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The Journal of the American Forensic Association Volume 14, 1978 - Issue 3
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Original Articles

A Reformulation of the Concept of Argument: The Constructivist/Interactionist Foundations of a Sociology of Argument

Charles Arthur Willard Mr. Willard is Assistant Professor of Speech, Dartmouth College. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Speech Communication Association convention in, December of 1975. The author thanks Joseph W. Wenzel, Daniel J. O'Keefe, Robert L. Scott, and Wayne Brockriede for their many helpful criticisms of the original paper.
Pages 121-140 | Published online: 23 Jan 2018

  • The constructivist (personal construct theory) view is articulated by George A. Kelly , A Theory of Personality: The Psychology of Personal Constructs (New York: W. W. Norton, 1955); D. Bannister , Ed., Perspectives in Personal Construct Theory (New York: Academic Press, 1970); D. Bannister and J. M. M. Mair , eds., The Evaluation of Personal Constructs (New York: Academic Press, 1968); and Fay Fransella and Don Bannister , A Manual for Repertory Grid Techniques (New York: Academic Press, 1977). The structural/developmental theories on which my view of constructivism is based are those of Piaget and Werner. Piaget's works are much too extensive to list here, but see his The Construction of Reality in, the Child (New York: Basic Books, 1954); The Mechanisms of Perception (London: Routledge, 1969); Psychology and Epistemology: Towards a Theory of Knowledge (New York: Viking, 1970); and Insights and IIlusions of Philosophy (New York: World, 1971); and, with Berbel Inhelder , The Growth of Logical Thinking from Childhood to Adolescence (New York: Basic Books, 1958). See also Heinz Werner , The Comparative Psychology of Mental Development (New York: International Universities Press, 1948), The interactionist perspective, of course, was formulated in the works of Cooley and Mead. See Charles H. Cooley , Human Nature and the Social Order (New York: Scribner's, 1922); and George Herbert Mead , The Philosophy of the Present (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1932); Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934); and Philosophy of the Act (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938). See also Herbert Blumer , Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1969); and the articles contained in Jerome Manis and Bernard Meitzer , eds., Symbolic Interaction: A Reader in, Social Psychology , 2nd ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1972); and Gregory Stone and Harvey Farberman , eds., Social Psychology Through Symbolic Interaction (Waltham: Ginn/ Xerox, 1973). See also Bernard Meitzer , et al. , Symbolic Interaction: Genesis, Varieties, and Criteria (London: Routledge and Kegan-Paul, 1975). Interactionism may be productively construed as an elaboration upon constructivist themes (specifically, George Kelly's notion of “sociality”). People are seen as attempting to share privately construed worlds through social interaction.
  • Jesse G. Delia , “Constructivism and the Study of Human Communication,” Quarterly Journal of Speech , 63 (1977), 67. See also his “A Constructivist Analysis of the Concept of Credibility,” Quarterly Journal of Speech , 62 (1976), 361–375. Delia and his associates use the term “constructivism” in a special way which differs in some important respects from its use in this essay. Their constructivist paradigm is a far-reaching extension and elaboration of Kelly's basic view, wedded to the Wernerian developmental framework. This orientation would lead them, I think, to eschew Mead's view of mind as emergent from social processes and his account of the development of mind and self. I am using the term in its more traditional sense, viz. in the sense in which Piaget often is called a “constructivist.”
  • Ibid. See also Bruce Aune , Knowledge, Mind, and Nature (New York: Random House, 1967), especially chapters One and Two.
  • Charles Arthur Willard , “On The Utility of Descriptive Diagrams for the Analysis and Criticism of Arguments,” Communication Monographs , 43 (1976), 308–319.
