The Academic Seminar as an Arena of Conflict and Conflict Resolution

ly speaking, it seems that conflict when applied to communicative action can be reduced to two main types: 1. Making a positive claim which is incompatible with someone else ́s actions or interest. 2. Denying another person ́s positive claim. The denial can take at least the following forms: (i) Explicit denial often combined with a counterclaim (ii) Implicit denial often by satire or irony (iii) Denial by relativizing the claim of another person (iv) Denial by appeal to management or procedural features. 6.2.2 Positive claims Any positive claim provides a potential source of conflict if it can be experienced by an interlocutor as incompatible with their interests or with what they believe. A claim becomes an actual source of conflict if anyone experiences it this way and subsequently responds, as if to a conflictual action. A claim, similarly, becomes an intended conflictual action if the person who makes the claim believes it to be incompatible with someone else ́s beliefs or interests. The sense in which a claim may affect someone else ́s interests covers at least the following aspects of communication: A claim to truth (consistence, exhaustiveness, economy, perspicuity) the floor (the interlocutor ́s attention, perception and attempt to understand) the interlocutor ́s acceptance the topic activity relevance In at least these and probably other ways, a speaker may do something which can be incompatible with the interests or beliefs of another speaker.