About this Research Topic
As members of a social world within which interaction needs and communicative tools are intertwined in a series of situated relationships, interactions between individuals, but also between groups and between institutions, emerges from the beginning of life. Thinking about how we participate in an interaction, through verbal and non-verbal exchanges, allows us to focus on explicit and implicit norms, on personal and collective preferences, on subjective and interpersonal theories, and on social processes of construction of meaning that characterize the communicative interactions.
Although discursive, conversational, and argumentative interactions play an essential role in our lives, there is no integrated area of psychological research on these types of communicative interactions. A wide variety of works is available concerning the focus on the different roles played by social actors within the interactions (symmetric-asymmetric, protagonist-antagonist, teacher-learner), as well as the interest for the constitutive aspects of the interactions (emotional, motivational, cognitive) or developmental factors (skills, competences, knowledge). However, research on discourse, conversation, and argumentation is conducted in a number of separate research communities that are spread across disciplines and have only limited intertwinement. We believe as necessary to create a space for open dialogue within the community of researchers interested in discourse, conversation, and argumentation from a psychological perspective.
Intending to bridge these different strands, the aim of this Research Topic falls under two main goals:
(1) to explore novel and promising theoretical perspectives to study discursive, conversational and argumentative interactions from a psychological perspective;
(2) and to provide an extensive platform of the latest innovative research investigating discursive, conversational, and argumentative interactions between individuals, between groups, and between institutions to shed light on the most recent methodological developments to examining these types of interactions.
As such, the proposed Research Topic provides an ideal opportunity for researchers working in different international and psychological contexts to draw together their work within a common forum. This will provide state-of-the-art collective evidence of the breadth of psychological research on discourse, conversation, and argumentation as well as place emphasis on opportunities for mutual awareness and integration, which will have implications for international psychological research and theory on these issues.
We welcome high-quality original research, reviews, commentaries, and perspectives on topics dealing with these issues. We are particularly interested in psychological perspectives on discursive, conversational, and argumentative interactions and in empirically supported approaches to analyze them.
Keywords: argumentation, communicative interactions, conversation, discourse, psychology
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
