a fundamental issue in understanding the pragmatic web -- that is, the problem of context and relevance when working on the Web over space and time [1]. Facilitating argumentation for discourse communities involves at its most basic level the practical problem of reconstructing from an ongoing discourse and social context the argumentation that will become the basis for further interaction. This is a fundamental issue for conceptualizing and developing the practice of facilitation of large-scale argumentation for goal oriented discourse communities. We exemplify the problem, some ways to understand it, and some implications for developing facilitation practice for large-scale argumentation.

miriam.benovitz@gmail.com

Categories and Subject Descriptors


H.4.1 [Office Automation] groupware; H.4.2 [Types of Systems] decision support; H.4.3 [Communication Applications] computer conferencing; H.5.3 [Group and Organization Interfaces] collaborative computing, theory and models, web-based interaction

General Terms
Design, Management, Design, Human Factors

Keywords
Facilitation, Argument Reconstruction, Mediation, Large-Scale Argumentation, Discourse Communities, Sense-Making

1. INTRODUCTION
The practices of facilitation and mediation continue to evolve and grow in importance in the global, networked world, especially in the context of using the web to support goal oriented discourse communities [1]. These communities become organized for purposes that go beyond information retrieval and provision to "meaning engagement practice" [2] where expressing, pursuing, and resolving differences are central to the aims of the community [3]. Goal oriented discourse communities seek support that enables argumentation among hundreds, thousands, or even more participants that potentially far exceeds the known ways to support dyadic and group argumentation [4,5].
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. 3rd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, Sept 2830, 2008, Uppsala, Sweden. Copyright 2008 ACM 978-1-60558-354-9 $5.00.

2. ARGUMENT RECONSTRUCTION
To illustrate the animating issue, consider the following situation faced by a dispute mediator during child-custody mediation between divorced parents (taken from [6]; W = Wife and H = Husband, the brackets indicate overlapping talk): (1) 131 W: Yeah I mean you bought Lisa a dress, and you deducted it from the child support thats asinine 132 H: No it isnt 133 W: And you know one little tiny loophole in the law

77

134 H: [I bought 135 W: Says that they will force him to do that

I bought

[ Veronica, I 136 H: bought over uh 500 bucks worth of clothes for the kids over Christmas

137 W: [No way, there is no way that is a blatant lie 138 H: 139 W: asshole 140 H: This is
[ [

((Husband says something indecipherable))


[

Total

This is

141 W: There is no communication because [I cannot communicate there has never been any communication
[ [ 142 H: This is this is typical of her dialogue, apparently ( ) she doesnt try

Reconstruction practice raises many issues that are indeed routinely solved everyday but often unreflectively and at times without much creativity. It is important to note, however, that interventions, such as those by mediators, presuppose many things about the nature of conflict and the role of argumentation in managing conflict. Is it enough for parties to have an argument, in the colloquial sense being disagreeable, or should parties be expected to make arguments? Should arguments be understood as logical products of individual minds, rhetorical practices used to persuade others, or conflict solving methods?1 Reconstruction becomes an issue when groups, organizations, communities, and publics come together to pursue some purpose and work out standards, routines, and practices for managing differences. This is where norms and values for argumentation are imported and developed for various walks of life. Much argumentation theory over the millennia, for example, has focused on developing a meta-discourse about good argument codified in the well known lists of fallacies in informal logic. The list provides a way to recognize and call out bad argumentative behavior. In less formal ways, though, all social groupings develop assumptions about preferred forms of interaction and reasoning that play a role in making choices about what aspects of ongoing discourse or social context should be made accountable.

