Advancing Polylogical Analysis of Large-Scale Argumentation: Disagreement Management in the Fracking Controversy

This paper offers a new way to make sense of disagreement expansion from a polylogical perspective by incorporating various places (venues) in addition to players (parties) and positions (standpoints) into the analysis. The concepts build on prior implicit ideas about disagreement space by suggesting how to more fully account for argumentative context, and its construction, in large-scale complex controversies. As a basis for our polylogical analysis, we use a New York Times news story reporting on an oil train explosion—a significant point in the broader controversy over producing oil and gas via hydraulic fracturing (fracking).