“It will only consist of two words”. Disagreement as a resource in study group sessions

Abstract

This study analyses argumentation –the negotiation of opinions in interac-tion– in multi-party conversations, more specifically in study group sessions involving Chilean university students. In particular, the study focuses on the  ways  in  which  the  participants  end  argumentative  sequences  which were initiated with an explicit expression of disagreement. In the article, a classification of the different kinds of resolutions is presented, which dis-tinguishes between who (protagonist, antagonist or a third party) ends the sequence and how it is ended: explicitly, implicitly or through a suspension of the argumentative sequence. By means of an exhaustive analysis of the data at hand, the study intends to answer two basic questions. First, if inter-personal disagreement does in fact, as is maintained by previous research, constitute a problem which needs to be resolved, this will be clear from the ways in which the participants orient themselves towards the disagreement and try to resolve it. Second, based on the same premises, the participants would  then  need  to  collaborate  to  resolve  the  disagreement  in  order  to bring  the  argumentative  sequence  to  a  close  and  go  back  to  elaborating the task at hand, an objective which presumably is given a special priority in the studied context, where the primary aim of the conversation – that of bringing the study group session to a fruitful ending – can be assumed to condition the strategies used in resolving the argumentative sequences. The results indicate that disagreements in the studied event, rather than being treated as problematic, are used by the participants as a means of reaching a successful solution to the task given.