Study on the merits and demerits of adversariality in argumentation and debate

Hong, Kyung Nam

Korean Journal of General Education 2016;10(4):237-257.
Published online December 30, 2016.

Kyung Nam Hong

논증과 토론에서 적대성의 공과에 대한 연구

홍경남

Abstract

A metaphor harmful to argumentation, “argument is war,” is widely distributed, and used. As is like with the war, the argumentation addressing various kinds of arguments is accompanied with many harmful attitudes because it is assumed to be quarrels among adversarial opponents. Particularly, quarrels for winning the debate reveal adversariality comparable to that of real battles or wars. An attempt is made in this paper to recognize the harmful effect of the adversarial attitude with the argumentative discourse, and find a way of mitigating it. However, it is also noted that such an adversarial property does not inevitably lead to the bad or the harmful. It follows from testing the merits and the demerits of arguments taken as wars to arguments as cooperative agreements that the argumentative adversariality can be so minimized as to make the argumentation vivid and alive. That is, it does not just suffer losses, but gives benefits.

Key Words: argument, argumentation, war metaphor, debate, adversariality, Lakoff