ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the failure of communication across disciplinary divides and provides a framework for the analysis and evaluation of deliberative practice, usable by analysts of political discourse in various disciplines. It suggests that deliberation fundamentally involves the critical testing of alternative proposals for action, followed by choice among those proposals that have withstood critical testing, as a basis for decision and action. The chapter discusses the argumentation with a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) perspective and indicates how a dialectical approach to argumentation can contribute to CDA concerns ideology and power. It also discusses the aspects under the broad umbrella of 'framing theory'. Politics is about making choices and collective decisions about what action to take in response to a situation. Because of fundamental differences of interests, purposes and values, and different ways of interpreting the situation, making collective decisions is almost invariably an adversarial process in which participants will advocate conflicting lines of action.