  • There is little question that Aristotle conceptualized it this way. See, for example, the definitive analysis by Takatsura Ando , Aristotle's Theory of Practical Cognition (Sakyo Kyoto, Japan: Ando, 1958). This interpretation is also supported by J. I. Beare , Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition from Alcmaeon to Aristotle (Oxiord: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1906); A. K. Griffin , Aristotle's Psychology of Conduct (London: Williams and Norgate, 1931); and Francois Nuyens , L' Evolution de la Psychologie a'Aristotle (Paris: Louvain, 1948). The syllogism was a cognitive model and the study of formal logic was a study of an important kind of human thought. The “thingness” or objectification of the syllogism is lucidly described (and, unfortunately, illustrated) by Jan Lukasiewicz , Aristotle's Syllogistic from the Standpoint of Modern Formal Logic , 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1957); Delton Thomas Howard , Analytical Syllogistics (Evanston: Northwestern University Studies in the Humanities, No. 15, 1946); and more recently in Storrs McCall , Aristotle's Modal Syllogisms (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing, 1963); and Lynn E. Rose , Aristotle's Syllogistic (Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas, 1968). Most treatments of Aristotle's enthymeme have similarly objectified the “unit of proof.” Most theorists have taken what Alfred Schutz has called the “Natural Attitude” in describing enthymematic reasoning. See Schutz's The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. George Walsh and Frederick Lehnert (Evans ton: Northwestern University Press, 1967), pp. 78–83. The natural attitude is the view of the situated ego that accepts as unquestionable the world of “facts” which surrounds it. That reality manifests itself in the same ways for everyone is a taken-for-granted awareness; it is a presuppositional framework which allows people to deal with daily life as if it were unproblematic. It seems fair to argue that theorists who have dealt with the enthymeme have regarded it from the natural attitude: they have conceptualized it as a unit of proof which entails a sharing of perceptions; and whether or not that sharing is problematic has not been treated as an essential problem in understanding the enthymeme. See Lloyd F. Bitzer , “Aristotle's Enthymeme Revisited,” Quarterly Journal of Speech , 45 (1959), 399–408. The varied approaches reviewed by Bitzer were later attacked in Jesse G. Delia , “The Logic Fallacy, Cognitive Theory, and the Enthymeme: A Search for the Foundations of Reasoned Discourse,” Quarterly Journal of Speech , 56 (1970), 140–148. We might draw from Delia's criticisms the notion that traditional conceptions of the enthymeme have not been especially useful to rhetorical critics insofar as they have encouraged critics to attempt to analyze the “unit of proof” apart from the social perspectives of the situated social actors who use enthymemes.
  • This is illustrated clearly in William J. McGuire , “A Syllogistic Analysis of Cognitive Relationships,” in Carl I. Hovland and Milton J. Rosenberg , eds., Attitude Organization and Change (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960), pp. 65–111. “'Wishful thinking,” in McGuire's system, is understood to be a contaminating variable which works in opposition to syllogistic form. McGuire's analysis, then, is a faithful rendition of Aristotle's view. See Charles Arthur Willard , “The Conception of the Auditor in Aristotelian Rhetorical Theory,” Diss. Illinois 1972, Chapters Three and Four. Aristotle's influence, in sum, has not been especially beneficial insofar as his system has prompted theorists to explain human thought along formalistic lines. Excepting McGuire, perhaps the best illustration of this trend appears in R. P. Abelson and M. J. Rosenberg , “Symbolic Psycho-logic: A Model of Attitudinal Cognition,” Behavioral Science , 3 (1958), 1–13.
  • An instructive example is Erwin Bettinghaus , “Structure and Argument,” in Gerald R. Miller and Thomas R. Nilsen , eds., Perspectives in Argumentation (Chicago: Scott, Foresman, 1966), pp. 130–155. This objectification of argument is characteristic of most of the older approaches to argumentation theory. A representative example of this older view is Glen E. Mills , Reason in Controversy , 2nd ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1968), pp. 16, 42, 110, 184.
  • See the critique in Willard, note 4. This is not, of course, an attack upon Toulmin's system per se. See Stephen Toulmin , The Uses of Argument (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958). This criticism is aimed at theorists in the speech communication discipline who have employed the diagrammatic procedure in the natural attitude. The earliest statement of this position appeared in Douglas Ehninger and Wayne Brockriede , “Toulmin on Argument: An Interpretation and Application,” Quarterly Journal of Speech , 46 (1960), 44. Two typical applications of Toulmin's layout appear in Gary L. Cronkhite , Persuasion: Speech and Behavioral Change (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969); and Kenneth E. Andersen , Persuasion Theory and Practice (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1971), pp. 136–137.
