Abstract

I wish to argue in favor of a particular orientation, one expressed in Brockriede’s remark that “aruments are not in statements but in people.” While much has been gained from textual analyses, even more will accrue by additional attention to the arguers. I consider that textual materials are really only the artifacts of arguments. The actual arguing is done exclusively by people, either the argument producers or receivers, and never by words on a page. In fact, most of our textua l interpretations are quietly founded on the assumption that the artifact is fully informative about what people think