Investigating agonism in linguistics

Argument plays an important role in (applied) linguistics and is one of the mechanisms by which the cognitive content of the discipline is developed. This role has been reflected in the recent development of specific sections in some journals for series of argumentative or agonistic articles. However, concern has also been expressed about the potential of agonistic argument to damage the human community of current and potential (applied) linguists. This paper reports on a study into three arguments represented by articles which have appeared in these sections and uses a variety of concordancing tools to explore how such articles differ both from other articles that appear in the same journal and from other articles written by the same authors. The research concludes that agonistic articles address important issues but that they display more negative attitudes towards other members of the discourse community than non-agonistic articles do. There is a danger that the arguments may damage the community of (applied) linguists.