  • A lucid review of these criticisms appears in Daniel J. O'Keefe , “Logical Empiricism and the Study of Human Communication,” Speech Monographs , 42 (1975), 169–183. Logical positivism or empiricism has generally been abandoned by philosophers of science. See Frederick Suppe , “The Search for Philosophic Understanding of Scientific Theories,” in Frederick Suppe , Ed., The Structure of Scientific Theories (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1974), p. 119. One important positivistic assumption, operationism, has led argumentation theorists and rhetorical critics to conceptualize 'argument” by “operatlonalizing” it in terms of syllogisms, enthymemes, Toulmin diagrams, or other “units of reasoning.” The net effect has been circular: we define an idea with respect to a model, and the model in turn has become the basis for subsequent theory development. The model serves as an unquestioned background awareness for the theorist. Attacks on the cperationist view have been trenchant to say the least. See Paul Feyerabend , “Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge,” in Michael Radner and Stephen Winokur , eds., Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. IV: Theories and Methods of Physics and Psychology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1970), pp. 17–130. Many alternatives to operationism have been advanced. See, or example, Norman K. Denzin , The Research Act: A Theoretical Introduction to Sociological Methods (Chicago: Aldine, 1970); and Michael Phillipson , “Phenomenology, Philosophy, and Sociology,” as well as many of the other articles in Paul Filmer , et al. , New Directions in, Sociological Theory (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1973), pp. 127ff.
  • The work of Erving Goffman has been especially influential. See, for example, his The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday, 1959); Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction (Indianapolis: Bcbbs-Merrill, 1961); Asylums (New York: Anchor Books, 1961); Behavior in Public Places (New York: Free Press, 1963); Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behavior (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967); Relations in Public (New York: Harper and Row, 1971); and Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1974). Developments within the speech communication discipline are represented by David L. Swanson and Jesse G. Delia, The Nature of Human Communication (Chicago: Science Research Associates, 1976); and Jesse G. Delia , Daniel J. O'Keefe , and Barbara J. O'Keefe , A Perspective on Communication Theory (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, forthcoming).
  • For instance, Leonard C. Hawes , “Elements of a Model for Communication Processes,” Quarterly Journal of Speech , 59 (1973), 11–21; Lawrence Grossberg and Daniel J. O'Keefe , “Presuppositions, Conceptual Foundations, and Communication Theory: On Hawes' Approach to Communication,” Quarterly Journal of Speech , 61 (1975), 195–208; and Hawes'reply , “A Response to Grossberg and O'Keefe: Building a Human Science of Communication,” Quarterly Journal of Speech , 61 (1975), 209–219. See also Barbara J. O'Keefe , “A Constructivist Approach to Human Interaction,” Diss. Illinois 1976.
  • This fault is evidenced in two recent texts: Craig R. Smith and David M. Hunsaker , The Bases of Argument (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1972), p. 97; and R. C. Dick , Argumentation and Rational Debating (Dubuque: William C. Brown, 1972), pp. 35–36. The dangers of objectification are explicitly recognized, and discussed in some detail, by Herbert W. Simons , Persuasion: Understanding, Practice, and Analysis (Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1976), pp. 192–223; yet, Simons proceeds to present a rather traditional account of “psycho-logic” which, it seems fair to say, belies his discussion of its theoretical dangers. His conclusion seems ironic: “… the relation between logic and ‘psycho-logic’ is among the most important /issues/ and also the least understood by rhetoricians” (p. 223). My argument is that his conceptualization of “psycho-logic” would be much clearer and useful if understood in the context of the interactive formulation elaborated in this essay.
