P. Rooney’s “Feminism and Argumentation: A Response to Govier” Title: Feminism and Argumentation: A Response to Govier

My paper is addressed to two related questions: What are the feminist issues concerning argument/argumentation? What can feminist theorizing contribute to the philosophy of argument /argumentation theory that is not readily available in other (not-specifically-feminist) approaches to theorizing argument? While these two questions presage a larger project, I will, in this paper, address them largely within the context of a response to Trudy Govier’s chapter “Feminists, Adversaries, and the Integrity of Argument ” (Govier 1999, ch. 4; also ch. 14). Govier pays particular attention to feminist concerns with the adversariality of argument in many understandings of argument, so this will also be a primary focus in my paper. It is now widely acknowledged that the adversariality of argument and argumentation is illustrated and significantly reinforced by the “argument as war ” metaphor, a prominent metaphor in conceptions of argument (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, Ayim 1988, Cohen 1995). While it is also regularly acknowledged that metaphors often prove to be helpful, if not necessary, devices in theorizing, the concern with argument as war (and related metaphors--confrontational sports metaphors, for example) is that it is such a dominant one that it has restricted, if not seriously limited, theorizing about and, thus, conceptions and understandings o