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Deborah Tannen. The Argument Culture: Moving from Debate to Dialogue. New York: Random House, 1998; pp. 348. $25.00, hardback.
Rethinking attitudes about and approaches to instrumental persuasion and conflict management has been an increasingly popular topic in communication studies for some years now. In The Argument Culture, Deborah Tannen joins the discussion by extending her examination of human problems into the realm of public and personal conflict. Although she presents some interesting perspectives and makes some interesting connections, Tannen offers little more to the communication scholar than an extended essay with lots of examples. However, her descriptions and explorations are quite interesting if read in the context of the reappraisals of the instrumental persuasion emphasis in rhetoric and argumentation (e.g. the invitational rhetoric ideas of Karen Foss, Sonja Foss and Cindy Griffin).
Tannen argues that apparently most modern communication is based on a model of fighting, and that the conflict metaphors have been extended to a point where communication is not only perceived agonistically, but is conducted as if conflict and disagreement are the ultimate goals. She examines the agonistic aspects of the media, politics, courtrooms, new technologies, education and personal relationships to demonstrate the destructive nature of such communication. Although this is an impressive list of topics, communication scholars looking for new theoretical insights are likely to be disappointed. Most of the observations about the contentious nature of society are pretty basic and simplistic, and most of the research used to support them is pretty well known. The value of Tannen's book is that it does collect some decent academic research and insights into conflict and argumentation and reports them to the general reading public.
Tannen's exploration of the Argument Culture grew out of her own experiences appearing on talk shows and other fora to discuss her earlier books. To her dismay, she discovered that in order to be able to talk about her book, she was often forced to "debate" someone from the "other side". As she explored the experiences of others, she began to see the pervasiveness of such agonistic tendencies throughout various cultural institutions. What is useful about Tannen's exploration is the way that she examines the common themes of dysfunctional argument in various contexts, especially the media and politics....