The next contribution (turn 143) in the mediation session is one made by the mediator. Rather than looking at what the mediator said in that next contribution, it is worth considering just what could the mediator say at that point? Maybe the mediator should ask a question or somehow summarize what has been said or left unsaid. The mediator could provide a kind of information service that aims to clarify, summarize, and provide some minimal procedural guidance. But mediator moves are much more than informational acts as the mediators move will draw attention to (or away from) any number of aspects of the ongoing discourse or the social context. The way the mediators next contribution is formulated will be a bid for how the parties should proceed through the differences of opinion and the broader conflict among the parties (see [7] for discussion of these different models of rationality in intervention). The contributions by the participants ground the discussion as they negotiate both the content and process of their interaction with each other [8]. The mediators contributions are of particular interest as the mediator is in the official role of supporting the sense-making, problem-solving, decision-making, and conflictresolution of the disputing parties. Herein lies the puzzle of reconstruction: just what aspect of the ongoing discourse or social context should be brought into the discussion, how should this be done, and on what basis is the intervention justified in doing so? Reconstructing argumentative discourse is a ubiquitous phenomenon of communication. Reconstruction is not restricted to formal settings, to the actions of one official third-party, nor to face-to-face settings. It is evident across institutional settings as reconstruction practices are embedded in procedures and technologies and routinized in social practices. It happens when at least one party holds another party accountable for having said, meant, or implied something which then draws out from the ongoing discourse and social context matters from among all possible matters what will be arguable [9]. The act of making something accountable does not mean the act of calling out is correct or justifiable; it simply means the actor draws attention to an action of another and calls it into question. Such an act draws upon practices for raising doubt and opposition and upon presuppositions and assumptions about what is a good argument in that setting [10].

We can see, for instance, how reconstruction plausibly happens in informal online communities. For example, Figure 1 is a Bingo card that appeared in a discussion of an online community about
1

The difference between making arguments and having arguments is discussed by [11]. The differences among argument as logic, rhetoric, and dialectic are discussed by [12]. The concept of argument as method was introduced by [13].

78

fpb, a person who has been involved in a number of fandomrelated incidents classified as wank. It takes place in the Journalfen community Fandom Wank.Figure 1: Informal Code for Interacting and Reasoning in an online Fandom Community The community mocks wank, which is defined as selfaggrandizing posturing, fannish absurdities, circular ego-stroking, endless flamewars, and pseudointellectual definitions. fpb has done so much and repeated several actions that a bingo card (Figure 1) was created to use in wanks where he appears. By displaying improper moves, the bingo card is a kind of metadiscourse for regulating interaction and reasoning among at least some members of the community. Reconstruction also happens when people use technologies designed to support the mapping or articulation of argumentative discourse for purposes of sense-making, conflict-resolution, decision-making, and problem-solving. Consider any kind of argument mapping tool (e.g., Compendium, Collaboratorium, DebateGraph) no matter its methodology (e.g., IBIS, Debate). The tool, whether used by an analyst, an ordinary user, or by a group collectively engaging about some matter, formalizes some ways to draw out or highlight aspects of the ongoing discourse and the social context and make it the grounds for further interaction. The ontologies for interaction promoted by each tool is a practical theory about representing discourse and context but also, and this will become even more important to the point here, tools for building the grounds for furthering interaction and shaping activity (see [6] for a discussion of models of reconstruction in groupware technology). Clearly, the examples from dispute mediation, fandom, and argument mapping make an odd lot of examples. However, each points in its own way to the problem of how social contexts and ongoing discourse are transformed into argumentation that underlies the pragmatic web and its applications. How can we make sense of this? What are some ways that we can understand argument reconstruction to improve the facilitation of goal oriented discourse communities and large-scale argumentation? Here we turn to an aspect of argumentation theory focused on explaining and developing the "reconstruction of argumentative discourse."

03 A: Yes I am. 04 B: Youve got no buns. 05 A: Ive got the puffy stomach though. 06 B: Dont worry about it. No one but you can even notice it. Note how Bs contributions call out aspects of what is said and the context in a way that gives rise to a disagreement space that is, the structured set of opportunities for argument available from the indefinitely large and complex set of beliefs, wants, and intentions that jointly compose the perspective of Bs conversational partner [9, p. 95]. Contribution 01 is reconstructed by B as a disagreeable contribution that is countered with an alternative assertion in turn 04. Ordinary argument, according to [9], has a pragmatic organization as participants attend to the actions performed in an ongoing activity, the commitments potentially attributable to those actions, and ways of articulating what is arguable. Nave or ordinary reconstruction plays a role not only in drawing out substantive matters but in shaping the direction of the interaction itself. Moreover, the pragmatic organization of the interaction plays an important role in what is substantive. Understanding ordinary reconstruction could contribute to understanding facilitation practice that is emergent and informal, like that illustrated in the example 2 and Figure 1. The reconstruction will reflect the everyday sense of propriety for the activity at hand as well as the implicit, common-sense constructs about pursuing disagreement.

