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36

The Image of the Ideal Arguer

Judith M. Dallinger, Western Illinois UniversityDale Hample, Western Illinois University

Throughout its history, the study of argumentation has had a strongnormative impulse, with scholars indicating what sorts of arguments are valid,strong, fallacious, ethical, and inappropriate. Only in the final quarter of the lastcentury, however, did researchers begin to focus on what ordinary arguers thinkan argument is, or what they think ought to happen in an argument. Hample (inpress) suggests that a fundamental consideration in our understanding of arguingskill is the arguer's phenomenal and intellectual experience while arguing. Hesays that a full understanding of why some people argue better than others needsto begin by answering the question, "What do people think they are doing whenthey are arguing?" With good answers to this question, we will be better able toadapt our normative precepts to our student audiences.

An early study of these issues, regrettably unpublished, is Benoit(1982). She asked her students to write free-form descriptions of actualinteractions. Half the students were asked to describe an "argument," and theother half wrote a diary account of a "discussion." When writing about theirarguments, Benoit reports, students repeatedly mention overt disagreement, loudand angry voices, irrational emotional displays, closed-mindedness by bothparties, and negative relational consequences. But when Benoit looked at theother half of the data, she found students think that discussions involveexpression and genuine exchange of views, successfully take on a problem-solving function, and are essentially cooperative. Now both discussions andarguments involve the exchange of reasons in contemplation of actual orpossible disagreement, and scholars would unhesitatingly label a videotape ofeither one as an argument. The problem seems to be the labeling words, whichof course frame participants' expectations and actions. Hample and Benoit(1999) report that people regard arguments as inherently destructive to personalrelationships. As Martin and Scheerhom (1985, p. 718) put it at Alta 16 yearsago, " . . . what seems most critical in the naive theories of everyday actors is notreasoned discourse, but hostility laden discourse."

We want to begin our investigation by exploring these understandings.Our chief goal here is to replicate Benoit's findings. So we generated a self-report questionnaire that expresses the leading findings from Benoit (1982), andpose this hypothesis:

RHI: Respondents will clearly differentiate between arguments anddiscussions, regarding arguments as more negative.

Another goal of this study is to find out not merely what people thinkan argument is like, but further, what an ideal argumentative experience would

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be. We could have followed several avenues in investigating this question, butchose to focus on the participants and how they act. This decision wasinfluenced by the ready availability of a body of research that broadly describesthe chief features of communicators, as perceived by others. This work dealswith communicator style. Norton (1983) described communicator style as "theway one verbally, nonverbally, and paraverbally interacts to signal how literalmeaning should be taken, interpreted, filtered, or understood" (p. 58). Hiscommunicator style instrument allows an individual to describe 10 specificaspects of a person's style of communicating. Norton says that communicatorimage is dependent on the remaining nine independent dimensions, whichinclude: dominant, dramatic, contentious, animated, impression leaving, relaxed,attentive, open, and friendly.

We have already reviewed literature indicating that people consider anargument to be competitive, destructive and hostile. But we are unsure whetherthey think this is ideal. Perhaps the perfect arguer is someone who isexceptionally dominant, contentious, and unfriendly; or perhaps the ideal argueris precisely the sort of person who manages to argue while being the opposite.The first possibility assumes that people see arguments as inherentlyunsalvageable and so capable of perfection in only the most hellish way. Thesecond possibility assumes that people already understand our professionalcommitments, even if these are not uppermost in their minds. Theseconsiderations make it clear that we are simultaneously investigating thephenomenon of argument and its labeling. Consequently, our first researchquestion asks:

RQI; Which communicator styles are thought to be exhibited byideal arguers?

The elements of communicative competence are traditionally thoughtto be effectiveness and appropriateness (Spitzberg & Cupach, 1984), and thesehave been operationalized for arguing by Trapp (1986; Trapp, Yingling, &Wanner, 1987). But even though argumentation researchers are committed to thenotion that good arguers should be both effective and appropriate, ordinaryactors hold such a negative view of arguing that they may not viewargumentative competence in the same way that scholars do. It seems possiblethat people may believe that ideal arguers won't hold their own very well if theyrely on appropriate argumentative strategies. Alternatively, they might supposethat ideal arguers would sacrifice effectiveness in order to smooth overrelational troubles.

