Cognition and communication: A theory of discourse structures

This dissertation studies political discourse from a cognitive developmental perspective. Theories of cognitive development posit stages of reasoning, which are structurally coherent and which provide individuals with a logical framework for understanding their world and acting in it. Over the course of development, individuals pass through a series of progressively more sophisticated structures of reasoning. This development is contingent upon exposure to social environments that negate existing forms of reasoning and encourage cognitive growth. The current study posits that discourse, or face to face conversation with others, is a critical social facilitator of development, and that forms of discourse can be differentiated in terms of their structural sophistication in a way that parallels cognitive stages. The developmental theories of Piaget, Kohlberg, and Shawn Rosenberg, and the communicative action theory of Habermas, are integrated to elaborate forms of discourse and their relationship to one another and to subjective structures of reasoning.;This theory hypothesizes a bidirectional relationship between individual cognition and social discourse. On one hand, exposure to higher order discourses is necessary to stimulate cognitive development; therefore the quality of social environments can be evaluated in terms of the developmental opportunities they provide. In this respect, theories of liberal and deliberative democracy are evaluated for the kinds of discourse they encourage and therefore the forms of reasoning they will tend to produce among citizens. On the other hand, abstract forms of reasoning are necessary for individuals to participate adequately in higher order discourses. In this respect, the prospects for the widespread institutionalization of deliberative democracy in contemporary Western cultures are evaluated. Finally, two empirical studies of political deliberation are analyzed in order to differentiate forms of political discourse and to determine the conditions under which higher order discourses can occur. I find that higher order discourses are rare and difficult to facilitate among both university students engaged in political debate and adult subjects engaged in cooperative political deliberation.