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Explaining and Arguing
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Explaining and Arguing
The Social Organization of Accounts



August 1994 | 222 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
"The most comprehensive work to date on explanations and accounts. Antaki is one of the few thinkers conversant both with the new qualitative paradigms in the social sciences--conversation analysis, discourse analysis, rhetorical approaches--and with the mainstream social psychological approach of attribution theory. Lucid and never ponderous, the book gives a much-needed shape and coherence to this cross-disciplinary area." --Richard Buttny, Syracuse University "Excellent. . . . An engagingly written and well-researched critical overview of the literature on everyday explanations, combined with a clear theoretical position. A beautifully crafted piece of work." --Derek Edwards, Loughborough University, London Explanations identify causes, back up claims, and justify actions. Social scientists study them because they reveal how people understand and construct their worlds. This stimulating book offers a critical review of the major approaches to the study of everyday explaining and arguing. Using numerous concrete examples to illuminate the range of contemporary approaches, Antaki's concern is to test theory against practice. He draws a picture of explanation as a rich social achievement of speaker and audience, involving a balance between delicate maneuver and the exercises of discursive power. Explaining and Arguing is essential reading for students and scholars in social psychology, sociolinguistics, and communication studies.
 
Introduction
 
Attributing Cause
 
Causal Talk
 
Explanations in Exoneration
 
Explanation Slots
 
Storied Accounts
 
Explanatory Discourse
 
Making Claims in Logic and Rhetoric
 
Backing Claims in Quarrels
 
Conclusion
Explaining and Arguing in Participants' Own Words

 

Charles Antaki

CHARLES ANTAKI Professor of Language and Social Psychology at the University of Loughborough, UK. More About Author

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