Repository logo
 

The dominant discourse in Indigenous consultations: when rules impede engagement

Date

2023-08-21

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

ORCID

Type

Thesis

Degree Level

Doctoral

Abstract

In Canada, consulting with Indigenous communities over recourse projects, the Crown sometimes avoids critical engagement with them, holding to the same arguments and counterarguments through regulatory and hearing stages. Such hollow moves, produced under the Crown’s rules, become embedded in the dominant argumentative discourse and pass unnoticed. To detect them, I apply Argument Continuities (AC) – a new category of argumentative discourse analysis. ACs are a set of the same arguments and counterarguments repeatedly produced/reproduced by the dominant arguer through an adversarial reasoning process to dismiss opposing arguments. ACs have a specific life cycle – a chain of reasoning dynamics developing in a path-dependent fashion and increasing the cost of adopting a certain argument/counterargument over time. I test ACs in two institutionally diverse cases of Indigenous consultations and argue for the contingency of ACs upon the rules of consultations in reasoning exchanges. Determining the evidence availability and allocating the burdens of proof in consultations, rules make it more or less likely for a dominant arguer to rebut opposing arguments with ACs.

Description

Keywords

Indigenous consultations – Argument Continuity – Authority rules – Directional reasoning

Citation

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy

Program

Public Policy

Part Of

item.page.relation.ispartofseries

DOI

item.page.identifier.pmid

item.page.identifier.pmcid