Therefore, we think it important not to assume that people think thatideal arguers are highly effective and highly appropriate during arguments. Thisis an important step in our theorizing, and it deserves empirical investigation.Therefore, our next research question asks:

RQ2: How do people evaluate the argumentative competence of idealarguers?

The next step in our investigation is to examine the relationships, if any,between argumentative competence and arguing style. Any naive theory ofarguing should, presumably, connect arguing ability and arguing style. Butwhich of the style dimensions will be associated with effectiveness and which

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with appropriateness? And will the associations be positive or negative? Thethird research question is therefore:

RQ3: What, if any, are the associations between arguing style andcompetence for ideal arguers?

The final set of considerations that motivate this investigation has to dowith actual arguers, rather than ideal ones. In addition to having people respondto items about ideal arguers, we also asked them to describe themselves, on boththe style and competence instruments. We suppose that few people regardthemselves as ideal arguers, and that there will therefore be some statistical"distance" between self and ideal ratings on both measures. While thesedistances are interesting in and of themselves, we also want to know whetherpeople's self ratings of own argument effectiveness and competence arepredicted by their distances from the characteristics of the ideal arguer.Therefore, we pose these last two questions:

RQ4: What are the distances on the communication style dimensionsbetween an ideal arguer and self?

RQ5: Do differences between self and ideal arguer ratings on thedimensions of communicator style predict respondents' owneffectiveness and appropriateness ratings?

Method

Participants

Respondents were 136 students who were enrolled in the university-required public speaking class at Western Illinois University. Participatingstudents were nearly equally divided in sex (69 men and 67 women); ranged inage from 19 through 30 (mean = 20.6, s.d. = 1.65) ; were primarily Euro-American (89.6%); and were nearly all sophomores (45.6%), juniors (30.1%) orseniors (22.1%). Students were asked how many prior classes they had taken incommunication or conflict; slightly over half had taken none (51.1 %), while themajority of the remaining students had taken either one (25.9%) previous class,or two (16.3%). Respondents were also asked if they had ever participated on adebate or forensics team, and the majority (89%) reported that they had not.Thus, we felt that, with few exceptions, these students had not had enoughacademic background to begin to adopt a scholarly point of view aboutargument and arguers.

Operation alizations

All participants completed a questionnaire packet which includedseveral instruments, as well as the demographic items described above.

The first instrument deals with students' perceptions of arguing anddiscussing. 10 items concern argument, and 10 parallel items refer to discussion.The items are modeled mainly on Benoit*s (1982) findings. Students are askedto indicate to what degree ( 1 - 5 ) these things refer (separately) to an argumentand a discussion: loud and negative voices, cooperation, positive relationaloutcomes, closed-mindedness, successful problem solving, irrational emotional

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displays, negative relational outcomes, hostility, genuine exchanges of views,and physical violence. Each 10 item group forms an internally reliable scale(argument alpha = .83, discussion alpha = .87). This offers evidence that theindividual items are reliable.

Norton's Communicator Style Measure (1983) was included, andrespondents were asked to respond to it twice for two separate targets: an idealarguer and self. The items in this instrument were slightly reworded so that theyasked specifically about arguments, rather than communication in general.Alpha reliabilities for each dimension are as follows: dominant (ideal = .83, self= .84), dramatic (.65, .58), contentious (.43, .63), animated (.65, .74), impressionleaving (.67, 86), relaxed (.55, 65), attentive (.49, 62), open (.25, .37), friendly(.49, 58), and overall image (.71, 80). Many of the dimensions did not functionwell, and this may be due to the awkwardness of asking about communicativestyles that are oflen considered to be inconsistent with arguing. In the opensubscale for self, one item was dropped because it reduced the overall alphareliability by .12. For other subscales, all items were retained, as dropping anyof them would not have increased subscale reliabilities by more than .03.

The Argumentative Competence Scale (Trapp et al., 1987) wasincluded in both its forms. On one, respondents were asked to respond to itemsin terms of an ideal arguer, and on the other, respondents rated their owncompetence. Alpha reliabilities were good for these subscales for both self andideal arguer: for ideal arguers, appropriateness = .90 and effectiveness = .67; forself, the parallel alphas are .90 and .74.

