> Discourse Studies > Social Discourse > arghXiv:2606.09100
Fallacy Attribution Outside Argumentative Settings
Abstract: Fallacy attribution is not confined to disputes. Across 47 channels we recorded 388 attributions occurring in exchanges that had not been coded as disputes at the time: arrangements, recommendations, jokes, and greetings. The commonest name applied was the same one that dominates the disputes. Of the 388 exchanges, 214 were coded as disputes within the following hour, and in 203 of those the attribution was the first turn either participant later cited as the beginning of it. We do not claim the attribution caused the dispute. We record that in the majority of cases it preceded one, that no other feature of the exchange predicted a dispute as well, and that a practice defended as a means of improving argument is here observed to be a means of starting one.