  • An ascertainably true statement given the paucity of argumentation research and the current popularity of diagramming. It is not sufficient to pay lip service to the principle of not extracting arguments from their contexts if we proceed to do exactly that by diagramming (or casting into syllogisms) serial predications without adequate reflection upon the phenomenal worlds of the naive social actors who use them. A good example of this fault is Wayne N. Thompson , Argumentation and Debate , 2nd ed. (Belmont: Wadsworth, 1968), p. 143. This is nothing new, however, since Brockriede and Ehninger had observed the same dangers (and then ignored them) in Decision by Debate (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1963), pp. 98–167. The danger rests specifically with dealing with argument as a “unit of proof” or as a “unit of reasoning.” At the very least, this view must be integrated into a broader conceptual structure viewing argument as a form of interaction. The unit of reasoning view has been recently advanced by Wayne Brockriede , “Rhetorical Criticism as Argument,” Quarterly Journal of Speech , 60 (1974), 165–174. He defines argument (p. 166) as “the process by which a person reasons his way from one idea to the choice of another idea.” Five generic characteristics of arguments are elaborated, all but two of which stress the nature of argument as a unit of reasoning.
  • Daniel J. O'Keefe , “Two Concepts of Argument,” Journal of the American Forensic Association , 13 (1977), 121–128; and Wayne Brockriede , “Characteristics of Arguments and Arguing,” Journal of the American Forensic Association , 13 (1977), 129–132. Brockriede's distinction is between process and product.
  • Joseph W. Wenzel , “Three Senses of Argument,” unpublished paper, 1977. Wenzel's conceptualization of argument as “procedure” is worthy of mention here since it bears upon at least some aspects of our formulation. He writes that “it is in this sense that argument is allied with dialectic (and debate, discussion, etc.) as a methodology or procedure for bringing argument as a process under some sort of deliberate control. The crucial feature of this sense of argument… is conscious articulation of rules…. Now the rules may very well originate in the encounters of naive social actors, but the development of explicit procedural rules marks a distinct stage of social development in the uses of argument.” This reasoning seems to be essentially consistent with my own formulation, although a distinction between unexamined background awarenesses and public rules (e.g., laws, regulations, administrative procedures, and the like) ought to be maintained. This amendment, however, does no violence to Wenzel's reasoning and is elaborated below in some detail.
  • Mind, Self, and Society , p. 122.
  • Ibid. , p. 134.
  • Bernard N. Meitzer , The Social Psychology of George Herbert Mead (Western Michigan University: Center for Sociological Research, 1964), p. 19.
  • Philosophy of the Present , p. 86. See also Guy E. Swanson , “Mead and Freud: Their Relevance for Social Psychology,” Sociometry , 24 (1961), 319–339; Walter Coutu , “Role-Playing vs. Role-Taking: An Appeal for Clarification,” American Sociological Review , 16 (1951), 180–187; and Robert H. Lauer and Linda Boardman , “Role-Taking: Theory, Typology, and Propositions,” Sociology and Social Research , 55 (1971), 137ff. See the more recent formulation in Robert H. Lauer and Warren H. Handel , Social Psychology: The Theory and Application of Symbolic Interactionism (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), pp. 60–66.
  • The “unit of meaningful utterance” has been discussed at length by Karl R. Wallace , Understanding Discourse: The Speech Art and Rhetorical Action (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970).
  • Thomas J. Scheff , “On the Concepts of Identity and Social Relationship,” in Tamotsu Shibutani , Ed., Human, Nature and Collective Behavior (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970), p. 194. See also Eugene Weinstein and Paul Deutschberger , “Some Dimensions of Altercasting,” Sociometry , 26 (1963), 454–466.
  • Max Weber , The Theory of Social and Economic Organization , trans. A. M. Henderson and Talcott Parsons (New York: the Free Press of Glencoe, Inc., 1947), p. 118.
  • John Dewey , Experience and Nature (New York: Dover, 1929). See Chapter V.
  • Mind, Self, and Society , Chapters Two and Four.
  • Formal treatment of the notion appears in Alfred Schutz , Collected Papers, I: the Problem of Social Reality , Ed. Maurice Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962). Schutz developed his phenomenological perspective in a series of writings including: “Some Leading Concepts of Phenomenology,” Social Research , 12 (1945), 77–97; “On Multiple Realities,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 5 (1945), 533–575; “Choosing Among Projects of Action,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 12 (1951), 161–184; and “Common Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 14 (1953), 1–37.
