How participants in arguments challenge the normative position of an opponent

Abstract

This article describes a device used to challenge a target’s normativity in the course of an argument, a members’ method employed in arguments in public places. In this device, participants seek to challenge their opponent’s normativity by implying that the target of the device is not adhering to a norm mutually agreed-to in the earlier preparatory phases of the device. A pre-challenge phase poses an ‘enticing interrogative’, a question that fails to take for granted common-sense features of the target as a resource for obtaining a pre-figured reply. The resulting challenge phase implies that on the basis of the pre-challenge, the target is failing to adhere to some norm required of them by means of category or general membership. This article describes the way in which with this device parties to an argument may manufacture challenge an opponent’s normativity.