Results

Our hypothesis predicts that people will clearly distinguish between"argument" and "discussion," and that the argument ratings will be morenegative, /-tests show that each of the 10 items distinguished the two terms, andthe differences are all in the predicted direction. Our hypothesis is supported.

Research question one asked how respondents describe the style ofideal arguers. The table below includes means for the 10 communicator styledimensions. Nine of the dimensions are based on responses to 5 items each, sothat scores range from five to 25, with a midpoint of 15. Because there are sixitems for communicator image, it can range from six to 30, and its theoreticalmean is 18. Observed means of respondents' descriptions of communicatorstyles for an ideal arguer were compared to theoretical means, using a series ofone sample /-tests. (These tests are not shown, to save space; the / tests in thetable are comparisons of self and ideal arguers, to be discussed later.) For alldimensions except the dramatic style, respondents described an ideal arguer ashaving a greater degree of the communicator style than the theoretical mean.

Research question two, concemed with the arguing competence of idealarguers, was answered by comparing means for appropriateness andeffectiveness for ideal arguers (see the table just below) to their theoreticalmeans. The appropriateness subscale uses 11 items (range = 11-55) and has amidpoint of 33, while the effectiveness subscale is based on 9 items (range = 9-45) with a theoretical mean of 27. Respondents described "an ideal arguer" assubstantially and statistically significantly more effective than the midpoint, andas far less inappropriate than the midpoint for appropriateness.

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Style FactorsDominantDramaticContentiousAnimatedImpression LeavingRelaxedAttentiveOpenFriendlyCommunicator ImageCompeteficeEffectivenessAppropriateness

Ideal

16.315.416.817.019.819.619.816.217.721.5

39.018.0

Self

16.215.016.117.317.515.817.512.516.917.4

30.715.7

/ value

0.431.412.62**-0.737.68***9.91***7.30***-1.792.78**9.98***

20.60***2.88**

*•/?<.01***p<.OOldf is between 128 and 133

Research question three inquires about the possible connectionsbetween arguing competence and style in naive theories of argument. The keydata deal with ideal arguers. Our statistical analyses consisted of stepwiseregressions, predicting either the ideal arguer's effectiveness or appropriatenessby the 10 style factors. For appropriateness, 2 factors are predictive: relaxed{beta = -.51,/? < .001) and dramatic (beta= .32,p< .001), resulting in anoticeably high R (.62, p < .001). Analysis of multicollinarity among thepredictors shows that only 3 of the omitted variables have tolerance valuesabove .80 (contentious, .81; open, .90; and friendly, .84). For the ideal arguer'seffectiveness, three predictors are significant: relaxed (beta = .40, p< .001),impression leaving (beta = .33,p < .001), and attentive (beta = .20,p < .02). TheR for this model is also substantial (.67,/? < .001). For this analysis, thetolerance statistics show that only one value (open) exceeds .80. These resultsoutline the relationships among style and competence, according to people'snaive theories of arguing.

Research question four was explored by comparing means for eachcommunicator style dimension for ideal arguers and self. Results of pairedsample /-test of differences are included in the earlier table. Respondents rated"an ideal arguer" as being more contentious, relaxed, attentive, friendly, leavinga better impression, and having a more positive communicator image than self.

Research question five asked if the differences that respondentsperceived between their own arguing style and that of an ideal arguer wouldpredict their own argumentative competence scores. It was answered byregressing difference scores (between self and ideal arguer's communicator styledimensions) onto own effectiveness and appropriateness ratings. Effectivenesswas significantly predicted by the communicator st>'le difference scores (R = .50,p < .001). The only significant beta weight is for impression leaving {-.35,p< .001), and the zero-order correlation between the impression leaving

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difference measure and self effectiveness is r = -.43 (p < .001). The regressionfor appropriateness scores was not quite significant {R = .37, p = .065), and noneof the beta weights is significant. These results indicate that a person's perceiveddifferences between own and ideal arguing style have little effect on self ratingsof argument competence.

