Arguments, Conflicts, and Decisions - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 112

Chapter 7
Arguments, Conflicts, and Decisions

Fabio Paglieri

7.1 Introduction

In English, “to argue” has two very different meanings: on the one hand, it refers to
the practice of giving reasons for or against a certain position, thus submitting them
to intersubjective scrutiny; on the other hand, it indicates the act of verbally fighting
against an opponent, often viciously and with little or no exchange of reasons. Let
us label these two senses as, respectively, the rational and the polemical view of
argument. While different languages do not exactly share the same ambiguity, other
forms of polysemy are found in relation to arguments: for instance, the Italian noun
argomento either means “argument” in its rational sense (a concatenation of reasons
in favor of a conclusion), or it indicates instead a topic of discussion; in the latter
sense, it is often used to label such topic as inappropriate or dangerous, e.g., Non
è un bell'argomento (It is not a nice thing to discuss), Non tocchiamo l'argomento,
per favore! (Let us skip the issue, please!), È un argomento delicato (It is a sensitive
matter).
This tension between a rational and a polemical view of arguments is not just
a quirk of natural languages. On the contrary, we find it mirrored in different
theoretical perspectives on argumentation. In pragma-dialectics (van Eemeren and
Grootendorst 2004 ), a critical discussion is defined as an ideal model of argumen-
tative discourse, in which argumentation is directed at resolving a difference of
opinion through reasonable means: thus arguing is seen as a rational exercise to
remedy an intersubjective conflict. In sharp contrast, other argumentation scholars
(e.g., Goodwin 2007 ) emphasize that promoting conflict is the main functional effect
of arguing, whether or not the arguers intend it, and that sometimes conflict escalates