Argumentation in Malaysia and How It Compares to the US, India, and China

• In Event: Arguments, Argumentation, and Language Competence

Abstract

Malaysia is a multiethnic nation with a majority of Malays, and a substantial number of ethnic Chinese and Indians. Face-to-face arguing, an inherent feature of personal and public experience, seems never to have been previously studied in Malaysia. We did so here, and compared results to those obtained in India, China, and the U.S. We found interesting distinctions between Malaysia and the other nations on several measures fundamental to the study of interpersonal arguing. Malaysians had a number of comparatively aggressive impulses, but these were tempered by their higher expectation of civility in arguments and their greater sophistication about the general nature of interpersonal disagreement. Malaysians had positive correlations between argument-approach and argument-avoid, and between verbal aggressiveness (prosocial vs. antisocial). Malaysia also produced few sex differences. These were interesting findings, both for what they say about Malaysia and for what they imply about our originating theories of interpersonal arguing.

Authors

• Moniza Waheed, Universiti Putra Malaysia

• Dale Hample, U of Maryland