ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Some Remarks On Interrogativity And Argumentation

• by: Giovanni Gobber - Università Cattolica

1. Introduction
This paper presents some aspects of a theory in which argumentation – as a ‘verbal, social and rational activity’ (van Eemeren 2001: 11) – plays a role in the explanation of the question phenomenon. In fact in linguistic research two levels are usually taken into account – the level of propositional content and that of the illocution or pragmatic function combined with the speaker’s attitudes (Gobber 1999). In this contribution we argue that questions can have a further intrinsic (natural, prototypical) component as a pragma‑dialectical move. This move is intended as a (part of a) dialogue that appears at some stage of a critical discussion (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004: 57-68). This level should be taken into account to explain the functioning of questions in verbal communication.
In fact, the classical rhetoric tradition is interested mainly in non-prototypical uses of interrogative structures such as the so-called rhetorical questions (interrogations, see Quintilianus, Institutio Oratoria, IX, 2, 7-16). This tradition considers nearly always monological texts whose goal is to draw the hearer’s attention, to gain his consent, to dissuade or to persuade him according to the speaker’s intention (‘dicendo tenere hominum mentis, adlicere voluntates, impellere quo velit, unde autem velit deducere’, Cicero, De oratore, I, 30).
This is not the natural, prototypical functioning of interrogatives as questions, i.e. as dialogical moves aiming at a verbal reply. As Edmondson 1981:196 puts it, ‘interrogativisation is a grammatical reflection of the interactional purpose of the language system’. Their role as requests for a verbal reply is relevant for the purposes of a dialogue in which the interlocutors’ task is to reach an agreement on a standpoint in a reasonable way. From this dialogical perspective interrogative structures can be observed both as “real” questions and as moves of another, i.e. non prototypical function.

2. Interrogatives and questions
Let us consider first the difference between interrogatives and questions. First we take into account the main pragmatic functions of the general type “questions”. Other uses of interrogatives which are relevant for critical discussion are described in a sketchy way.
Questions should be kept qualitatively distinct from interrogative structures. The latter are items and patterns of a given language, whereas the former are text sequences (Rigotti 1993), i.e. “moves” in a dialogue or in a monologue.
There is a “many-many relation” (Gatti 1992) between interrogative structures and questions. Of course, the most typical use of interrogatives is that of making questions.

As text sequences, questions have a propositional content and a pragmatic function (Stati 1990). Two sorts of propositional content are generally considered. Their structure results from the unknown element they exhibit. According to the sort of propositional content, two types of semantic structures are then distinguished. If the content calls for verification, a propositional question is given (i.e. “Yes-No Question” or “alternative Question”) and the propositional content has the cognitive status of an assumption (Alexius Meinong called it Annahme: see Meinong 1910). If the content calls for interpretation of (a) variable(s), an x-question (wh-question) is given and the propositional content has the semantic status of an open proposition. It has been observed that
[…] we can assume that the listener has understood the question if he knows what kind of information must be given as an answer – though, perhaps, he has no such information at hand. In other words, the listener understands the question if he can characterize correctly the semantical scheme of the answer (Padučeva 1986: 374).

X-questions have a premise (a propositional content condition), a “datum” (the propositional content) and an “obiectum quaestionis” (the range of the variable in the content) (Ajdukiewicz 1926/27).

In a dialogue questions are posed with a specific illocution. A bundle of illocutions is also possible (‘amalgame pragmatique’, Stati 1990). Specific illocutions can be traced back to two generic ones: most questions require an answer, and some of them can get the answer from the same questioner (e.g. the so-called expository questions). But there are also questions which do not wait for a verbal reply, although an answer is still possible and accepted. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – A Normative Reconstruction Of Arguments From Reasonableness In The Justification Of Judicial Decisions

