Argumentative Behaviour and Social Capital

One of the challenges related to discursive practices of argumentative agents is to know whether these interactions have an institutional effect. It is well known accepted that institutions have discourses and vocabularies that society uses to understand, interpret and socially construct itself and its demands. But, what happens when new discursive institutional practices emerge from the social structure and the interactions between agents? Why and how can these practices create new social life patterns for discursive agents of the civil society? What is the cause of this phenomenon and what are its effects in the (discourse’s) civil logic of an epoch? The field of argumentation theories has been unable to provide adequate answers to these questions. That is why, in the last decade, specialists working in the Spanish-speaking world have developed an innovative programme in the field of argumentation theories called “socio-institutional perspective”. This perspective -also known as “civil logic”- analyses discourse phenomena in the public sphere that cannot be explained with the tools of analysis that are characteristic of logic, dialectic or rhetoric. The objectives of the socio-institutional programme in the field of argumentation theories are: (1) to analyse the beliefs, values and attitudes that make sense of argumentative exchanges; (2) to examine the processes of belief induction and (3) to present argumentation as a type of practice related to public legitimation and acknowledgement. This paper will argue that there is a direct relationship between the collective rationality that is put into play by public argumentation and the processes of acquisition and production of social capital. In this presentation I will analyse the data of the parliamentary discourses that have taken place in Spain the last years. These data and discourses of the deliberations in the Spanish parliament will be used to illustrate and sustain the hypothesis according to which in argumentative processes intervene elements that are those of collective rationality which has the objective of producing (but also eliminating) social capital. Finally, argumentative behaviours that lead to the creation of social capital in the public sphere that have an optimum effect in socio-political and ethical terms will be identified, and also counter-examples will be provided to illustrate cases of argumentative behaviour that intend to harm and/or eliminate part of the social capital that exists in a community or institution.