Recovering Argument (PDF)

Randall A. Lake is Associate Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, USA, where he also was Director of Debate from 1981-1990, and Director of Forensics from 1990-1994. Among other positions, he served on the NCA Committee on International Discussion and Debate from 1998-2002, organizing exchanges with teams from the United Kingdom, Japan, the Soviet Union, and Eastern European countries. He was editor-in-chief of Argumentation and Advocacy from 2004-2008 and associate editor of three previous Alta Conference volumes. His research has appeared in Argumentation and Advocacy, Argumentation, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Communication Monographs, Rhetoric & Public Affairs, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, and numerous edited collections. He also created and maintains asduniway.org, a website devoted to woman suffrage rhetoric, particularly that of Abigail Scott Duniway, of Oregon. He has received the NCA Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Dissertation Award (1982), the NCA Golden Anniversary Monograph Award for article of the year (1998), and the AFA Daniel Rohrer Research Award for article of the year (1998, 2016). His scholarship explores argumentation's cultural and civic functions and emphasizes difference in the context of social change, focusing particularly on Native American, feminist, and conservative rhetorics.