  • R. D. Laing , H. Phillipson , and A. R. Lee , Interpersonal Perception: A Theory and Method of Research (New York: Harper and Row, Perennial Library, 1972), 102–103.
  • See Schutz , “On Multiple Realities,” p. 540.
  • See P. H. Marcoups and Rene Bassoul , “Jeux De Mirrors et Sociologie de la Connaissance D'Autrui,” Cahiers Internationaux de Sociologie , 32 (1962), 43–60. The root metaphor of the “mirror game” is the endless chain of reflections obtained when two mirrors are directly opposed to one another. The authors argue that the naive social actor probably cannot distinguish each individual progression into the mirror (because they are blurred), but he can sense the impact of the collective importance on the chain of reflections.
  • Laing , Phillipson , and Lee , pp. 30–45.
  • Harold Garfinkel , “Studies of the Routine Grounds of Everyday Activities”, Social Problems , 11 (1964), 237. In a similar vein, Thomas Schelling, in his discussion of the American—North Korean war talks, notes that recognitions of war limitations could not be unilateral since only mutual recognition would give them force: “It was not just that we recognized it and they recognized it, but that we recognized that they recognized it, they recognized that we recognized it, and so on. It was a shared expectation. To that extent, it was a somewhat undeniable expectation.” Thomas C. Schelling , Toward a Theory of Strategy for International Conflict (New y ork: Rand Corporation, Publication 1948), pp. 40–41.
  • Thomas J. Scheff , “A Theory of Social Coordination Applicable to Mixed-Motive Games,” Sociometry , 30 (1967), 225. Scheff makes considerable use of the notational system developed by Laing, Phillipson, and Lee. This system isolates three levels of co-orientation: agreement, understanding, and realization. If A and B express agreement on issue X, they “agree.” If A believes that B agrees, there is “understanding.” If A believes that B believes that A agrees with X, “realization” has occurred. See Laing , Phillipson , and Lee , pp. 64–92.
  • Thomas J. Scheff , “Toward a Sociological Model of Consensus,” American Sociological Review , 32 (1967), 32–46. This approach seems similar to the notion of “awareness contexts” described in Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss, “Awareness Contexts and Social Interaction,” American Sociological Review , 29 (1964), 669–679. Scheff, however, believes that the notion of “identity,” as used by Glaser and Strauss, is unacceptably ambiguous. He substitutes the notion of “situational identity” which consists of a mutually recognized verbal statement of a projected sequence of actions by and toward an actor.
  • This distinction is made by Peter B. Warr and Christopher Knapper , The Perception of People and Events (New York: Wiley, 1968), pp. 14–15. Dispositional attributions assign qualities to a person which are independent of a specific occasion (“She is intelligent,” “He is dishonest”). Episodic attributions are situation-specific statements about a person (“she is bored,” “he is trying to con me”).
  • See Michal M. McCall , “Boundary Rules in Relationships and Encounters,” in George J. McCall , Ed., Social Relatonships (Chicago: Aldine, 1970), pp. 35–61. Encounters and relationships are held by McCall (p. 36) to be “distinct Phenomena” because “a social relationship is more than the encounter between two members. Encounters are important beyond their function as observable manifestations of social relationships.” In essence, the focus of an encounter is on some mutual activity while the focus of a social relationship is the identities of its members. Conversely, the boundary rules of encounters are primarily concerned with the identities of the actors while the boundary rules for relationships are focused on activities.
  • The relationship between relationships and encounters is, therefore, always circular, but always starting with encounters. The formulation by Ms. McCall focuses upon relationships sustained over time. The assumption of the present paper is that an “argument” is a co- orientation requiring higher order co-orientations as necessary preconditions. Goffmanesque strangers could hardly enter into an argument without first having arrived at some relational definitions which make the argument possible.
  • George M. McCall , et al. , “A Collaborative Overview of Social Relationships,” in McCall , p. 172. In this view, a relationship is characterized by (1) intimacy, (2) duration, (3) formality, (4) embeddedness within a larger organization, (5) actuality—a number of encounters, (6) reciprocality, and (7) differentiation—the degree to which members are distinguished from one another.