• by: Eveline T. Feteris - University of Amsterdam

1. Introduction
In the law arguments from reasonableness play an important role. Judges often refer to reasonableness in ‘hard cases’ where there is a tension between the requirement of formal justice to treat like cases alike and the requirement of equity (or substantial justice) to do justice in accordance with the particularities of the concrete case. In such situations judges often use an argument from reasonableness to justify that an exception should be made to a general rule for the concrete case. However, the question arises how judges must account for the way in which they use their discretionary space in a situation in which they depart from the literal meaning of a general rule and establish the meaning of the rule for the concrete case on the basis of considerations of reasonableness and fairness. The central question I will answer in this paper is what an adequate justification based on an argument from reasonableness exactly amounts to from the perspective of the application of law in a rational legal discussion.
Although arguments from reasonableness are considered to be an important form of argumentation to defend a judicial decision in a hard case, in the legal literature little attention has been paid to the standards for argumentation underlying the justification of such a decision. Insight into such standards is important from the perspective of the rationality of the application of law because only on the basis of such standards it can be established whether the judge has used his discretionary power in an acceptable way. In order to establish the standards for an adequate use of arguments from reasonableness, I will develop an argumentation model that can be used for the analysis and evaluation of arguments from reasonableness.
In this paper I will proceed as follows. First in (2) I will discuss the legal background of the use of arguments from reasonableness and fairness and I will establish under what conditions they form an acceptable justification of a judicial decision. Then, in (3) I will develop an argumentation model for the analysis and evaluation of legal arguments from reasonableness to be able to make the underlying choices and assumptions explicit. In (4) I will apply this argumentation model to an example from Dutch law in which this form of argumentation is used and establish in what respects it can be considered an acceptable contribution to a rational legal discussion.

2. The role of arguments from reasonableness in a legal discussion
Judges use an argument from reasonableness to justify that in a concrete situation an exception should be made to a legal rule to avoid an unacceptable result. The need for an argument from reasonableness for this purpose can already be found in the classical literature with Aristotle who claims that an argument from ‘equity’ can be used as an argument to make an exception to application of a universal legal rule in a concrete case if this would yield un unacceptable result. A judge is allowed to correct the law on the basis of ‘equity’ if it would be unjust because of its generality. According to Aristotle, in such cases equity amounts to justice to correct the injustice that would be caused by strict application of a universal rule in a concrete case.[i]
A similar view is defended by Perelman (1979) who argues that the requirement of reasonableness is a requirement for the judge to apply the law in a just way, that is the requirement to treat like cases alike und unlike cases differently. This may result in an obligation for the judge not to apply a legal rule if application would be incompatible with the rational goal of the rule. A rational legislator can never have intended that a rule would be applied that would lead to a result that would conflict with the goal of the rule. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Investigations And The Critical Discussion Model

• by: J. Anthony Blair - University of Windsor

1. Introduction: The alleged scope of the Critical Discussion model
This paper is an investigation of the scope of the Pragma-Dialectical theory of argumentation, and in particular of its ingredient concept of a Critical Discussion (see van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1984, 1992, 2004). The Pragma-Dialectical theory is explicitly designed to apply to argumentation aimed at the rational resolution of a difference of opinion, what Walton and Krabbe (1995) call “persuasion dialogues.” On the face of it, there are other uses of argument besides attempting to resolve disagreements, for example, to inquire about what is true. But the proponents of Pragma-Dialectics seem either to regard that theory has having universal application or to regard all uses of argument as reducible to disagreement-resolution argumentation. The evidence for this claim is found in their application of a central component of their theory, the model of a Critical Discussion.

A “Critical Discussion,” as that term is defined in the Pragma-Dialectical theory, is a technical concept – a term of art (hence here capitalized, as is ‘Pragma-Dialectics’ and its cognates, for the same reason). The Pragma-Dialectical Critical Discussion is an ideal model of a discussion between two parties with a difference of opinion who agree to use arguments and follow an instrumentally rational procedure in doing so to try to resolve their difference. The model aims to specify the conditions that an actual argumentative exchange would satisfy if the parties were orderly and reasonable. They would order their discussion in the way best designed to resolve their disagreement, and they would carry out their discussion according to norms that make it rational for them to agree to (or to decline to) make concessions and to accept (or to reject) alleged implications. In the end, one party would convince the other to withdraw the commitment or the doubt that started the discussion, or the parties would remain in disagreement.
The model of a Critical Discussion is introduced as applicable to argumentation exchanges aimed at resolving a difference of opinion, but it is taken to apply generally, as the following passage in van Eemeren and Grootendorst’s latest statement of their theory (2004) makes clear:

