Taking It to the Streets: The Rhetorical Mobility of Expert Arguments in Public Settings

Abstract

This essay argues that experts are capable of accessing public debates if they construct arguments that have an argument purpose relevant to public problems. Taking a rhetorical approach to design theory, I argue that experts can redesign spaces for deliberative argument by contesting infrastructural discourse to open up new contours for deliberative engagement. In the case of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment (UPHE), expertise is used as a public resource for penetrating layers of infrastructure that have excluded values of health from industrial visions. The discourse of health has rhetorical mobility because it is capable of transcending limitations of deliberative debates, inviting public participants to see public problems through a new lens.

Key Words:

• argument from authority
• design
• expertise
• health
• rhetorical mobility