In his theory of 'argumentative scales', D. shows that the syntactic structure of utterances used in argumentative discourse contains indications as to the type of conclusions they are meant to point to, independently of the information they convey. The very meaning of each utterance is then to be seen, intrinsically, as a means of bending the addressee's speech in the desired direction, so that the intention to say something - and the meaning of the utterance - cannot be distinguished from the intention to direct the addressee's response.