The aim of a pragma-dialectical analysis is to reconstruct the process of resolving a difference of opinion occurring in an argumentative discourse or text. This means that argumentative reality is systematically analyzed from the perspective of a critical discussion…. What exactly does such an analytic reconstruction of an argumentative discourse or text entail?… In the reconstruction, the speech acts performed in the discourse or text are, where this is possible with the help of the ideal model of a critical discussion, analyzed as argumentative moves that are aimed at bringing about a resolution of a difference of opinion. (p. 95)
Notice the glissement that occurs in this text – not from one dialogue type to another (see Walton and Krabbe 1995, p.102) – but from one claim to another. The first sentence notes that a pragma-dialectical analysis focuses on the process of argumentation aimed at resolving a difference of opinion. But the very next sentence mentions subjecting “argumentative reality” – without qualification now – to analysis from the perspective of the Pragma-Dialectical model of a “critical discussion.” So argumentation aimed at resolving a difference of opinion is quickly identified with argumentative reality in general. An argumentative discourse or text, the next paragraph declares, is to be reconstructed, using the ideal model of a critical discussion. And what the authors are referring to is a Critical Discussion – the ideal construct they designed expressly to model argumentation aimed at rationally resolving a difference of opinion. So any argumentation text or discourse is to be modeled as if it were argumentation aimed at bringing about a resolution of a difference of opinion.
The text quoted above makes clear the commitment of the proponents of the Pragma-Dialectical theory. It has two related aspects. One is to assimilate all argumentation to opinion-difference resolution argumentation. The other is to treat the ideal model developed as an element of that theory as applicable to any argumentation whatever. From a perspective internal to the theory, these are two sides of the same commitment, but they are two distinct claims, since it is in principle possible for either to be false while the other is true. It is in principle possible that not all argumentation functions to resolve a difference of opinion yet the critical discussion model can be usefully applied generally. And it is in principle possible that all argumentation does boil down to attempts to resolve differences of opinion rationally yet the critical discussion model is flawed and does not apply as neatly as its proponents believe it does. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Informal Logic And Pragma Dialectics

• by: John Hoaglund - Christopher Newport University

Pragma-dialecticians are mainly Dutch argumentation theorists, while informal logicians are chiefly Canadian reformers of logic. The two groups are further differentiated in that pragma-dialecticians find their disciplinary home in speech communications while informal logicians dwell in philosophy. Yet these two groups, richly represented at this conference, have interacted productively for over twenty years. What is their common ground? And how did each come to find it?

Fallacies
Initially I believe the groups met over informal logical fallacies, although there is not the only way of describing their common ground. So let us glance at what informal logical fallacies are. A fallacy is a false belief held by one or more persons to be true, in other words, a mistaken belief. A school of American literary critics (the New School) held in the mid-twentieth century that you should not consult the intentions of the artist in evaluating an artwork, and that those who did so committed the intentional fallacy (Wimsatt & Beardsley 1954). But such a mistaken belief (if it is mistaken) is not yet a logical fallacy.
A logical fallacy is a mistake in reasoning (or arguing), and frequently the statement so inferred will be false. But this is not necessarily the case. It is simply unproven by these premises in this inference, yet might be proven by some other combination of premises and reasoning. The distinction of informal from formal logical fallacies takes us to the circumstances that motivated the rise of informal logic, so we must look at it more closely.
Formal logics offer us certain forms of inference or argument as valid, and the charm of a valid form (or indeed of formal logic itself) is that when you substitute appropriate (true) premises, you are assured of getting a true conclusion. In this sense valid forms have probative force – they contribute to proving conclusions. In some cases the form is a way of organizing certain complete statements, as in modus tollens; in others you have a small number of statement forms into which you substitute subject and predicate terms, as in the Aristotelian syllogism. A formal logical fallacy occurs when you substitute into an invalid form, one which will not prove a conclusion even when all of the premises are true. Examples are the fallacy of undistributed middle term in syllogistic logic, or negating the antecedent in propositional logic.
On the other hand an informal logical fallacy is a failed inference or argument whose fatal flaw is unrelated to any formal feature. Begging the question is an example, where we assume as true in a premise what we attempt to prove in the conclusion. The appeal to ignorance is another example, where we fallaciously claim that a conclusion is true because no one has disproved it. At this point a critic might object that we are mistaken in claiming that begging the question is unrelated to formal features. It involves the relation of premises to a conclusion, which is the form of an argument and hence a formal feature. But this an unhelpful way of speaking about arguments because the premise-conclusion relation is what constitutes an argument – without it, whatever use of language you have, it isn’t argument. And even if we accept that the premise-conclusion relation is a form, it differs from the forms of formal logics in having no probative force. So it is not a form in the sense that the forms of formal logics are forms.