To follow up on these nearly null results, we ran simpler analyses,parallel to those reported earlier for ideal arguer's style and competence. Here,we predicted our respondents' self ratings of arguing effectiveness andappropriateness by means of the 10 style self ratings. For effectiveness, 4 stylefactors are predictive: impression leaving {beta = .30, p < .001), overall arguerimage {beta = .20, p < .03), dominant {beta= .24,/7<.01), and relaxed (= . 15, /? < .04). The entire model produces ^ = .71, p < .001. One omittedvariable, open, has a tolerance value of .83; no others are as high. Forappropriateness, 5 style variables survive the stepwise procedure: dominant{beta = AS,p< .001), relaxed {beta = -.19,p < .04), friendly {beta = -.24,p< .01), dramatic {beta - .26, p < .01), and overall arguer image {beta = -.22, p< .03). Analysis of multicoUinearity among predictors shows that only oneomitted variable, open, has a tolerance value over .70 (.82).

Discussion

In the most general terms, the point of this investigation is to explorewhat people think arguing is: what they think the term means, what an idealarguer is like, how they differ from the ideal, and how arguing style relates toarguing competence. This study's results improve our understanding of theseissues.

As other studies have already indicated, the term "argument" is anegative one. Scholars see few important differences between interpersonalarguments and interpersonal discussions, especially problem-solving ones: bothinvolve advocacy, anticipate or eventuate in disagreement, exchange reasons,require critical thinking, and have the dual goals of persuasive effectiveness andsocial appropriateness. Nonetheless, our respondents see stark contrasts betweenthe terms. Interactions framed as "arguments" are punishing, aggressive, angry,closed-minded, and dangerous. Though these are not new findings, theytriangulate results from other methodologies. These common understandings ofthe word that labels our academic specialty are a fundamental obstacle forteachers.

Some optimism is invited, however, by our results bearing on idealarguers. Such people are expected to be dominant, contentious, and closed, it istrue. But they are also thought to be even more animated, impression leaving,relaxed, attentive, and friendly. Instructors can use the second set ofexpectations to contextualize the first set. We can thereby find a ready audiencefor our view that people can contend while being relaxed, friendly, and so forth.More difficult will be teaching that dominance and closed-mindedness areunnecessary. Perhaps the inconsistency of these two characteristics with thepositive ones can be used as a resource for bringing students' expectations intocloser alignment with our own. Students already understand that ideal arguersare simultaneously effective and socially appropriate, and this is an importantpremise for improving their intellectualization of arguing.

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This study also shows where people find themselves to be most in needof personal improvement. Compared to their own perceptions of ideal arguers,people rate themselves as significantly less impression leaving, relaxed,attentive, and friendly. They also see themselves as too contentious and perhaps(p = .08) not open enough. We were somewhat disappointed to discover thatthese differences between self and ideal do not predict self ratings of arguingcompetence. Still, these differences describe people's personal inventories ofcommunication deficiencies, and therefore once again point to a good startingplace for instruction.

References

Benoit, P. J. (1982, November). Tlw naive social actor's concept of argument.Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Speech CommunicationAssociation, Louisville, KY.

Hample, D. (in press). Arguing skill. In J. O. Green & B. R. Burleson (Eds.),Handbook of communication and social interaction skills. Mahwah,NJ: Erlbaum

Hample, D., & Benoit, P. J. (1999). Must arguments be explicit and violent: Astudy of naive social actors' understandings. In F. H. van Eemeren, R.Grootendorst, J.A. Blair, & C. A. Willard (Eds.), Proceedings of the

fourth international conference of the International Society for theStudy of Argumentation (pp. 306-310). Amsterdam: SICSAT.

Martin, R. W., & Scheerhom, D. R. (1985). What are conversational arguments?Toward a natural language user's perspective. In J. R. Cox, M.O.Sillars, & G. B. Walker (Eds.), Argument and social practice:Proceedings of the Fourth SCA/AFA Conference on Argumentation (pp.705-722). Annandale, VA: Speech Communication Association.

Norton, R. (1983). Communicator style: Theory, applications, and measures.Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.

Spitzberg, B., & Cupach, W. (1984). Interpersonal communication competence.Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Trapp, R. (1986, November). The concept of argumentative competence. Paperpresented to the annual meeting of the Speech CommunicationAssociation, Chicago IL.

Trapp, R,, Yingling, J., & Wanner, J. (1987). Measuring argumentativecompetence. In F. H. van Eemeren, R. Grootendorst, J.A. Blair, & C. A.Willard (Eds.), Argumentation: Across the lines of discipline (pp. 253-261). Dordrecht, Holland: Foris.