  • Tamotsu Shibutani , “Reference Groups and Social Control,” in Arnold Rose , Ed., Human Behavior and Social Processes: An Interactionist Approach (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), pp. 129–147.
  • Norman K. Denzin , “Rules of Conduct and the Study of Deviant Behavior: Some Notes on the Social Relationship,” in McCall , p. 71.
  • ibid. See also J. Gibbs , “The Sociology of Law and Normative Phenomena,” American Sociological Review , 31 (1966), 315–325; R. Bierstedt , The Social Order: An Introduction to Sociology (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957); and R. T. Morris , “Typology of Norms,” American Sociological Review , 21 (1956), 610–613.
  • Ibid. See also Michael Argyle , The Psychology of Interpersonal Behavior (Baltimore: Penguin, 1967), pp. 47–67.
  • It would be a mistake, however, to equate these broader social standards with the old notion of status. Too often, positivist sociologists have employed the idea of status to suggest stable relationships or meanings (one person being stabilized in a role with reference to others in a network of social relationships). See Aaron V. Cicourel , Cognitive Sociology: Language and Meaning in Social Interaction (New York: The Free Press, 1974), p. 29: “The common view is to characterize our theoretical conceptions of norms as stable features of society… evoking consensus in groups. Norms are problematic to all interaction scenes because our reflective thoughts, as participants or observers, reify and reconstruct the ‘rules of the game.’ The analogy which fits here is that of Mead's distinction between the ‘I’ and the ‘me.’ Although interaction is always a gamble for all concerned, we have managed to exempt that abstract entity called ‘society.’ The reflective ‘me’ of the participants and observers (including the social analyst) imputes meanings and reinterprets perceptions and actions after the social scene unfolds, but it is the ‘I’ which is leading the way with potentially impulsive, innovative, spontaneous interpretations of the situation.” Thus, Cicourel seeks to divorce the idea of norms and rules from structuralist foundations. His final distinction between interpretive rules and norms, then, may be especially useful for our purposes (pp. 30–31): “The distinction between interpretive rules and norms is tied to the difference between consensus or shared agreement and a sense of social structure. Interpretive procedures provide the actor with a developmentally changing sense of social structure that enables him to assign meaning or relevance to an environment of objects. Normative or surface rules enable the actor to link his view of the world to that of others in concerted social action, and to presume that consensus or shared agreement governs interaction. The shared agreement would include consensus about the existence of conflict or differences in normative rules.” See also Tamotsu Shibutani , Society and Personality. An Interactionist Approach to Social Psychology (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1961), p. 40, for an elaboration upon the theme.
  • Denzin , p. 71. See also Aaron V. Cicourel , “The Acquisition of Social Structure: Toward a Developmental Sociology of Language and Meaning,” in J. Douglas , Ed., Understanding Everyday Life: Toward the Reconstruction of Sociological Knowledge (Chicago: Aldine, 1970)—this paper has been reprinted as Chapter Two of Cognitive Sociology. This view (and the relationship between ethnomethodology and interactionism) has been the subject of several papers in Douglas. See, for example, Norman K. Denzin , “Symbolic Interaction and Ethnomethodology,” pp. 261–287; Don Zimmerman and D. Lawrence Wieder , “Ethnomethodology and the Problem of Order: Comment on Denzin,” pp. 287–298; and Don Zimmerman and Melvin Pollner , “The Everyday World as a Phenomenon,” pp. 80–104. See also Thomas Wilson , “Conceptions of Interaction and Forms of Sociological Explanation,” American Sociological Review , 35 (1970), 197–210.