Informal Logic
The great insight, which arose with the work of John Woods, Douglas Walton(1989), Ralph Johnson(1996), and J. Anthony Blair(Johnson 1996: 2-51) in the 1970s and 1980s, was that where there were informal logical fallacies, there was also an informal logic. Put differently, given that formal techniques are of little or no avail in analyzing informal fallacies, the techniques we develop for dealing with such informal logical fallacies will constitute an informal logic. To deal with them effectively would be to have criteria for identifying them, to understand why they are fallacious, and to be able to avoid them in one’s own reasoning and arguments. Informal has developed from little more than a list of fallacies, against which any given argument is checked, to a developed theory of argument in natural language and its appraisal.
So valuable is this insight that in my judgment we are today still in the early stages of exploring its implications. But a large part of its value at that time was its challenge to the accepted view among Anglo-American philosophers that classical (formal) logic and its progeny are the only logics worth serious attention. The problem with that view is that classical logic was developed by Frege(1986) and Russell(Whitehead & Russell 1927) with the goal of deducing all true propositions of arithmetic as theorems from a small number of axioms, and beyond subsequent applications in computer languages and work in AI, it has proved to be of little use.
The conviction that classical logic is the gold standard is present in Susan Haack’s discussion of all other logics as either rivals to (intuitionist), extensions of (Lewis’ modal systems), or deviants from (Lukasiewisz’s 3-valued) classical logic. Haack’s is a discussion (1974)for which informal logic does not yet exist. Classical logic still prevails among professional philosophers in the U.S.A., where mastery of its propositional and predicate calculi is a leaving requirement of many better graduate programs in philosophy (e.g. according to websites visited in April 2006, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Yale, Harvard, Berkeley). The irony of this is that these budding professional philosophers are force-fed a logic they will almost never use in their work, unless they become mathematical logicians. Witness W.O. Quine, regarded by some as the most important logician of the later twentieth century. The techniques he developed for classical logic in Mathematical Logic and Set Theory and Its Logic are scarcely to be found applied at all in works like From a Logical Point of View or Word and Object, which established his reputation as an ontologist and philosopher of language. It isn’t that in these works classical logic does no heavy lifting but that it does almost no lifting at all.
So it is perhaps not surprising that early steps toward developing informal logic moved tentatively away from classical logic and its progeny rather than breaking off decisively with it. In stimulating, carefully argued, and influential papers on specific informal fallacies in the 1970s and 1980s (Woods & Walton 1989) a variety of logics, some clearly formal, were drawn on. The debate this approach provoked at the first International Conference of ISSA (1986) was directed not so much at the reliance on formal logics as the plethora of logics drawn on. As Grootendorst and van Eemeren put it, we should not have to learn a complete new logic for each individual informal fallacy. A more parsimonious theory was desirable, and undergraduate teaching would require a simpler approach. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Women In Combat: Arguments Against Military Women In Combat Through Media Depictions Of Jessica Lynch And Lynndie England

• by: Gerard Hauser - University of Colorado at Boulder & Virginia C. Sanprie - University of Colorado at Boulder

One in seven U.S. military personnel currently serving in Iraq is female. As of June 2003, women represented roughly 15% of active duty armed forces (Cook, 2003; Iskander, 2004).[i] Women’s presence in the military is a logistical necessity, although one that continues to be defined by military dictates in part shaped by public sentiment. In early 2005, Army Secretary Francis Harvey elected to maintain current military regulations denying women access to what were considered “combat” positions, a decision that met with debate regarding the “non-linear” reality of modern warfare (Bender, 2005a; Bender, 2005b). Long-range missiles, insurgent attacks, and roadside bombs do not target the “front lines” alone, making the notion of a front line as obsolete as the belief that because they do not occupy what are designated “direct ground combat positions,” women are distanced from fighting. The reality of modern warfare has bearing beyond the battlefield however, including an impact on the stories of women in the military and the way in which those stories are told.

