Strategic Rhetorical Language in the Argument Between the Biological versus Sociological Etiology of

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Strategic Rhetorical Language in the Argument
Between the Biological versus Sociological
Etiology of Homosexuality

• John Martin
• Rhetoric of Science Technology
• December 10, 2007

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Topic Interest

• Its All About Me!

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Are people born wicked, or do they have
wickedness thrust upon them?
Glenda, in Wicked
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Are people born homosexual, or do they have
homosexuality thrust upon them?
John 1210, in ENG 515
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The Discussion

• Biologists
• Innateness/Genetics
• Episodic / empiricism
• Kinsey (1948)
• Hooker (1957)
• Swaab (1990)
• Allen (1990)
• LeVay (1991)
• Kallman (1952)
• Bailey Pillard (1991)
• Dean Hamer (1993)

• Sociologists
• Learned/Environment
• Sweeping / narrative
• Antiquity
• Psychoanalytic theories
• Parent Manipulation Theory
• Kin Selection Theory
• Planophysical Theory (Halperin)
• Justified Aberration (Foucault)

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The Players

The Attitudes of American

Sociologists toward Causal Biology
and Homosexuality Theories of Male
Homosexuality
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Strategic Rhetorical Language (Commonality)

• Jeanne Fahnestock noted that most arguments in
  the field cannot demonstrate certainty but only
  establish some degree of probability, a standard
  with which many in the field seem, perhaps
  unreasonably, uncomfortable, because it always
  leaves room for disagreement.

• Hedging
• Establishing reality structures
• Example
• Illustration

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Strategic Rhetorical Language (Ormbsee)

• Blog entry format
• Opening rebuttal paragraph
• Nine numbered list items for the case of biology
• Devices
• Metaphor
• Hedging
• Quasi-logical argument (transitive)
• Establishing a reality structure (example)

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Strategic Rhetorical Language (Ormbsee, Cont...)

• Hedging
• Jeanne Fahnestock
• Type 2 3 Have hedges, qualifications, or
  modalities that suggest the information
  conveyed is not indisputable.
• In opening paragraph
• Stage-setting metaphor (simile)
• Genes act in cascades, more like a recipe than a
  blueprint.
• In nine supporting points
• Zoological data indicates that nearly all bird
  and mammal species have individuals in their
  population with preferences for sex with
• colleagues found an area on gay mens
  x-chromosome that appeared to be passed on
  through the mothers line.
• The most likely hypothesis from this as it now
  stands and as we understand fetal development
  now, is that when a child

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Strategic Rhetorical Language (Ormbsee, Cont...)

• Quasi-logical argument (transitive)
• Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca
• Transitive Because one set of relationships
  holds another relationship follows
• "Nearly all bird and mammal species have
  individuals in their population with preferences
  for sex with members of their own sex."

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Strategic Rhetorical Language (Ormbsee, Cont...)

• Establishing reality structures (Hauser)
• Illustration the use of a particular case to
  provide support to an already established
  regularity
• In the late 1990s, a group of scientists found
  that the ratio of the finger length of the ring
  finger to the index finger was the same between
  straight men and gay women and between gay men
  and straight women. The significance of this
  study is that we know very much about how finger
  lengths develop (the gene cascades that stop and
  start finger development in utero), and so given
  the corresponding ratios across sexual
  orientations, this indicates again a
  developmental component to homo-sexuality.

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Strategic Rhetorical Language (Engle et al.)

• Paper format
• IMRAD
• Most hedging late in the paper
• Devices
• Hedging
• Visual parallelism
• Establishing a reality structure (example)
• The courtly style

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Strategic Rhetorical Language (Engle et al.,
Cont)

• Hedging
• In the Results and Discussion sections
• Apparently, the essentialist perspective held by
  these sociologists favors the view that biology
  and environment work in tandem during the
  developmental
• The majority of respondents now view biology
  as at least playing some role in the causation of
  male homosexuality.
• In retrospect, respondents could have been
  offered a combination model

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Strategic Rhetorical Language (Engle et al.,
Cont...)

• Visual Parallelism
• Jeanne Fahnestock, Verbal and Visual Parallelism
• Deliberate visual deployment can facilitate
  making inferences from the images their
  arrangements constituting an argument.
• Accomplished in this article through the use of

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Strategic Rhetorical Language (Engle et al.,
Cont...)

• The table!
• In the Introduction
• Tabular results of 1995 study There is no such
  survey comparable to this one to tell if new
  research has led to a shift in attitudes.
• In the Results and again in the Discussion
• Tables with new data, in similar format.
• The constituted argument through visual
  parallelism We have filled the aforementioned
  gap for you.

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Strategic Rhetorical Language (Engle et al.,
Cont...)

• Establishing reality structures (Hauser)
• Example the use of particular cases to make a
  generalization possible
• Posit in Discussion section A hybrid model is
  emerging that includes all the elements of both
  essentialism and constructionism, i.e., genetic
  predisposition, clusters of physiological
  factors, and social factors throughout the life
  cycle.
• Sayer (1997)
• Conrad (1996)
• Textbook inclusion of theory

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Strategic Rhetorical Language (Engle et al.,
Cont...)

• The courtly style
• Robert Hariman (as discussed in Hauser)
• Those who are courtiers strive to be in
  proximity with the monarch because that is a sign
  of power.
• It is also noteworthy that this Combination
  Theory is also now being espoused by some of the
  major textbooks in sociology. For example,
  Macionis Sociology, the dominate text since the
  early 1990s, states Mounting evidence supports
  the conclusion that sexual orientation is rooted
  in biology, although it is likely that society as
  well as biology plays a part in guiding sexual
  orientation Thus the task of explaining sexual
  orientation is extremely complex.

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Strategic Rhetorical Language Summary

• Biological and Sociological
• Conversing in the room for disagreement
• Hedging
• Establishing reality structures (example and
  illustration)
• Biological
• Metaphor
• Quasi-logical arguments (transitive)
• Sociological
• Visual parallelism
• The courtly style

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The Rhetorical Future

• The conflict between biology and sociology is the
  bedrock of the nature/nurture divide. It is a
  divide between the social and the biological, and
  between sociologists and biologists and
  evolutionists. A divide has also separated
  sociology and psychology.
• This is not necessary, or advantageous. The
  varieties of approaches that exist imply that
  somewhere along the line, each field has
  something useful to say to the other.
• P.J. Brennan
• "Dumb questions - blustering hostility"
  Nature/nurture, the
• body and the sociology of child abuse

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A Little Holiday Rhetoric

• Wikipedia entry for Santa Clause