Page 128 - Courting the Media Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Law

―Your Words Against Mine‖: States of Exception… 119

be a quarrel at all. The conflict would still be maintained but not the verbal
quarrel. The consequences of not accepting the cooperative assumptions of
such interactions are that the quarrel will not make sense or even occur. A
classical quarrel requests an equality: ―Although the quarrel can be a fight
between the two concerning who is the strongest, the basic condition is in a
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way an imagined balance‖ [ibid, p. 145 ). The difference between a discussion
and a quarrel is, according to Adelswärd, that the latter has a personal
character in being oriented towards the other person. The conflict or the topic
on which the quarrel is based will only become this if both parties accept this
assumption. A quarrel is paradoxically a form of conversation that is
accomplished ―in a spirit of cooperative conflict‖ (ibid:150).

Under the surface of agreement conflicts can be hidden. The
agreement is there as an implicit understanding that the conflict should
not be brought into the open. The participants can use the discursive
space for anything but the unselfish acts. Behind a veil of positive
agreement, they can interact in order to acquire a position, to gain
advantage, to suppress others and to promote themselves [Adelswärd,
p.150].

The quarrel can be regarded as a ―your words against mine‖ situation
where the tempo, intensity and emotions are escalating and where both parties
in a spirit of cooperation and in a general atmosphere of conflict, contribute to
maintain this character. Conflicts can also temporarily be ignored and this
ignoring is also a result of a mutual acceptance of not making this neglect
explicit. In the quotation above, we can see examples of people with stern
faces and thin smiles who cooperate on not letting the conflicts out in the
open. This is also a ―your words against mine‖ situation but this has not yet
resulted in a cease fire. In pragmatically oriented discourse analysis, we can
thus find many examples on how naturally occurring interaction can both be
characterized as symmetrical and asymmetrical. In a communicative sense this
is not unique. The parties can choose to cooperate on a surface level and in
their turn taking system, but they can carry their own distinctive goals with
this interaction. They can be involved in a process of contested meanings but
still adhere to the general rules of turn taking in interaction. In fact, the quarrel
would not take place at all if it were not for their compliance to these shared
communicative rules. A situation involving ―your words against mine‖ can
thus be said to be based on mutual cooperation.

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The translations from Adelswärd are mine.