Abstract
In this paper, we report on the orientations of Turkish college students to interpersonal arguing and compare them with American students’ predispositions for arguing. In measuring the argument orientations, a group of instruments was utilized: argument motivations, argument frames, and taking conflict personally. Turkish data come from 300 college students who were asked to complete self-report surveys. Analyses contrast the mean scores of the Turkish and American respondents, offer gender-based comparisons in the Turkish data, and show whether religiosity has an effect on Turkish students’ arguing orientations. In order to give an explanatory account of the argument motivations of Turkish college students, the relevant socio-cultural and political facts about Turkey were also considered. Our investigation has revealed that Turkish students have more advanced and positive understandings of interpersonal arguing compared to American ones. We have also found clear sex-typing between Turkish male and female students, and have discovered some limited evidence for religiosity’s relevance to interpersonal arguing.
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Notes
A documentary that addresses this topic is “Sözün Farkı” [Difference of expression] directed by Odabaş (2013).
The emergency state that had been in progress in Turkey since July 20, 2016 was abolished by the government in July 18, 2018.
The typification of men as more ‘aggressive’ is a conceptual summary of the Table 2 results bearing on verbal aggressiveness, eagerness to argue for purposes of utility/dominance/play, levels of blurting/cooperation/civility, and enjoyment of conflict.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Michel Dufour for his valuable comments on the back-translated version of the instruments and his suggestions about addressing translation problems. Thanks also to Paul Hoard for translating the instruments back into English, and to our manuscript reviewers for helping us improve our manuscript to its present state.
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Demir, Y., Hample, D. A Cross-Cultural Study of Argument Orientations of Turkish and American College Students: Is Silence Really Golden and Speech Silver for Turkish Students?. Argumentation 33, 521–540 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-019-09483-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-019-09483-1