Arguing In Two University Disciplines: A Toulminian Approach To Academic Argumentation In Discourse Studies And Biology

Toulmin (2001) claims that the invention of the disciplines, a change began in the 17th century, involved both intellectual and institutional factors. Intellectually, the use of Cartesian geometry as a model of knowledge provided the foundations; institutionally, the division of labour in professions and disciplines did the rest. However, this change occurred slowly and only reached its apogee during the 20th century, with the formation of what Snow (2012) recognizes as the two cultures: the Humanities and the Natural Sciences. Focusing on this distinction, we aim at reflecting on the written argumentation in two areas (Discourse Studies and Biology) from the Toulminian perspective. In this regard, we believe that arguments and the ways of writing them are so deeply tied to disciplines that it is essential to know and to recognize how these processes operate in order to understand the logic of these fields. In fact, the particularities of each discipline are always present when writing and arguing. All texts belong, at least, to a genre and to a discipline; as such, they use particular rhetorical moves that vary from one community to another and from one type of speech to another. This work, rethinks Toulmin's argumentative model (2003, 2001) and seeks to give an account of the specificities of written arguments in two Argentine university seminars (Discourse Studies and Biology). Thus, after completing field work that included, during a semester, participant observation of classes, interviews with teachers and students, and the collection of courses' documents (written examinations and other written assignments), we distinguish four aspects that characterize the argumentation in the fields of the Humanities and the Natural Sciences: (1) the degrees of formality; (2) the degrees of precision; (3) the ways of resolution; and (4) the goals of the argumentation. These aspects allow us to complex the Toulminian model and to think its uses, applications and limits in the disciplines.