Argumentation Across Web-Based Organizational Discourses: The Case Of Climate Change

The chapter investigates a common yet little-studied discursive phenomenon the collective formation of argumentation across networks of texts produced by various professional organizations as they engage in public debates over major social issues. A case study of argumentation produced by organizations active in the debate over climate change serves to illustrate this phenomenon. The case study draws on the work of James Gee and Maarten Hajer as well as on scholarship in Science Studies in analyzing a corpus of Internet-published texts gathered from a range of organizations involved in the climate-change debate. Using Hajer's 'argumentative discourse analysis' approach, the study identifies two 'discourse coalitions' - clusters of organizations sharing a common position on an issue - one labeled the 'climate-change crisis discourse coalition' and the other the 'climate-crisis skepticism discourse coalition'. While these two clusters of organizations are diametrically opposed in their positions on climate change and clearly not attempting to establish mutual understanding through an authentic deliberative dialogue, they are nevertheless highly engaged with one another discursively. The case study also reveals that science, as appropriated rhetorically in argumentation on climate change, is represented in multiple ways across different instances of argumentation - with each particular representation of science cast in either a positive or a negative light for persuasive effect, depending on which of the two discourse coalitions is employing it to advance or counter an argument.