six dimensions of structure in a two-party conversation

"Even in as simple a case as a polite two-party conversation, several dimensions of structure can be seen: Participants, Parts, Stages, Linear sequence, Causation, Purpose" (#60 1385)
"these six dimensions of structure give the main outlines of what is common to typical conversations." (#60 1403)

Understanding a conversation as being an argument

"You sense that you are in an argument when you find your own position under attack or when you feel a need to attack the other person's position. It becomes a full-fledged argument when both of you devote most of your conversational energy to trying to discredit the other person's position while maintaining your own. The argument remains a conversation, although the element of polite cooperation in maintaining the conversational structure may be strained if the argument becomes heated." (#60 1407)
"Understanding a conversation as being an argument involves being able to superimpose the multidimensional structure of part of the concept WAR upon the corresponding structure CONVERSATION. Such multidimensional structures characterize experiential gestalts, which are ways of organizing experiences into structured wholes." (#60 1458)
"In the ARGUMENT IS WAR metaphor, the gestalt for CONVERSATION is structured further by means of correspondences with selected elements of the gestalt for war." (#60 1461)

arguments

"We construct arguments when we need to show the connections between things that are obvious—that we take for granted—and other things that are not obvious. We do this by putting ideas together. These ideas constitute the content of the argument. The things we take for granted are the starting point of the argument. The things we wish to show are the goals that we must reach. As we proceed toward these goals, we make progress by establishing connections. The connections may be strong or weak, and the network of connections has an overall structure. In any argument certain ideas and connections may be more basic than others, certain ideas will be more obvious than others. How good an argument is will depend on its content, the strength of the connections, how directly it establishes the connections, and how easy it is to understand the connections." (#60 1730)