UWindsor philosophy professor Christopher Tindale’s rhetorical approach to argumentation has come under critical scrutiny from an unlikely source, says doctoral candidate Justin Ross Morris: feminist theorists working in argumentation theory.

“Unlikely because rhetorical argumentation puts due emphasis on particularities, mutual respect, consensus, and community building,” says the student fellow of the Centre for Research in Reasoning, Argumentation and Rhetoric, “Which, when taken together, seems to be congruent with feminist meta-epistemologies operating outside of the win-lose argumentation paradigm.”

He says Sylvia Burrow accuses Dr. Tindale’s approach as overlooking discourse as gendered, while James Lang claims that it does not address the moral considerations of asymmetrical power arrangements.

Morris promises a dialogic response to these critics in his free public lecture “A Gendered Analysis of Rhetorical Argumentation,” Thursday, May 10, at 3 p.m. in the seminar room of Parker House, 105 Sunset Avenue.

“I aim to show that Tindale does, in fact, possess the necessary resources to account for these supposed lacunae by calling attention to his insights on and cultivation of the dialogic model of argument,” says Morris.