Argumentative interactions in emerging fields: How institutional multiplicity sparks new meaning systems

The paper investigates how an incipient meaning system gets formed in emerging fields. The variety of actors typical of these settings give rise to a condition of institutional multiplicity that entails relevant discursive tensions. We explore these tense interactions by means of Toulmin’s (1958) argumentation theory applied to the earliest debate occurring between actors involved in the emerging Italian drone field. This approach allows zooming in the ways in which different actors rhetorically defend their positions and advance claims that progressively give structure to the field’s meaning system. The discursive elements of different arguments get intertwined when those different actors debate about the same issues. The findings suggest that the emerging meaning system of the drone field is constructed along four main dimensions: the ontological, the pragmatic, the normative, and the prospective. The ontological meaning dimension provides the foundation to the others and, according to the different uses of arguments made by field actors, it may feed potential contradictions or foster overall convergence between them.