The stories of Private First Class Jessica Lynch and Private First Class Lynndie England, two soldiers whose names and faces became famous during the U.S. war with Iraq, are examples of how the current context involving the shifting reality of modern warfare presents unique opportunity to study public arguments that include an element we describe as the free radical.[ii] As women who traversed traditional gender boundaries and faced situations considered far outside stereotypical feminine experiences, we argue Lynch and England are instantiations of the free radical “gender” in the context of the military. When it comes to the military, and specifically military roles such as positions in combat and POW prisons, or those stereotypically understood as far-removed from traditional feminine spheres, gender is a free radical, an element not entirely familiar or traditionally associated with the male-dominated institution. It is unstable because it does not draw from established scripts and in fact contradicts many long-held arguments against women’s participation in the military, combat, and war. The presence of atypical gender (that of woman) in combat and in the military, consequently, produces various possibilities for understanding a story and argument, as the free radical element of gender bonds to frames.
To account for the free radical, or explain this unusual and unfamiliar aspect of both women’s stories, the narratives of Lynch and England were framed in a variety of ways through the media’s telling of their incidents. The experiences of Lynch and England differ drastically, as does the media coverage of both women’s stories. We bring the concepts of framing and free radical together and explore their mutual impact through an analysis of their respective mediated stories. Such an analysis reveals that in the context of women in the military, the free radical gender often is controlled through traditional and familiar scripts, as an analysis of the Lynch story reveals. However, as an analysis of England’s narrative illustrates, those stories for which there are no traditional scripts on which to rely send us scrambling for a means to frame the story, tame the free radical, and allow for easier consumption and understanding. We explore the concepts of framing and free radical, as well as apply an understanding of their interactions to the stories of Lynch and England, and conclude with a discussion of the impact of such an analysis on the study of argument.

1. Framing and Free Radicals
Framing is a familiar concept to argumentation scholars, although its continuum ranges from discourse analysis to media analysis. In this paper, frames refer to “principles of selection, emphasis and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens and what matters” (Gitlin, 1980, p. 6). Entman (1993, p. 52) tells us, “To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communication text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation.”
Frames are essential for public arguments since they select and give salience to certain aspects of perceived reality that cue a particular response. They define the problem and establish its terms for resolution (Gusfield, 1981). However, not all frames are equal. Their chance of catching on depends on how they comport with what we know about the world or how they resonate with other frames we are used to and employ regularly to make sense of our experiences.
Two criteria particularly relevant for our analysis are narrative fidelity and empirical credibility (“Frame Analysis,” n.d.). Narrative fidelity refers to the congruence of a frame with one’s life experiences (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Oberschall, 1996). Sometimes the frame may require little or no explanation. Employees whose firm has filed for bankruptcy will easily catch onto the idea that this jeopardizes their pension fund. An invisible threat, such as the firm’s loss of market shares, may require more elaborate mediation of the pension frame for employees to regard the firm’s performance as threatening their retirement plans.
Although narrative fidelity provides the strongest possibility for catching on, a frame that does not relate to personal experiences still can have force if it fits with real world events as we know them, or has empirical credibility (“Frame Analysis,” n.d.). When a country is directly attacked, media presentations will help citizens not directly struck to comprehend the event through comparable personal experiences of self-defense. For example, the 9/11 terrorist attack on the U.S. rendered the self-defense frame more credible than, say, the frame of legal redress, even though most U.S. citizens were not directly hit.
The concept of free radical is borrowed from chemistry. Atoms seek stability, which is achieved when an outer shell’s capacity for electrons is full. Often atoms complete their outer shell by sharing an electron with another atom to form a molecule. As long as bonds don’t split in a way that leaves an electron unpaired, the molecule is stable. When an electron is unpaired, however, it becomes a free radical. Free radicals are extremely volatile; they react swiftly to bond with other compounds in order to regain stability. Free radicals, then, are highly reactive molecules that actively seek stability (“Understanding Free Radicals and Antioxidants,” 2006).
As we apply the notion of free radical to argument in this paper, it denotes a highly unusual and therefore unstable element within a story or argument that seeks a stabilizing bond. How an argument is framed may exacerbate the free radical’s instability. That is, as with free radicals, when the dominant element of a story violates its frame, it may accelerate the search for a stabilizing bond. This element’s volatility and bonding strength will depend on the frames it interacts with, each of which is socially constructed to consume the unfamiliar. In the sections that follow, we apply our conception of free radical to the notion of framing and explain how these concepts interact, and with what result, within the mediated stories of Lynch and England. Read more

ISSA Proceedings 2006 – Pragma-Dialectics And A Unified Understanding Of Interpersonal Disagreement

