A comparative analysis of philosophical, literary, scientific -in short 'learned'- controversies, which consist mainly in written texts, and argumentation in face-to-face communication. The author points out how the framework of conversational pragmatics can be applied to controversies (i.e. which features can be accounted for by looking at them as dialogues, and which by applying to them the pragmatic concepts developed for the analysis of conversation), and suggests a way of explaining remaining differences.