How dialogues create arguments

The goal of this paper is to demonstrate how argumentation dialogues of various types can construct a shared map or a shared understanding of an issue under discussion. In the language of O'Keefe (1977), the goal is to show how arguments2 create and update arguments1. The approach turns upon two issues. First, that the connection between locutions in a dialogue has an inferential component beyond any that may hold between the contents of those locutions; and second, that the connection between the components of an argument1 and the components of an argument2 is rich and complex -but can be explained by speech act theory. The work is part of a project which aims to build infrastructure for an online 'Argument Web' which will support both the analysis, manipulation, assessment and display of billions of arguments1 and also the conduct of millions of concurrent arguments2. The distinction between argument1 and argument2 originated in an important discussion about the ambiguity of the English word, argument, between W. Brockriede (1975, 1977) and D. J. O’Keefe (1977):