  • See Harold Garfinkel , Studies in Ethnomethodology (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1967); Guy Swanson , Anthony Wallace , and James Coleman , “Review Symposium of Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology “ American Sociological Review, 33 (1968), 122–130; and James Wilkins , “Review of Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology,” American Journal of Sociology, 73 (1968), 642–643. The term “ethnomethodology” refers to the study of folk methods for deciding questions of fact and value, of standards for evaluation, and of rules of conduct. These folk standards are the “routine grounds of everyday life” in that they constitute background awarenesses which make social interaction predictable. This is analogous to saying that scientific theories inform and organize scientific methods and researches. Unfortunately, most ethnomethodologists believe that the organizing rules used by naive social actors are essentially different from those of scientists. The constructivist/interactionist view would suggest that they are not. See Richard Hill and Kathleen Crittendon , Proceedings of the Purdue Symposium on Ethnomethodology, Institute Monograph Series, Number 1 (West Lafayette: Institute for the Study of Social Change, Purdue Research Foundation, 1968), for an exacting discussion of such matters. At a very general level of conception, ethnomethodology is consistent with the world view informing this essay: we may enjoin the examination of the interpretive activities of situated social actors and the study of the background assumptions which shape their interpretations without committing ourselves to all aspects of ethnomethodological research. Whether the argumentation discipline will wish to embrace the methodologies of ethnomethodology (such as conversational analysis, scene analysis, and the like) is a question which must be taken up in another paper. The general ethnomethodological posture, however, seems clearly to be complementary to the nature of the argumentation discipline being advocated in this essay. Other important developments of this perspective are found in Peter McHugh , Defining the Situation: The Organization of Meaning in Social Interaction (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968); Harold Garfinkel and Harvey Sacks , “On Formal Structures of Practical Actions,” in J. C. McKinney and E. Tiryakian , eds., Theoretical Sociology: Perspectives and Developments (New York: Appleton, 1970); many of the essays in R. Bauman and J. Sherzer , eds., Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974); and many of the essays in J. Gumperz and D. Hymes , eds., Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1972).
  • The procedural rules of argument characteristically spring from either moral notions or pragmatic assumptions about interaction efficiency, although naive social actors might not use such terms. Procedural rules are rationalized post facto with reference to a casual link to action. See Donald Davidson , “Actions, Reasons, and Causes,” in, Alan R. White , Ed., The Philosophy of Action (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 79–94. Davidson's “common sense” explanation of the rationalizations of ordinary causal explanations stands in rather stark contrast to the approaches urged by many philosophers. See, e.g., G. E. M. Anscombe , Intention (New York: Oxford University Press, 1959); Stuart Hampshire , Thought and Action (London: Cambridge University Press, 1959); and Julius Kovesi , Moral Notions (London: Routledge and Kegan-Paul, 1967). The argument of this essay that procedural rules are rationalized post facto by common sense appeals to causal links to action is, I think, reasonably consistent with the view of J. L. Austin , “A Plea for Excuses,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society , 57 (1956–57), 1–30.
  • Natanson's introduction to Alfred Schutz, Collected Papers , Vol. I, is especially lucid. See also P. L. Berger and T. Luckmann , The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Doubleday, 1966).
  • George Pasthas , “Ethnomethods and Phenomenology,” in Manis and Meitzer , p. 132. Post facto explanations have been studied along these lines. See, for example, M. Scott and S. Lyman , “Accounts,” American Sociological Review , 33 (1968), 46–62.
  • David L. Swanson , “A Reflective View of the Epistemology of Critical Inquiry,” Communication Monographs , 44 (1977), 211–212. See also his “The Requirements of Critical Justification,” Communication Monographs , 44 (1977), 306–320, for an elaboration of the implications of the “reflective” view as opposed to the natural attitude in criticism. Swanson's position applies to the argumentation discipline as much as it does to criticism and fits nicely with Cicourel's (Cognitive Sociology) criticisms of traditional sociological research stances.
  • See note 1.
  • Kelly , p. 50.
  • Ibid.
  • See William Thomas and Dorothy Thomas , The Child in, America: Behavior Problems and Programs (New York: Knopf, 1928), p. 572.
  • For the early theorists, at least, this was conceptualized as a “drive state” in Freud's terms. Such drives ought to be particularly powerful although the body of research spawned by the consistency theories has displayed a marked inability to document the existence of such a phenomenon. See Robert P. Abelson , Ed., Theories of Cognitive Consistency. A Sourcebook (Chicago: Rand-McNally, 1968); and Jack Brehm and Arthur Cohen , Explorations in Cognitive Dissonance (New York: Wiley, 1962). A good survey of weaknesses in the various theories is C. A. Kiesler , B. Collins , and N. Miller , Attitude Change: A Critical Analysis of Theoretical Approaches (New York: Wiley, 1969).
