Agreement and Disagreement

Abstract

Agreement has traditionally been characterized as the preferred response to a proposition or assessment, disagreement as the dispreferred response. Yet recent research into social interaction indicates that the use and evaluation of these two speech acts is much more complex than previously thought. This article outlines some of the prominent theoretical approaches within which agreement and disagreement have been conceptualized. It then examines some of the various types of disagreement before considering the current state of scholarship into agreement/disagreement and its likely trajectory in the future.