3.2 Normative Reconstruction


Normative reconstruction is a specialized practice involved in argument analysis. Since everyday argumentation does not typically meet the standards of normatively good argument, an analysis must first determine the argumentative potential of some naturally occuring texts. It is an intermediate analytic step to account for the assertions that can be reconstructed from the speech acts performed in discussion. The aim of normative reconstruction is to recover from a sequence of practically organized speech acts a set of argumentatively relevant moves [9, p. 92]. Unlike nave reconstruction, normative reconstruction is constrained to finding the assertives in what is said with propositional content relevant to the ongoing dialogue. Once accomplished, the critical argument analyst can then proceed with an evaluation of the argumentative quality of the dialogue. Normative reconstruction aims to identify (1) the points at issue, (2) the different positions that the parties concerned adopt with respect to these points, (3) the explicit and implicit arguments that the parties adduce for their standpoints, and (4) the structure of the argumentation of each of the parties [9, p. 60]. In doing this, the critical analyst must transform the observed, naturally occurring discourse into an analytic overview that articulates the assertions and propositions while resonating with both the pragmatic organization of the actual interaction and plausible nave reconstructions. These transformation are guided by a theory and model of ideal argumentation that can be summarized as argument that aims to resolve differences of opinion on their merits [9]. The argumentatively ideal dialogue is one of critical discussion where no doubt or disagreement is abandoned until resolved on the merits.

3. RECONSTRUCTING ARGUMENTATIVE DISCOURSE


There are three broad classes of argument reconstruction. These can be used to inform the facilitation of goal oriented discourse communities and large-scale argumentation. Each will be defined, described and discussed in terms of its relation to facilitation.

3.1 Nave or Ordinary Argument Reconstruction


Nave reconstruction is accomplished through interpretive procedures used by ordinary language users to accomplish an ongoing reading of the situation [9, p. 50]. It happens when some actor is held accountable for saying, intending, or meaning such and such and then treating what was said as having argumentative content, such as in example 2 (taken from [9, p. 103]: (2) 01 A: Im getting fat again 02 B: You are not.

79

Strictly speaking critical discussion is a counter-factual ideal that cannot be realized but only approximated in the real conditions of disagreement and conflict. Current applications for supporting large-scale argumentation seem to aspire to a version of normative reconstruction as the approach to facilitating discourse.

by communities. Exploring how argument ecologies are organized in conditions of large scale is another direction. Communities pursue multiple dialogues and address issues from multiple sides. How then are dialogues related to each other in purposeful and useful ways? Second, how can we re-conceptualize facilitative interventions on community discourse? There is a long-standing debate about whether facilitation is primarily a human activity or something that can be fully embedded in technology [15]. Facilitation should be seen as a function that can be carried out in several ways and via a variety of modes that aim to make it easier for collectives to achieve their goals. It is best understood as a social practice, dimensions of which can be embedded in procedures and technologies and thus thought of as socio-technical facilitation. Moreover, socio-facilitation aims to deliver collaboration, which is a normative goal about what communication must be like in order to achieve states of knowledge, understanding, consensus, and such. Collaboration must be understood as not only involving cooperation but also conflict. Thus, an important aim of sociotechnical facilitation ought to be articulating forms of conflict that are productive in achieving some state or outcome for a collective. Third, how can we re-imagine socio-technical facilitation competence and education? By exploring how competence lies in the crafting of activity and dialogue suited to exigencies of the situation. For instance, it does not make much sense to push critical discussion if the participants have not established some starting points and the issues to be discussed. It does not make much sense to push critical discussion of when issues of understanding and face-work are at stake. Since different applications provide different ontologies for interaction there is a need to understand what dialogues are best supported by that application and what type of dialogue is most desirable for the situation at hand. The applications and their use by a community is a kind of transcription practice, and the transcript produced is a socio-cultural object embedded with rich cultural knowledge. Researching reconstruction practices in socio-technical facilitation provides an opportunity to understand more of the design issues inherent in the creation of the pragmatic web.