• by: Richard Friemann - York University

1. The Demand/ Withdraw Pattern and Serial Argument
The demand/ withdraw communication pattern (D/W) is a familiar concept in the marital interaction literature (Watzlawick et al., 1967; Christensen & Heavey, 1990, 1993; Gottman, 1994; Canary et al., 1995; Heavey et al., 1995; Caughlin & Vangelisti, 1999, 2000; Bradbury et al., 2000; Caughlin, 2002; Caughlin & Huston, 2002). Johnson and Roloff (2000a) link D/W to the concept of a serial argument through the notion of an argumentative role. Their interest lies in the extent to which occupying different interaction roles leads to different perceptions about the resolvability of serial arguments. For example, might it be the case that a partner who is in the initiator role in a serial argument is more likely to believe that the argument is resolvable than the partner who occupies the resistor role? The link to D/W is achieved when Johnson and Roloff (Ibid., 3) claim that one way the initiator and resistor roles can be enacted is through the embodiment of D/W.
Of course, pointing this out is not to claim a particularly strong conceptual connection between D/W and serial argument. Serial arguments may not involve D/W at all; for example, neither Trapp and Hoff (1985) nor Trapp (1990) mention it. However, a defensible view of D/W is that it implies serial arguing. When Johnson and Roloff (1998, 3) discuss the process of arguing in serial arguments, they mention three argument patterns that reduce the chances of reaching agreement, one of which is D/W.
Second, individuals may enact a demand-withdraw pattern (Christensen & Shenk, 1991). Sometimes, a complainant confronts another in a very direct and aggressive way, and the perpetrator responds by withdrawing from the conversation or by becoming defensive. In effect, by withdrawing, no resolution is reached, and the argument may reemerge at a later time. (My emphasis).

There is a question here about the motivational force of D/W, such that we can ask whether or not it is plausible to think that D/W typically occurs without serial arguing. The theoretical background of D/W (C.f. Bateson et al., 1956; Watzlawick et al., 1967; Jackson 1965a, 1965b) suggests that the relationship between D/W and the reemergence of the argument is stronger than a correlation (Cf. Friemann, 2005). From this older literature we can suppose a causal claim is being made for not only does it reduce the chances of a couple reaching agreement, but it more than likely causes the argument to reemerge at a later time. Such a claim is implicit in more recent statements like the following: “Also, recall that dissatisfied couples enact patterns of negativity, which are likewise attributed to global, stable, and internal properties of the partner or the relationship” (Canary et al., 1995, 121).
If it is acceptable to claim that a couple caught in a D/W pattern are motivated to continue to enact the pattern (ignoring for the moment the issue of just how the pattern ‘motivates’; but see Johnson and Roloff 2000a, for an interesting analysis of how this motivation may develop), then we might suppose that the subsequent argument episodes will somehow reflect the fact that they are the product of D/W.
What happens when we broaden the perspective from an argument episode to a serial argument? Caughlin and Huston (2002, 114) lay out the possibilities.
K. L. Johnson and Roloff (2000) suggest, for example, that engaging in positive behaviors during, after, and between serial arguments may be an effective way of coping with the otherwise deleterious effects of recurring arguments (My emphasis).

Caughlin and Huston, through Johnson and Roloff, are suggesting that after an argument episode partners may mediate the negative effect of D/W with positive behavior. We can understand this mediating process in two ways. First, imagine an argument episode has just ended involving D/W, other negative behaviors, but positive ones as well. Suppose that after a while one partner, call him Peter, engages in some positive behavior (perhaps the same kind of behavior he expressed in the argument or different ones) toward his partner, call her Martha. These post-argument positive acts may have the effect such that Martha reevaluates the negative behaviors she experienced in the argument episode. Second, the buffering effect could run in the other direction: Peter’s positive behaviors after an argument episode influences how Martha will think about the next argument episode. So even if Peter behaves negatively toward her the next time, she might not think that his negative actions are as significant as she might have, if he had not previously behaved positively toward her. In such a case, we are supposing that Peter’s positive actions are done between argument episodes. The two examples assume that whatever behavior was exchanged during the argument episode was not enough to ameliorate the negative effect of D/W. For only if that is the case does it make sense to discuss behavior that could be exchanged between episodes. This must be part of the account of how D/W causes serial arguing. Read more