  • Kelly , p. 53. The assumption is that humans are forward-oriented and that consistency is a construct which facilitates the evaluation of other constructs thereby enhancing prediction. Thus, Kelly (p. 83) assumes that a person may employ many construction subsystems which are inferentially incompatible with one another. A personal construct system is in a continual state of flux, this fluctuation always occurring within the confines of regnant or superordinate construct systems. This means that new constructs are not necessarily direct derivatives of (or special cases within) any specific previously established constructs. This makes the clear case ( Kelly , p. 83 notes) “for seeking out the regnant construct systems in order to explain the behavior of men, rather than seeking merely to explain each bit of behavior as a derivative of its immediately antecedent behavior.” Although one element in a cognitive system may be inferentially incompatible with another specific element, a person may decide to abide the inconsistency because of features of the system within which they are embedded. The scope and nature of construct systems (as opposed to individual constructs) leads to the “cognitive complexity” notion described below in this essay.
  • This is, of course, the descriptive starting point. The normative evaluation of actor's perceptions and behavior is a different matter yielding to manners of analysis which are different from (though consistent with) the descriptive assumptions being espoused here.
  • Although several researchers have explored the relationships between interpretive procedures and surface rules, Cicourel believes that there exists relatively little dependable information about them. It seems fair to say that argumentation theorists know nearly nothing about what the relationships might be obtaining between interpretive procedures and the surface rules of public argument (in the sense of conduct during an argument) or surface rules for serializing. One advantage of the present formulation is that it suggests that serial predications will take their form (whatever that form may be) from surface rules which are given situated meanings by the social actors who refer to them.
  • Ray E. McKerrow , “Rhetorical Validity: An Analysis of Three Perspectives on the Justification of Rhetorical Argument,” Journal of the American Forensic Association , 13 (1977), 133–141.
  • Thomas B. Farrell , “Knowledge, Consensus, and Rhetorical Theory,” Quarterly Journal of Speech , 62 (1976), 1–14; and “Validity and Rationality: The Rhetorical Constituents of Argumentative Form,” Journal of the American Forensic Association , 13 (1977), 142–149.
  • “Knowledge, Consensus, and Rhetorical Theory,” p. 12.
  • See W. H. Crockett , “Cognitive Complexity and Impression Formation,” in B. A. Maher , Ed., Progress in Experimental Personality Research , Vol. II (New York: Academic Press, 1965), pp. 47–90.
  • See, for example, Allan N. Press and Paul S. Rcsenkrantz , “Cognitive Complexity and the Learning of Balanced and Unbalanced Social Structures,” Journal of Personality , 37 (1969), 541–553; and L. J. Nidorf and W. H. Crockett , “Cognitive Complexity and the Integration of Conflicting Information in Written Impressions,” Journal of Social Psychology , 66 (1975), 165–169.
  • See, for example, H. Leventhal and D. L. Singer , “Cognitive Complexity, Impression Formation, and Impression Change,” Journal of Personality , 33 (1964), 210–226; and Jesse G. Delia , “Dialects and the Effects of Sterotypes on Interpersonal Attraction and Cognitive Processes in Impression Formation,” Quarterly Journal of Speech , 58 (1972), 285–297. A good review of the literature appears in Jesse G. Delia , Ruth Anne Clark , and David Switzer , “Cognitive Complexity and Impression Formation in Informal Social Interaction,” Speech Monographs , 41 (1974), 299–308.
  • Some research already done seems to bear directly upon argumentative concerns. See, for example, C. W. Mayo and W. H. Crockett , “Cognitive Complexity and Primacy-Recency Effects in Impression Formation,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology , 68, (1964), 335–338; and W. H. Crockett , S. Mahood , and A. N. Press , “Impressions of a Speaker as a Function of Set to Understand or to Evaluate, of Cognitive Complexity, and of Prior Attitudes,” Journal of Personality , 43 (1975), 168–178.

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