3.3 Reconstruction as Communication Design


Reconstruction as design is neither naive nor normative reconstruction but has elements of both. Reconstruction as design involves creating kinds of dialogue suited to the circumstances at hand and the preferred forms of dialogue are extensions of the professional expertise or accumulated knowledge of an organization. Reconstruction as design is not limited to articulating the assertive and propositional in ongoing discourse but seeks to create forms of interactivity that solve the exigencies for interacting and reasoning through the problems at hand in the current social context. It involves practical knowledge of the type of disagreement space to enable effective sense-making, problemsolving, decision-making, or conflict-resolution. The practices and procedures aim to invoke particular patterns of interaction and standards and forms of accountability among the participants. Unlike normative reconstruction which hinges on the validity of one abstract set of discussion norms, reconstruction as design draws upon or promotes a variety of discussion norms suited to the practical interactional problems addressed by a particular arena of expert practice or service cultivated within a profession or organization. Waltons [14] dialogue theory of argument provides some insight as the theory claims that argument serves different purposes in different types of dialogue. He outlines several kinds of argumentative dialogues, such as negotiation, inquiry, planning, and information seeking, that vary in terms of the acts, sequences of acts, manner of retracting commitments, and dialogue goals. These different dialogues reveal different idealized forms of interactive reasoning with varying roles for argument. Unlike ordinary reconstruction, reconstruction as design operates from a specialized sense of how argumentation should proceed. Reconstruction is an intermediate analytic step taken to determine and make explicit the argumentative potential of an action relative to the norms and standards of the dialogue invoked. By helping to discipline interaction in a particular way, the intervention shapes the form of interactivity and the quality of the joint reasoning of the parties.

5. REFERENCES
[1] Schoop, M., de Moor, A., & Dietz, J. 2006 The pragmatic web: A manifesto. Comm ACM 49(5), 75-76. [2] Mokros, H. and Aakhus, M. 2002 From information seeking behavior to meaning engagement practice: Implications for communication theory and research. Human Communication Research, 28(2), 298312. [3] Buckingham-Shum, S. 2006 Sensemaking and the web: A hypermedia discourse perspective. 1st International Conference on the Pragmatic Web. [4] Malone, T. & Klein, M. 2007 Harnessing collective intelligence to address global climate change, 2(3), 15-26. [5] Klein, M. 2007 Achieving collective intelligence via largescale argumentation. 2cd International Conference on Internet and Web Applications and Services [6] Aakhus, M. 2003 Neither nave nor normative reconstruction: Dispute mediators, impasse, and the design of argumentation. Argumentation: An International Journal on Reasoning, 17(3), 265290.

4. DISCUSSION & IMPLICATIONS


The three classes of reconstruction described here provide a starting point for investigating, understanding, and developing facilitation of goal oriented discourse communities and the largescale argumentation that animates sense-making, conflictmanagement, problem-solving, and decision-making. First, how can we understand argument quality under conditions of goal oriented discourse communities engaged in large scale argumentation? Exploring the development of argumentative norms in online communities is one direction. There are numerous practices emerging in communities to shape and discipline interaction and reasoning. The Bingo card in Figure 1 is just one example of an emergent ordinary reconstruction practice. The aim here is to find the substantive and procedural standards to understand how problematic reasoning is detected and corrected

80

[7] Jacobs, S. & Aakhus, M. 2003 What mediators do with words: Implementing three models of rational discussion in dispute mediation. Conflict Resolution Quarterly, 20(4), 177204. [8] Clark, H. 1992 Arenas of language use. University of Chicago Press.

[9] van Eemeren, F., Grootendorst, R., Jackson, S. and Jacobs, S. 1993 Reconstructing argumentative discourse. University of Alabama Press. [10] Hutchby, I. 1996 Confrontation talk. Lawrence Erlbaum.

81

You might also like